Pod Insights The Rewatchables ‘Witness’ With Bill Simmons and Mallory Rubin About this episode The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Mallory head to Amish country to revisit the 1985 crime thriller ‘Witness,’ starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, and Viggo Mortensen.
Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Ronak Nair, and Chris Wohlers
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Transcript 23,699 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:00 Bill Simmons? The Rewatchables is brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. The Ringer, a name Mallory Rubin was intimately involved with deciding.
1:08 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:09 Bill Simmons? From about 40 selections.
1:10 Speaker 02 Could have been brainwreck.com, could have been chasethenight.com. Fascinating alternate history.
1:15 Bill Simmons? Brainwreck.com would have been a terrible idea.
1:17 Speaker 02 That was your idea.
1:18 Bill Simmons? I know. That sounds like, I don't know, what, like an energy drink gone wrong? I don't know what it is. You can hear Mallory.
1:26 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:27 Bill Simmons? On House of R.
1:27 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:28 Bill Simmons? A great podcast.
1:29 Speaker 02 Thanks.
1:29 Bill Simmons? You pop on a bunch of our podcasts, actually.
1:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, always nice to be here with you on The Rewatchables, you know?
1:34 Bill Simmons? First time in person in a while for just a one-on-one.
1:36 Speaker 02 My first time here, ever.
1:39 Bill Simmons? It's like an intimate Harrison Ford.
1:41 Speaker 02 Wow, that's how I like it, yeah.
1:42 Bill Simmons? Kind of talking date for us. You've wanted this movie since we launched the feed.
1:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:48 Bill Simmons? We are now in year nine of The Rewatchables, headed toward 400 movies. It is one-word movie month. And I just texted you last week and I said, "Witness?"
1:58 Speaker 02 It's time.
1:59 Bill Simmons? And you're ready to go. Witness is next. This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by Prime. You listen to this podcast for the movie talk. So let's set the scene. Our lead, tall, dark, stranded at the airport. Hours of delays. He's scrolled, strolled and loitered by every overpriced snack stand, but just when all hope seems lost. Plot twist. He remembers he has prime and without a whole library of free ebooks ready to read right from his device. Cue the triumph and score. Roll credits. Free ebooks library. It's on prime.
2:47 Bill Simmons? All right, Mallory Rubin, is this your favorite movie?
2:51 Speaker 02 Top 10 unquestionably, probably top 5. It is one of my favorite movies ever and it is definitely one of the movies that I revisit the most often and think about the most. And as you know, we'll talk about this at length today, but it is the movie where I believe we see the hottest person who has ever lived and that is Harrison Ford as John Book.
3:11 Bill Simmons? It's not Viggo Mortensen?
3:13 Speaker 02 No, though he looks great.
3:13 Bill Simmons? It's not Alexander Goodenough?
3:16 Speaker 02 Daniel looks great. Moses looks great. Everybody looks great in the movie, but when Book drums the top of the car in the barn, we've just never witnessed anything like it in the history of the world. What a privilege to be here today to talk about it with you.
3:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I don't have the same relationship with that aspect of it. To me, this was always more of the Kelly McGee as
3:35 Speaker 02 Also wonderful.
3:36 Bill Simmons? Sneaky hot as a teenager.
3:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:38 Bill Simmons? And they threw a brief nude scene in there and then she went on to fall in love with Maverick.
3:43 Speaker 02 That's right. Big stretch.
3:44 Bill Simmons? Big run for her.
3:44 Speaker 02 One of mid 80s for Kelly.
3:46 Bill Simmons? Great mid 80s for her. This was Harrison Ford's official unquestionable, I'm now an A plus lister, if you didn't already think that, because he had two Raiders movies. He had the two Star Wars movies.
4:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:01 Bill Simmons? And he had Blade Runner.
4:03 Speaker 02 I would say that-
4:03 Bill Simmons? But they were all like, kind of, they all had some sort of gimmick with them. This is like an actual Robert Redford, Paul Newman movie star part that those guys easily would have played 10 years earlier.
4:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, the franchise king goes prestige, right?
4:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
4:18 Speaker 02 It's sort of like the summation of what happens here. I, you know, we've talked about this before. You've talked about this, obviously, many times. You've done many Harrison Ford movies on the Rewatchables. Great podcast.
4:26 Bill Simmons? Not as many as I thought, by the way.
4:27 Speaker 02 Not as many as you should have, yeah.
4:28 Bill Simmons? That's almost like there's enough left for our Harrison Ford month, like for real.
4:32 Speaker 02 I'm available.
4:33 Bill Simmons? Okay, I figured he would be.
4:34 Speaker 02 I'm standing by and I'm available. His run in the eighties is unrivaled. I think it's unmatched. I don't think that there's any run you can put up against it and say, this is better, definitively better, and specifically eighty to eighty-five. I mean, the whole eighties, but Empire into Raiders into Blade Runner into Jedi into Temple Doom into Witness. What compares? Nothing.
4:56 Bill Simmons? Pretty great. And then he has the Mosquito Coast stumble, and yet that's a good movie.
5:00 Speaker 02 I like that movie.
5:01 Bill Simmons? Peter Weir.
5:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:02 Bill Simmons? The same director for this one.
5:03 Speaker 02 The collaboration continuing.
5:05 Bill Simmons? So it's an interesting moment. They filmed this in eighty-four, but it comes out in February eighty-five.
5:09 Speaker 02 Yep.
5:10 Bill Simmons? And it's an interesting moment for the A-list movie stars because we have Redford, Newman, Burt Reynolds. They're all now a little too old. Like Newman was in The Verdict a couple of years. He's just aged out of this. Redford has aged out, but doesn't want to admit it yet. Like, he's playing Roy Hobbs in The Natural, and he's pretending to be sixteen years old in the barn scene.
5:29 Speaker 02 Yep.
5:30 Bill Simmons? And Burt Reynolds just all of a sudden has a rug on his head and just looks like what's happening. Hanks isn't ready yet. Tom Cruise is too young.
5:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
5:40 Bill Simmons? Travolta has blown it.
5:42 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
5:43 Bill Simmons? It was sitting there for him for years. Maybe three years earlier, he's the guy in Witness. Stallone's kind of over here.
5:50 Speaker 02 Right.
5:51 Bill Simmons? Clint's kind of over here. And Michael Douglas is starting to happen. Like, Romance in the Stone is eighty-four, but it hasn't really happened. And Harrison Ford, for like two years here, is just the guy you would put in movies like this.
6:05 Speaker 02 I mean, two years? Like, more like two decades.
6:08 Bill Simmons? Then he protects it. But I'm saying, like, this is, he's the obvious A-list choice for a role like this.
6:13 Speaker 02 He is the most powerful force in the history of the world. That is a thing that I believe to be true. And I would say that he is like the rare thing in our fractured world that we can all agree on. You know, he is just...
6:30 Bill Simmons? Yeah, who doesn't like Harrison Ford?
6:31 Speaker 02 I wouldn't want to know that person. I wouldn't want to spend time with them.
6:33 Bill Simmons? What a weird zag that would be.
6:35 Speaker 02 I wouldn't want to do a podcast with them.
6:37 Bill Simmons? What would be the case?
6:39 Speaker 02 I don't think there is a case. Because he is like... The consummate, you wanna be him and you wanna be with him, right?
6:48 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
6:50 Speaker 02 The ultimate action hero, action star, but he's also like gentle. He's a little, a little goofy, right?
6:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
6:59 Speaker 02 He leans into the, the, the quirk. He's charming, he's charismatic. He is like, one of the things that I love talking about with Harrison Ford and every time I re-watch any of his movies, gets such a kick out of is the hand acting. You know, the like, a blooper, my ultimate favorite example, but it's present in every movie, including this one. And that's such a like, particular affectation for somebody who only really needs to stand there and ooze and exude magnetism.
7:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
7:29 Speaker 02 But he does all of these different things. You believe that he's the president. You believe that he's Dr. Richard Kimball. You believe that he's a cop. You believe that he's Indiana Jones. You believe that he's on solo. He's a rogue. He's a scoundrel. He's capable of playing the smartest man in the room. He can be empathetic.
7:45 Bill Simmons? What about evil Harrison Ford? What lies beneath?
7:48 Speaker 02 Sure.
7:48 Bill Simmons? Hiding a dark secret.
7:49 Speaker 02 Edgy Harrison Ford, right? I mean, we get frantic in 88. Frantic in 88 and working girl in 88 is one of the great duo film installments in a single year.
7:59 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
8:00 Speaker 02 Incredible stuff. He is just an unbelievably potent star who has been present in our lives across decades. This is the most incredible stretch, but like the fact that we're living through now, the, the Fordassance. You know, he's back. He's doing 1923. He was just in a Marvel movie playing Thunderbolt Ross in Red Hulk, spoiler. He's, uh, you know, he's on Shrinking. He just got nominated for an Emmy for playing Paul on Shrinking. Like, he's just been this inextricable aspect of our movie going and now TV experience for half a century.
8:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah, if you start with American Graffiti, it's more than a half a century.
8:32 Speaker 02 What is life without Harrison Ford?
8:33 Bill Simmons? Fifty-two years.
8:34 Speaker 02 It's not a life I recognize.
8:35 Bill Simmons? It'll be a top five most devastating actor death.
8:38 Speaker 02 No, I can't think about it. I do have like, I don't really spend much time on Twitter anymore, but back in the day when I was on Twitter a lot, anytime I saw that he was trending.
8:46 Bill Simmons? You just got scared?
8:47 Speaker 02 Terrified, like that he had like crashed a plane again, or that something horrible had happened. But usually it was just him saying something amazing on a press tour, you know? Is the best.
8:56 Bill Simmons? You said it earlier, but it's the key thing with him and only a couple of people have this, where guys would wanna hang out with them and women would wanna date them.
9:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:03 Bill Simmons? And if you find the actor who can hit both of those and the guys aren't. Nagging him or jealous of him or anything, they're just like, yeah, he seems like a cool guy. I would have a beer with him.
9:13 Speaker 02 The coolest. Who wouldn't want to have a bourbon with Harrison Ford?
9:15 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
9:16 Speaker 02 Who wouldn't? One of the things I love is that anytime you hear uh somebody who has bonded with him in the process of making a picture with him, like Peter Weir talks about this a lot with Witness, right?
9:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
9:26 Speaker 02 I went to Harrison's ranch.
9:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
9:29 Speaker 02 You know, he picked me up on the airfield in Wyoming.
9:35 Speaker 02 I, I, what is not amazing about that? That's the dream. It's the best.
9:42 Bill Simmons? And he, what, he married Melissa Matheson, right?
9:45 Speaker 02 Mm hmm. Well, he's had three wives.
