The "Anything But Oscars" Mailbag! Plus: ‘Hoppers’

Sean and Amanda open up the mailbag and answer your "Anything But Oscars” questions! Before diving in, they cover a handful of movie news headlines, including a big opening weekend box office for ‘Hoppers,' two of the final Oscars precursors with the WGA and the ASC awards, and the news that Christopher McQuarrie is directing a new ‘Conan the Barbarian’ movie for 20th Century Studios (1:37). Next, they open the mailbag and answer whether or not Bob Ferguson is into physical media, highlight some 2026 titles they hope to see premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, and share the most memorable movie theater experiences of their lives (17:51). Finally, they cover Pixar’s new animated movie, ‘Hoppers,’ and break down why they were ultimately mixed-positive on Daniel Chong’s new film (1:47:14). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producers: Jack Sanders, Chris Wohlers, and Kevin Cureghian Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan®️. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there®️. Drivers wanted. Learn more at vw.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:46Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 1:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 1:48Sean Fennessey?

  And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about your questions and our answers. Today on the show, we are coming to you live on Netflix and otherwise in your standard podcast experience to dig into your anything-but-Oscars mailbag questions. Then we will dive into the next Pixar film, Hoppers, which just came out over the weekend. But first, we need to talk about some news, some box office, a new franchise announcement. We'll do it all right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is presented by State Farm. Sure, being an expert at movie trivia is impressive. You know what's even more impressive? Being smart about saving money. And a great way to do that is by saving when you choose to bundle home and auto with the State Farm Personal Price Plan. Bundling, just another way to save with the Personal Price Plan.

• 2:32Sean Fennessey?

  Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Volkswagen. There is such a thing as becoming too comfortable in your day to day. But our favorite films with stories that make us change the way we think, they weren't made by people content to just sit back and watch the world pass by. This is your sign that you shouldn't either. From us, from VW and the other drivers out there, grab the wheel. Do what you love, even if it means taking the road less traveled. Learn more at VW.com. Okay, Amanda, we're live. We are also going live on Sunday night, right?

• 3:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:13Sean Fennessey?

  It'll be first on Instagram Live. What time?

• 3:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Before the show. This is very important, so everybody listen. So 3:00 PM PT Pacific time, 6:00 PM Eastern. That's on Instagram before the show.

• 3:28Sean Fennessey?

  Before the Oscars, yes.

• 3:29Amanda Dobbins?

  The reason it's so early is because the Oscars telecast starts at 7:00 PM Eastern, 4:00 PM Pacific.

• 3:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 3:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Let me say that again. The Oscars telecast, and I'm not being paid by ABC right now, just so you know, is at 7:00 PM and not the traditional 8:00 PM. I'm letting you know because I don't think anyone has done a sufficiently good job of broadcasting that. It's unusual. It's nice in that it starts a little earlier. Hopefully it'll be done a little earlier. But if you don't want to miss the first hour. Join us at 3:00 PM, 6:00 PM. Join the Oscars at 4:00 PM, 7:00 PM. And then join us again after the Oscars.

• 4:13Sean Fennessey?

  Somewhere between 7:30 PM PT, 10:30 PM ET, based on how long the telecast goes, where we will be back live on Netflix. You can watch our immediate reactions to all of the, hopefully, interesting results. And I have been waxing and waning on my predictions over the last few weeks. And we'll talk about those predictions later this week on the show.

• 4:37Amanda Dobbins?

  But not today.

• 4:37Sean Fennessey?

  Not today. That'll be on Wednesday. How do you feel about that? Can you hold it in until, for two more days?

• 4:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I think a couple of things will creep out, probably. But also, I don't feel that my predictions are yet locked in.

• 4:49Sean Fennessey?

  Mine are not either.

• 4:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm going right down to the wire. So in that sense, it's fine, you know? Well.

• 4:55Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 4:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe it will feel it out.

• 4:57Sean Fennessey?

  Let's talk about the precursors over the weekend quickly. Because this is not an Oscars podcast, but I at least want to note what happened on Sunday, which was two of the relatively big precursors, based on how we've been tracking this godforsaken award season for six months. One is the WGA Awards, which of course, much like the Academy Awards, splits between adapted screenplay and original screenplay. One battle after another, one adapted, Sinners, one original. We have learned nothing about the state of this race.

• 5:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Seems chalk. That seems like we know which to pick in those categories.

• 5:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. The other major precursor was the American Society of Cinematographers Awards, which transpired last night. And Michael Baumann won for one battle after another, which means he now has the trifecta of cinematography precursors, which I think means this is over.

• 5:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well, which is not, I think, what we expected. And probably not even if I had filled out my predictions on Friday that I would have put down.

• 5:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, there's always room for a surprise. But I do wonder, again, it's just a really tight race. One battle and Sinners, and things are just going back and forth. And every time you think, oh, maybe it's going to be over here, you get something else. But I think One Battle is very strong. People like this film.

• 6:09Sean Fennessey?

  I completely agree with you. It has absolutely dominated the precursors in a way that almost like we've, maybe we've never seen. And there's something in play that could be tremendously historic for that movie. But we'll talk about that on Wednesday. We have a lot more award season to come on Wednesday, and then Sunday, and then probably after that on Tuesday as well. So for now, let's talk about movies. Movies, movies. Pixar's back.

• 6:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure is.

• 6:32Sean Fennessey?

  Over the weekend, Hoppers made $81 million worldwide, made $47 million here in the United States of America. It is the second largest original opening movie, the second largest original movie opening this decade behind F1, which we can quibble about whether or not that's an original.

• 6:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 6:50Sean Fennessey?

  And then on down the list, you've got Weapons, Onward, another Pixar film, and Sinners. This is the biggest Pixar opening for an original since Coco in 2017. And I do feel like the thing that started happening around the Barbie time, around the Super Mario Brothers movie time, where you could sense that audiences were a little sick of the hegemony of the previous 15, 20 years of franchise movies, was starting to shift and that the old was going out and that the new was coming in. And then, you know, we had Minecraft last year, and then we had movies like Sinners and Weapons last year. You know, I don't want to overreact, but what do you make of the Hopper's success?

• 7:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I see what you're saying, and I think, yes, in the sense of there is a new generation of young audiences who are ready to get in on the ground floor of something instead of being handed whatever their parents were really into 30 years ago. Even though that's also thriving in both our houses and at the world at large.

• 7:48Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 7:49Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think you're right. I do also think that this just had a billboard with an animal at the center of it. And I really, you don't have to overthink it. And I know that was very powerful in my home. And there were many people who just, and I think by many people, I mean many children under the age of 16, who were taken by that simplicity. You know, it is, it's effective. It's just, here's an animal. Maybe it's gonna talk.

• 8:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Come see what's going on.

• 8:17Sean Fennessey?

  I've been thinking about this with respect to the last five years of Pixar, which has been a troubled period, I would say.

• 8:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Sean Fennessey?

  In 2020 and 2021, Soul and Turning Red both went kind of day and date. They went on Disney Plus very, very shortly after their release, or maybe it's timed same to their release. And I like both of those movies a lot. I think they were like a little bit disserved by the moment. Since then, Pixar has been in a little bit of a rocky place. Pete Docter has come under some fire for some of his changes that he has made to stories to make them quote unquote, less woke, less DEI, whatever you want to call it. There's been a lot of sense that Disney is maybe putting their thumb on the scale to change the point of view of some of the movies. But like, if you just look at the movies themselves, if you look at like Lightyear, Inside Out 2, last year's LEO, there's a fourth one that I'm forgetting that is also in that kind of mid-tier.

• 9:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Luca?

• 9:10Sean Fennessey?

  Luca precedes that, but there's another one, well onward.

• 9:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 9:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's a handful of these movies from this time that have not quite hit and...

• 9:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Elemental.

• 9:21Sean Fennessey?

  Elemental, yes, which did decent business, but I don't think anybody would put it in the top five Pixar movies of all time. And so because the company is in this kind of transition, one, unsurprising that over the weekend, they announced Monsters, Inc. 3, because they have come to rely very much on the sequel machine as like, maybe the rest of the world is getting a little more interested in original stories. Pixar knows that like, every two years, there has to be a new Toy Story, a new Monsters, Inc., a new Inside Out, a new, when's Ratatouille coming? Will there be a third Finding Nemo movie? Like, all, that's kind of their business strategy at this point.

• 9:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's good business. The Monsters, you know, they're pre-merchandise. They're great. Monsters, Inc., a classic, you know, at every pediatrician's office in the waiting room that I've ever been to. So that makes sense to have your baseline of things that we know work and things, Pixar movies that are made a little bit more in the mold of, this is slightly more at a child's level than some of the other experiments you just made in, and maybe also Hoppers. We'll talk about it later. And then, and repeatable. And that's, listen, if you repeat it well, that's not inherently an evil thing.

• 10:32Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I don't think there's anything evil about it. I think, I think it is good business. I think creatively, I'm curious where the studio goes. It was once...

• 10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 10:41Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of the, the most successful bastion for original storytelling in not just animated features, but arguably in all feature storytelling in, in this country for the last 25 years. I think you could make that case. There, there are roughly 10. Original stories that this studio just built and created and made into individual franchises. Hoppers, I'm not sure if it's gonna be a franchise. It seems like it's doing very well and is gonna do fine, but it doesn't, it's not a billion dollar movie, right?

• 11:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Sean Fennessey?

  So it's just maybe just a transition period, we shall see. But I do feel, I feel pretty good about what's going, Project Hail Mary is two weeks away.

• 11:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm psyched.

• 11:18Sean Fennessey?

  The buzz is like definitely positive on that. And we've both seen it, we'll wait to share our thoughts, but I don't know, something's happening.

• 11:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, my child laughed multiple times during the Minions vs. Monsters trailer and I, you know, it's like, that was my It's a Wonderful Life, you know, every time a bell rings, like every time Knox laughs, magical things happen in my heart. So yeah, it's, it's looking up.

• 11:42Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. Not such original news. Christopher McQuarrie last seen completing his octology of Mission Impossible films with The Final Reckoning. Is that a word, octology? Probably not.

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  He finished the Mission Impossible movies with Tom Cruise and now he's making a Conan the Barbarian movie for 20th Century Studios with Arnold Schwarzenegger reprising his role as Conan the Barbarian. How old is Arnold Schwarzenegger? Pop quiz. Don't look it up.

• 12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, 64?

• 12:11Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's gotta be older than that, no?

• 12:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Really? I don't know. It's very confusing now with all of the plastic surgery. I'm like, some people are way older, some people are way younger.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  He's 78 years old.

• 12:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Really?

• 12:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, okay. Well preserved. Funny on Instagram.

• 12:25Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm. How did you think he did as governor of California?

• 12:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I have some notes.

• 12:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I enjoyed that documentary about him on Netflix a couple of years ago.

• 12:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:35Sean Fennessey?

  This is interesting for McQuarrie. I get it, this is for guys who like to work at scale and he likes to work with big budgets on big stories.

• 12:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 12:43Sean Fennessey?

  You need to, you need to have IP. You actually need to have a known, a known story to get your arms around. It seems somewhat similar to what 20th Century Studios, what their mandate is now, since they were kind of subsumed in the Fox Disney deal where- Okay, we have Predator. What are we gonna do with Predator to make a new Predator movie, to make it coherent? Okay, we've got Alien. What are we gonna do with this Xenomorph? And they've pretty successfully done movies like that. And so I suspect they'll have a pretty cool spin. Macquarie is great. I have, I have had some concerns about the last couple of Mission Impossible movies. About like, losing the plot and things getting a little bit too big to get your arms around.

• 13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and also the process, the, the structure and the, the stuntification of the movie getting away from what they're actually doing. I also, you know, another star of our childhood trying to reinvent a phase of their career, but like, I haven't seen Arnold Schwarzenegger run. Like, I don't know how he's doing, but 78 is different than 60, or whatever cruise is hovering around.

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  Presumably there's some sort of baby Conan hanging around.

• 13:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, they're gonna like, Creed it?

• 13:49Sean Fennessey?

  I, I assume so. I think, well, that would be interesting if what they did was, they had James Earl Jones' character from the original Conan the Barbarian. If he had a son, then he could be the, the Adonis Creed. Now, now then we would be cooking with gas.

• 14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  That's an idea right there.

• 14:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Now, now, now you're excited.

• 14:07Sean Fennessey?

  Well, God, I gotta remember what the name of that character is from Conan the Barbarian, because that character is a sick villain that James Earl Jones plays. Hmm, it is Folsa Doom.

• 14:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That's cool. So what's the son's name? Doom 2?

• 14:24Sean Fennessey?

  Um, well, in the Apollo Adonis formulation, would it be like, Thalor Doom? Like, something similar but different? Just, just, honestly, put me in the room for this movie. Like, I, I, I worship the John Millius original. Conan the Destroyer, not a big fan of, but, uh, God, this is, I got interested again. Who's gonna play, play baby Conan? Nicholas Galitzin? Austin Butler? Noah Centineo?

• 14:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe.

• 14:52Sean Fennessey?

  Could see that, right?

• 14:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:54Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Will Poulter?

• 14:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I like Will Poulter.

• 14:56Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I'm just, I'm firing off names here.

• 14:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, you're just firing off the cast of Warfare.

• 15:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 15:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, that, I mean, maybe they should just bring the whole group back together together to do Conan the Barbarian.

• 15:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited you're excited.

• 15:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Conan not really in your interest set.

• 15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No. We asked Jack Sanders, our producer, to break in if there was any breaking news during this. And with four minutes to go, he broke in and I was bracing for something like more exciting than a Conan the Barbarian reboot, but that's okay.

• 15:27Sean Fennessey?

  Jack, you are empowered to break in again if something dramatic happens again.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Don't worry, I will.

• 15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Any other, any other stray thoughts? How are you feeling? You feeling good about the world of movies? You feeling good about your life?

• 15:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Those are two very different questions.

• 15:39Sean Fennessey?

  Are they? I feel like they're intertwined for me.

• 15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, feeling good about the world of movies. Yeah, sure.

• 15:48Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 15:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I feel, I had a great time with my son. I also recorded him watching the entire two-minute Mandalorian and Grogu trailer, which, I mean, I really feel Disney should be paying me at this point for this, this work, but he's excited. And we also had to switch theaters because Knox's first choice of theater was sold out when we could go.

• 16:08Sean Fennessey?

  No kidding.

• 16:08Amanda Dobbins?

  So that seems good. Yeah, it was a robust scene. We ran into some school friends.

• 16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 16:13Amanda Dobbins?

  At the, at the, at Hoppers. Hi, Larelli, if you're listening.

• 16:16Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 16:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible stuff.

• 16:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, films, they're great. Everything else, really don't want to get into it.

• 16:22Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I'm about to make my, my first half picks for the movie fantasy league I'm in. And that goes March through August on the slate.

• 16:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:31Sean Fennessey?

  So I've been taking a longer look at where, what this show is gonna be.

• 16:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It goes March through August, but you haven't done it yet?

• 16:37Sean Fennessey?

  It's due on Wednesday. Um, my picks are due on Wednesday.

• 16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  So Hail Mary is eligible.

• 16:43Sean Fennessey?

  Hail Mary is eligible and I am likely to take it. Now, there's a price affixed to every movie.

• 16:47Amanda Dobbins?

  How much?

• 16:48Sean Fennessey?

  And I would, what I want to do is I want to introduce this game to the world at large. I want to make a, I want to make a big picture movie fantasy league.

• 16:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 16:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's something I mentioned to Jack. It will require a lot of work.

• 16:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Sean Fennessey?

  Probably a little bit of backend tech, but I think it would be really fun because it's kind of in the spirit of everything that we do on the show.

• 17:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It's true.

• 17:05Sean Fennessey?

  With the auctions and, you know, all of our previews. So I've been looking at the slate and I, it's not the greatest first, like next three months of the year. Once July comes around, we're cooking.

• 17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:17Sean Fennessey?

  But up until about Ju, up until about Toy Story 5, it's not an ideal set of circumstances, which I think is pretty common, and that's usually when my- Panic starts to set in is like roughly April, May.

• 17:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 17:30Sean Fennessey?

  So I'm.

• 17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, we can annotate it, but it like, we have a record of past years, but it is, it's, I would say mid-April.

• 17:37Sean Fennessey?

  Mid-April is when I get a little concerned. And you know what?

• 17:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And/or you go to see Minecraft by yourself on a Saturday night and are like, the movies are saved.

• 17:44Sean Fennessey?

  Minecraft right into sinners. That was a very special time for me. We kind of staved off my panic this, this past year.

• 17:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if our April is going to look quite that good this time around, but I, I think that there's a lot to look forward to. We're, we'll preview the summer stuff as we get a little further into the spring, but um, I think I'm feeling pretty good. The world at large, no.