9:47 Bill Simmons? Who had been with Spielberg for a little bit there.
9:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:51 Bill Simmons? But he, he didn't really, it wasn't like the Brad Pitt where he was always in these famous paparazzi relationships. There was always mystery. I never really knew that much about Harrison Ford's personal life. I always just knew him from the movies, whereas like I think that shifted over the last 30 years with Cruise.
10:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:07 Bill Simmons? With Brad Pitt, with Leo.
10:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:09 Bill Simmons? He just felt like he had more access about what their lives were like.
10:12 Speaker 02 Counterpoint.
10:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
10:13 Speaker 02 Maybe, okay, not a counterpoint, maybe a co-point because you're right about the access to information in real time. Obviously, when you have something like Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, there's a lot of like intrigue around it.
10:22 Bill Simmons? Think about that. We never knew that forever.
10:25 Speaker 02 But now, like sitting here now in 2025, anybody who knows that Harrison Ford exists knows that he is the ultimate lover. The Eve Babest quote.
10:36 Bill Simmons? Swordsman?
10:37 Speaker 02 Ultimate swordsman. You're familiar with the Eve Babest quote, the famous one, right?
10:41 Bill Simmons? What was that one?
10:42 Speaker 02 Uh.
10:43 Bill Simmons? Is this gonna?
10:43 Speaker 02 Let's see if I remember it.
10:44 Bill Simmons? Is this gonna make me uncomfortable?
10:46 Speaker 02 The thing about Harrison is Harrison could fuck. I believe that is the quote, and then she went on to say that he um could fuck, and now I'm paraphrasing, could, could fuck nine women a day or a woman nine times. And that seems exhausting. Eve Babest.
11:07 Bill Simmons? Who's he, Babbitts?
11:08 Speaker 02 Oh, come on. Famous, like, writer and the figure in the history of of culture, who had an intimate awareness of Harrison Ford's prowess as a
11:19 Bill Simmons? What?
11:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah.
11:21 Bill Simmons? How would she know that? That just sounds like somebody, she didn't date him, though, or did she?
11:26 Speaker 02 Oh, well, yeah. I mean, they had a
11:27 Bill Simmons? Man.
11:28 Speaker 02 intimate acquaintance, as many women did with Harrison Ford, which is the point. He was very active.
11:33 Bill Simmons? Maybe that's why he had to start smoking pot. It's a calm down his his little Harrison.
11:38 Speaker 02 I mean, nine times a day is unthinkable.
11:41 Bill Simmons? I never believed those stories. Every time they say those, I'm always like, all right.
11:45 Speaker 02 It's it just actually seems like it would be a real scheduling challenge, like, logistically
11:50 Bill Simmons? They're shaping. I don't know. There's like fluid replenishment.
11:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, a lot of friction. Yeah.
11:56 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I know.
11:57 Speaker 02 It's tough.
11:58 Bill Simmons? But who knows? They always said that with Warren Beatty. There was like any, like that book about him where it was like, literally, anyone was in play at all time for him. It didn't matter what they looked like. It was just somebody make eye contact with them and then it was off. They're on. Interesting wrinkle with Witness and Harrison Ford.
12:15 Speaker 02 Tell me.
12:15 Bill Simmons? Your beloved guy.
12:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
12:17 Bill Simmons? Only Oscar nomination ever.
12:19 Speaker 02 All right. I didn't know when in the pod we were gonna do this.
12:21 Bill Simmons? Know this. I felt like I knew this and blocked it out or forgot it, but I just would have assumed there are more. And then I went through all the movies and I was like, all right, I get it. It doesn't make sense, but.
12:33 Speaker 02 This, to me, is one of, like, the great injustices in the history of Hollywood.
12:37 Bill Simmons? That he didn't win or that he's only gotten one?
12:39 Speaker 02 Both. I think he should have won for playing John Buck in Witness. I think it's a sensational performance. It's a wonderful role. That's a really weird Academy Awards year.
12:49 Bill Simmons? I'm ready to talk about it. Will you just click your fingers? I'm ready to go.
12:53 Speaker 02 And so there's that. Let's dive into it. But then also the fact that he was never nominated again, like.
12:58 Bill Simmons? So what were the other ones? Like, would you have said Blade Runner?
13:01 Speaker 02 I mean, you know, I would say Blade Runner.
13:03 Bill Simmons? That was a more loaded year, I think, is the problem with that one.
13:05 Speaker 02 Right. So that was 82, so the 83 Academy Awards.
13:08 Bill Simmons? Working Girl, Working Girl Supporting Actor?
13:10 Speaker 02 Could have been supporting for Working Girl. Fugitive?
13:13 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
13:14 Speaker 02 Come on.
13:15 Bill Simmons? The thing is, those action parts don't usually get Oscar noms.
13:18 Speaker 02 He's never been, he was never nominated for playing Indiana Jones at any point. I know it was like a different period of Hollywood, but it just feels like his stature and heft and significance in the history of Hollywood is like not reflected in the fact that he has only been nominated once for an Oscar. Now, he kind of famously shrugs this off and says it's not important and says he doesn't care. And because he's Harrison Ford, I actually believe him, but that doesn't mean it's right.
13:45 Bill Simmons? There's a couple of parts he showed that you clearly, like when he did Branch Rickey in 42, it felt a little
13:51 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
13:52 Bill Simmons? Little chase in it, but I don't think he cares. I mean, the thing when you read about him.
13:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:57 Bill Simmons? Like, he talks about how Mosquito Coast didn't make money and he was like, that's the first movie I ever made that didn't make 100 million. Like, he's, he was keeping track of how successful he was versus other people. The, the thing with the Oscar noms.
14:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:10 Bill Simmons? Cause he, this happens in sports. Like, people get mad that LeBron hasn't won an MVP since 2013, that Kobe only won one MVP.
14:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:20 Bill Simmons? That's, and they'll just say it.
14:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:22 Bill Simmons? But if you actually go through the IMDB in this case.
14:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:27 Bill Simmons? I had, I only had like three where I was like, oh, he might've gotten robbed. But then you have to look at the year and all the other performances.
14:33 Speaker 02 What were the, what were the few that you thought should have been?
14:36 Bill Simmons? Blade Runner is pretty.
14:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:37 Bill Simmons? But pretty good case for that one. I think the first Indy, and I think Working Girl, 100%.
14:42 Speaker 02 Yeah. Raiders not being a nomination is so strange. I really do think The Fugitive is a bizarre, bizarre miss. That's an odd one.
14:49 Bill Simmons? I think that was a really hard year, though.
14:51 Speaker 02 The thing about Blade Runner, which as you know, is one of my favorite movies and one of the certainly most important movies in my household.
14:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
14:58 Speaker 02 It's my husband's favorite movie. You know, the one thing about that that makes it, while it is still a shock and a scandal and an outrage, maybe not surprising, is that, as you know, of course Blade Runner's esteem really grew over time. That feels to me like a time capsule. Like, if you went back and redid it and people brought to that moment in time how they feel about that film now and it's standing as a sci-fi classic, it would be different. But that wasn't the instant in real time.
15:26 Bill Simmons? No, it was considered kind of a bomb.
15:29 Speaker 02 When are we gonna do the Blade Runner rewatchables? Specifically, the Ridley Scott director's cut. Sign me up.
15:36 Bill Simmons? How many different cuts are there?
15:37 Speaker 02 There are a lot of cuts to Blade Runner, but that's that that would be the one that we should do.
15:40 Bill Simmons? So that Oscars with The Fugitive, Hank's wins for Philadelphia, Daniel Day Lewis, The Name of the Father, Laurence Fishburne, What's Love Got To Do With It?
15:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:48 Bill Simmons? Liam Neeson, Schindler's List, and then Anthony Hopkins, The Remains of the Day.
15:52 Speaker 02 That's a pretty stacked field.
15:53 Bill Simmons? That's the thing. He just had bad luck with some of these.
15:58 Bill Simmons? I still feel like a part like Indiana Jones.
16:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:01 Bill Simmons? Is just so much harder than people realize that you took off the charm of it. It's weird because Brad Pitt gets credit for this.
16:08 Speaker 02 I agree.
16:08 Bill Simmons? With some of these parts now, like even F1, I don't think he's gonna get nominated for F1. But he got credit for like, oh, only Brad Pitt could have done this. Ford, it took a while. I just think there were too many good actors. I don't almost feel like he didn't get the credit. And he also didn't have like his version of Dances with Wolves. Or those big like epics that where everybody just jerks each other off about how, you know, this is, this is the Out of Africa thing, though.
16:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:34 Bill Simmons? So.
16:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:35 Bill Simmons? This was his best chance, I think, for an Oscar. And what happens is this is this weird time in the Oscars. When they got carried away with these big sweeping epic.
16:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:46 Bill Simmons? You know, picture with big directors or big actors. And Out of Africa wins Best Picture and Best Director.
16:53 Speaker 02 Right.
16:54 Bill Simmons? And then William Hurt wins for Kiss of the Spider Woman, which he's really good in that. I mean, I get it.
16:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, but like.
17:00 Bill Simmons? I think there's actually a better case for Witness being robbed in the movie than Ford for actor.
17:06 Speaker 02 I think both are.
17:07 Bill Simmons? People didn't love Out of Africa when it came out.
17:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:09 Bill Simmons? You can go back, I was reading it last night, reading it, I was like, I always thought that movie was slow and ponderous. I never understood the Redford character. And then you read the reviews and people were going.
17:18 Speaker 02 Right.
17:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, it's good. There's some good stuff in here.
17:21 Speaker 02 Right.
17:21 Bill Simmons? But it wasn't like a multiple Oscar winner type of movie.
17:23 Speaker 02 And it dominated the Oscars. You have something like The Color Purple getting shut out after getting all of its nominations. Witness got eight nominations, one, two, cinematography and editing. But like Peter Weir, I think, also has a really strong case. He's been nominated multiple times over the years for Best Director. But this is like a unbelievably directed movie. And I think especially, it was really fun to prep for this pod because I love the movie. I've, I've been watching this movie since I was like a kid.
17:53 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
17:53 Speaker 02 And. Diving and like learning more about it, watching, you know, the bonus features on the DVD. And they put out the Arrow 4K Ultra a couple of years ago. So checking out like the specials on that. You know, you hear Peter Weir talk about the movie and like, on the one hand, he'll say, I'm like a little surprised that this is a movie that people still love so much. I didn't think it would have this kind of lasting impact and legacy. But then when he talks about every single choice he made and the level of care and what he did, the choices he made in particular to like amend the screenplay. Oh, sorry, I said cinematography won, it didn't screenplay won.
18:28 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
18:28 Speaker 02 John Seal did not win for cinematography. He was nominated, but he didn't win. It won for screenplay and it's an incredible screenplay. But Weir did so much work to amend the screenplay and dampen down the dialogue and really like orient the movie and root the movie in restraint and these glances and these longing looks. It's a beautifully and impeccably shot and directed film. So, you know, Sidney Pollack won for Out of Africa and that's not like crazy or anything. But would you not have picked Weir?
18:58 Bill Simmons? It makes sense in the eighties just because of the stuff that rewarded. It makes no sense now because I just, I don't think culturally that movie really matters. And I think it's surprising looking back at what it won. But I think watching this again and then reading
19:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:14 Bill Simmons? some of the stuff, which I had never like deep dived, like the actual research, which we have to do in the rewatchables. Some of the things they cut out, some of the dialogue they cut out and how he's always like deferring toward like, I want this to be visual. I want to, I want to center on the reactions. And they don't really do this anymore in movies with very few exceptions. It's, everything is so dialogue heavy now. This movie is so good, like that, like one of the best scenes we'll do in rewatchable scene is when the little kid Samuel sees Danny Glover's picture.
19:45 Speaker 02 Historic.
19:46 Bill Simmons? And Ford just lowers his finger.
19:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:50 Bill Simmons? It's, it's just that this movie has like 19 things like that, just these little touches that are just make it special.
19:56 Speaker 02 You could go through start to finish and you're never going more than 12 minutes without a moment like that.
20:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
20:01 Speaker 02 Where you're just completely gripped and oriented and like you have your mooring because of somebody's eyes. And I think to your point about how that feels like really of a moment in time, like, I mean, There are a lot of good movies and a lot of good TV right now, but I think undeniably there's an aspect of like, can we trust our audience as much in the sensory overload era? You know, people are on their phones, people are distracted, you need to have all of these like exposition gums.
20:26 Bill Simmons? That's a good point. If you're on your phone during that Danny Glover scene, you miss what happened. You're like, wait, what happened? And then you just missed it.
20:33 Speaker 02 But in this era, where people are actually paying attention to the beautiful art in front of them, something like, and again, I know we'll talk about this more later when we go through the, all of the scenes and all of the great choices, but something like Peter Weir, it's fascinating to hear him talk about this, saying that there were multiple pages of dialogue at the end of the film where Rachel and Book basically explain to each other what they're thinking and feeling.
20:55 Bill Simmons? By the way, that sounds awful.
20:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
20:57 Bill Simmons? Why did they even have, why did they, these two never exchanged more than like five words together?
21:01 Speaker 02 I know. It's a very like base animalistic bond, but the fact that like Peter Weir is just like, if I've done my, and this is literally what he says, right? Like if I've done my job by that point, you should know how they feel about each other and how they feel about the choice that they've had to make and what they're leaving behind and what they're each moving toward. And the fact that you can see that in a little smile, but also like the glassy eyes because of the emotion and the tears, who looks away, who looks back, when are their eyes meeting?
21:28 Bill Simmons? Well, him and Samuel at the end.
21:29 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
21:30 Bill Simmons? How many times have you cried during that scene?
21:33 Speaker 02 I am, I am moved.
21:34 Bill Simmons? Goodbye, John Book.
21:35 Speaker 02 Goodbye, John Book. I am moved to a lot of different powerful feelings and emotions watching Witness, sometimes tears, sometimes more private things. But all very, all very powerful.
21:46 Bill Simmons? I love how they're just hanging out and it's not like, I think in a, in a bad movie, mediocre movie, or even a decent movie, there's Harrison Ford's character saying, now Samuel.
22:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, remember what I told you.
22:02 Bill Simmons? You're gonna be great. Remember what I told, like, just like, here are my words of wisdom. And they just don't do that.
22:08 Speaker 02 No.
22:09 Bill Simmons? He just like kind of puts his head against them.
22:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like a very subtle, I love the, the nuzzle, I love the little head pat. It's a very subtle film, it's very restrained, it's like kind of delicate, but in a beautiful way. And it's, and in a way, of course, that is, is very like entwined with and connected to the contrast between the worlds in the film. But the fact that like, when you go to Lancaster and everything at the, at the lap farm in an Amish country, it's not suddenly like. Big city cop energy has seeped and saturated every scene of this experience? It's like, no, there is, what do we hear over and over again? You look plain. There's like a plainness to it. There's a pastoral quality. We'll have multiple moments. Maybe my favorite example of this actually is like,
22:55 Speaker 02 that we are saying that the barn raising is a paragraph in the script. It's like, I mean, how long is that scene?
23:01 Bill Simmons? It's like five minutes, yeah.
23:02 Speaker 02 Yeah. And you're just watching people exist in a community. And it's really gripping.
23:07 Bill Simmons? There's so many smart little things. I really love this movie. I've watched it a bunch of times.
23:12 Speaker 02 It's so good.
23:13 Bill Simmons? Even when they're building the barn, they take the break and they're all eating.
23:16 Speaker 02 I love that.
23:17 Bill Simmons? And Alexander Goodenough's character.
23:18 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
23:19 Bill Simmons? He just looks over and he's just staring at, like, you're so used to all these movies where it's like, oh, this guy's gonna be a dick to John Book and they're gonna have a little thing. And it never happens. He's always, they're always just kind of sizing each other up. Book clearly knows, like, I'm gonna leave here and this guy's gonna marry Kelly McGillis's character. And that's how, we all know how this is gonna play out. But we have to, like, do this little dance. And I just don't, I think movies fuck that up all the time, though.
23:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're like luxuriating in a moment.
23:48 Bill Simmons? You'd be like, I don't know who you think you are, English. Like, we just would have had like a terrible scene.
23:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:53 Bill Simmons? And they just don't do it.
23:54 Speaker 02 And every character, that's true for, right?
23:56 Bill Simmons? And I kind of like Daniel, like.
23:57 Speaker 02 Well, you have to.
23:58 Bill Simmons? I don't know if they had the same spark, to say the least.
24:03 Speaker 02 As Kelly McGillis and Harrison fucking Ford have, yeah, I don't think so.
24:07 Bill Simmons? I don't think the fire was burning as bright, but I think he'll be a good stepdad to our guy Samuel.
24:12 Speaker 02 He will. I think that that moment, like, the, you know, there's a lot of, like, resisting Daniel's presence, right? Because you're so swept up in the love story. As Book and Rachel are just becoming, like, enraptured with each other, you want to. Watch them fall in love. You want to see them find a way to be together, even though you know, just like they know in the back of your minds that it can't happen. And so when Daniel comes over and he's like, I'm sitting here kind of like awkwardly in silence, swinging on the porch with you. You're like, man, I'm really not feeling it. And also clearly neither is Rachel, but you under, you never lose sight of the fact that that's the thing that makes sense and that that's probably where we're gonna end up. And that closing shot of Book driving away and Daniel walking.
24:57 Bill Simmons? That's another one where they don't stop. We don't have like one last thing, like take care of them.
25:01 Speaker 02 No.
25:01 Bill Simmons? Nothing. He's just like.
25:02 Speaker 02 No, you just see the brake lights. You know, they had a little brief moment, but we didn't need to actually hear it. We understand what has transpired. Great.
25:11 Bill Simmons? Another great thing about this movie, we enter a world, I always talk about this, almost 400 movies, these movies where we just go into this place that I don't really understand or know that much about.
25:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:23 Bill Simmons? We're in this whole Amish society for
25:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:26 Bill Simmons? 100 minutes and it's really riveting.
25:29 Speaker 02 Oh, my God.
25:29 Bill Simmons? And you're watching and they do such a good job of checking every box of everything you need to understand about this little, little world that we're in.
25:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:38 Bill Simmons? By the end of it, I feel like I get it.
25:40 Speaker 02 Yes.
25:40 Bill Simmons? And I, and I understand why it's so damaging to have an outsider and all of these things from the outside world come in there and why they're all like, what the fuck? Like,
25:50 Speaker 02 Right.
25:50 Bill Simmons? Like this, he just punched some, he just punched some bully.
25:54 Speaker 02 Great scene.
25:54 Bill Simmons? On the street.
25:55 Speaker 02 Great scene.
25:55 Bill Simmons? We don't do things that way. We, we would rather just, you know, we're pacifist. And then there's this whole pacifist versus violence theme that, um, it's just perfectly done.
26:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, like it feels like anything from the townies with the ice cream cone on Daniel's face to Samuel finding the gun to obviously the west, the, the Western showdown at the end when the dirty cops all arrive. The number of moments where like, I love the phrasing that Eli uses, the gun of the hand, like this incursion of violence in this peaceful, quiet world. And the moments where Book, like, he's so ashamed when Rachel catches him and Samuel with the gun. And he's like, right, no, yeah, I get it. But then when he has to go into town, it's like, I need that back. Like, I haven't given that up. I have just decided that I will respect your way of life while I'm here.
26:50 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
26:51 Speaker 02 But then, obviously, it's on the heels of, you know, learning about Carter and the call with Schaefer. But when he sees the town, he's mocking these people who he has come to form an attachment with. And he has embraced what, even though it's not the choice he's gonna make, it's not right for him, he has embraced their life and comes to value and understands it.
27:07 Bill Simmons? I think he thought about it a couple of times.
27:07 Speaker 02 Well, no question. When he's like, Rachel.
27:09 Bill Simmons? He's like, you know what? I could just make some corn and milk some teats.
27:14 Speaker 02 4 a.m., Bill, it's time for milking. It's time for milking.
27:18 Bill Simmons? I'll work on young Samuel, teach him some stuff.
27:21 Speaker 02 Dude, the moment where, no matter how many times I see this movie, when he goes, well, obviously, talk about the SpongeBob thing, Great's Tale, but after that, next morning, when he goes and he seeks her out, and they're like separated by the wire, he's in that gorgeous, like, forest green shirt. He just looks so fucking hot. It's insane. I should have a more elegant way of saying it. I don't. He just looks so fucking hot. It's crazy. He's like, Rachel, if we had made love last night, I'd have to stay, or you'd have to go. And I'm like, go! Go, Rachel, look at him!
27:56 Bill Simmons? Take him.
27:57 Speaker 02 Go!
27:58 Bill Simmons? He said, if we had made love last night, we would have had to make love another eight times, because that's how I roll.
28:04 Speaker 02 Because it's nine a day for me, or it's not a day well spent.
28:06 Bill Simmons? I didn't know if you could handle my nine a day.
28:09 Speaker 02 He's a big-city cop. He's got a sister in Baltimore. This is a really unexplored element of the film. What's Rachel's sister doing down in Baltimore, my home? Rachel, Book, and Samuel, let's go live a life down in Baltimore. It's a great place.
28:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, your husband just died. It's time to change life a little bit. Let's go.
28:29 Speaker 02 Exactly.
28:32 Bill Simmons? I love entering a world.
28:33 Speaker 02 Yes.
28:34 Bill Simmons? I also love movies with really good scripts. And what I didn't realize until I did the research was that this is one of the most respected scripts for fledgling movie people over the last 40 years because the structure is so perfect.
28:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:49 Bill Simmons? Which it is, but I just, I've seen this movie so many times, I'd never really.
28:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:54 Bill Simmons? It never really occurred to me how perfect it is where it's like first part, thriller, where we this fish out of water, they see something bad, like we've seen that version.
29:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:04 Bill Simmons? Now all of a sudden, the second part, Book is healed back to life. He's in this Amish world and it's like, oh shit, this is a completely different movie. And then the last act is the bad people have now come to this, to this place that was this idyllic, awesome place that I was happy in.
29:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:22 Bill Simmons? And they've upended it and then the movie ends. And it's just first act, second act, third act, credits.
29:28 Speaker 02 It's really tight. I mean, you can, you know, you hear people talk about how it was like quite long and, and, you know, 180 some page script and.
29:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
29:37 Speaker 02 Tracking for three hours and edited down and obviously tweaked over time, but yeah, the like genre mashup aspect of it and the need to, to pace it so that we feel. I want to, I don't want to like step on some of the categories because I think this will come up a lot later, but I'm always kind of amazed when I rewatch it that how much time actually like is outside of Amish country before, I mean, obviously we start there with the funeral and then the train ride and everything, but we are in the like,
30:08 Speaker 02 we have had a murder. There's been a murder. We're like trying to get Samuel to ID a suspect. We're in Philly, we're in the big city, like Book's sister's house, Patti LuPone.
30:21 Bill Simmons? We go to a bar for some reason and pull somebody out.
30:24 Speaker 02 Wild stretch with T-Bone at the bar. That's like the first 30 some minutes of the movie before Book.
30:33 Speaker 02 Drops them off and then passes out and ends up into your, to your fish out of water point with Samuel and Rachel in the big city, the way that we are still, we're always in a fish out of water movie.
30:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
30:43 Speaker 02 It just flips. Book becomes the fish out of water.
30:46 Bill Simmons? Right.
30:46 Speaker 02 And like, that's so deftly, nimbly done where it turns, it's always a clash of cultures, no matter where we are in the film. It's always a matter of contrast, but the lens through which we're assessing that contrast pivots. And it's, it's awesome.
31:02 Bill Simmons? Well, Peter Weir directed it. It's the first American movie.
31:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:05 Bill Simmons? He'd done Year of Living Dangerously and Gallipoli. But it comes into America, does this, does Mosquito Coach, then.
31:12 Speaker 02 Yeah. Dead Poets.
31:15 Bill Simmons? Neil!
31:16 Speaker 02 One of our faves. Truman Show, Master and Commander. Peter Weir's made a lot of good movies.
31:21 Bill Simmons? Made a lot of good movies. This and Witness and Dead Poets, I feel like are definitely siblings. They're not even cousins.
31:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:29 Bill Simmons? There's a lot of the same touches. Like if you watch both, you would absolutely think it was the same director for both. Even the music.
31:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:35 Bill Simmons? Some of the music parts feel the same, some of the wide shots of the outdoors.
31:39 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's an introspection and a tenderness. Yeah.
31:42 Bill Simmons? Like scenes without dialogue. I guess the difference is Dead Poets has like that Robin Williams like jumpstart energy where his witness, I guess, has the murder. But there's something about the way he does his movies.
31:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:56 Bill Simmons? That is really distinct to him.
31:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:58 Bill Simmons? And I haven't seen anybody quite like him, just very patient, wide. The actors are always, oh, you always feel like they're in a good spot. See of that, you have Kelly McGillis, we talked about her.
32:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:11 Bill Simmons? Great role. And she became a thing. Like, it was like, who's, who's this lady? Cause this movie was a big movie.
32:16 Speaker 02 Witness and Top Gun in back to back years is nuts.
32:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah. But even this thing, it was like, who's the newcomer? She was like waitressing five months before.
32:23 Speaker 02 This is one of my favorite anecdotes that I was not aware of before prepping for this pod where, you know, she's like, yeah, I was working at a coffee shop. Peter Weir, it's hysterical to listen to him talk about how impossible it was to try to find Rachel.
32:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
32:36 Speaker 02 He's like, basically all of the American actresses we looked at were like too hip. They were too knowing. He asked the casting director to start looking in Italy?
32:46 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
32:46 Speaker 02 And then they found, they found Kelly McGillis. And she's like, yeah, I was working at a coffee shop and like Harrison Ford and Peter Weir walked in and everyone who was there was like, that's fucking Harrison Ford. What's happening? Like, imagine that being a thing that happened in your life.
33:00 Bill Simmons? Yeah. And then she's filming a movie with them. So you have her, you have evil Danny Glover.
33:05 Speaker 02 Yep.
33:06 Bill Simmons? Which is so funny.
33:07 Speaker 02 McVeigh.
33:08 Bill Simmons? You know, he's, lethal weapon took over his life and he made a bunch of great stuff. Everybody loves Danny Glover. Evil Danny Glover, I could have explored in a couple more movies.
33:16 Speaker 02 Definitely. One of the like quietly great moments in the movie because it's so sinister and borderline maniacal is when he stops to wash his hands. It's like you have murdered someone in a public place.
33:29 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
33:30 Speaker 02 Get out of there, but he's like, no.
33:32 Bill Simmons? Yeah, time.
33:33 Speaker 02 Tidy up. Wash up. There's something very insidious about that moment.
33:37 Bill Simmons? And then Goodnev, who then then becomes Hans Gruber's right hand guy in Die Hard. Two of the completely different role characters you could have played.
33:46 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Yeah.
33:47 Bill Simmons? Awesome, charismatic henchman. And then this movie is all back. Vigo, they made a big deal in all the research stuff that Vigo, it was Vigo's first movie. He's barely in it. He's got like two lines.
33:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's barely in it.
33:58 Bill Simmons? Handsome, though.
33:59 Speaker 02 He looks great. It is to me like as obviously a Lord of the Rings obsessive and the Peter Jackson, Lord of the Rings films are like sacred texts in my life, as you know.
34:09 Bill Simmons? See in those?
34:13 Speaker 02 We need to stop the pod. Chris, can you power down?
34:16 Bill Simmons? I didn't realize he was in those.
34:17 Speaker 02 Okay. The alternate history.
34:19 Bill Simmons? All of them or just one of them?
34:20 Speaker 02 He's Aragorn, god damn it. The alternate history where he's like, yeah, I almost picked like playing a soldier in Henry the fifth and Shakespeare in the Park, but then I did this instead and decided to be a movie actor. It's like, who would have played Aragorn? If?
34:34 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
34:35 Speaker 02 Viggo Mortensen had not been in this movie for three seasons. Are you doing this just to hurt me? The thing is, I actually believe that it's possible that you don't know who Aragorn is. Have you seen the Lord of the Rings movies? You've seen them.
34:46 Bill Simmons? I have not.
34:48 Speaker 02 Are you serious?
34:49 Bill Simmons? I haven't. Didn't see him.
34:52 Speaker 02 You.
34:52 Bill Simmons? I thought I would watch him someday with my kids and then my kids didn't care.
34:55 Speaker 02 Whoa.
34:56 Bill Simmons? I don't know who's left.
34:57 Speaker 02 Am I not one of your children?
34:59 Bill Simmons? Do I have to adopt a child?
35:01 Speaker 02 You don't want to watch Lord of the Rings with me? Okay.
35:03 Bill Simmons? You know what? If we're gonna try to go for 500 movies, I guess I'm gonna have to watch it.
35:07 Speaker 02 Great, eventually. Next year, Joanna and I have some plans for House of R, but great moment for you to dip in. Next year, 25 years.
35:16 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
35:16 Speaker 02 Fellowship.
35:17 Bill Simmons? We could do Gun to My Head Month, where it's four movies I never wanted to watch. And then Lord of the Rings.
35:23 Speaker 02 Okay. Well, it wouldn't be a gun. It would be a.
35:25 Bill Simmons? Aragorn?
35:26 Speaker 02 A broken blade, but that just shows me that you haven't watched.
35:29 Bill Simmons? I knew Sean Astin was in it.
35:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's not just in it. He's Samwise fucking Gamgee.
35:34 Bill Simmons? And Elijah Wood's in it?
35:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's Frodo!
35:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
35:37 Speaker 02 You ever heard of Frodo?
35:38 Bill Simmons? That's all I know. I knew those two were in it. I didn't know about Vigo.
35:41 Speaker 02 This is very painful for me right now.
35:44 Bill Simmons? The screenplay by William Kelly and Earl W. Wallace, which may or not be fake names. I don't know. Those are like screenwriter names you would create if you were doing it, but it was an unproduced Gunsmoke's.
35:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:55 Bill Simmons? Script, and then nobody wanted to make this movie forever, and then they finally made it.
35:58 Speaker 02 Which is wild. And one of the things that's like genuinely, I think, pretty interesting about the, you know.
36:03 Bill Simmons? It's the Amish. I don't think it's wild at all.
36:05 Speaker 02 But it's, but you hear, that's what I was actually just gonna say is like, you kind of hear both things. Like, some of the directors have turned it down, like, it's just another cop movie, which is objectively.
36:13 Bill Simmons? Definitely not.
36:13 Speaker 02 Not true. And then, yeah, like Fox, right, passing on it because they didn't think they wanted to like focus on like rural films and Amish culture. And it's like, you hear kind of both sides of it, which is very strange.
36:24 Bill Simmons? But I get it that a studio would be like, yeah, Amish, stay away. But finally, somebody didn't stay away. Eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor. 12 million dollar budget made $117.1 million.
36:37 Speaker 02 Which is wild.
36:38 Bill Simmons? Really solid.
36:38 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it was like the fifth week that it was in theaters that it became the number one movie. So you, I mean. Positive buzz, well reviewed, word of mouth, like it's sticking around.
36:49 Bill Simmons? That was one of those things that-
36:49 Speaker 02 People like, I'm gonna go see Witness.
36:50 Bill Simmons? We talk about that sometimes when that just doesn't happen anymore.
36:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:54 Bill Simmons? No movie would come out and not be number one for a couple of weeks.
36:58 Speaker 02 Right.
36:59 Bill Simmons? But that was the, that was the era. Roger Ebert loved it, four stars.
37:04 Speaker 02 I'm thrilled.
37:04 Bill Simmons? He called it an electrifying and poignant love story.