• 18:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Sean Fennessey?

  Bad.

• 18:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Real bad.

• 18:05Sean Fennessey?

  Extremely bad.

• 18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, I want to let you and Jack know that another International Women's Day has passed without your comment. So thanks again for all that you do.

• 18:13Speaker 05

  That's on me.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  It was on a Saturday this year.

• 18:15Amanda Dobbins?

  It was on a Sunday.

• 18:15Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Sunday? Okay. There was a big banner at the Americana.

• 18:18Amanda Dobbins?

  We can't even get a real day. Yeah.

• 18:19Sean Fennessey?

  What day is this?

• 18:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It's, it's the day of rest.

• 18:22Sean Fennessey?

  I did turn to my wife and daughter when I saw that banner and I said, today is your day.

• 18:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no.

• 18:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Before we start, let me just say, one of the best moons of all time. Was this, I just clocked this bracelet halfway through this recording, which I love.

• 18:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 18:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It's wonderful. Is, is she gonna, is it a one of one? Or is she gonna be making any others?

• 18:40Sean Fennessey?

  This was individually made.

• 18:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I place an order?

• 18:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think so. Oh, I think she would love that.

• 18:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I would love, or maybe I can come make one with her.

• 18:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, honestly, she would love nothing. Well, actually, in a bit, Alison, a big Amanda phase right now. Big like, will Amanda be there? What's Amanda doing? So.

• 18:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you. That's very sweet.

• 18:54Sean Fennessey?

  What color would you go with?

• 18:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I do like the blue. I guess I'd want to see the options. Red, maybe?

• 18:59Sean Fennessey?

  All manner of bead. So make a choice. Maybe don't, maybe not to matchy-matchy. You might want to find some differentiation here at the table. Okay, red. That is nice. Then we can be like.

• 19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  That's one of my colors.

• 19:08Sean Fennessey?

  Superman and super girl.

• 19:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's exactly what we'll be.

• 19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Super girl so close to International Women's Day on purpose this year on the calendar?

• 19:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I was about to ask you what it is.

• 19:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You're a super girl, I must tell you.

• 19:20Amanda Dobbins?

  So much. Every day.

• 19:21Sean Fennessey?

  Should we do the mailbag? What do you think?

• 19:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 19:23Sean Fennessey?

  How do you feel about these questions?

• 19:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Good.

• 19:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah?

• 19:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 19:27Amanda Dobbins?

  They're funny. Jack, are we opening up? Are people going to submit in the, while we're recording or not?

• 19:32Sean Fennessey?

  No, they're not.

• 19:33Speaker 05

  Not today, unfortunately.

• 19:34Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, not today. That's okay.

• 19:35Sean Fennessey?

  Should we just have them text you? Read your number on, out loud right now?

• 19:37Speaker 05

  1234567899.

• 19:40Amanda Dobbins?

  What if someone emails during the show?

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Sure. Listeners, email in the big pick mailbag at gmail dot com. If you have anything truly special, I'll fire it in.

• 19:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Because the one thing I'll say, these are great questions. I'm excited. I love our community. Also love that I no longer really look at the big pick mailbag account because there are a lot of unsolicited essays.

• 20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  There's, people took anything but Oscars, like, pretty literally in a film sense, you know, and just one question of advice, you know, anything people need to check in on?

• 20:17Speaker 05

  That's it, Amanda. If any of you live listening have advice questions to send to Amanda Dobbins, email them right now. I will try to get them in at the end.

• 20:26Sean Fennessey?

  You, you, you want to be Dear Abby. You don't want to be a podcaster.

• 20:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I just think I have a unique perspective.

• 20:34Sean Fennessey?

  That I will not argue with. I, I, I can't say I feel good about that. That is definitely true, that you are, you are one of one.

• 20:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much.

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  You got it. All right, let's begin the questions. Jack, where do we start?

• 20:48Speaker 05

  Well, I just want to say, if you email me your question nine times in a 24 hour period, I will not be reading it, not to name any names, but Phillies fan [email protected], your question's not going to be read, and I'm sorry about that.

• 21:01Sean Fennessey?

  Tough one.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  This first one is probably my favorite, and I'm guessing Sean moved it up to the front, from Paul. He's asking, "In one battle after another, we see a shot of Bob Ferguson watching The Battle of Algiers on his couch. I doubt that the local Fox affiliate in Bacton Cross would be airing this film. So, does this mean Bob is into physical media? If he were invited into the Criterion closet, what other films do you think he'd grab?"

• 21:26Sean Fennessey?

  Do you, what do we think he was doing? Did he have a VHS tape? Was he watching TCM?

• 21:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It's TCM.

• 21:31Sean Fennessey?

  You think, but he, he like really was like tucked in for the afternoon, you know, where he was like, "This is what I'm doing today. I'm watching The Battle of Algiers in the middle of the after, in the evening time?" I guess his daughter went off to the dance. What time did she leave?

• 21:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It's still, it's still dusk.

• 21:44Sean Fennessey?

  4:30?

• 21:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Probably 5:30 because it's, it's springtime. No one's wearing winter coats, so it's getting a little bit later in the day, but it's not like a 9:00 PM start for a school dance.

• 21:55Sean Fennessey?

  How are you feeling about daylight savings, by the way?

• 21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm thrilled. I went outside at 7:30 yesterday to take the trash out and I just like almost started crying of happiness.

• 22:01Sean Fennessey?

  I'm happy to hear that.

• 22:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It smells so good. It's, I love it. Um, this is a two-part question.

• 22:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm gonna let you have part two.

• 22:08Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 22:09Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm gonna take part one.

• 22:10Sean Fennessey?

  Great.

• 22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Does this mean Bob is into physical media? Fam, he does not have a phone. This guy is not investing in plastic. He is like a wash-up? No, he's just, he does not know about like international, like region-free whatevers. He doesn't even believe in borders. Like, he's not investing. He's watching this on TCM.

• 22:32Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 22:33Amanda Dobbins?

  He's not a collector. It's nice. And also, are you?

• 22:37Sean Fennessey?

  Incorrect.

• 22:38Amanda Dobbins?

  If you want, he's a, he's a wash-up. He's a loser. Do you want him like in your army?

• 22:42Sean Fennessey?

  Fuck yeah.

• 22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 22:43Sean Fennessey?

  Bob Ferguson of the French 75?

• 22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  He's got a good heart.

• 22:47Sean Fennessey?

  Ghetto Pat?

• 22:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm rooting for him.

• 22:49Sean Fennessey?

  Rocket Man?

• 22:50Amanda Dobbins?

  But I just, I don't.

• 22:51Sean Fennessey?

  You're fucking kidding me?

• 22:52Amanda Dobbins?

  First of all, is he like on the internet checking out new releases? Does he know about all the? No!

• 22:57Sean Fennessey?

  No, but he has his old favorites.

• 23:00Amanda Dobbins?

  He's not.

• 23:00Sean Fennessey?

  And that's why if you were invited to the Criterion Closet, he would do wonderfully.

• 23:04Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, I, that's why I said you can answer part two because he's watching TCM. He has taste. He's just not like hoarding plastic.

• 23:13Sean Fennessey?

  In the preceding scene, we hear him talking to his daughter, who could not give less of a damn.

• 23:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Sean Fennessey?

  About recording with his band, the old band.

• 23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 23:22Sean Fennessey?

  About, and getting that tube sound from the Steely Dan records. This is an analog king. This is a guy.

• 23:30Amanda Dobbins?

  This is also a broke man.

• 23:32Sean Fennessey?

  Well, yeah.

• 23:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Who cannot remember anything and is also watching the Battle of Algiers at like 5:30 PM because he's lost contact with the rest of the world and he has nothing going on.

• 23:41Sean Fennessey?

  I know.

• 23:42Amanda Dobbins?

  God love him.

• 23:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's so, it's so fucking relatable. You know where you're just like, you just tuck into a cinema classic on an afternoon after you send your daughter out for the evening?

• 23:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Sean Fennessey?

  God damn.

• 23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Bob does not have a letterbox. Bob is not-

• 23:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, he doesn't.

• 23:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And Bob is not-

• 23:55Sean Fennessey?

  That wasn't the question.

• 23:56Amanda Dobbins?

  He's not into physical media, but I think he would have a lovely time and some very interesting picks in the Criterion Closet. So now you, you made Dreamcast for him.

• 24:05Sean Fennessey?

  I've made five Criterion Closet selections on Bob's behalf. Whether he owns these discs, LaserDiscs, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K, we don't know. Probably not.

• 24:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Bob isn't into ownership.

• 24:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's very true. That's true. But the great works must be celebrated, even in a socialistic experience. We still, we support artists.

• 24:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I believe, I believe in film preservation.

• 24:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 24:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I just don't believe that, like, you are the only person preserving film. You know what I'm saying?

• 24:34Sean Fennessey?

  No, but I have a voice.

• 24:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 24:36Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm using that voice to proclaim.

• 24:38Amanda Dobbins?

  You are making capitalism work for you.

• 24:40Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's very true. And you know what? Hopefully sending a positive message in doing so.

• 24:44Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and you are supporting the work of other people who actually do this.

• 24:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 24:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But you are a crazy person with a garage full of plastic.

• 24:50Sean Fennessey?

  I am a creator.

• 24:53Sean Fennessey?

  The five films that he would either pull from the Criterion Closet, or, or maybe he has in his stash, as follows. And all of these movies are in the closet, and I would recommend all of them. It's actually technically, I chose seven movies, because he's pulling a box set off the shelf. One is Jean Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows. Nice little pairing about the paranoia of living in a revolutionary moment. Jean Pierre Melville, one of the great filmmakers about war and espionage, and subterranean societies. Number two, Paths of Glory, Stanley Kubrick's classic, about living in ethical rejection of awful fascism. Three, three revolutionary films by Usman Semben, the African filmmaker. Those films are Imiti,

• 25:35Sean Fennessey?

  Zala, and Sado. All three of those movies are amazing and underseen. Steven Soderbergh's Che.

• 25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:43Sean Fennessey?

  That big double cardboard box.

• 25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but I know about it. You have to tell me.

• 25:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, great film, starring Benicio del Toro, of course. Does the film Che exist in the one battle after another universe because Benicio del Toro is in it, but so is Sensei?

• 25:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Sensei's also in it?

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Sensei's in Bob's universe. So does Che exist? And if Che exists, is it star a different actor?

• 26:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Interesting.

• 26:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know, is it like Lou Diamond Phillips in Che?

• 26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm trying to think of other in the universe, what else exists? Probably it exists and it's just a guy who looks a lot like Sensei.

• 26:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, alright.

• 26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  But here's my question for you.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  Or does Sensei just look like Benicio del Toro? Is that the thing?

• 26:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:24Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Here's my question. What is Bob's second favorite Steven Soderbergh film?

• 26:29Sean Fennessey?

  Full frontal.

• 26:31Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, what do you think it is?

• 26:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, let's see. The limey.

• 26:36Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 26:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You could see.

• 26:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 26:39Sean Fennessey?

  Tell them I'm fucking coming.

• 26:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Sean Fennessey?

  Um, although Terrence Stamp in that movie has, really has more Sean Penn vibes from One Battle.

• 26:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, sure, but you gotta know your enemy.

• 26:48Sean Fennessey?

  Good point. Good point. Number five, Eraserhead, right?

• 26:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:51Sean Fennessey?

  Girl dad movie, you know, and just like guy figuring out what it means to be a father.

• 26:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:55Sean Fennessey?

  The, the absolute abject terror of

• 26:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:57Sean Fennessey?

  Bringing life into this world and having to protect it.

• 26:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, what we're doing every day.

• 27:01Sean Fennessey?

  We are doing that every day. Thank you, Bob. Thank you for that question. Thank you, Paul. I didn't move this question up. Was this question sent by Paul Thomas Anderson?

• 27:08Speaker 05

  That is correct.

• 27:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Uh, thanks, Paul.

• 27:10Speaker 05

  You think you would go for shortcuts, uh, in film in the PTA world?

• 27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Uh,

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  Bob is like a real kind of single issue voter, I would say. You know, doesn't really, he's kind of into revolution and not much else. And I guess Steely Dan. But we don't know a whole lot about him. I'd love to know what's on his, what's on his nightstand.

• 27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  You think he's doing a lot of reading, like?

• 27:35Sean Fennessey?

  Like anarchist cookbook?

• 27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I definitely don't think he has a Kindle, you know?

• 27:39Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So, um, I don't.

• 27:41Speaker 05

  How does Bob make money?

• 27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't know, but we don't know that, which means that we don't, where does the money come from to buy the DVDs? Sorry, Blu-ray.

• 27:53Sean Fennessey?

  I know. I think it might just be VHS tapes.

• 27:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think he might just be rocking. I gotta go back and look at that scene.

• 27:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 27:58Sean Fennessey?

  Need to see that scene for a ninth time. Um, just a wonderful question. Incredible way to start this. Bi-physical media, that's my message to everyone watching right now on Netflix. What's the next question?

• 28:09Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Thomas. Frequently, we hear someone affectionately refer to a modern movie as something that feels like a seventies movie. In my heart, I know what that means. If you had to describe a 2020s film, what would that mean to you?

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of this question?

• 28:26Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel that we know the character of the films that are happening right now, or do we need more space to determine that?

• 28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess we know some of the visual signifiers and some of the mood. And I think when we say it feels like a real 70s film, sometimes that means the subject matter or the performance or, you know, or the style of direction. But it can often mean that someone's just like ripping off Gordon Willis. And, and that's good, by the way.

• 28:55Sean Fennessey?

  It is good.

• 28:56Amanda Dobbins?

  All good artists, you know, great artists steal. So at this point, we have a sense of what it's going to look like. The tricky part is that all the examples of what we consider to be like, good films made in the 2020s, we often compare to 70s films. And so I think our definition of 2020s would be just because of subtraction, like negative.

• 29:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 29:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, which is unfair. I guess there are. But if I had to think of examples of like new cinema, like visually, that I think is genuinely really exciting. I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe that's a reflection of me that I am, I am yearn for the traditional.

• 29:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think like the signature movies of the century so far is probably in some order, Top Gun Maverick, Barbie, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Oppenheimer. You know, like, you know, I'm sure there's a few others that you could throw in there. But just kind of off the top of my head, those are movies and they're, they're diff, they're all different, right? They're, those are mostly franchise stories. They're pretty heavyweight. This is, this is a very American focused point of view, obviously. I don't mean that those are the best movies. I don't mean that they're the most successful movies. There's kind of somewhere in between. They're kind of like, when you go back, when we get to 2030 and we look back at what this decade represented, I do think that there's something about spectacle

• 30:25Sean Fennessey?

  and about fusing genres together.

• 30:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:27Sean Fennessey?

  That has been pretty consistent. I think we're in a very, both a synthetic and a synthesis era, where everything feels a little bit more like Barbie is a very kind of created world. Right?

• 30:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:39Sean Fennessey?

  Everything Everywhere All at Once is a very created world. It's very hyper stylized world. Oppenheimer even is a very stylized movie. It's not a gritty, realistic, naturalistic movie. I think when you think of like All the President's Men or. You know, the Sidney Lumet films from the 70s, those are very like on-ground level, hard-bitten, naturalistic films in the way that they're shot and in their performance style. Right now, everything is sort of like, there's a kind of extratextual mania in every movie. You know, the Mission Impossible movies that have come out in the last seven years, Minecraft, like, these are, these are kind of zany constructions. So, I feel like that is a thing, and I feel like that is very much the influence of the internet.

• 31:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of people's attention spans and the stylistic things that we've seen on like Instagram, Vine, Twitter, Facebook, all of these social media platforms over the last 15 years. I feel the influence there. I've personally been super excited by the YouTube influence on movies, and I feel like it's really strong on horror, and we're about to have this stretch this year where you've got Backrooms, and Obsession, and Kyle Edgerball, who made Skinamarink, has another movie coming out, and there's like all of these new filmmakers. I know, I know, the Chris Ryan voice.

• 31:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Hi, it's Sean. Hello, Sean. What's happening?

• 32:04Sean Fennessey?

  But I like that there is, there's like some, there's like some peanut butter getting in the chocolate right now that is kind of messing with what a movie is allowed to look like on a big screen.

• 32:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Sean Fennessey?

  That I like. But for the most part, I mean, do you agree with what I'm saying about the big movies and kind of what their character is?

• 32:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's, I'm, both the, like, the hyper-production, the spectacle of it all, and also, as you said, that essentially like the meme or the, you know, the one-shot influence.

• 32:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 32:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Reflected back into the movies, and we know that this is going to be like parceled out, image by image. So, people are really kind of Wes Anderson-ing out, but in, in very specific ways. And that's, you know, that's not always a bad thing. I liked most of the movies that you just mentioned. The other thing I think about, and this is sort of related to the YouTube of it all, but just screens.

• 32:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 32:59Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, very obviously like phones in movies and how that affects on a plot sense. But I mean more in terms of when you see people on their phones or you see the text messages. You see surveillance footage, you see, you know, monitors in like situation rooms, all sorts of just like the presence. You see recreations of YouTube and Tik Tok. All the ways that we spend our time looking at screens other than a movie screen now have to be reflected back into the movies themselves. And sometimes that's done in an interesting way. Sometimes it's done in an absolutely vile way, but the movies visually trying to get their arms around the internet and all of the ways we're projected around ourselves

• 33:43Amanda Dobbins?

  all the time is certainly a visual signature.

• 33:45Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I feel like there's some filmmakers really have their arms around it. Park Chan Wook in particular, I feel like has done a really nice job with that. What was the, there was a Soderbergh series that was on HBO a couple of years ago. It was a mini series that Ed Solomon wrote. I can't remember the name of it at the moment. Was it Full Circle? Something like that.

• 34:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Not Mosaic.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  Mosaic, yes. Mosaic.

• 34:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:06Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, no, maybe it wasn't Mosaic. Maybe there was another one.

• 34:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I think there's also-

• 34:09Sean Fennessey?

  Mosaic was the Sharon Stone one. That wasn't the one I'm thinking of.

• 34:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Full Circle sounds, yeah, Full Circle is right.

• 34:13Sean Fennessey?

  Full Circle, yeah. That also I think had an interest in this and this kind of idea of surveillance. And in that way, it kind of mimics the seventies and this sense of paranoia, right? That you'd find in films like The Conversation. And I can feel that coming in a little bit in mainstream movies, not really in blockbusters. It's a little bit more like in that second tier of size of film, but there's definitely some, some of the anxiety of the world is creeping in. I mean, we talked about it a little bit with even just the Academy Award nominees this year, Secret Agent, One Battle, Sinners. These are all movies about kind of like one group coming in to take over another group and doing it in subterranean ways. But um, I think there's also just a little bit of a-

• 34:55Sean Fennessey?

  Nostalgia porn pre-branded thing that is essential to it, too. Like F1 is another movie that I think will be, if not memorable, like notable in the chain of big movies over the last 10 years. And that movie is kind of like a big hash of other stuff. And some of it works really well and some of it doesn't work as well. But you never watch that movie and think like, never seen this before.

• 35:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I've never seen racing like that before, but I've seen race car movies. I've seen old guys still got it movies. You know, I've seen reinventions of that, you know, hero dynamic. Like, all of that seems very familiar. So it feels like Hollywood is kind of figuring, trying to figure out like what people want. And the only time when it really works is when someone truly original comes along and is like, I have an idea. You know?

• 35:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Sean Fennessey?

  And Jordan Peele comes along and he's like, I got something. Or Daniels are like, we're gonna try something. Like, that is when things really shake a little. Hopefully that keeps happening. What's next?

• 35:55Speaker 05

  Before our next question, just want to let you know, we probably have already 15 advice questions, two of which I've put at the bottom of the rundown.

• 36:02Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 36:02Speaker 05

  Just putting that on your radar.

• 36:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible.

• 36:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you, guys.

• 36:04Sean Fennessey?

  You did it.

• 36:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 36:05Speaker 05

  The next question comes from Michael. In honor of Send Help and Survivor 50, let's flip the classic desert island question around. Instead of what movie you'd bring, what movie would you force each other to have as their only option? With the idea being they can't leave the island until they finally get it.

• 36:22Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 36:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Double worse product. Easy. Over and over again.

• 36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Is it that I don't get it?

• 36:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't get it.

• 36:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're resistant to it as well. You don't want to get it, you know? And...

• 36:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's a good movie.

• 36:35Amanda Dobbins?

  On a desert island.

• 36:36Sean Fennessey?

  No, I think it's a good movie.

• 36:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It could really click for you.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  I... You want me to believe it is a five-star masterpiece and you think repeated viewings will reveal that? You don't think I'll turn against it by being exposed to it so often? Because I have, I don't have negative feelings towards it.

• 36:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think that you value it.

• 36:52Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 36:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And by definition, this would make you value it in the sense that it's something for you to, it's the only thing you have. Also, Bill's point stands. You know, you go to Paris, you get a makeover, you're in New York, King Colbert.

• 37:05Sean Fennessey?

  Tell you something, double worse product, not available in 4K.

• 37:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 37:08Sean Fennessey?

  What's going on there? What's up with that?

• 37:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. Maybe those people are just spending their money on other things like Close, like Prada.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  They probably are. The Devil Wears Prada 2 trailer ran before Hopper's Curious, I would say, based on the audience in my movie theater. And Alice was like, what's this?

• 37:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I will let her know. I will take her and we will find out together.

• 37:31Sean Fennessey?

  First of all, just a few words on Survivor 50.

• 37:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:34Sean Fennessey?

  Loving it so far. I think the three hour premiere was an act of evil and I don't support that. Just making any episode of television three hours is not okay. However, just love seeing all my old friends together again on an island.

• 37:47Amanda Dobbins?

  That's nice.

• 37:48Sean Fennessey?

  Just fighting it out. It's a wonderful show. You should get involved.

• 37:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Has anyone been sent home?

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, certainly. Yeah. Well, we've had two tribal councils and one injury evacuation thus far.

• 37:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, no.

• 37:57Sean Fennessey?

  Some poor guy who is a great player named Kyle, I believe he ruptured his Achilles in full, which is not what you want.

• 38:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, absolutely not.

• 38:07Sean Fennessey?

  It was one of those things where they showed it and in real time when you watched it happen, you were like, no, no. It was like watching sports, right?

• 38:13Speaker 05

  You knew immediately it was his Achilles.

• 38:16Sean Fennessey?

  That was, it was very tough. Wonderful. For me, just in keeping with the Sam Raimi thing, I think I'll just give you Evil Dead 2. You could just sit with it. And you can look at the craft and the creativity, the relationship to cinema history that it has, the wonders of Bruce Campbell's chin. There's so much. Also, Bruce Campbell diagnosed with a treatable but not curable cancer, he announced last week. I want to send my love to him, one of my all time favorite actors. That was very sad. Evil Dead 2, just fucking banger. Banger.

• 38:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I can appreciate craft.

• 38:47Sean Fennessey?

  What's your preferred format on a desert island? Streaming?

• 38:53Amanda Dobbins?

  So am I building my own theater or does it can like?

• 38:57Sean Fennessey?

  Is this the Send Help Island?

• 38:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Or can we like, you know, airlift in a full couch and?

• 39:04Sean Fennessey?

  Not sure that's how that's gonna work. How would you, remind me, you would do well in the Send Help environment?

• 39:09Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no. Because first of all, I haven't watched Survivor.

• 39:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 39:13Amanda Dobbins?

  So when we saw Send Help, you kept, you know, turning me and being like, this is like they do on Survivor and they do this on Survivor. And then afterwards I was asking you, so like which skills did you recognize from Survivor? And like, do you, and you have some practical knowledge, I guess?

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think I'd do very well.

• 39:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I would know to like, I need to build a shelter. I need to stay out of this, the sun.

• 39:37Sean Fennessey?

  I could build the shelter. I have some concerns about fire.

• 39:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, also spoiler alert for send help, I guess. But, you know, if I had the knowledge that Rachel McAdams' character has and send help, I'd be great.

• 39:50Sean Fennessey?

  Well, sure. That's called cheating. Okay, what's the next question?

• 39:55Speaker 05

  Our next question comes from Drew. With the Warner Brothers merger, I've been wondering, why don't industry giants like Apple or Disney go after this storied studio and all it has to offer? I feel like they've got more than enough money and power to obtain it, so I don't get why they never threw their hat in the ring.

• 40:10Sean Fennessey?

  I actually invited Tim Cook and Bob on here to join us. So, Tim, Bob, come on out, guys.

• 40:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say, I actually did just get my advanced degree in like debt load management. And so I'm able to explain Disney's balance sheet to you in like great detail. Disney.

• 40:27Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Disney's just now digging out of the Fox debt, so they were never really under consideration.

• 40:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and they have enough of their own stuff that they don't actually need it to compete.

• 40:36Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you what, there was a lot of talk about game over if the Netflix deal went through. If Disney bought Warner Brothers, that would really be IP game over. Then they would really have the complete war chest of valuable franchises. I don't think Disney was ever on the table. And particularly because they're bringing in a parks chief to now run their content business, which I think should tell you a little bit, something about how they intend to monetize over the next 10 years. Apple, did we talk about Apple as like, it might've been offline where we were just like, couldn't it just be Apple and make this a little bit more coherent? Like, that would've been just preferable.

• 41:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think a couple of weeks ago, we were at least talking about, you know, Apple has a, or has had a distribution deal with A24 in the past. And it was always rumored.

• 41:18Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that was what we were talking about.

• 41:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and it was maybe rumored, but that like has never really happened. And it's just sort of unclear what Apple wants.

• 41:27Sean Fennessey?

  I think they are enjoying just kind of ginning up their own stuff.

• 41:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like they feel very proud of the F1 thing. I think their movie and TV strategy has been like a little hit or miss, but it's kind of hard to just start from nothing. And they have built out like a very credible slate. And you go to Apple TV now and you're like, there's a lot to watch here. There's a lot of shows, there's a lot of original films, there's a lot of kids' content. And five years, and they can just keep doing it because it's a drop in the bucket for them, right? Structurally. And. I don't, you know, I'm very curious to see where they go with movies. I wish that they were throwing more behind theatrical movies because I think they could end up doing really good business and it even taking an L would not be that big of a deal for them.

• 42:07Sean Fennessey?

  But some of it is just reputational and what can be seen. As far as acquiring, I mean, they've been very persistent. Actually, I think Eddie Q was on the town last year vehement that he was not, that they were not going to pursue Warner Brothers. So it was never really under consideration. Could they afford it? Yeah. They would be a big, they would be doing it just to get the IP too, right? I mean, what like-

• 42:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but then it's like, what are they gonna use the IP for? It's sort of seems like a lot of distraction from, you know?

• 42:37Sean Fennessey?

  I, I'll, here's what I think it would be.

• 42:39Amanda Dobbins?

  They don't need to sell Mickey Mouse or Batman branded iPads, you know, like they, they just have iPads.

• 42:45Sean Fennessey?

  They, I think it would be not for the tech and the hardware. I think it would probably be a big experiential shift where they would actually start exploring theme parks. They would start exploring different lines of business that are much more experiential, one to one, person to person in the real world, which they don't really do.

• 43:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:02Sean Fennessey?

  And that's just a totally different kind of a business and you have to build up a whole infrastructure to do that. That's the one thing with Warner Brothers. And there's, there was talk even of one of the studio lots being transformed into kind of like an experiential playground for people who love movies or TV shows.

• 43:19Amanda Dobbins?

  The Paramount lot and then they would move to Warner.

• 43:21Sean Fennessey?

  There's some centrality there, but there's no fucking parking there. So I don't know how that would work. But if they wanted to get involved in that business, in addition to being able to just have Batman and Harry Potter, I guess I could see that. And also HBO obviously just matches very neatly with what Apple TV has been.

• 43:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Correct.

• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like just tonally the vibe of the shows, even some of the administration and people like Richard Plepler advising on Apple content. So that, it would make sense. They just, they didn't want to do it.

• 43:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Sean Fennessey?

  So they didn't do it.

• 43:49Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what I was wondering about the other day related to Apple? Whatever happened to the, the iPhones? Vision Pro. Vision Pro. I was thinking about it because I went to the eye doctor and was basically given a vision pro to do a test.

• 44:01Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:02Amanda Dobbins?

  A good version of AI. Yeah.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  Fancy eye doctor.

• 44:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And then it's, it's our local eye doctor. I recommend them and-

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  What's his name? Jim I. Doctor?

• 44:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. And then I was like, oh, I haven't seen or heard from those things in actual years. And that was, I mean, I remembered it because that was another, like, not quite experiential, but their version of experiential, right?

• 44:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And also trying to merge in with video game streaming, whatever. And that just didn't happen.

• 44:32Sean Fennessey?

  It didn't happen. I tested one out. Van Lathan is the only person I know who actually bought one. And he enjoyed it. I watched some of a movie and, and a really unique kind of baseball game experience with the headset. And I thought it was very cool. I can't imagine wearing a headset for hours on end. That's just not something that seems fun to me.

• 44:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Sean Fennessey?

  And it is, you know, I just rewatched Ready Player One to prepare for this Steven Spielberg conversation that I'm having later this week. And you know, that movie, which I think is pretty cool, actually, and a little bit misunderstood, is about the hellscape of like plugging yourself in and not unplugging. And so I think that there was some, some wisdom in that.

• 45:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. But I just, I thought of it because their version of experiential is still gadget based, because that's ultimately what they are. They are, you know, and the most recent iteration didn't work, but I do still think their business aim is to release another product that they can sell rather, rather than, you know, a Batman theme park.

• 45:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right. What's our next question?

• 45:31Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Skylar. My question is related to a comment Amanda made in the Alternative Oscars episode about how she visits the Rebecca Ferguson death bridge every time she is in Venice.

• 45:41Amanda Dobbins?

  It's been twice, but it is true.

• 45:43Sean Fennessey?

  Every time.

• 45:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Every time. Maybe this year, too.

• 45:46Speaker 05

  My question is simple. Is Venice the greatest film location in the world? If not, what is?

• 45:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. I mean, Paris, New York.

• 45:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's New York for me.

• 45:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:56Sean Fennessey?

  But that's, you know, I've got some biases there.

• 45:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I just, like, I just want to put Paris in as a European location. They've done good work.

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. No question about it.

• 46:05Amanda Dobbins?

  The light? Just great.

• 46:06Sean Fennessey?

  What's the name of that bridge?

• 46:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I don't know. I don't speak Italian. Let's see. Venice Mission Impossible Bridge.

• 46:12Sean Fennessey?

  Venezia Briga.

• 46:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, Dead Reckoning Bridge. Let's see, the Bridge of... Hold on.

• 46:20Sean Fennessey?

  You got this, Mo.

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Size?

• 46:21Sean Fennessey?

  Hang in there, Mo.

• 46:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But S.I.C. S.I.G.H.S. Not C.Y.S. Size, like, like, uh, like I sighed.

• 46:30Sean Fennessey?

  S.I.G.H.S.?

• 46:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 46:32Sean Fennessey?

  The Bridge of Size?

• 46:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Apparently.

• 46:35Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, that's dramatic.

• 46:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 46:37Sean Fennessey?

  That was not what I was expecting.

• 46:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, this is an AI thing, so I gotta.

• 46:39Sean Fennessey?

  I was expecting like, mozzarella, montepulciano.

• 46:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, you know, that is not respectful of the, of the Italian people.

• 46:49Sean Fennessey?

  Is this, are we on Netflix right now?

• 46:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:51Sean Fennessey?

  Is this going out live?

• 46:52Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 46:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Let's see, now I'm looking on Reddit and I don't, I don't, some people just talking about their opinions of this scene, which they didn't like. So we're gonna go with Bridge of Sighs, which apparently also Lord Byron wrote about. Again, this is an AI answer, so it's wrong, most likely.

• 47:09Sean Fennessey?

  Good to know.

• 47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  There are a lot of bridges in Venice, so, but there's a little bit of a crowd when I'm there usually.

• 47:16Sean Fennessey?

  I have not been to Venice before.

• 47:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Sean Fennessey?

  I can't say how it matches specifically. I think Rome, speaking of Italy, is also a wonderful movie location.

• 47:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Rome, dynamite.

• 47:26Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, love Rome, the city.

• 47:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:28Sean Fennessey?

  Had a wonderful time there. Um.

• 47:31Amanda Dobbins?

  London, not bad.

• 47:33Sean Fennessey?

  London is interesting, you know, we can just name large cities. Chicago is a fine city, uh, you know, think, mm, Oslo, I enjoy Oslo.

• 47:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, the, have you been to Oslo?

• 47:45Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 47:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 47:46Sean Fennessey?

  But I've enjoyed the cinema of the Norwegians.

• 47:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Thinking of all of the places where Bond did opening, uh, sequences. So Mexico City, that's a really good one.

• 47:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I love Mexico City.

• 47:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, let's see. I mean, we haven't said Los Angeles, pretty good.

• 48:00Speaker 05

  I was just about to say that, took about a dozen names to get that right.

• 48:03Sean Fennessey?

  It was, and then they stopped letting us shoot movies here, you know? I, I, I'm dramatically overrated crime 101, because I'm like, I know what that is. It's very rare to be able to look at a movie and say, I know what that is in 2026. Uh, I don't know, I gotta get to Venice one of these days. When's that gonna be?