37:07 Speaker 02 He's correct. Yeah.
37:08 Bill Simmons? He said, Witness arrives like a fresh new day. He crushed all the terrible movies that were out. And then said, Witness arrives like a fresh new day. A movie about adults whose lives have dignity and whose choices matter to them. And it's also one hell of a thriller. Then he also said, your guy Harrison Ford had never given a better performance in a movie.
37:28 Speaker 02 I think that's true. And I say that as the world's-
37:31 Bill Simmons? Might still be true.
37:32 Speaker 02 -leading Han Solo and Indiana Jones enthusiast.
37:35 Bill Simmons? I wonder what Harrison Ford would say. I wonder if anyone's ever actually asked him.
37:38 Speaker 02 What his favorite performance is or what he's like most proud of.
37:40 Bill Simmons? What was your best performance? If you, if you'd won an Oscar, what should it have been for?
37:44 Speaker 02 He would, I think he would pick this or something in this mold. And I don't think he would pick one of his genre movies. I think his like-
37:52 Bill Simmons? You don't think he would pick K-19 Widowmaker?
37:54 Speaker 02 It's possible. Some frankly astonishing accent work in that film. It's entirely possible.
38:01 Bill Simmons? I don't know if that movie's making on the rewatchables. Listen to Bad Accent Month.
38:05 Speaker 02 What about when you hit the 600s?
38:07 Bill Simmons? 600 maybe. I do think Patriot Games was good.
38:11 Speaker 02 I mean-
38:11 Bill Simmons? And it's a movie that's not really on anymore. I don't know what happened to it. I mean, I'm sure it's on streaming somewhere, but it never-
38:16 Speaker 02 Patriot Games is really good. I think Claire and Rose in Danger is better.
38:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, yeah.
38:19 Speaker 02 But he's a great Jack Ryan.
38:20 Bill Simmons? I like both of those.
38:21 Speaker 02 He's a great Jack Ryan.
38:22 Bill Simmons? We're taking a break and then we'll do most rewatchable scene. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Having the right people in your corner make all the difference. Just think of all the people we cycle in and out as co-hosts here on the rewatchables. I send texts, hey, you like this movie? Hey, you like that movie? All of a sudden, Van Lathan's like, I love that movie. Chris Ryan's like, I love that movie. And by the way, can we do Hunt for Red October again? Like those people, State Farm is there to help you choose the coverage you need. With so many coverage options, it's nice knowing you have help finding what fits for you. Go online at statefarm.com or use the award winning app to get help from one of their local agents. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. All right, most rewatchable scene.
39:07 Speaker 02 Okay, can we just go through every single frame of the movie?
39:09 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna try not to do that, but I did have 10 things marked. And I did really enjoy all the Amish stuff and the travel stuff in the first 10 minutes.
39:16 Speaker 02 It's amazing.
39:18 Bill Simmons? I like when he gets on the train. I just like all of it. And I think we didn't mention, we should have mentioned him earlier, but Lucas Aziz Samuel. It's just a great little kid performance.
39:27 Speaker 02 It's one of the best.
39:27 Bill Simmons? I continue to think little kid Oscar should be an Oscar every year, like 10 or under. Every year we should commemorate who the best little kid performance was. He's, I like all his facial expressions. You know him right away. I like how wide-eyed he is looking out the window in the train. I love how he handles the train murder in the bathroom. Like, he's just crushing it.
39:48 Speaker 02 It's fantastic. He's really incredible throughout the movie. I think that, you know, we'll get to these scenes now, but the the eyes, like the amount that he can express just by gazing through.
40:04 Bill Simmons? He's a stare through your soul kind of little kid.
40:07 Speaker 02 Really like indelible.
40:09 Bill Simmons? It doesn't work as well when you become an adult actor, because his adult career.
40:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:14 Bill Simmons? And then we'll talk about some of the stuff that happened with him, which is great, but.
40:18 Speaker 02 I mean.
40:18 Bill Simmons? But when you start to stare.
40:19 Speaker 02 Pussy posse. You know.
40:22 Bill Simmons? When you stare into somebody's soul as an adult, it becomes maybe more creepy than when you were eight.
40:27 Speaker 02 Yeah. But I, he is for me, no matter what, to this day, I see him in something and I'm like, it's Samuel from Witness. Like when he's, he's in a deception. And I'm like, it's Samuel from Witness. So no matter what.
40:40 Bill Simmons? It's like, it's William Miller. I can't, he's in like, We Bought a Zoo, and it's like, that's William Miller.
40:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, definitely.
40:46 Bill Simmons? Samuel sees a murder.
40:48 Speaker 02 This is just an incredible bit of filmmaking. This is great.
40:52 Bill Simmons? The toilet switch?
40:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:55 Bill Simmons? This could also go on what stage the best for me, but when somebody witnesses something in the toilet and then people wonder if they're there and they go stall by stall and you have to do. It's a great, what would I do in this situation as you're watching it?
41:06 Speaker 02 Um, I do have, I have very few picking nits on this movie, which I think is incredible and impeccable. I have a couple actually on that front that we'll get to later. I'll save them for that category. Broadly, the scene is amazing. The suspense and tension, the, the shirt wrapped around the head, the, you flash the knife before you know what's gonna happen. You cut to Samuel's eyes through the door, the throat slice. You cut to Samuel's eyes through the door with the, the, his like tiny, his hands are like, we know he's a young kid, but you see his little hands go to close the lock, like slide the lock. And you're just like, this is like a baby.
41:40 Bill Simmons? Right.
41:41 Speaker 02 Like, he's so tiny and then you're so scared for him. And of course, you have the added brilliant little chef's kiss touch of the Indiana Jones homage by reaching for the hat, which is just like, they're already killing it.
41:55 Bill Simmons? I did love that.
41:56 Speaker 02 And you put that on top. It's just great stuff.
41:57 Bill Simmons? Now, if they had this scene, he would be on his iPad. He would have missed the murder.
42:02 Speaker 02 Taking a shit, scrolling on TikTok.
42:04 Bill Simmons? Peeing while watching like Blue's Clues. Um, Samuel notices the Danny Glover photo, which we discussed earlier is a classic. Um, good Harrison Ford's face.
42:16 Speaker 02 Unbelievable.
42:16 Bill Simmons? The slow mo walk.
42:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:18 Bill Simmons? Pulling the finger down. It's just no notes.
42:21 Speaker 02 I love the like, kind of almost magnetic pull across the room.
42:27 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
42:28 Speaker 02 Like, and it, it does actually slow down. The sound is kind of sucked out of the scene. It does actually go into slow mo, but there are a couple in very different moods in these scenes, but a couple of moments in the movie where like people basically feel like they are in a trance of some sort. And it's totally hypnotic then when you watch it. You have the same feeling as a viewer that the character has in that moment. That's really one of them. And I love the way that even though they've only been in each other's lives briefly, you have something like you're coming off the very cute little, um, hot dog lunch, you know, right, right before this. And like, it's, it's the fact that there's kind of a shorthand, right? Like he, there's only one, Book knows. He doesn't know what he's seen, but he knows what he has seen.
43:08 Bill Simmons? He knows something.
43:08 Speaker 02 He knows what he's communicating. And it's just very potent. Really good.
43:12 Bill Simmons? The, uh, the shootout, the blood reveal and the driving exit, that whole part. The, uh,
43:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:18 Bill Simmons? I love a good blood reveal. It's like, oh, my guy didn't get shot.
43:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:21 Bill Simmons? Uh oh, blood drips.
43:22 Speaker 02 Gotta pick up the dry cleaning. Drip, drip, drip.
43:24 Bill Simmons? The Glover showing up and him immediately recognized and just like. Everything about the look on Glover's face, everything about that scene is really, uh, it's really like smart thriller.
43:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:34 Bill Simmons? Action shit.
43:35 Speaker 02 Also, like, this is kind of a, because it's a serious movie, it's a gentle movie, it's an underrated, I think, comic movie. There's like, obviously, a lot of the humor.
43:44 Bill Simmons? The people in the elevator?
43:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, a lot of the humor across the film comes from like, culture clash stuff, but the woman in the elevator is like, there's an active shootout, and she opens the doors again, is like, wait, that's my car. And I love the way that Harrison Ford, who's so measured through most of the film, is just like, can you hear it?
43:58 Bill Simmons? Right. Yeah, he's a good, like, immediately snap actor.
44:01 Speaker 02 So good.
44:03 Bill Simmons? Uh, I got the old Amish guy, our guy Eli.
44:06 Speaker 02 Eli, yeah.
44:07 Bill Simmons? Explaining to Samuel why guns are bad.
44:09 Speaker 02 Wait, you didn't, you're skipping the whole, like, Rachel nursing book, back to health stretch? I guess that's less of a scene and more like vignettes, but, okay, we'll come back to that.
44:18 Bill Simmons? I was just trying to narrate that in 10 scenes.
44:20 Speaker 02 All right, well, we'll be coming back to that momentarily.
44:22 Bill Simmons? Eli.
44:22 Speaker 02 Put a pin in it.
44:23 Bill Simmons? Only God can take life. There's never only one way.
44:28 Speaker 02 I love that. It's gorgeous.
44:30 Bill Simmons? What you take into your hands, you take into your heart.
44:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:33 Bill Simmons? That's how I felt about my IBM ThinkPad back when my fingers wrote.
44:37 Speaker 02 Yep.
44:37 Bill Simmons? Took every word I typed in.
44:39 Speaker 02 Taken to your heart.
44:40 Bill Simmons? Right into my heart.
44:41 Speaker 02 The gun in the hand, the, uh, the keys in the hand. I assume that this was, um, not what you were thinking of, because as recently established mere moments ago, you're not a Lord of the Rings enthusiast, but this is like the most Frodo Gandalf-coded conversation in like, the history of movies. Like, many who live deserve death, many who die deserve life, can you give it to them? Do not be too quick to deal out death and judgment, even the wisest cannot see all ends. No? You're not familiar? Well, that's basically what this is.
45:11 Bill Simmons? That sounds like there's never only one way.
45:13 Speaker 02 It's true.
45:15 Bill Simmons? Maybe, maybe Eli had it better.
45:17 Speaker 02 Keep it in mind if you come across Gollum.
45:19 Bill Simmons? Eli, good character.
45:20 Speaker 02 Opera singer. Canadian opera singer.
45:23 Bill Simmons? Your favorite scene, Book and Rachel dancing in the barn.
45:26 Speaker 02 You skipped the milking? All right, we've got it, we're hitting some, we're, we're missing some.
45:29 Bill Simmons? I put the milking at what stage the best. Look, I could have listed the whole movie.