• 48:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know whether it'll be this year, but.

• 48:22Sean Fennessey?

  It won't be, I've already signed up for Telluride, so I won't be going to Venice.

• 48:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Uh. Maybe one year, it's great.

• 48:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's the next question?

• 48:29Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Tim. What is a movie you objectively know is flawed, messy, and maybe even chaotic, but you still defend with your whole heart?

• 48:39Sean Fennessey?

  This comes right on the heels of The Bride absolutely tanking at the box office, like far worse than anyone could have imagined. I think it was tracking for between 12 and 18 million dollars on Thursday and it finished at 7 million dollars.

• 48:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You know it's bad when Just Jared does its Instagram card and says, "It's bad news for The Bride at the box office." And I was like, "Damn, even Just Jared is getting in on The Bride. They're not regularly doing box office criticism."

• 49:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a very dramatic underperformance for that film.

• 49:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I skipped this question in my prep and was like, "I'll come back to it," but I forgot. So you gotta go first. Because anytime people are like, "It's flawed, it's messy," but like, you know, it's perfect. Like, no, to me, it is perfect. Therefore, it's not flawed.

• 49:22Sean Fennessey?

  Well, and that was actually at the center of-

• 49:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Me with the Love Actually cards. To me, it is perfect.

• 49:28Sean Fennessey?

  That's like, I think that I really cotton to a kind of insane, "I went for it" kind of a movie that doesn't totally come together. I really have a, a real like sentimentality about those kinds of movies. It's why I was defending The Bride and, and pretty much enjoyed my experience watching it while also acknowledging it has a lot of problems. And we talked about Mickey 17, we talked about Babylon, we talked about these movies-

• 49:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Here comes the motherfucking bride. I realized last night, I was falling asleep last night that I didn't say that on our podcast, but that's a real thing that she says. That's how she ends the prologue. And then it says, "The Bride." And I liked the typeface, like the font that they use. That's my one nice thing about The Bride.

• 50:11Sean Fennessey?

  There's a somewhat similar question to this about like disasters, um, that we'll get to in a minute. And it feels like they kind of feel intertwined because, I don't know, you know, like my, my easy answer for this is always Congo, which is like the dumbest movie of all time that I think is a five star classic.

• 50:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I was about to say Triple Frontier.

• 50:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's pretty good. I mean, is it chaotic?

• 50:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I don't know. They're just like on the side of a mountain for a while and I'm not really sure about any of the choices that Ben Affleck's making.

• 50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but that's just like guys being dudes.

• 50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And I think Charlie Hunnam like has a breakdown in a Publix, you know?

• 50:43Sean Fennessey?

  I know. So relatable. Holy shit.

• 50:46Amanda Dobbins?

  You ever been to a Publix?

• 50:47Sean Fennessey?

  I have, yeah.

• 50:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 50:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 50:48Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't need to say it like that. It's fine.

• 50:50Sean Fennessey?

  What, how did I say?

• 50:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you were just like, I, that's a thing that you people in the South have and we don't really care about it.

• 50:55Sean Fennessey?

  I did, that's not what I said, no.

• 50:56Amanda Dobbins?

  It was dismissive.

• 50:57Sean Fennessey?

  You know what, the, the, the shopping, uh, the supermarket that I think of most when it comes to the South is Food Lion.

• 51:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:06Sean Fennessey?

  It's Food Lion. When I would visit North Carolina.

• 51:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, we would always hit the Food Lion on the first day.

• 51:11Amanda Dobbins?

  That is where my grandparents in North Carolina shopped always. Yeah.

• 51:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Is Food Lion still kicking around?

• 51:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope so.

• 51:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, cool. You know what was elite going to college in Ithaca was Wegmans. And Wegmans is kind of spread now.

• 51:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I've heard a lot about Wegmans, still have never been.

• 51:25Sean Fennessey?

  Wegmans, Jack.

• 51:27Speaker 05

  It's where I first purchased alcohol under the age of 21 with a fake ID.

• 51:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations!

• 51:32Speaker 05

  Sam Adams Pumpkin Beer for October.

• 51:35Sean Fennessey?

  Nice. This is Sanders lore. I love it.

• 51:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I would really like to go to Wegmans because I really like grocery stores and I like grocery store, like, you know, tourism.

• 51:44Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 51:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But I just, I've never made it to a Wegmans.

• 51:47Sean Fennessey?

  There, I feel like it is expanding.

• 51:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:49Sean Fennessey?

  And, uh, it was the first, it was, I don't know if it predates Whole Foods entirely, but it was the first time where I was like, this is a lot of fucking grocery store.

• 51:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Sean Fennessey?

  Like, there are a lot of places to, and being 18 and just being like, I'll just buy every bad junk food that I was not allowed to eat as a kid in my mom's house. Um, thrilling experience. Anyway, I don't know how we got here. What's the next question?

• 52:09Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Thomas. What are some upcoming titles that you hope will be world premiering at this year's Cannes Film Festival?

• 52:16Sean Fennessey?

  Should we make an announcement?

• 52:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. We're booked for Cannes. It's happening.

• 52:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Cannes 2026, Sean and Amanda.

• 52:24Sean Fennessey?

  We're going.

• 52:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, we are going. We're credentials.

• 52:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, we have a place to stay.

• 52:29Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I gotta submit that expense report. That's a good reminder. Thanks so much. And I have some outfit concepts, as do you.

• 52:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So I'm pretty excited.

• 52:40Sean Fennessey?

  I am excited. I'm a little nervous.

• 52:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Why?

• 52:44Sean Fennessey?

  Because this is kind of the last mountain to scale.

• 52:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 52:46Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of like.

• 52:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And you don't feel you'll be like good enough?

• 52:49Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I just don't know what to expect. It's a lot. It's a very long festival.

• 52:53Amanda Dobbins?

  That, that is true.

• 52:54Sean Fennessey?

  12 day festival. I want to do a good job being at the festival.

• 52:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Sean Fennessey?

  But just given what our job is, it's not really coherent for us to be out for 13 days. So I'm trying to figure out how we can pull that off. And I want to see as much as possible. Like, that's my disease, right?

• 53:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:09Sean Fennessey?

  Is trying to like knock everything off the list. And that's not totally achievable at Cannes. So I want to just play chess properly.

• 53:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it is, it's, it's very different from, from what I understand Telluride to be, which is just everyone convenes together for three days and does trust falls. And then like, we just see films.

• 53:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's not what it's like, but continue.

• 53:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm assuming that this is a little bit more like Venice. It is also ticketed like Venice.

• 53:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 53:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so I look forward to us up at like 1 a.m. on the, the French ticketing, uh, website. But you'll be able to see a lot. You do also, bless you, you don't have to file reviews three times a day.

• 53:48Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, but I want to try to find a way to cover it in realish time.

• 53:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 53:53Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like realish.

• 53:54Amanda Dobbins?

  But that is different than having to go to three press conferences.

• 53:58Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt.

• 53:58Amanda Dobbins?

  And then file. So I think you'll be able to see a lot.

• 54:00Sean Fennessey?

  You're right. We're very lucky in terms of the, the way that we cover the movies and cover, cover the festivals. I'm, I'm really grateful that we've been able to figure that out in the way that we have. Um, and I don't want to spoil, actually, what I think is usually a very fun episode.

• 54:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Where we.

• 54:13Sean Fennessey?

  Convened to talk about what we've seen. And I think we should also divide and conquer a little bit too. Like, we, you should definitely see some stuff that I can't make and vice versa. But there's a lot of potentially great stuff this year. I don't know if there's anything on the like,

• 54:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, you know, the like Killers of the Flower Moon level.

• 54:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 54:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I don't know that that's sort of like, it would be my hope and dream to see the world premiere of Blank Blank.

• 54:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Or even the year of Megalopolis and Horizon and a lot of other things that turned out to be.

• 54:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Fairly disastrous.

• 54:49Sean Fennessey?

  Right outrageous misfires.

• 54:50Amanda Dobbins?

  But we're historic.

• 54:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. See, that's a really good answer to the previous question. Like Horizon is like kind of a mess, but I enjoyed it. Megalopolis is kind of a mess, but I really need to revisit it because I didn't like it very much. So.

• 55:01Amanda Dobbins?

  What is Kevin Costner doing opening Zero Bond in Las Vegas?

• 55:06Sean Fennessey?

  What is Zero Bond?

• 55:07Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just the new, listen, he was just at a club opening with Tom Brady and Alex Earl.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 55:13Amanda Dobbins?

  This weekend.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's exciting.

• 55:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I have some, they really need to get that Horizon money back.

• 55:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So Alex Earl and Tom Brady, that's officially happening. That's public.

• 55:21Amanda Dobbins?

  They have been seen a lot of the same places.

• 55:23Sean Fennessey?

  Cool. That sounds great. Um, movies.

• 55:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:27Sean Fennessey?

  At Cannes. We did go through this a bit in January in terms of what we thought could happen, but here's the list that I made.

• 55:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:34Sean Fennessey?

  Tell me if you have additions, any other thoughts. The Adventures of Cliff Booth? Netflix doesn't premiere movies there, so I assume that's not going to happen.

• 55:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Sean Fennessey?

  But it's QT and Fincher?

• 55:45Amanda Dobbins?

  To, well, it's this summer is the release.

• 55:47Sean Fennessey?

  It is this summer.

• 55:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's not like September 15th? And which was technically the definition of summer. We don't, we don't know either. Again, this is on Netflix. We don't know shit.

• 55:57Sean Fennessey?

  I also don't have any information, so I'm not pretending like I do. I have not talked to Quentin about it. Like, I don't know.

• 56:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Fincher has a history of Venice. And Netflix is very, very Venice forward. So if they, if they wanted to do something splashy.

• 56:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, but this would be my number one with a bullet in terms of anticipation.

• 56:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you kidding? That would be so exciting.

• 56:14Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I have to put The Way of the Wind, the Terrence Malick movie, which has been rumored for seven consecutive years. Some people seem to think this could be the year. I think April 9th is the announcement date. So we have a full month till we find out what's coming. Um, Jack of Spades, the new Joel Cohen movie, which I think I took in the auction.

• 56:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That sounds right.

• 56:32Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Nicholas Winding Refinz, Her Private Hell will almost, will almost certainly be there.

• 56:36Amanda Dobbins?

  CR, come to Cannes.

• 56:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that is.

• 56:38Amanda Dobbins?

  You think Chris is watching right now?

• 56:40Sean Fennessey?

  On Netflix?

• 56:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think he has to make his own podcast right now.

• 56:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I will, they're usually wrapped by now.

• 56:46Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 56:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I will say.

• 56:47Sean Fennessey?

  You want him to burst in with a Kool-Aid man?

• 56:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but the last time we went live, like I heard from a lot of friends and loved ones via text message, just noting that everyone's silent right now. So.

• 56:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good point. Would you, would you say you have a lot of friends and loved ones?

• 57:02Amanda Dobbins?

  It depends on the day.

• 57:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly how I feel. Don't we all feel that way? Isn't that the mystery of life?

• 57:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Sean Fennessey?

  You know, sometimes you're so alone and sometimes we're so together. Uh, disclosure day, perhaps?

• 57:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd love it.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  The new Steven Spielberg film, which I think it'll only come out maybe three weeks or four weeks after Cannes, so that seems definitely possible.

• 57:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 57:23Sean Fennessey?

  Spielberg has premiered five films out of competition. I think he has only competed for the Palme d'Or one time and it was for his first theatrical feature film, The Sugarland Express. I've been doing a lot of Steven Spielberg.

• 57:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm excited.

• 57:36Sean Fennessey?

  Recently. I'm excited for her disclosure day, too.

• 57:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I'm also excited for you to talk to Steven Spielberg.

• 57:40Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, I'm nervous. Um, Digger?

• 57:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that's a Venice.

• 57:44Sean Fennessey?

  I think you're right. The entertainment system is down. Ruben Oslen's new film.

• 57:49Amanda Dobbins?

  This, to me, he's, you know, the prince of Cannes, so that seems like a no brainer. Also, that means that, once again, Kirsten Dunst and I would be sharing the same air.

• 57:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. How do we get you guys together socially?

• 58:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know, and I really don't want to force it, right? Because...

• 58:04Sean Fennessey?

  What if I pursue it?

• 58:05Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just...

• 58:06Sean Fennessey?

  I have some contacts.

• 58:07Amanda Dobbins?

  She's genuinely cool, so she's not, I don't want everyone to be like, hey, this person wants to be your friend. The one time I'm out of shoes, great, we just talked about kid stuff. So, uh, she's lovely, but we...

• 58:17Sean Fennessey?

  But don't know, hey, this person wants to be your friend, no one would, you can't be intro'd that way.

• 58:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I know.

• 58:22Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like you guys would get along great.

• 58:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I do as well.

• 58:24Sean Fennessey?

  That I like.

• 58:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, but any of like the fake, the Hollywood bullshit setup is just not gonna work.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 58:28Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 58:29Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 58:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So I gotta, I gotta think smart.

• 58:31Sean Fennessey?

  Do you like her because she's Real Talk Central, just like you? Or she's like, we're just cutting through it?

• 58:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely.

• 58:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, okay, I get that. That's nice. Um, do you think she has many loved ones and friends?

• 58:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I think she does.

• 58:43Sean Fennessey?

  I think she probably does, too. So she doesn't need anymore. Okay, uh, Paper Tiger, James Gray's new movie?

• 58:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope so. Speaking of big in France.

• 58:52Sean Fennessey?

  Kind of want to ask him. Should I email him right now?

• 58:56Amanda Dobbins?

  You think James is watching on Netflix?

• 58:57Sean Fennessey?

  Probably not. I would almost certainly not. Does he have Netflix? We should talk about that. 1949, Pawel Pawlikowski's new movie?

• 59:06Amanda Dobbins?

  This would be really fun.

• 59:07Sean Fennessey?

  There's naturally a bunch of very exciting, potential international films. Fjord also with Renato Reinzwe and, oh my gosh, what is? Bucky Barnes's name? Sebastian.

• 59:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Stan.

• 59:20Sean Fennessey?

  Stan, thank you. Hope, Na Hong Jin's new movie. I haven't seen The Wailing in like 10 years. I'm just going to re-watch The Wailing before Cannes, just in case this movie is playing there. Al Bursara's Out of This World, starring Riley Keo, his first English language work. I'm pretty excited about. Is there anything else that you're thinking about that could be there?

• 59:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think you took the big ones.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  You think Mando and Grogu will do a, at a competition?

• 59:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, when are we going to see it?

• 59:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's the real challenge.

• 59:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And how am I going to see it with my child?

• 59:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it's fine. Chris Ryan's taking him, as he knows.

• 59:54Sean Fennessey?

  He says he's not seeing the film.

• 59:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I told him that he will be seeing it with Knox, who will be so locked in, who's so excited, has so many questions, you know, and maybe Joanna and Mallory, who have become kind of my, like, my, like, Ask Jeeves, but instead it's Ask House of R.

• 1:00:11Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 1:00:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Questions about the Mandalorian.

• 1:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting how you think of them as service people and not loved ones or friends.

• 1:00:16Amanda Dobbins?

  They're lovely, but when Knox asks me, is Grogu an animal or a human? At 5:30 on a Thursday, what am I supposed to do? And then he follows up with, can you ask the director?

• 1:00:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's actually.

• 1:00:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm like, I don't know I can't, but these people know, they're close enough. Okay, so we'll ask Mallory and Joanna.

• 1:00:32Sean Fennessey?

  I never had Jon Favreau on the pod. Should I pursue that?

• 1:00:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so.

• 1:00:36Sean Fennessey?

  On Knox's behalf?

• 1:00:37Amanda Dobbins?

  And then I'll present the list of questions.

• 1:00:40Sean Fennessey?

  I've always been a fan of Jon Favreau. I don't really, you know, his career has taken a turn that wouldn't be my first choice, but you know, that, those early stretch of The Swingers story was iconic to me. One of the first screenplays I ever bought was Jon Favreau screenplay for Swingers.

• 1:00:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Have him on.

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little personal.

• 1:00:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe he'll be in Cannes for the, out of, you know, out of competition screening.

• 1:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Amanda Dobbins?

  And we can all see it together.

• 1:01:03Sean Fennessey?

  You think he's pumped for Fjord?

• 1:01:07Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't know him. You don't know.

• 1:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  I don't. I know he loves movies.

• 1:01:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Sean Fennessey?

  I hope he likes Fjord. Uh, any other, any other thoughts on Cannes? You're excited.

• 1:01:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd like to go to the cap.

• 1:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:01:17Amanda Dobbins?

  So if you're having a party, just think of me. You probably also, we should go on a boat. How are you on sea?

• 1:01:24Sean Fennessey?

  Fine. I'm from.