45:32 Speaker 02 Fair enough. Okay, the, but I don't wanna, yes, I don't wanna interrupt discussing the barn scene, which is the most important scene in the history of film.
45:38 Bill Simmons? She broke the rule of the ordnung. That's another thing I like about this movie and when there's weird phrases and words, but they're, they're laws and but we don't know what they are. It's like, oh shit, she broke the rule of the ordnung.
45:51 Speaker 02 Well, they speak a different language. I mean, they're speaking, yeah, they're speaking the German dialect. Yeah. Um, where, when do we want to talk about this scene in more detail? Here?
46:00 Bill Simmons? Still right now. Yeah, it also gets the Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award because it's the only scene with music, but.
46:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, absolutely. This is a fantastic, fantastic needle drop.
46:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah, listen, it's on. There's some, there's some consummation, not some actual consummation.
46:17 Speaker 02 So.
46:17 Bill Simmons? She didn't get to join the nine time club.
46:20 Speaker 02 Not yet. She's got to wait for that. Um.
46:26 Speaker 02 Sometimes it's hard. We have more scenes to go through. Sometimes it's hard to decide. Okay, I love a lot of these scenes and I do love a lot of scenes in this movie. What is the pick for most rewatchable scene?
46:34 Bill Simmons? Well, I knew this would be your pick.
46:35 Speaker 02 This is the easy, and we've done, you've done a ton of pods. I've had the privilege of joining you for the couple dozen rewatchables over the years. This is the single easiest category pick for me in any of the pods we've ever done.
46:46 Bill Simmons? Wow.
46:46 Speaker 02 This has the most rewatchable scene because it is maybe my favorite scene in a movie ever. I texted you last night, including like illustrating the arrows to the timestamps.
46:58 Bill Simmons? Different years of your life.
46:59 Speaker 02 How many different times on my camera roll, I have just filmed my TV while this scene is on? Like, I don't know why I do that. I could just go to YouTube.
47:06 Bill Simmons? Just a lunatic.
47:07 Speaker 02 Or like put in the DVD of which I have multiple copies. Like, I don't know why I feel compelled to like film it on my phone, but then I could just look at it. Um, we haven't actually talked about this very much yet, but I think one of the things that makes this such a beautiful film and one of the reasons it's my favorite genuinely is like, I think that this is a masterpiece. It's like a, a portrait of desire, right? This movie is about. Yearning, it's about something that you want, but you don't know if you should have it.
47:37 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
47:38 Speaker 02 And there is not a scene, and there are plenty of scenes in this film where that desire is palpable. We'll talk about some of them elsewhere, but like, this is the ultimate encapsulation of that. The fact that like, the music is playing because he gets the car battery going and it's not supposed to be. So that's ultimately why Eli comes up. It gives us that framework of just like, these people are from a different world. You can't forget that. This is another moment where you have that kind of trance, like, like the camera swings from Book to Rachel. The lighting is different behind her than it is from him and she's just like utterly absorbed and swept up. How could you not be if Harrison Ford was like wrapping you in his arms and singing to you? I think you would just orgasm and die, basically. I think that's how it would go. The, right? I don't know, probably.
48:20 Speaker 02 Loved learning and researching for the pod that he picked the song. I had not known that. That was not a thing I knew.
48:26 Bill Simmons? They couldn't get the rights, they had to have somebody else sing it.
48:29 Speaker 02 Not Sam Cooke, it's a cover, but still.
48:32 Speaker 02 When he, when the music kicks in and he's like, oh yeah, this is great. And then he stands up and he looks over the roof of the car and he's drumming. And then he kind of turns his head and he just stares at her for a second.
48:46 Speaker 02 That taught me what sex was, even though it's not a sex scene. Like, it is just unbelievably powerful and incredible and they look great. It's awkward, it's clumsy. There are moments where you think they're gonna kiss and then they don't. There are moments when they're giggling, they're dripping in sweat because the barn is hot. It's just absolute perfection. Gorgeous. And he just looks so good.
49:09 Bill Simmons? It led to a possible shunning of her.
49:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, Eli's like, you're gonna get shunned.
49:13 Bill Simmons? Shunning.
49:14 Speaker 02 Don't shame me. And she says, you shame yourself, big guy. Let me fuck Harrison Ford.
49:19 Bill Simmons? I like the whole concept of shunning. What Game of Thrones, what was the, what did they call it in Game of Thrones?
49:25 Speaker 02 Shunning?
49:26 Bill Simmons? No, the what, when she had to do the walk of shame?
49:28 Speaker 02 Oh, the walk of shame, Cersei's walk of shame. Yeah, mother's mercy, shame, shame, shame, the shame bell.
49:32 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna talk to-
49:33 Speaker 02 Walk of atonement?
49:34 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna talk to Spotify HR.
49:36 Speaker 02 You wanna do a walk of atonement?
49:37 Bill Simmons? No, see if shunning can come back as part of the HR evaluate.
49:40 Speaker 02 I do think they would have some news, yeah, on incorporating the walk of atonement.
49:43 Bill Simmons? We need to put a shunning in.
49:45 Speaker 02 What's your Sept of Baylor and what's your Red Keep in that scenario? I don't know.
49:49 Bill Simmons? This scene's really good.
49:51 Speaker 02 It's great.
49:51 Bill Simmons? I put the barn raising in there because
49:53 Speaker 02 Of course.
49:54 Bill Simmons? For some reason, it's riveting.
49:56 Speaker 02 It's, it's
49:56 Bill Simmons? It shouldn't be a good scene. It should be the scene where you go to like a popcorn or pee.
50:00 Speaker 02 It's incredible.
50:01 Bill Simmons? And yet, and then plus it feels Harrison Ford, former carpenter. It feels like he's really like, no, no, guys, I got this.
50:07 Speaker 02 That, making Samuel the wooden toy, fixing the birdhouse, all of the, the little nods and wings to his history as a carpenter. Great stuff. Daniel, in the beginning of that scene, like, how's your hole about this gunshot? What, how's your hole? It's always kills me and makes me laugh. And he's like, it's good. The hole's good.
50:24 Bill Simmons? My host.
50:24 Speaker 02 Let me tell you about, let me tell you about Rachel's holes. You know, I'm about to do some exploring. And then Daniel's like, you should just fucking go then. If you're healed and you're fine, get out of here.
50:33 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
50:33 Speaker 02 You know, three parts milk, two parts linseed oil and some shitty tea. Pack up, let's go. I'm trying to move in. But then when they start to build this thing together, even Daniel, like when they share the lemonade, Daniel passes book, the lemonade, like, he has been absorbed into the community. But then to your point from earlier, we shift into the lunch break. And Rachel, the fact that like for us, it's wonderful for Eli, for Daniel, for everyone else, the audacity that she pours books drink first, right? And then you have the great little like needlepoint moment with the woman who's like, a lot of talk. Lot of talk. Group chats are buzzing with talk about you and the English.
51:09 Bill Simmons? That's like your mom.
51:10 Speaker 02 Totally.
51:11 Bill Simmons? Mallory, a lot of talk.
51:12 Speaker 02 A lot of talk.
51:13 Bill Simmons? People talking in the family right now.
51:15 Speaker 02 Lot of talk. So that scene is just beautiful. And like, it is such a, it's such a great portrait of community, much like at the end when Samuel, you know, rings the bell and everybody actually does come. Like, it's important to understand what life would be. We have moments where Rachel's like, you know, people come in and they like, want to take our pictures and they just walk in our yard and it's fucking rude, right?
51:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
51:36 Speaker 02 And then you see like, whether you would ever want to live this way, or you agree with this way of life, or you're a pacifist, or whatever, you're religious, any of it. It's like, you see something in that moment that is beautiful, right? And you understand why it's valuable to them.
51:51 Bill Simmons? Well, they got married. Time to build, time for everybody to chip in, build them a barn.
51:54 Speaker 02 The Zooks need a barn, man. They need a barn.
51:57 Bill Simmons? My next scene is, I just wrote down Sponge Bass stare down. Which is apparently a great porn search.
52:06 Speaker 02 I was afraid to Google.
52:08 Bill Simmons? Sponge Bass stare down?
52:10 Speaker 02 Sponge, just Sponge Bass scenes in movies on my work computer.
52:14 Bill Simmons? Like a media virus.
52:15 Speaker 02 But I did it on my phone, yeah.
52:17 Bill Simmons? Good acting here by Harrison Ford as well.
52:19 Speaker 02 I mean, this is, this is another.
52:20 Bill Simmons? I really want to step in here, but just so you know, I can't. Someone look away.
52:25 Speaker 02 This is a great part of the movie. The way that it starts with, you know, the lightning strike in the sky, like literally the crackle of electricity in the air, right? He's on the porch, she's on the swing, looking through the glass.
52:36 Bill Simmons? She sees him pouring the hot water. Yeah, it's like.
52:38 Speaker 02 She like meets his eye as she's passing through. It's an invitation.
52:42 Bill Simmons? She's working the speed bag a little bit, getting a sweat going.
52:45 Speaker 02 Doing the lunges, stretches, getting limber, getting ready, hydrating. It's crucial. And, you know, the fact that like, she's left the door open, right?
52:54 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
52:54 Speaker 02 She wants him to see her. And the first glimpse, he's in the mirror. And the way that she turns and just like, you know, here I am, right? And I have decided, I'm not going to let Eli or anybody else tell me, like what is right for me, what I can and cannot do. There's a defiance, but also like a confidence. And of course, it's very sexy. And he is like, this is basically like, I don't know what to do. He has this look of incredible yearning and lust and desire on his face. But also then that moment where he looks down, it's like she's consumed by doubt.
53:26 Bill Simmons? Look at that, his boner.
53:27 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, he's like, when she said, when you said earlier that you would like let out my trousers, I know you meant the extra hem on the bottom, but I could use a little more room in the crotch.
53:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
53:36 Speaker 02 I'm packing something that Jacob wasn't.
53:38 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
53:38 Speaker 02 You know, if we could get on that, that would be helpful. But like, he's consumed by doubt in that moment in a way that she actually isn't, which is a fascinating thing.
53:46 Bill Simmons? Character, the category, the.
53:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
53:49 Bill Simmons? The Amish Rachel.
53:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
53:51 Bill Simmons? I'm asking for, and I don't know how to make it any more clear, stare down.
53:55 Speaker 02 Incorporate it from this pod forward.
53:57 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's, that's, that stare of like. Come on.
54:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:02 Bill Simmons? Let's go.
54:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, yep.
54:04 Bill Simmons? The crowd is in their seats. Let's start.
54:06 Speaker 02 We're ready.
54:07 Bill Simmons? The clock's on.
54:07 Speaker 02 We're ready. And then you like see him alone in his room. You know,
54:11 Bill Simmons? He's just like, damn.
54:11 Speaker 02 Sitting on the bed, looking out the window, presumably when we cut away, frantically, feverishly jerking off.
54:17 Bill Simmons? No question, masturbation.
54:18 Speaker 02 Without a doubt.
54:19 Bill Simmons? Yeah, probably loudly.
54:21 Speaker 02 Uh, yeah, I mean, I would assume.
54:24 Bill Simmons? He was dealing with a shunning the next day. Um, Book kicks the boy's ass.
54:29 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
54:30 Bill Simmons? I think this is the corniest 80s scene in the movie where we just had scenes like this.
54:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
54:35 Bill Simmons? Um, I still like when he punches the guy.
54:37 Speaker 02 And it's right on the heels of like, he's learned that his partner has been killed. He's called Schaefer. That phone call is great.
54:42 Bill Simmons? He's a little angry.
54:43 Speaker 02 Great stuff. And I like when he's like, you know, Eli's like, this isn't our way. And he's like, but it's my way.
54:48 Bill Simmons? It's my way.
54:49 Speaker 02 Great.
54:49 Bill Simmons? Motherfucker.
54:50 Speaker 02 It's great.
54:50 Bill Simmons? Bad guys show up.
54:52 Speaker 02 Yep.
54:52 Bill Simmons? Samuel doing the runaway stop.
54:54 Speaker 02 You're skipping the kiss?
54:57 Bill Simmons? Um, we're gonna get to the kiss later.
54:59 Speaker 02 Okay.
55:00 Bill Simmons? Different category.
55:01 Speaker 02 Okay.
55:02 Bill Simmons? Samuel running away, but then stopping.
55:04 Speaker 02 Yep.
55:05 Bill Simmons? We get cows. It's a chase scene, but cows like really involved for real.
55:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:11 Bill Simmons? We get a corn murder.
55:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, the corn silo. Iconic.
55:14 Bill Simmons? Danny Glover gets it.
55:15 Speaker 02 Yep.
55:15 Bill Simmons? Samuel rings the bell.
55:17 Speaker 02 Yep.
55:17 Bill Simmons? And then, uh, and then our guy Paul is the bad guy.
55:21 Speaker 02 Yep.
55:22 Bill Simmons? A little moral reckoning for him.
55:23 Speaker 02 Mm hmm. Yeah.
55:25 Bill Simmons? Unusual movie choice for the, uh, this is where the guy usually shoots himself in the head.
55:30 Speaker 02 Right.
55:30 Bill Simmons? Or he got shot because he's holding a hostage.
55:33 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:33 Bill Simmons? And he's just like, yeah, what happened to me? Yeah. And, and he just sinks to the ground. He's like, God, I just take me away.
55:42 Speaker 02 Well, like.
55:43 Bill Simmons? We see him in the car in the next scene. He's kind of stealth in there.
55:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
55:46 Bill Simmons? Air support is in the backseat, just like, I can't believe I'm going to jail.
55:51 Speaker 02 That, the phone call in the prior sequence where Book is like, you know, you lost the way. Like kind of calling back to this lesson that clearly Paul had been the one to impart on Book in the first place. That was really interesting. The whole final sequence. From the moment like the car inches up the drive and then recedes from view and you just hear the sound of the tires on the pavement, like it is just so good. The corn silo to me, Fergie suffocating to death in the corn silo, that is like a really iconic movie death. That's like just so, I think the way that they use.
56:28 Bill Simmons? It's an all-timer.
56:30 Speaker 02 The, using the setting in a way that makes sense, right? Like they have shotguns.
56:36 Bill Simmons? I had this for picking nits, I'll just do it now.
56:38 Speaker 02 Tell me.
56:39 Bill Simmons? Not sure you'd die.
56:41 Speaker 02 You don't, you would suffocate.
56:43 Bill Simmons? You just gotta stay above the corn.
56:46 Speaker 02 It's, I think the thing is that it's like, it's less, I mean, ultimately he is buried by the corn, but I think it's less that and more that just the air, he can't breathe the air. When he's trying to get a breath in.
56:57 Bill Simmons? The corn air?
56:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
56:58 Bill Simmons? So it's like the two.
56:58 Speaker 02 It's like all the fibers and dust in the air.
57:00 Bill Simmons? Cause the other death that's like this is Hand that Rocks the Cradle when Julian Moore, the Rebecca de Mornay rigs the glass house, whatever it was called, the greenhouse?
57:08 Speaker 02 Yeah, the greenhouse, yeah.
57:09 Bill Simmons? And all the glass breaks on her, she's like, ah, and it just somehow dies. It's like, would you die? Or like?
57:17 Speaker 02 But there's no way out and the air is not breathable and it's falling, the corn is falling for so long. I buy it. I believe it.
57:24 Bill Simmons? I think you would die.
57:26 Speaker 02 Oh, I would, I, I would be gone instantly.
57:28 Bill Simmons? The moment the air got weird, I think, the corn air, you'd get some new form of COVID, you'd get corn COVID.
57:33 Speaker 02 It's corn, it's like three degrees north of like my ideal temperature in here and I'm about to die just from this. A corn silo, I'd be, it's a, it's a rap. But, um, one of the great little like nuggets.
57:43 Bill Simmons? I'm gonna fix that as we're talking.
57:44 Speaker 02 Great.
57:44 Bill Simmons? My fancy controls.
57:45 Speaker 02 Look at this. I did, had I but known, I would have asked, uh, an hour ago. Um, the, I loved learning that McPhee was supposed to be killed by a mule?
57:59 Speaker 02 He was like, so it was gonna be farm death after farm death. And then Harrison Ford is like, no, I'm gonna shoot this guy.
58:06 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
58:06 Speaker 02 Like, I didn't come all this way to not shoot this guy, but I like that we got both. I like that we got book having to basic, like, no functional fixedness. He had to innovate. He had to use his surroundings. He had to use what he had learned. You know, there's the scene earlier where Samuel takes him, the beautiful little scene with the kittens and they're down in the ground. He's like, learned about the farm. He spent time milking and learning about the way of life and he knows he's hiding, but also he's like, wait, I can like lure him in by dropping the corn and do this. And then it's like, I'm gonna go and dig out the shotgun and shoot McPhee.
58:36 Bill Simmons? He learned some Amish skills.
58:37 Speaker 02 Exactly.
58:38 Bill Simmons? He used his things. All right, so you have the barn scene.
58:41 Speaker 02 Well, that's the obvious one.
58:42 Bill Simmons? Oh, I left out the farewells with the goodbye, John Boeb, but we talked about that already.
58:44 Speaker 02 That's a beautiful one. Okay, so you didn't have the kiss, because you wanna talk about it elsewhere. You didn't have milking, which is sad, but will we have another opportunity to talk about you never had your hands on a teat before and not one this big?
58:57 Bill Simmons? We will.
58:58 Speaker 02 Okay, great.
59:00 Speaker 02 As long as that's gonna come up again, I'm content.
59:03 Bill Simmons? I, uh, I'm going hot take. I really like the bad guy showing up is my favorite part of the movie. It's like the happiest.
59:11 Speaker 02 The final shootout?
59:12 Bill Simmons? I just, I love the corn.
59:13 Speaker 02 It's great.
59:14 Bill Simmons? I like how we're films everything. I like how you always know where we are. I like how they use Samuel as like, oh, God, you just assume he's just gonna wander back in and get shot.
59:23 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:25 Bill Simmons? I just think it's a really fun, all of a sudden, it's a thriller again, out of nowhere.
59:29 Speaker 02 Yes, I love.
59:30 Bill Simmons? You've calmed me down. I'm in my whole Amish world and, and then the switch flips again, but in the right ways.
59:36 Speaker 02 Well, and you have the moment too with the, with the payphone call where Schaefer's like, we know, we know where you are. But my read on that is they do not. They only learn where he is after, because he punches the townie and then we see the like, local guy who's like, this is bad for business, tell the cops. So that's how they learn. So it's a mistake ultimately. The book is leaving, like, he is leaving. He's said his goodbyes. They've had their final night, which I guess we'll talk about elsewhere. And the fact that it's such a near, like, the fact that that almost didn't happen, that confrontation in that place and that way. But they, they made it there just in time to challenge him. It's really good. I like too when Schaefer takes.
1:00:12 Bill Simmons? Notice how it's getting colder in here?
1:00:13 Speaker 02 It, um, it's, feels great. Schaefer taking Rachel.
1:00:18 Speaker 02 Hostage, and I love the like, the this little moment there where Shaffer and Booker just screaming at each other.
1:00:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:00:25 Speaker 02 Like, let her go, Paul.
1:00:26 Bill Simmons? Harrison Ford's really good at when he's angry, you really feel like he's actually angry.
1:00:30 Speaker 02 Really great. I can't believe you're not picking the Wonderful World barn dance. I can't believe it.
1:00:37 Bill Simmons? You know why? You know why I'm not picking it? Because I'm a man.
1:00:42 Speaker 02 And men don't like?
1:00:44 Bill Simmons? No, it's a scene for you and my wife. It's my wife's favorite scene, too.
1:00:48 Speaker 02 I would expect so because she's a woman of taste and character.
1:00:51 Bill Simmons? 1985 thing about this movie?
1:00:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:55 Bill Simmons? So Book makes a honey, that's great coffee joke.
1:00:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:00:59 Bill Simmons? Which I think was an ad back then, but I couldn't find the ad.
1:01:01 Speaker 02 Folgers.
1:01:02 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:01:02 Speaker 02 And apparently Harrison Ford wanted to do this because he had, he had gone out for that commercial. And so it was like a little bit of a nod to a commercial that he couldn't nail.
1:01:12 Bill Simmons? 2025, that joke makes no sense.
1:01:14 Speaker 02 Great moment, though, because they're like, we don't know what you're talking about because we don't have a TV, so we don't watch commercials. Perfect. And he's also just very charming as the coffee salesman. My two nominees for this are, and I think ultimately the 84 thing about the movie, 85 thing about the movie filmed, released, it's kind of hard because like, everything in Amish country is a time capsule of a different moment.
1:01:33 Bill Simmons? I have an answer I didn't give you yet. What were your two?
1:01:36 Speaker 02 Okay, my two, my two nominees for you are either just Eileen Book, the sister character, full stop, like everything. The mullet, she's in a bathrobe in basically every scene.
1:01:46 Bill Simmons? I have a guy home, a guy over.
1:01:49 Speaker 02 You, you got a man in the house and the kids are upstairs. There's a deleted scene where her kids are with Samuel at the kitchen table and they, they show him Donkey Kong. He gets to play Donkey Kong and it's like.