• 1:01:24Amanda Dobbins?

  You're never ever sick at sea?

• 1:01:25Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:01:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, then we'd like to go on a boat.

• 1:01:29Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, I didn't say I want to.

• 1:01:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause if you're out there, you're gonna be a Cannes, let us know.

• 1:01:35Sean Fennessey?

  Are there movies playing there? That's the thing I'm most excited about.

• 1:01:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Mornings are for movies. Then the evenings are for boats.

• 1:01:42Sean Fennessey?

  Is that how it works?

• 1:01:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I, I would hope that, I mean, I'm just basing this on the Venice of it all, but that all of the, you know, that the big movies at least get press screenings in the morning so then you can do the press conference and then they have like the premiere later at night. That's what I would assume.

• 1:01:58Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel that you'd like to go to press screenings or premieres?

• 1:02:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Press screenings as much as I can. I, I mean, it would be fun to do one premiere, you know, and just see all the hoopla, but it's inefficient.

• 1:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Good question. Thank you for asking. All right, Jack, what's up?

• 1:02:13Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Brandon. Every March, especially after the Oscars happen, I like to watch a bunch of baseball movies in the lead up to opening day. What are your favorite garbage sports movies and why don't we get them anymore?

• 1:02:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Opening day at my house on Saturday.

• 1:02:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, Little League has begun.

• 1:02:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 1:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  I saw the Instagram clip. I'm very supportive of this.

• 1:02:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Line drive up the middle.

• 1:02:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:02:37Amanda Dobbins?

  There we go. Um, this is a nice tradition. I like baseball movies. I like sports movies. These were important to my childhood, like bad movies about sports that aren't regularly broadcast on American television.

• 1:02:50Sean Fennessey?

  I have a bunch of these as well. I didn't write mine down. I will just say, they don't happen anymore because audiences don't show up for them. And that this was like stock and trade Disney strategy for 30 plus years. That almost every year without fail, there would be a new. Kind of like high concept, low execution movie for nine year olds about sports. And you've listed some of them here, others not listed include like The Little Giants, for example.

• 1:03:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:03:18Sean Fennessey?

  Angels in the Outfield.

• 1:03:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:20Sean Fennessey?

  There are a lot of movies that were like that when I was, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, where you could kind of count on them at all times. And there was definitely a generation, our generation had our stretch of these. And they, I think that they really carried on and extended to people who were in their like 30s, even their 20s. And now it feels like if you're like 15, what are the sports movies of your life? Like Creed?

• 1:03:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean.

• 1:03:45Sean Fennessey?

  Warrior, you know, like what are the?

• 1:03:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Creed, Creed would be great if the, if the youths are embracing Creed.

• 1:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The Way Back?

• 1:03:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that would be exciting. I do remember taking.

• 1:03:55Sean Fennessey?

  F1?

• 1:03:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Our littlest cousin Max on Thanksgiving to Creed 2. Hi, Max, if you're listening. And it's, the lights went down. He said, so what happened in Creed 1? So I don't think that, you know, that generation, 18 ish.

• 1:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:04:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Is embracing.

• 1:04:10Sean Fennessey?

  Does Max listen to the show?

• 1:04:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Sometimes, but listen, he's in college. He's got a lot of obligations.

• 1:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  What makes you more concerned? Loved ones, of which you have many listening to the show, or famous people that you've heard listen to the show? Cause we've now heard some, some prominent famous people are listening.

• 1:04:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No famous people or no people who work in cinema should ever listen to this podcast. Okay?

• 1:04:32Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 1:04:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Because they know things. Like they, first of all, they know where, they know all the secrets. But like, they know how things work. And this is, this is not, this is, this is a fan thing. This is a celebration, you know? I think there should be some.

• 1:04:48Sean Fennessey?

  Would you say this is a fandom podcast?

• 1:04:50Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because I think we're often too mean. But I also don't really feel that artists should read criticism of their work, positive or negative.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  I disagree.

• 1:04:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't know how you can preserve the, well, let's see.

• 1:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  I think people should be themselves. And if they are neurotic and need to see that.

• 1:05:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Sean Fennessey?

  That feedback, I think they should.

• 1:05:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that obviously artists are different from people engaged in a commercial enterprise that has to make money, which movies also are. And you kind of do have to take some of that feedback.

• 1:05:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't think filmmakers should be listening to what we have to say. I think you could just go and create and

• 1:05:27Sean Fennessey?

  There's hearing us and there's listening, right?

• 1:05:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but I don't know. We don't look at the comments, you know?

• 1:05:34Sean Fennessey?

  I hear a lot of feedback, but do I listen?

• 1:05:35Amanda Dobbins?

  This is what I'm saying. So, famous people, good job on everything you're doing. And I would say to you what I say to the rest of the Da Bob, go outside.

• 1:05:45Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. What were your garbage sports movies?

• 1:05:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Cutting edge, essential.

• 1:05:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:05:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Just absolutely dynamite. Related Mighty Ducks. The Sandlot is not garbage, but it's for children.

• 1:05:58Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think any of these first three movies are garbage.

• 1:06:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't either.

• 1:06:01Sean Fennessey?

  They're garbage in the classical, like, we love this.

• 1:06:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Cutting edge, written by Tony Gilroy.

• 1:06:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The Sandlot is an A+ masterpiece.

• 1:06:07Amanda Dobbins?

  So is the next film, Bring It On, which is a straight up masterpiece and is also about a competition, cheerleading. Chariots of Fire, which my parents tried to show me when I was like 10. And great, you know, the theme song and the guys running on the beach, it's very good. It's not really garbage, but also it won Best Picture over, that's 1980, right? Yeah. So it won over Raging Bull. So I don't know whether we can defend that.

• 1:06:35Sean Fennessey?

  No, no. That was Ordinary People.

• 1:06:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's right. So what did it win over?

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  I think Chariots of Fire is 84?

• 1:06:44Amanda Dobbins?

  81. I was close. Okay.

• 1:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  And what did it win over there?

• 1:06:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I just Googled Chariots of Fire. So 1982, Oscars. We gotta really standardize this. Okay. It won over Reds.

• 1:06:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 1:06:58Sean Fennessey?

  That's, for me, that's a

• 1:06:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and that was a split. Beatty won for directing. Anyway.

• 1:07:02Sean Fennessey?

  I don't like that.

• 1:07:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, it is really funny to follow people around who are running or exercising with the Chariots of Fire.

• 1:07:09Sean Fennessey?

  Do you like the vangelist, the theme?

• 1:07:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course. It's very beautiful.

• 1:07:13Sean Fennessey?

  Do you run to it?

• 1:07:14Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but like, sometimes when Knox is on the playground and I'm trying to get him to run somewhere, I play it on my phone and then we run along and it gets him from A to B.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  Can I tell you something? I've been preparing for, um, The To Live and Die in L.A. Rewatchables, which is recording immediately after this.

• 1:07:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 1:07:29Sean Fennessey?

  Normal day for me.

• 1:07:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Congratulations.

• 1:07:31Sean Fennessey?

  And I used to think that the eighties sucked, and I used to think that the pop music from the eighty was not, was not interesting, and I didn't really like the cinema. I'm coming around.

• 1:07:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, Harold Faltermeyer, a god in our house.

• 1:07:43Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:07:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know what, I know nothing besides his music, so I don't, and his contributions to cinema, so like I.

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  In the event he has ten people tied up in his basement.

• 1:07:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Don't like bring the politics to me. I don't know. I haven't done that, that research. Uh, yeah. Power, powerful stuff.

• 1:07:59Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay. A couple of others like.

• 1:08:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Wait, I didn't get to say Wimbledon. Speaking of Kirsten Dunst.

• 1:08:04Sean Fennessey?

  Wimbledon stinks, but okay. Excuse me.

• 1:08:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, Tin Cup?

• 1:08:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That's more of your alley. It also stinks, but whatever.

• 1:08:12Sean Fennessey?

  No, stop, please stop, please stop.

• 1:08:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, Molly's Game? She was a competitive skier. That is garbage sports if I've ever seen it.

• 1:08:21Sean Fennessey?

  Watch along.

• 1:08:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Garbage business. Oh, God.

• 1:08:24Sean Fennessey?

  Really good. That would be good.

• 1:08:25Amanda Dobbins?

  So fun. Yeah. Okay. No one watches those, but it would be great. Yeah. Uh, and then Blue Crush?

• 1:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I don't know if I've seen that.

• 1:08:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, that was, that was.

• 1:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah. Kate Oswald. Yeah.

• 1:08:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that was a thing when we were young. Jack, Blue Crush. Ever heard of it? No. Yeah.

• 1:08:40Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I mean, a few others, like Miracle is just good, you know, like that's, but that's kind of in the same zone. Remember the Titans is a famous version of this.

• 1:08:49Amanda Dobbins?

  This isn't a list of like good sports movies. It, that, those are mainstream sports movies.

• 1:08:53Sean Fennessey?

  What about?

• 1:08:53Amanda Dobbins?

  And garbage is different. Sure. Yeah.

• 1:08:56Sean Fennessey?

  That's kind of it. The Big Green, the soccer movie. Ever see that one?

• 1:08:59Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I never saw that one.

• 1:09:00Sean Fennessey?

  You're kind of anti soccer, aren't you?

• 1:09:02Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm at soccer practice every Saturday, except when it's my turn to stay home with the sleeping baby.

• 1:09:08Sean Fennessey?

  Thunderstruck, starring Kevin Durant?

• 1:09:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I haven't seen this.

• 1:09:11Sean Fennessey?

  Came out like seven years.

• 1:09:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Starring Kevin Durant.

• 1:09:14Sean Fennessey?

  When he was still on the Oklahoma City Thunder, Thunderstruck is a play on words.

• 1:09:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And he's the star?

• 1:09:19Sean Fennessey?

  He's the co-star, along with a, a young boy.

• 1:09:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, but like, how much screen time, like, how much does the movie rest on Kevin Durant's shoulders?

• 1:09:26Sean Fennessey?

  Inadequate amount. A teenage klutz becomes the star of his high school basketball team when he magically acquires the abilities of his hero, NBA star Kevin Durant, but the switch leaves Durant unable to score.

• 1:09:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, dear.

• 1:09:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of a body swap.

• 1:09:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:09:42Sean Fennessey?

  With NBA.

• 1:09:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Did, I haven't seen it. How'd it turn out?

• 1:09:45Sean Fennessey?

  What's the body swap movie? It's terrible. What's the body swap movie with Kirk Cameron and Dudley Moore? What's that movie called?

• 1:09:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't.

• 1:09:53Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's who's in the cast.

• 1:09:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Like father, like son?

• 1:09:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, is that, are the, is that it? Is it, no, is it Judge Reinhold with Kirk Cameron?

• 1:10:00Amanda Dobbins?

  What is this? Uh, let's see. Uh, no, this is, the father and son are switching minds in this.

• 1:10:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:10:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Like father, like son.

• 1:10:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that movie's a banger. What's, is there a Judge Reinhold body swap movie too? I feel like there is. Yeah, Vice Versa, fuck yeah. Vice Versa is actually the superior film.

• 1:10:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:10:17Sean Fennessey?

  Vice Versa is Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage.

• 1:10:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:10:20Sean Fennessey?

  And they body swap.

• 1:10:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:10:21Sean Fennessey?

  And it is fucking good, let me tell you.

• 1:10:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, we're talking about sports movies right now?

• 1:10:26Sean Fennessey?

  Are we? Um, I said Thunderstruck. People were screaming at the TV. I mean, Cry Kid.

• 1:10:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but like, is that garbage? I guess it is. I don't know whether, I don't, I, what's, what's the definition of garbage here?

• 1:10:43Sean Fennessey?

  Ralph Macchio, the pride of Long Island.

• 1:10:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:45Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Ralph, noted Mets fan. Uh, okay, what's the next question?

• 1:10:49Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Patrick from Ghana. What recent, underseen or underappreciated movies do you see becoming a cult classic in the future?

• 1:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think about my theory of the holy trinity of low wattage, late 2010s, early 2020s rom-coms? Of Palm Springs, Plus One and Set It Up?

• 1:11:11Amanda Dobbins?

  These are good. Key attributes are that they have, if not the next generation of movie stars, but like, young stars, we really like Glenn Powell, Andy Samberg, Christina Milati, um, Zoe Deutsch is the other in Set It Up. And then Plus One is Jack Quaid and Maya Erskine. Plus One, like, barely seen at all, so if anyone has not seen that, what a delight. Uh, I-

• 1:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like we should do a new rom-com canon.

• 1:11:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:11:42Sean Fennessey?

  I was thinking about this and I was like, these are, because these other movies that I listed here, and I'm not saying these are the best answers ever, but I'm like, these already kind of have their own cults. They already, like, they had like, instant cults because of the filmmaker who was attached or whatever. And I remember when Set It Up came out, and Set It Up is like, 2016, it's a long time ago now. But when it came out, I was like, what the hell's this? It was the, one of the only times I can remember in the last 10 years where I was like, where did this come from? Who made this? Whose idea was this? And probably because it was like, based in Portland, but, um, you know. Still, there was something in it where I was like, how did this get over the line? Given what was happening in movies at that time? And I do feel that the same vibe is in Plus One in Palm Springs, where it's like,

• 1:12:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's dramedy, there's like real world stakes, but it's kind of silly. You know, in Palm Springs's case, it's more elevated because of the time travel concept.

• 1:12:30Amanda Dobbins?

  The tricky thing is that these are all direct to streaming.

• 1:12:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's the other thing.

• 1:12:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, there's been no shortage of direct to streaming romantic comedies. Films and TV shows, but like a lot of movies in the last 10 years.

• 1:12:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:12:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Many of them starring our greatest former movie stars. And most of them, like, quite bad. But it does seem like the high profile, not very good streamers still get all of the, like, the attention and where things are directed.

• 1:13:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, no, I think you're right. There's, I think there's like, I think those three movies I listed are kind of like the hidden bridge.

• 1:13:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Sean Fennessey?

  To The Kissing Booth, to All the Boys I Loved Before, the Colleen Hoover Wave, like, they're not, those movies are not really that funny. They're, they're much more in the sort of like romance kind of teen obsession. And the, the other movies are more calm than rom, I would say.

• 1:13:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  Or like more vibey?

• 1:13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess so. They're just, they're-

• 1:13:32Sean Fennessey?

  Is that the best word I can come up with?

• 1:13:33Amanda Dobbins?

  They're, they're traditional rom-coms, where the people are like opposed and at war until the very last moment when they like kiss and make up. That's it. And, and so much about what's going on is the world that it set in, or like the premise. Palm Springs being like, oh, we're Groundhog Day-ing it, but at a wedding. Also, many of these, two out of three wedding-based. They both start at weddings. Do they end, they don't end at weddings.

• 1:14:02Sean Fennessey?

  Plus One is such a banger, because it deploys this really, really well.

• 1:14:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but your wedding rule is, would you like to state it?

• 1:14:08Sean Fennessey?

  If your film opens with a wedding, good. If it ends with a wedding, bad.

• 1:14:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Palm Springs does-

• 1:14:14Amanda Dobbins?

  End with a wedding, but it's not.

• 1:14:16Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's kind of a continuous loop of wedding.

• 1:14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's allowed. And the other things, those are just different genres. Like the kissing booth, it's the teen thing, which is, which is very different. And the Colleen Hoover stuff is romance, weird, whatever. So I think part of the reasons that these work is because they are just really traditional structured rom-coms.

• 1:14:39Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. If they don't have a cult, I'd like to inspire one.

• 1:14:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Good idea. The rest of your list is good.

• 1:14:44Sean Fennessey?

  So some other ideas I had for this Pearl, which I do think is basically a cult movie already. I think, you know, that the Ty West trilogy is well known and well covered. But like that movie in particular, I think has like a cosplay quality to it where people are just obsessed with that character. Bottoms?

• 1:15:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I just saw that Alex Ruspari put a question in here.

• 1:15:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I put it in there for him.

• 1:15:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No, Bottoms is great.

• 1:15:07Sean Fennessey?

  Bottoms is great, but not, not, not super well seen.

• 1:15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Sean Fennessey?

  But I think generationally well seen by younger moviegoers.

• 1:15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And also it has like I Odebury and Rachel Sennett and Molly Gordon and.

• 1:15:19Sean Fennessey?

  Ty Gerber.

• 1:15:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like everybody, all the people who have been a whole generation.

• 1:15:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Bo is afraid.

• 1:15:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Great movie.

• 1:15:27Sean Fennessey?

  That I think will be dramatically reclaimed in the next 10 years.

• 1:15:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  Red Rocket.

• 1:15:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Loved it.

• 1:15:34Sean Fennessey?

  Honestly, this is the one that I would have picked for all the Oscar hosannas for, for Sean. I feel like this is like maybe his best movie. Saltburn?

• 1:15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but that was also, it was reclaimed as soon as it hit Amazon Prime.

• 1:15:47Sean Fennessey?

  It was watched. Was anybody like, this is actually good?

• 1:15:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I think a lot of young people.

• 1:15:53Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think, Jack?

• 1:15:54Speaker 05

  I don't know if a lot of young people were saying it's good, but it, I feel like it did penetrate like the Gen Z pop culture stream.

• 1:16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Chris Ryan?

• 1:16:02Sean Fennessey?

  He enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he identified with the lead character.

• 1:16:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Me more than any other Emerald Fennel, Fennel movie. Yes.

• 1:16:09Sean Fennessey?

  That was your favorite of the three.

• 1:16:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Better Man?

• 1:16:15Amanda Dobbins?

  We tried instantly.

• 1:16:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Yasi's fave.

• 1:16:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Malignant, have you seen Malignant?

• 1:16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  No, which one is that?

• 1:16:22Sean Fennessey?

  Malignant is a good movie swap, OMG, holy cow. Just look up the log line, actually, don't, don't.

• 1:16:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, alright, okay, I didn't, I looked at the poster and then I closed it.

• 1:16:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's a James Wan movie that came out during COVID.

• 1:16:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:33Sean Fennessey?

  When he was like, I'm just gonna put, set aside the major franchises that I work on for one minute and just make this bonkers, original horror movie, and it's crazy.

• 1:16:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I added a couple, Game Night.

• 1:16:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's there.

• 1:16:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I do think it's there, but it's like, we aren't, we aren't saying it out loud yet. Every single time it comes up, everyone's like, oh yeah, remember how Game Night was the funniest movie ever made? And it still is, it was funny the first time I saw it, it's funny on rewatch.

• 1:16:59Speaker 05

  How can that be profitable for Frito Lay?

• 1:17:03Sean Fennessey?

  Oh no, died.

• 1:17:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I realized when we saw, uh, Send Help, I accidentally, I did that, like, in homage, by accident, it was just kind of in my head. Yeah, so Challengers, I think, also.

• 1:17:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, a hit, though.

• 1:17:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but a modest hit.

• 1:17:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, I was wondering whether Marty Supreme counts for this.

• 1:17:29Sean Fennessey?

  I think the last two are too big, and I think that they're great examples of a legitimate power of a handful of people who are under the age of 35.

• 1:17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Sean Fennessey?

  And we're doing 35 under 35 in April, and I'm excited for it. I'm, I'm a little concerned about it, given the, like, some of the new audience we've discovered in the last two years. We haven't done this project in the last couple of years.

• 1:17:53Amanda Dobbins?

  You think all the?

• 1:17:54Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of haters come out for this episode, it's usually like, a really controversial episode.

• 1:17:59Amanda Dobbins?

  So you think it's gonna be, you mean that just because of the negativity? Or because we have young people who are gonna be like, okay, mom and dad?

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Both, you know, I think it kind of is coming in all directions. I mean, it's really good, honestly, I like it when it's really noisy like that, but, you know, we had a debate about Margot versus Timothy Chalamet, the last time we did that episode, and you've, you've held tightly to Margot.

• 1:18:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:22Sean Fennessey?

  Understandably, because she was coming right off of Barbie, I think I was pushing for Timothy.

• 1:18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But it was, once again, it's reflective of what they've done versus what they're gonna do. So it's like, are we forecasting? Where are we marking the moment in time? Because now, yes, you're right. It's Timmy.

• 1:18:40Sean Fennessey?

  And did Margot Robbie cross the 35 threshold?

• 1:18:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, she's not eligible, so.

• 1:18:44Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, interesting. Yeah, she's, oh, she's 35. She just turned 35.

• 1:18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, uh, what's the next question?

• 1:18:51Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Day. What would you like to see in the new X-Men movie coming from Jake Schreier? P.S. The outfits go hard, Amanda.

• 1:18:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:19:02Sean Fennessey?

  Well,

• 1:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  I, I want something that feels familiar but new.

• 1:19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:14Sean Fennessey?

  I want the Chris Claremont era, yellow and blue costumes. I want the classic team. I want Storm and Cyclops and Jean Grey and Wolverine and Beast and Professor Xavier. And I want to see Rogue. I want to see some of the like Tier B characters, you know?

• 1:19:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:36Sean Fennessey?

  Jubilee, Archangel, be interested in that. Um, I want to see them fight Magneto.

• 1:19:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:44Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I want to see like a classical X-Men story. And I don't want them to have to redo any of the stories they previously done. It would be interesting to see them try to do something brand new. That would be risky. Comic book movies don't usually not use source material. I imagine they are because one, it like pats the fan on the head. You know, where they're like, oh, good, you, the age of apocalypse, you like this. You know, Dark Phoenix, you'll enjoy this. Um, and it's also like, because they're usually big epic stories. It's very legible for normie Amanda. Um,

• 1:20:17Sean Fennessey?

  that's pretty much it. I, you know, I think I could probably personally do 12 consecutive episodes. Wish casting, like fan casting, who should play the X-Men? Actually, I made an offer to the legendary News and Deals text thread.

• 1:20:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Sean Fennessey?

  Which includes the Blank Check guys and Alex Ross Perry and a few other friends.

• 1:20:38Sean Fennessey?

  Where I'm like, if you guys are all in LA at the same time, we will do an X-Men fan casting episode, but they'll never all be in LA at the same time. So we'll never actually make that episode. What do you want from an X-Men movie?

• 1:20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd like for you to be happy. And I think I mean that both sincerely and also in the sense that I don't know if I can deal with the level of the breakdown.

• 1:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  The fallout.

• 1:21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  That, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this, you know, this will make many waves. It's not just that this movie is bad, but they've besmirched this legacy and then they, you know, killed a whole studio and lots of people lost their jobs and all for what?

• 1:21:15Sean Fennessey?

  For this.

• 1:21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  For an X-Men movie that does not, you know, make the X-Men men happy. So.

• 1:21:20Sean Fennessey?

  You nailed it, man. That's actually it. It's like when you boil down the Fox deal to its barest essential, it's barest essential is X-Men. It's gotten other stuff, right? We just talked about getting Conan and getting to do Alien and Predator and getting to do Deadpool pool versus Wolverine and Fantastic Four and all that stuff, but.

• 1:21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Getting to do.

• 1:21:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Remember, I don't want to talk about Fantastic Four. Anyway, um, I think, yeah, it will, there will be a crash out amongst Gen X, millennial and Gen Z alike, because X-Men is very, very sacred and very inspiring to young people who discover that comic book, because it's a story about outcasts, people who are trying to find each other, found family, your favorite. But it actually literally is that.

• 1:22:04Amanda Dobbins?

  It's nice to find a family.

• 1:22:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And it's about figuring out like, what makes you special instead of what makes you different. And that's a beautiful way of telling a story. I really think X-Men is very, very intellectually deep in a way that is uncommon for, for a lot of comic books and also very legible for young kids. So I like it.

• 1:22:22Speaker 05

  After seeing Thunderbolts, do you think Shrier has the right sensibility for the material?

• 1:22:26Sean Fennessey?

  I do. I, you know. I think that movie is now maybe a bit underrated relative to what comic book movies have been since 2019. It's by no means perfect, but I do think he, he has a background in YA and X-Men is YA. You know, it's about, it's about young kids going to school and figuring out their powers.

• 1:22:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I like that. I obviously prefer Spider-Man to all the other, the kid, teens are the, the right entry point. Also, Psy can say Spider-Man now, just so you know.

• 1:22:54Sean Fennessey?

  The problem, the problem is, is you can't have teen Wolverine.

• 1:22:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Why not?

• 1:23:00Sean Fennessey?

  Cause he's just not a teenager, you know, like Logan, Weapon X, he was like a man.

• 1:23:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:23:05Sean Fennessey?

  When they put the adamantium in his body.

• 1:23:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. And they don't time travel?

• 1:23:10Sean Fennessey?

  They do time travel.

• 1:23:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, there you go.

• 1:23:11Sean Fennessey?

  You want old, well, they did old Logan and younger X-Men, right? Didn't they already do that? And, no, you guys don't remember?

• 1:23:18Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 1:23:19Sean Fennessey?

  Days of future past, right? Isn't that what happens in that? I'm fairly certain that's what happens in that.

• 1:23:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:23:24Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, did you see that one?

• 1:23:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that the one where they go to Argentina or whatever?

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  No idea what you mean.

• 1:23:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Anyone?

• 1:23:35Sean Fennessey?

  Are you thinking?

• 1:23:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Michael Fassbender?

• 1:23:37Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's first class. No, that's not that one.

• 1:23:39Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 1:23:39Sean Fennessey?

  They go to Argentina in that one?

• 1:23:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know where they go. Somewhere.

• 1:23:43Sean Fennessey?

  All right. What's the next question? That's a generous question. Thank you, Day.

• 1:23:46Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Tom from England. On longer journeys, I have started downloading a movie I have seen many times and then play the audio only through my car speakers. If you were to do this, which movie would you choose?

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Probably Network, cause I can do Network word for word.

• 1:24:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I was gonna say A Few Good Men.

• 1:24:04Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm. Another movie I've memorized large chunks of.

• 1:24:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. And also you don't really need the visuals.

• 1:24:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a lot of, there's not a lot of empty air.

• 1:24:13Sean Fennessey?

  There's something to a movie that you can listen to. I shared this with you recently. I don't think I said this on the show. I watched the movie Nuremberg.

• 1:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  On December 24th, 2025.

• 1:24:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:24:26Sean Fennessey?

  And here's why I did it. One, I was obviously cramming for the year end movies. I think Nuremberg is on Netflix. You haven't seen it yet?

• 1:24:33Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I keep forgetting.

• 1:24:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably worth a chat at some point.

• 1:24:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You keep saying this, but then there are all these other movies. Can we, can we put it on the movies we missed episode?

• 1:24:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:42Sean Fennessey?

  Great idea. I won't say anything about it, but here's how I watched it. I was building a five foot tall dollhouse for my daughter. Spoiler alert, Alice Santa is not real. She's not listening.

• 1:24:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:24:56Sean Fennessey?

  So I'm building this dollhouse on Christmas Eve and it was an ornate, complicated act.

• 1:25:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Quite impressive.

• 1:25:02Sean Fennessey?

  It is a very large edifice.

• 1:25:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Does it close or is it?

• 1:25:06Sean Fennessey?

  It does not.

• 1:25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, so it's just kind of like the.

• 1:25:08Sean Fennessey?

  Tony Collette and Hereditary.

• 1:25:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:10Sean Fennessey?

  You know, the miniatures are there and you know, we have a demon who obviously is living in our home. And so, you know, I couldn't really see the TV while I was building it because it was so tall. But I had Nuremberg on and I found Nuremberg to be an amazing movie to listen to. Because it's just people yelling at each other in rooms and over explaining the state of the world.

• 1:25:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:30Sean Fennessey?

  One another. And so what I heard, I found it an enjoyable way to pass the time.

• 1:25:35Amanda Dobbins?

  When I was seven or eight, I got really into, and we would drive a lot to see, but my grandparents lived in Tennessee and North Carolina. And so this was in the olden days before iPads, kids. And I would get books on tape, but what I liked was not just the narrated audiobook. They were like audio plays of Agatha Christie.

• 1:25:55Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:25:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Mysteries that the, like, I think it was the BBC. They're amazing and they can still, you can get them on Libby or whatever. I really recommend them, but they had the same, you know, there were people, it was kind of like a Prairie Home Companion. They had people doing sounds and people doing like enough of a theatrical.

• 1:26:14Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:26:15Amanda Dobbins?

  To set the vibe and it was sort of like listening to a movie. They're great. I recommend that, but I guess you could also just listen to Ms. Marple on, without looking at it.

• 1:26:24Sean Fennessey?

  Semi related, have you read Saito Matsumoto's Tokyo Express?

• 1:26:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't think so.

• 1:26:30Sean Fennessey?

  Eileen was, was eyeing this recently and it's a sort of, it's a, it's a sort of an Agatha Christie-esque Japanese detective novel that apparently is very good.

• 1:26:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh no, I haven't read this one.

• 1:26:39Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I figured if someone had read it, you would have read it. Okay, what's the next question?

• 1:26:43Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Brandon. What is your most memorable movie theater experience ever?

• 1:26:52Sean Fennessey?

  I vividly recall seeing There's Something About Mary,

• 1:26:58Sean Fennessey?

  which I did with 10 friends.

• 1:27:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's cute.

• 1:27:01Sean Fennessey?

  And we were huge, huge, huge Farrelly Brothers and Jim Carrey and, you know, like, super slapstick comedy fans.

• 1:27:16Sean Fennessey?

  And I don't know if buzz worked differently at that time in history, but the pre-release buzz on There's Something About Mary, probably powered entirely by trailers and commercials, was like, this will be the funniest movie that ever touches your soul. And at the moment, it was, like, it was, it was like going to see fucking Led Zeppelin or something.

• 1:27:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Were you reading Entertainment Weekly by then?

• 1:27:38Sean Fennessey?

  I was.

• 1:27:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so that's part of it.

• 1:27:40Sean Fennessey?

  Whether my friends were, I doubt it. I probably was like the plug for all that stuff.

• 1:27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  So, but then you started and then you're like, no, we really gotta, we gotta do this.

• 1:27:47Sean Fennessey?

  It was pretty, pretty electrifying, gotta be honest. I was a teenage boy living on Long Island, you know, what do you want?

• 1:27:51Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful. I'm trying to think, so as a child, I remember going to see Clueless at Lennox Mall with my mother. I was 11, 10, turning 11. And just remember being like, wow, I'm allowed to get to see something this quote unquote grown up. And also, movies can be like this. I also remember seeing a year later Jerry Maguire with my mother, which was a pretty scarring experience because of the sex scene. I remember seeing The American President with my dad multiple times in theaters. So that's sort of a, I think we saw it four times in theaters.

• 1:28:27Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Four times you both went together?

• 1:28:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:30Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:28:31Amanda Dobbins?

  We just, we really liked it.

• 1:28:32Sean Fennessey?

  That's very sweet.

• 1:28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah, it was, he likes movies.

• 1:28:34Sean Fennessey?

  That's when a centrist liberal America was still possible.

• 1:28:38Amanda Dobbins?

  1895, that was the end of it. But, so I guess 95, big movie year. Let's see. And then, as a grown up? I'm trying to think. I think a lot about the Irishman premiere.

• 1:28:51Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that was very memorable.

• 1:28:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which was.

• 1:28:53Sean Fennessey?

  That was great.

• 1:28:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, at the Chinese theater in Hollywood and was like a big deal and very fancy and everyone was there. Um, and then wound up being one of the last big premieres that we went to before COVID. So.

• 1:29:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great call.

• 1:29:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, but, and I also just remember like the end of that movie and in the still of the night, like playing through the Chinese. It really, really works. So, and then I remember taking my son and your son to Singin' in the Rain, uh, your daughter, to Singin' in the Rain at Vidious.

• 1:29:25Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna say, when did, where's my son? Where's my son? Give me back my son!

• 1:29:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and then they all started dancing in the front during the actual song, Singin' in the Rain.

• 1:29:36Sean Fennessey?

  That's very, very sweet.

• 1:29:37Amanda Dobbins?

  It was really very special.

• 1:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  More recent adult ones for me, I mentioned this on our 25 for 25, but I was at the New York Film Festival premiere of The Social Network in September of 2010, which was incredible. Um, I took Alice to see Wish when she was barely two years old. And I watched something happen that happened to me that is just unforgettable and is like a huge part of our relationship right now, which is very special. Um, I don't know, more recent fare, I'm trying to think of what's a, like an exciting festival street. Oh, Uncut Gems at Telluride.

• 1:30:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:12Sean Fennessey?

  That was fucking electric and it was amazing because 25% of the people were there left. Cause they were like, this is disgusting to me. And the other 75% of us sickos were absolutely vibrating. Um, good question. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. There's nothing better than having friends who support whatever you're into, like re-watching a director's entire catalog in the lead up to their latest release. And like those friends, State Farm is there to help you feel supported by helping you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. So you can check coverage off the list and spend more time debating movie rankings. Go online at statefarm.com or use the easily accessible app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

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• 1:31:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, what's next?

• 1:31:42Speaker 05

  Next question comes from our good friend Alex Ross Perry. He asks, "I wanted to know if you and Amanda have to take those passport-style photos that serve as the banner for every episode by looking at the camera and giving a big old smile every single episode? And if so, do you do it at the beginning or end of the recording?"

• 1:32:01Amanda Dobbins?

  What, you think AI is doing this? You think we're just changing our little outfits with the AI every time? No, of course we do it. We do it at the end. Here's the alternative, Alex Ross Perry. It's a thumbnail that is of a screen grab of you frozen at the most heinous facial expressive moment that you possibly could make. And then the Green Goblin photoshopped into every single, like, around you, like, five of them trying to eat you. And then it just shows up and it like pops out at you on YouTube or Spotify. You're just going about your business. You're trying to hit Rafi, you know, to please your children. And then your face being eaten by the Green Goblin going like, "Ah!"

• 1:32:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just frozen there.

• 1:32:47Sean Fennessey?

  Please make that a screenshot.

• 1:32:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we do a direct to camera thumbnail, Alex Ross Perry. We're gonna do it after this one.

• 1:32:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't do a big ol' smile.

• 1:32:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Some, and that sometimes on NBA group chat, you know, they're getting like snazzy with the little, yeah, everything.

• 1:33:04Sean Fennessey?

  Should we do like this, like one time, you know, just some dance moves?

• 1:33:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, like Pulp Fiction or whatever? Um, no, because then immediately once the photo exists, it gets taken out of context. Right?

• 1:33:15Sean Fennessey?

  Very good point.

• 1:33:16Amanda Dobbins?

  So, and I have enough out of my control of being live on Netflix as we are right now. So that's my one attempt to art direct this. What do we do with our thumbnails? Anyone have any thoughts?

• 1:33:29Sean Fennessey?

  I don't care. You know, I've been on the rewatchables on video for some time now, and every single photo of me promoting an episode of the rewatchables is me awkwardly laughing at something Chris has said. Every single time. They're like, this is gonna be gold, guys. We'll just put Sean right in the middle and he'll look like a freak. And you know what? That's, that's showbiz, baby. You know, like, what can I say? That's just how it works. Okay, what's next? Thanks, Alex.

• 1:33:56Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Jeffrey. Joffrey or Jeffrey? I apologize.

• 1:34:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's Jeffrey.

• 1:34:01Speaker 05

  I recently saw Charlie Kaufman speak at Senectady New York screening at Yale and was reminded of how much his work changed when he started directing his own screenplays. With every Best Director winner dating back to the 2013 Academy Awards, having written or co-written their films, and all five nominees writing their own films this year, is something being lost in the old way of a great screenwriter turning over a script to a great director?

• 1:34:25Sean Fennessey?

  This is a great question and a wonderful observation about how things have changed.

• 1:34:31Sean Fennessey?

  We, I personally, I think you too, we're auteurists. We love people who conceive and imagine and build, you know, all from whole cloth. However.

• 1:34:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, the reason that we're so excited about that is because we came of age and came to love cinema in like the great heyday of our favorite, of wonderful directors taking great scripts from screenwriters and turning them into this classic, they don't make them anymore, like this anymore, studio fare. So, we were excited by what was new and what the younger generation was doing. And, you know, I think we'll all still really feel that way. And there's nothing. I think both of us more exciting than someone who just has like, who has it all in their head. They see it and they they've written it. They know what it's supposed to look like.

• 1:35:20Amanda Dobbins?

  They understand it, that it is kind of the closest you can get to film as a sculpture or a painting or as like fine art.

• 1:35:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:35:29Amanda Dobbins?

  So I do really value that, but also like Aaron Sorkin is directing The Social Reckoning. Like, why? God help us. And that is that is someone who wrote the screenplays for some of my favorite movies that were then directed by Rob Reiner and David Fincher. And it's like, and now, now he's just doing it by himself. So.

• 1:35:50Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's two reasons for this. This is a very interesting question to me. I've given this some thought in the past, too. One of the reasons is because obviously the studios are not taking the chances on those kinds of stories that you were talking about that are written by screenwriters. And it's just much harder to submit. It was much harder up until about two years ago to just submit a spec script and hope that anything could happen. The idea of a movie like Send Help Getting Made is super exciting because that just came from two veteran screenwriters who'd been writing movies for decades. And that's a movie that they had written, you know, I don't know how many years ago it was, five, six, seven. And Raimi was like, I'll do this one. And that's kind of how the business should work, like 30% of the time.

• 1:36:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:26Sean Fennessey?

  Where there's just a good idea floating around and someone grabs it who has a lot of skill and they can transform it into something. It feels like that business is coming back. We were raised, you know, in like the Shane Black era, right? Where Shane Black was like writing these mind blowing screenplays and selling them for a million dollars. And that person was venerated in the same way that like William Goldman was venerated before that. William Goldman never directed a movie. Sorkin, obviously, working in the same tradition. I think it's coming back a little bit.

• 1:36:53Amanda Dobbins?

  The sales are, the spec sales.

• 1:36:55Sean Fennessey?

  Sales are up this year, which is really cool. Kaufman's a really good example. I like his films as a director, but I do not like them more than when he's working with Spike Jonze. And him and Spike Jonze together, to me, is as magical as it gets. In fact, I was listening to the How to Live and Die in L.A. commentary track with William Friedkin last night. And he was talking about his favorite films of all time and what they all did. And he listed a handful of movies. All About Eve was certainly one of them. But there were a couple of others. And he said, one of the things that these movies do is you have no idea where the story is going and they surprise you. They upend your expectations and then they surprise you. And he said, the best modern example of that is when Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze get together. And I was like, that's such a random coincidence that that was part of that question.

• 1:37:39Sean Fennessey?

  I think sometimes great screenwriters, one, they're not as trained in the art of filmmaking. So when they try to take their hand at it, like someone like Aaron Sorkin, he didn't train as a film director, and a film director is an artistic craft. And I find that he's a little bit lacking stylistically to those who have worked on his films before. There's also just like, something going on with the marketing and primacy of the one guy or the one girl. And like, movie studios have latched on to this very wisely, where it's like, this is a Christopher Nolan movie, and that is the selling point.

• 1:38:17Amanda Dobbins?

  As our friend David Sims wrote recently, I mean, and as we have been discussing, you know, movie stars are long gone, replaced by Batman and Spider-Man and Harry Potter. And so David observed that now it is the director that gets sold as like, this is the, it's a star vehicle, but it's a star vehicle for Christopher Nolan or Greta Gerwig or Jordan Peele.

• 1:38:40Sean Fennessey?

  This is not a mistake. This is something that movie studios have learned through market research and looking at the audiences, because as movies get smaller, the people who go consistently are sickos, and they are signing up for brands, and those brands are not as frequent as stars. They're much more these people who create. It's like being really interested in an author and buying any book that they write. It's the same kind of fandom. I'm obviously one of these fans too, so I relate to it, but it has come at the expense of the stock-in-trade screenwriter, and that's a little sad.

• 1:39:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Sean Fennessey?

  What's next?

• 1:39:13Speaker 05

  Next question comes from Raina. After watching The Studio, I rewatched The Player, and I was wondering, what are some of your favorite Hollywood satire movies?

• 1:39:24Sean Fennessey?

  There are a lot.

• 1:39:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, you made a long list of many of the classics. I added a couple.

• 1:39:31Sean Fennessey?

  The top three classic Hollywood additions of this are Sullivan's Travels, Singin' in the Rain and Sunset Boulevard. Presumably, if you're listening to the show, you've heard of those movies. They're three of our favorite movies. We talk about them all the time on the show. They all, I think, operate in a different register of satire when it comes to Hollywood and achieve their ends in different ways.

• 1:39:51Amanda Dobbins?

  We should also say that since the player was mentioned in the question, it's not also on the list, which would be, it would be a top four. It would be a Mount Rushmore situation.

• 1:40:00Sean Fennessey?

  No question. Handful that I'm thought of, Hail Caesar, Tropic Thunder, The Hollywood Shuffle. The loved one is a little bit of an underrated one. It's a Tony Richardson movie from the 1960s that is a lot of fun. Albert Brooks is The Muse, Bowfinger. Speaking of Criterion, there's a great addition of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, starring Jane Mansfield, that I think is very funny. State and Maine. Blazing Saddles, especially like the last 20 minutes of Blazing Saddles, when it becomes clear that they're inside of a movie. Been thinking about Blazing Saddles a lot because I'm thinking about Mel Brooks, who's turning 100 and, you know, his career is really, deserves as much acclaim as it can get while he's still with us. What else did you add?

• 1:40:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Speaking of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, Adaptation, which is the satire of many things, but screenwriting is certainly one of them. And then Notting Hill, which may have a sweet ending, but is, is pretty acidic about movie stars and certainly about Alec Baldwin as a movie star.

• 1:41:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Did we ever do an episode about Hollywood satires?

• 1:41:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, I think so, but maybe during the pandemic.

• 1:41:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:41:12Amanda Dobbins?

  But we could go back.

• 1:41:14Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's keep going.

• 1:41:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, are we going to talk about Hoppers?

• 1:41:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, let's keep buzzing. We're going to do two more questions.

• 1:41:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:41:20Speaker 05

  Should I make one of them life advice?

• 1:41:22Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, yes.

• 1:41:24Speaker 05

  Okay. Last movie related question comes from Kyle. What films really capture the people or culture of the city or state you grew up in?

• 1:41:35Sean Fennessey?

  There's a whole history of Long Island cinema, many of which get it very, very right. No movie gets it more right than The Wolf of Wall Street.

• 1:41:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:44Sean Fennessey?

  Which doesn't take place entirely on Long Island, but it captures the Long Island agro bro better than any movie I've ever seen.

• 1:41:53Sean Fennessey?

  Married to the Mob and Goodfellas are sort of antecedents for this. They are like

• 1:42:00Sean Fennessey?

  much more in the, in the sort of like the production design, the vocal intonations of people, the relationships that they make. First half of Married to the Mob, second half of Goodfellas, you know, that's sort of like

• 1:42:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:11Sean Fennessey?

  when they're in the suburbs moments of those movies. Steve Buscemi's film Trees Lounge is an all time Long Island classic. And as somebody who's spent a lot of time in bars with his dad as a kid, that's what it's like to be in a bar. Hal Hartley's Trust is unforgettable. It was

• 1:42:30Sean Fennessey?

  Frank Oz's In-N-Out starring Kevin Kline was shooting in Northport, which is one town over from me when I was a teenager. And there was a huge flurry around that movie when I was a kid and I remember very well. And it takes, it takes place on Long Island. No Hard Feelings in Montauk, which I think is a really good, like the locals in the, in the beach town, you know, in the, in the, in the tourist town representation. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a lot of Long Island Railroad in that movie. Final Destination One.

• 1:42:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:59Sean Fennessey?

  You know, just sad Jets fans getting annihilated by death.

• 1:43:06Sean Fennessey?

  And then the cinema of Ed Burns.

• 1:43:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:43:09Sean Fennessey?

  You know, especially the Brothers McMullin.

• 1:43:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Have you seen The Family McMullin?

• 1:43:12Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't, but I will watch it. I'm, I'm a Burns completist.

• 1:43:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm a fan.

• 1:43:18Sean Fennessey?

  Of the film?

• 1:43:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No, of Ed Burns.

• 1:43:20Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 1:43:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And of his choice to marry Christie Turlington. Good job.

• 1:43:24Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a fan of that choice as well. They put Tracey Ellis Ross in the mix there, too. She's joining the McMullin family.

• 1:43:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:43:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, I'm gonna see it.

• 1:43:31Sean Fennessey?

  I'm intrigued. It's on HBO Max. Okay, what's, what's, what's Atlanta?

• 1:43:35Amanda Dobbins?

  So the thing about Atlanta is that now every movie is filmed there, but not that many, like, good movies are set there.

• 1:43:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:43:43Amanda Dobbins?

  So. To get the vibe and to movies actually that represent Atlanta. I'm sorry to say that Gone with the Wind represents, well, listen.

• 1:43:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It happened there and Atlanta is like has been.

• 1:43:57Sean Fennessey?

  And you feel that was when it was at its best.

• 1:43:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Can be a very racist city. And then the other historical one I thought of was Selma, which obviously is in Alabama, but Dr. King was from Atlanta, like a very important part of the fabric and history of Atlanta. And also John Lewis is featured pretty prominently in Selma, and that was our congressperson for many years growing up and like an absolute Atlanta legend. So those are Atlanta historical. Then present day, Drumline.

• 1:44:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:29Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and the like HBCUs.

• 1:44:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:44:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And I believe that is like a made up one in Atlanta.

• 1:44:33Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm. The Canon.

• 1:44:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Contagion, which the CDC, back when it existed.

• 1:44:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:44:40Amanda Dobbins?

  CDC is important. It's there. I went to summer camp near the CDC for many years and I'm healthy and thriving and I believe in vaccines.

• 1:44:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. You have many friends and close loved ones. Yes.

• 1:44:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, I mean, every Marvel movie, I guess. I don't know. So Black Panther starts in with a heist at the High Museum of Art. And I, it's not identified as the High Museum of Art, of course. I grew up two blocks from the High Museum of Art.

• 1:45:08Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 1:45:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And I went there all the time and played in the, the front lawn all the time. And then the library where I went to Storytime was right across the street.

• 1:45:16Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:45:17Amanda Dobbins?

  So I didn't witness any heists in my time, nor did I meet any superheroes.

• 1:45:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:45:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But.

• 1:45:23Sean Fennessey?

  Eric Killmonger, not exactly a superhero, right?

• 1:45:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, thwarted, I guess, you know, and he's angry about it. He's trying to steal it back.

• 1:45:30Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:45:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I don't know, Atlanta, I, it's good. It's good and it's bad.

• 1:45:37Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:45:37Amanda Dobbins?

  That's, you had a tough experience, but you weren't properly in the city of Atlanta. So.

• 1:45:41Sean Fennessey?

  No. Long Island is, I feel the same way.

• 1:45:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's good. It's bad. It's like any place. Okay. What's our last question before chatting Hoppers a little bit?

• 1:45:48Speaker 05

  Last question, Live Life Advice with Dustin.

• 1:45:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:52Speaker 05

  He writes in, "I recently ordered an engagement ring for my longtime girlfriend, but I've been struggling to come up with a fun and meaningful way to propose. We're both cinephiles and are going to TIFF for the second year in a row this fall. Should I work our love of cinema into my proposal?"

• 1:46:09Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think?

• 1:46:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, yes, absolutely. It's like, I don't think, where are you on a public proposal?

• 1:46:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's not what I would do.

• 1:46:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not what I would do either. It's not what happened to me. And I don't think, I'm a big fan of TIFF, excited that you guys are going, but I like, we shouldn't be trying to rent out like a screen, you know, to do some sort of, will you marry me, public sort of thing? I just, I wouldn't, I couldn't.

• 1:46:33Sean Fennessey?

  How would it work? Let's just, let's just game it out.

• 1:46:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't know, I've never been to TIFF, right? I've never been to Canada.

• 1:46:38Sean Fennessey?

  You book a friends and family only mass screening of Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride.

• 1:46:45Sean Fennessey?

  The greatest love story ever told.

• 1:46:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And then?

• 1:46:48Sean Fennessey?

  You and your gal come out. You introduce the film. You know, you say, hey, my name's Dustin. This is Maggie Jr. We're madly in love with each other.

• 1:46:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:58Sean Fennessey?

  This is an expression of our love. Two monsters trying to make their way across the United States of America, or Toronto, I guess Toronto, in Canada. This is a Canadian story. And I guess Niagara Falls figures prominently in, in the film.

• 1:47:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah, that's right. That looked real fake.

• 1:47:12Sean Fennessey?

  And after the film is over, stick around. We've got a special surprise for you all.

• 1:47:18Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no. I mean, what you have to do is you either have to get in touch with Jessie Buckley's people and/or film your, film your own drop-in. And instead of here comes the motherfucking bride, or?

• 1:47:33Sean Fennessey?

  Wait, you wanna, you wanna cut the film?

• 1:47:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and then you either, well, listen, you've already rented out a friends and family screening for the bride in Canada. I can't recommend any of that. No, I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know. I don't think public, but what's like a small thing that you could do?

• 1:47:51Amanda Dobbins?

  For movie night? I mean, let's see, I don't, I don't, I honestly, it's great that you have shared interests. A gimmicky proposal, you don't really have to do it. Do something from the heart. I still don't remember anything my husband said to me during the proposal because I was so surprised and I like sort of blacked out.

• 1:48:10Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:48:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, he says it was nice. I'm sure that was, I said yes.

• 1:48:14Sean Fennessey?

  Did you fear dying alone?

• 1:48:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't, but you know.

• 1:48:22Sean Fennessey?

  Me either.

• 1:48:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, the story, you know, the story of this is that we didn't really, we didn't have a conversation about it. It's not like I picked out a ring or anything. We had one conversation about my very ambivalent feelings about the institution of marriage because of, you know, previous events, child of divorce.

• 1:48:40Sean Fennessey?

  World War II? Like, I don't know what you mean.

• 1:48:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, all of that. Um, and that, and like, and nothing happened and six months went by and then just like out of nowhere. So I didn't remember and that was nice. I thought it was very romantic. The, one of the most romantic things that you can do, even though I think marriage is like a, a pretty weird institution and it's primarily a business arrangement. One of the most romantic things you can do is ask someone to marry you. So just do that. Just do it, like do it meaningfully, probably not in public. I don't know if you need a photographer hidden, but that's up to you. And then you can go see a movie.

• 1:49:19Sean Fennessey?

  That's good advice.

• 1:49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:49:20Sean Fennessey?

  Let's leave it there. Uh, thank you for all of these wonderful questions. We had a bunch more, but we just didn't have time to get to them. Um, we will be doing another mailbag immediately after the Academy Awards. So maybe some of these questions can float into that mailbag.

• 1:49:31Amanda Dobbins?

  That will be about the Oscars though.

• 1:49:33Sean Fennessey?

  Almost entirely. Yeah. But you know, maybe we'll just sprinkle in some other stuff for fun. You know, just to keep it loose. How are you feeling about your 2027 Oscar picks?

• 1:49:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's only 11 and a half months away.

• 1:49:46Amanda Dobbins?

  It's gonna be great.

• 1:49:48Sean Fennessey?

  Hoppers.

• 1:49:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Have they announced the date for the 2027 Oscars?

• 1:49:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's July 18th, 2027, which I think is a really good idea and they should keep pushing it back. Hoppers is directed by Daniel Chong. Uh, it's his first feature for Pixar, but not his first feature film. It's, uh, written by Jesse Andrews and the story is by Chong and Andrews. The voice cast includes Piper Curta, Bobby Moynihan, Jon Hamm, Kathy Najimy and Dave Franco. The story is as follows. When scientists discover a way to transform human consciousness into robotic animals, Mabel uses the new technology to uncover mysteries of the animal world that are beyond anything she could have ever imagined.

• 1:50:30Sean Fennessey?

  What did you think of Hoppers?

• 1:50:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I had a nice time, as did my four-year-old son. He was a little convoluted, is it not?

• 1:50:41Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:50:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a little, and I would say the most succinct review was delivered by my son 20, maybe 25 minutes into Hoppers, when he just said very loudly, "This is not Hoppers", because he had not seen any of the animals advertised on the billboard just yet. And very shortly thereafter, King George the Beaver and, you know, and all the other animals of the animal kingdom showed up, and he was very excited. I don't think he could tell you reliably anything that happened in the film Hoppers afterwards, but spending time with animals and trying to, you know, be a force for good in the world, I'm pro.

• 1:51:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm, yes, I'm with you. I like this movie.

• 1:51:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:31Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was perhaps the most laugh-out-loud funny Pixar movie in a long time. I thought it had really good jokes.

• 1:51:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:51:38Sean Fennessey?

  It had a couple of real gasp moments. There's one in particular where one character is eliminated, and I was like, "Oh, my."

• 1:51:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that was funny.

• 1:51:46Sean Fennessey?

  It was great. It was a great moment. There's a handful of moments like this that are surprising and played for laughs. And the slapstick of it is very good. I think the voice performances are great in this movie. I thought Dave Franco and Meryl Streep in particular were excellent. It's crazy to just be saying Meryl Streep in Hoppers, but she's in there.

• 1:52:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:09Sean Fennessey?

  It is ornately plotted, and I would say, I don't want to say it's challenging for a little kid, but I'll tell you this, in the same way that Knox had a reaction 20 minutes in, about an hour in, Alice, who I would describe as a high-level plot understander, given that she has like a real mastery of the Star Wars universe at four and a half years old, turned to me, one hour in, she said, "Dad, what is this movie about?"

• 1:52:37Sean Fennessey?

  And I couldn't answer that succinctly and quietly for her in the movie theater. But I think, and you know what, maybe for eight year olds, it's super easy to understand. But because of the experience that we find ourselves in, as parents going to see these movies, I'm watching it through her eyes a little bit more and it's okay for them to not understand every plot detail, but this is a wacky plot.

• 1:52:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. To be fair to Hoppers, my son can't really recount the plots of anything that he sees, but it is, it's a hat on a hat on a hat on a hat on a animatronic beaver. Um, or a robot beaver. I, you know, I don't want to get the technology wrong.

• 1:53:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a robot with the power to accept consciousness.

• 1:53:16Amanda Dobbins?

  In a real battle with my son over whether robots are good or evil and really about drones and whether drones are good or evil, I'm obviously anti drones in, in all cases. But, and he has a contrarian opinion. It's just like drones. Yeah, I'm into it. I like them. You don't like them, but I do. Cause I think he likes that when they're flying around at the park.

• 1:53:37Sean Fennessey?

  Of course.

• 1:53:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And then robots, he's very interested in Siri. That's very complicated. You know, he likes to talk to Siri. Um, so I didn't love it when robots were lionized in this film, but, but, but it was so confusing. It like, it was, it was a robot for such a short period of time that I think it really just passed over an ox's head.

• 1:54:02Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, I personally didn't find the actual plot confusing to understand like as an adult. I don't think it's, I think most people will understand the movie. I think for young kids, it's a, it's just a lot of information.

• 1:54:12Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just a lot of jumps.

• 1:54:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And it's also, I mean, it's like, it's also a few different kinds of films. Like it is kind of a body swap, body horror movie in a way. It's also like a conservationist comedy, you know, it's very throw Ralph Waldo Emerson in terms of how it thinks about like the transcendental relationship to nature and how fulfilling and powerful that can be for the young Mabel character and her relationship with her grandmother. I found that stuff to be very touching.

• 1:54:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Sean Fennessey?

  Very classical Pixar.

• 1:54:38Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, I mean, there, there's a 10 minute, very moving prologue about loss.

• 1:54:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:54:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, that animates the, sorry, that does animate the rest of the film.

• 1:54:47Sean Fennessey?

  Literally.

• 1:54:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Pun intended, I guess. Um, I also like, especially young Mabel, I loved. I really would have liked a whole movie about young Mabel.

• 1:54:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:54:56Amanda Dobbins?

  She, then she turns into a teenager, which I guess you have to be to have access to the research lab where they're turning into, I get it from a plot. Please, but I was really into angry seven-year-old Mabel trying to free all the reptile pets in her classrooms.

• 1:55:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think there's something interesting too about how old is the kid in the story that you're telling for a Pixar film? You know, in Elio, I think he was maybe like eight or nine. In this movie, Mabel is a teenager.

• 1:55:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:25Sean Fennessey?

  She's an activist teenager. And that has got to be the oldest lead.

• 1:55:32Amanda Dobbins?

  She's living on her own.

• 1:55:34Sean Fennessey?

  Short of soul, I guess.

• 1:55:35Amanda Dobbins?

  She goes to school, she goes to college in Beaverton. She doesn't always attend her classes, but she's college age.

• 1:55:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and so that choice, I think, leads to kind of a naturally little bit more elevated experience where this collision of science and the real world and politics. Initially, the villain of the film is a Gavin Newsom-esque mayor named Jerry, voiced by Jon Hamm, who is up to no good. He's trying to build a bridge, and in doing so, he is sending the wildlife racing away from their natural habitat. And so that's really what Mabel is trying to preserve. And there's like a couple of things about this movie that I didn't totally click with. Clearly, Mabel is trying to make some chaos to transform the human world to let the animals

• 1:56:25Sean Fennessey?

  return to their safe place because she believes that they should have their own sanctuaries and they shouldn't be disrupted by humans. And also, she has this emotional connection to her family and the way that she kind of came to understand herself and be more at peace by being in that world herself. So then she's like kind of setting up an animal plot to undermine the humans, but then she accidentally kills the queen of the insects. And when she does so, all the creatures want to go kill a politician and Mabel, and they go on a mad spree. And then one of the butterfly's son grows up to be an evil butterfly king.

• 1:57:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Titus, yeah.

• 1:57:08Sean Fennessey?

  Titus. And then he goes into the robot body of Jerry. Once they've been captured, like it's a very, like, it's just going in a lot of places and it's a lot of, it's a lot of plot in the final 40 minutes of the movie.

• 1:57:22Sean Fennessey?

  And then the movie has a naturally like sweet conclusion, like the bad guy was eliminated and the other bad guy learned a lesson and then we're gonna clean up this place after a forced fire, which is a little

• 1:57:35Amanda Dobbins?

  That was tough. Yeah, I was thinking about when the

• 1:57:39Amanda Dobbins?

  when they finished like script development on this because

• 1:57:43Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, these movies take years to make, obviously, so but just we're a year out of the wildfires here in Los Angeles. And that was unfortunate to see. My wife said something about it immediately afterwards. And then Jerry's just like cleaning up the forest and he hasn't lost office despite all the terrible things that he's done. And it's like, okay, we got this, you guys, we can conserve the environment. I don't know. I was left a little like, I guess this is solved then. Thanks, Hoppers.

• 1:58:10Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, and you get a job at the local research thing, but we can't be animals anymore. So instead, the professor has a whole whiteboard of other ideas of things. So science continues, but like in harmony with nature.

• 1:58:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:26Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't, I don't know. I mostly just laughed at the animals like, like my child did.

• 1:58:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the jokes are good.

• 1:58:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:31Sean Fennessey?

  And it's very entertaining.

• 1:58:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And like in the, I did think it was notable that to me, the funniest joke

• 1:58:40Amanda Dobbins?

  was about an iPhone and about using voice, like voice to text or text to voice.

• 1:58:45Sean Fennessey?

  And emojis.

• 1:58:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And emojis. And but we've, you know, a lot of, yeah, but like, and not, that's the only thing that Knox remembers as soon as I start going beaver, beaver, beaver. He remembers the potato punchline. So it works.

• 1:58:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought Bobby Moynihan was really funny. And the, like, the George character has the classic, like, I would buy, you know, a stuffy merchandisable. I'm rooting for this person. Very funny, endearing. I thought the ways that their expressions, but their, and their eyes changed depending on whether they were like talking between animals.

• 1:59:20Sean Fennessey?

  I love that.

• 1:59:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And so the thing, the innate child thing of wouldn't it be fun to be an animal and be able to talk to animals? Which I, you know, all children or most children do feel, I thought they realized really well. I just, everything else was involved. I say that, but we sat next to like two grownups on a date to see the Pixar movie in the middle of the afternoon, which is really cool. And I was mostly nervous about making sure that my child, you know, behaved appropriately.

• 1:59:51Amanda Dobbins?

  But it did remind me that these movies have the burden of like a much wider audience now.

• 1:59:56Sean Fennessey?

  They have to support both audiences.

• 1:59:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:58Sean Fennessey?

  They really do. It's a very good point.

• 2:00:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think so Chong shared a kind of like 2D animation preview of what the film looked like at an early stage, and it was a pure Miyazaki style, hand drawn experience of two beavers going up the river. And it was beautiful.

• 2:00:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:18Sean Fennessey?

  And we don't know how the movie would have poured it over in that way, but I do think that there's something in the like, hyper mania of kids movies, and that extends to good kids movies like this, like Sutopia 2, like, these are pretty good movies. But there's something like, really antic about them, that you don't find in a Miyazaki movie, and I wonder what this movie would have been if it had removed a little bit of the like, robot chaos mania.

• 2:00:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:00:45Sean Fennessey?

  And been a little bit more ground level, like a little bit more Ponyo, if it would have been a better movie, and frankly, if Chong might have been like, almost more well suited to that, I can kind of feel just the like, Pop-optimist Pixar stuff going on in the film at times. It's not, it's not like, it doesn't make it bad, but it did make me wondering about the alternative.

• 2:01:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, you can feel it in the pacing, and the, it both does, it does have jokes every few minutes, but it's almost like it's the kid version of the Netflix, make sure that you have something that you have to look at the screen at every five seconds, because people are going to be looking away, and so it's just over here, over here, over here. And it worked, you know, my kid sat happily, but it, it felt overstuffed, and it, it kind of just, you can really feel the divide between, okay, we're putting this stuff in for the bigger kids and the grownups, and we're putting this stuff in because we know we have to get a new, younger audience. They are, they are not cohesive.

• 2:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I found with a lot of these movies, I can feel, I can hear the noises of 15 adults in a room, like negotiating between what's going to work at what time in the movie, and that's just a product of having seen every single one of these multiple times, and really liking a lot of them, but it's very hard to go back to a, like, a more innocent viewing experience of seeing Toy Story for the first time, where even though I was like a- Probably 13 at the time, there just felt like something, like something extraordinary that had never been done was happening, but just the use of that 3D animation style at that time felt so novel. And now, that has been the experience we've lived in for 30 years as animation consumers. And so when I saw that 2D image, I was like, there's, there's a reason why a Miyazaki movie

• 2:02:28Sean Fennessey?

  still feels special and still feels different. And there's a reason why Spider-Verse still feels special, because that's different than this. That is that the texture of those movies is unlike just what every Pixar movie looks like. You mentioned Luca earlier. Luca is one of the few Pixar movies that looks totally different, like the visual palette is so dramatically different. I don't mean to dump on the movie, I think it's like very good and I'm glad that it's successful and doing well, but I had some, and I've seen it twice now, so I like, I had some time to kind of mull it over and kind of work through, like, how much did this really follow through on all of its intentions?

• 2:03:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I don't know that it has real lasting power in the mind of the people in my house either. Like, I don't, it has, it has not been brought up several times, but, like, once since we saw it. But Mandalorian and Grogu lives run free. And I did also forget that the movie theater we went to had, like, Zootopia 2 popcorn buckets still out. They, they just have them all. They're making popcorn buckets for everything, apparently.

• 2:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, they do, yeah.

• 2:03:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And...

• 2:03:32Sean Fennessey?

  About to get that Skinnamarine popcorn bucket.

• 2:03:34Amanda Dobbins?

  My son, I mean, my son was like begging me, like, please, please, can we have this? Please, he was holding it, you know? Because it's just a friendly snake, and that's...

• 2:03:42Sean Fennessey?

  And you did it.

• 2:03:43Amanda Dobbins?

  That's where he is. No, of course not.

• 2:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  No. Where am I gonna put that?

• 2:03:49Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, on his head. After our consumption? We got popcorn and then when the movie ended, Alice said, can I have M&Ms? So we just got M&Ms after the movie.

• 2:03:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's really nice. Not kept trying to buy me peanut M&Ms because he knows I like them.

• 2:04:03Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 2:04:03Amanda Dobbins?

  And he kept being like, Mama, I really want to get these for you. Mama, can I get them? And I was like, this is a generous...

• 2:04:08Sean Fennessey?

  That's a nice act.

• 2:04:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it's self-serving, but I appreciate the creativity of trying to think that he can buy it for me.

• 2:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's gonna be a hustler.

• 2:04:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, yeah, it's smart. Anyway, he had a nice time.

• 2:04:19Sean Fennessey?

  How did you feel our live experience went? Did this break two minutes in and we don't know?

• 2:04:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Jack? No, it's good?

• 2:04:25Speaker 05

  It's all good.

• 2:04:26Amanda Dobbins?

  It's working?

• 2:04:26Speaker 05

  Nothing broke.

• 2:04:27Amanda Dobbins?

  We're still on Netflix?

• 2:04:28Sean Fennessey?

  Who's watching?

• 2:04:30Speaker 05

  Uh, my mom, my girlfriend.

• 2:04:32Sean Fennessey?

  Is President Trump watching?

• 2:04:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I really, really.

• 2:04:35Speaker 05

  This has been a great episode of The Big Picture. Thank you to Jack Sanders, Lucas Cavanagh.

• 2:04:41Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah. Yeah, thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for navigating these live waters. Thanks to Lucas. Thanks to everybody here at Spotify who helps make this happen for us. We appreciate it. This was a road test.

• 2:04:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  For next Sunday's episode.

• 2:04:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Sunday night.

• 2:04:55Sean Fennessey?

  But that's not our, that's not our next episode. Our next episode is on Thursday. We're going to be making our final Oscar predictions.

• 2:05:02Amanda Dobbins?

  You're going to wait till Thursday to put it up? Are you sure you're not going to say, put it up as soon as it's ready, Jack? Because I want my wisdom to be out.

• 2:05:09Sean Fennessey?

  There's a reason why I can't do that. That I will reveal to you.

• 2:05:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:05:12Sean Fennessey?

  On the episode.

• 2:05:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, how exciting.

• 2:05:14Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Jack, how'd you feel about this? Good?

• 2:05:18Speaker 05

  Home run.

• 2:05:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Come see us on next Thursday. Thanks, thanks to everybody for watching at home, all dozen of you. We'll see you next time.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

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• 2:05:53Speaker 06

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• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Member FDIC, copyright 2026 US Bank.

• 2:06:16Speaker 05

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