1:01:57 Bill Simmons? Oh, that would have been 1985.
1:01:58 Speaker 02 Count Chocula, Sun Kiss Can, all of that. So it's either that or the fact that Book calls Carter and is basically like, get rid of the files, like hide the files. And then for the entire movie, Shaffer, McPhee and Fergie can't find them because the address was only written on a piece of paper. Like, that just wouldn't happen now. It's in the system. It's in the cloud. Like, it's somewhere. Yeah. What's your pick?
1:02:18 Bill Simmons? Good candidates, that is not the answer.
1:02:19 Speaker 02 Tell me.
1:02:20 Bill Simmons? So the, the score by Maurice Jerry.
1:02:24 Speaker 02 It's a beautiful score.
1:02:25 Bill Simmons? Electronic score.
1:02:26 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:27 Bill Simmons? Which somehow in the Oscar.
1:02:31 Bill Simmons? I just don't think in 2025, that's the score. It feels very 1980s, trying to like, oh, look how cutting edge our electronic score is. And now when I hear it, I'm like, that feels like 1985 to me. It just wouldn't be in a movie now. It's weirdly good and completely dated and rooted in the exact era that they made it.
1:02:53 Speaker 02 Interesting.
1:02:54 Bill Simmons? You know what I mean?
1:02:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, I like the score. I think it's like very.
1:02:57 Bill Simmons? Just wouldn't happen now.
1:02:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, it puts you in the mood, but yeah, it is of a moment of time.
1:03:01 Bill Simmons? Well, we have the most important category of this podcast coming up, but we have to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Trivia. Sweeteners are like movies. The best ones don't leave an aftertaste. That's why Trivia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri-blend that delivers sugar-like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Trivia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. This episode is brought to you by Viori.
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1:04:15 Bill Simmons? All right, I know everyone's on the edge of their seat. Not many people have a category named after them in the Rewatchables. You have the Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene?
1:04:24 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:04:24 Bill Simmons? I can't think of a better movie for this question than Witness.
1:04:28 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:04:29 Bill Simmons? What's the answer?
1:04:30 Speaker 02 I think I, I think I'm about to stun you because my answer to this prompt is almost always yes. Because, uh,
1:04:37 Bill Simmons? I don't think you've ever answered no.
1:04:39 Speaker 02 I like to watch people fucking movies.
1:04:41 Bill Simmons? You've never said no.
1:04:42 Speaker 02 Uh, I think that Harrison Ford is the hottest person who's ever lived. He's my number one all-timer and I like to watch him have sex in movies. And as we've discussed before on other pods, it's actually really rare for Harrison Ford to have like a graphic sex scene in a movie. Like when he's pumping away and presumed innocent, you're like, I don't actually see this a lot. There's a lot of sex in his movies, but not a lot of like overt sex scenes.
1:05:05 Speaker 02 I think the answer to did this movie need a better sex scene is no. I think it is a perfect choice and it's fascinating to learn that the script had a sex scene in it. Obviously they fuck after the kiss. We don't see it. And I think that's the right choice because the movie is, as we have discussed, about, it's about the buildup. It's not actually about the, the culmination. It's about the longing and the wanting and the yearning and the craving and the thinking and the wondering, what would it be like? It's about all of the little moments where they're watching either Rachel sponging him or he's watching her sponge herself, or they're dancing in a hot bar and dripping sweat. Or she watches him, she hands him the lemonade and he takes it down to one gulp and it's like dribbling
1:05:48 Speaker 02 down his chin and she's just like, I need a private moment.
1:05:51 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:05:52 Speaker 02 That's what it's about. Watching them kiss, I think tells us that watching them fuck is not the point. It's about all of the moments that lead up to it. What do you think?
1:06:03 Bill Simmons? I think that's the right answer.
1:06:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:06 Bill Simmons? There could have been a, a book solo scene they could have added that would have been pretty traumatic. They could have had the five minute postscript, the book's back in Philly. And then the movie ends with Alexander Goodenough just having, having sex and she's just staring in the ceiling, thinking a book.
1:06:22 Speaker 02 We get a little thought bubble.
1:06:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that's just the ending, just her looking like this.
1:06:26 Speaker 02 Fucking book in a bale of hay. Yeah.
1:06:30 Bill Simmons? I think it's the right move.
1:06:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:32 Bill Simmons? What stage is the best? We mentioned the script and some of the choices, especially the last 15 minutes. I'll start here, though.
1:06:40 Bill Simmons? And I know you have a bunch. Try not to have too many. How many do you have?
1:06:44 Speaker 02 Only a handful.
1:06:44 Bill Simmons? Okay, good.
1:06:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:06:46 Bill Simmons? What's aged the best? There's a moment where Harrison Ford's holding a cat and you held the screenshot. You you sent the screenshot of that to me yesterday. And you said, this picture is the highlight of my life.
1:06:58 Speaker 02 I believe what I said was, when I die, just assuming I'll be dead before you and you'll be at my funeral.
1:07:02 Bill Simmons? Very possible.
1:07:03 Speaker 02 It's entirely possible. I think it's likely. When I die, put this on a tapestry and drape it over my casket. I believe when I texted you.
1:07:11 Bill Simmons? Like one of those vinyl, homemade vinyl posters?
1:07:14 Speaker 02 And I would like you to consider that a formal request and I would like it to be honored.
1:07:18 Bill Simmons? Did you feel like he liked holding the cat? Was there, was it a loving hold of the cat?
1:07:23 Speaker 02 I feel like someone who made the movie was like, we don't have a sex scene, but we should see Harrison Ford stroke a pussy at some point. You know, we should probably see that. Let's find a different way.
1:07:33 Bill Simmons? Some pussy.
1:07:36 Bill Simmons? I had Dirty Cops.
1:07:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:07:38 Bill Simmons? Just in general, in any movie I like, but I like, I like the concept here of they lost the meaning that John Book said.
1:07:43 Speaker 02 Lost the meaning. Yeah.
1:07:44 Bill Simmons? Paul lost the meaning. What do you have? Give me a couple.
1:07:46 Speaker 02 Okay, we already talked about just Harrison Ford's 1980s, just the best decade and the early eighties, mid eighties, best stretch ever. We already talked about just the restraint in the filmmaking, the focus on the eyes, the faces, the glances. The number of moments, like one of, one, an example we haven't talked about yet actually is when Book wakes up from being nursed. And Rachel's kind of falling asleep and it's just, he's, he's on his side. So it's just one eye looking up from the pillow. It's like,
1:08:10 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:08:11 Speaker 02 We have it with Samuel, with what he has witnessed. We have it in all of the, the looks that pass between Book and Rachel. It's just like incredible. The portrait of desire and all of the little moments building toward this thing that they know they can't have. I think that the, something we haven't talked about yet, because we didn't really talk about the, um, the like opening funeral scene in great detail, or the nursing scenes is like, The visual choices with the lighting, John Seale and Peter Weir both talked about how there was like literally a Vermeer exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art at the time. So they like went to see all these paintings of the Dutch masters and decided to basically light the movie that way. So the number of scenes where it's just, there's
1:08:52 Speaker 02 just an oil lamp, or there's just like a little bit of light coming from the left side through a window. And the way that that sort of heightens the like naturalistic setting and your belief of like where you are there. And also then of course, helps to heighten this like clash of big city hotshot cop coming into Amish country. That's all really, really great. I guess another thing, we've kind of talked about this, but like the casting, I mean, obviously like, you don't have to be a genius to put Harrison Ford in your movie, but putting him in this role is inspired. And obviously, and he talks about like, I was coming off Temple of Doom, like I wanted to do something different. But the rest of the cast, like discovering Kelly McGillis. Lukas Haas is seven and eight
1:09:37 Speaker 02 years old when he's making this movie. Alexander Guttenoff is a defector and a ballet dancer.
1:09:44 Bill Simmons? Right. Lukas Haas could have ruined the movie if he's bad in it.
1:09:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:09:48 Bill Simmons? If we don't like Samuel, the movie falls apart.
1:09:50 Speaker 02 Exactly. Jan Rubin is a Canadian opera singer. It's like, a lot of the people in the movie had basically no experience and they have to share air with the most powerful movie star in the history of the world. Like, the fact that that works and is so, the balance and calibration is so expert is like really astonishing.
1:10:10 Bill Simmons? I had for what's age the best, the fact that Lukas Haas eventually became the right-hand man in Leo's pussy posse.
1:10:18 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:10:19 Bill Simmons? Would not have predicted that from the little Amish kid.
1:10:21 Speaker 02 No, no.
1:10:23 Bill Simmons? He was basically the, I don't know, the Scottie Pippen to Leo's MJ.
1:10:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, definitely.
1:10:29 Bill Simmons? Or was Tobey Maguire Pippen? Maybe he was Horace Grant.
1:10:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. I think Tobey might have been Pippen in that scenario.
1:10:35 Bill Simmons? But that's how he had this whole second life, is it was like Toby, Leo, Lukas Haas, I think Kevin Connolly was in there, couple others, but yeah.
1:10:45 Speaker 02 Great stuff. Great stuff.
1:10:47 Bill Simmons? It's 4:30, time for milking is just really funny.
1:10:50 Speaker 02 Sensational. That whole scene is great.
1:10:52 Bill Simmons? You've never had your hands on a teat before?
1:10:54 Speaker 02 Not one that big. And then the Eli's laugh.
1:10:57 Bill Simmons? Remember the word teat?
1:10:57 Speaker 02 Teat, sure. Yeah, of course. Teat, yeah.
1:11:00 Bill Simmons? I like when they call Ford the English.
1:11:02 Speaker 02 The milking hat.
1:11:04 Bill Simmons? Alexander Goodenough, this is a What's Age the Best.
1:11:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:11:07 Bill Simmons? Just the Wikipedia deep dive of him, what happened to him?
1:11:10 Speaker 02 Sad.
1:11:11 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:11:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, very sad.
1:11:13 Bill Simmons? It was kinda like, so he comes in, he dates Jacqueline Bissette, the single most beautiful woman who ever lived, or at least the top five.
1:11:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
1:11:21 Bill Simmons? And he's with her for most of the 80s. He's in Die Hard, but apparently just had like this massive drinking problem.
1:11:27 Speaker 02 He died really young.
1:11:28 Bill Simmons? And died of alcoholism, basically.
1:11:30 Speaker 02 Very sad.
1:11:31 Bill Simmons? Like in his early 40s, but it was a way more interesting 10 minutes than I was expecting. And then no actual Amish were in the film because they do not like to be photographed.
1:11:41 Speaker 02 Right.
1:11:41 Bill Simmons? But.
1:11:42 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:11:43 Bill Simmons? They were all at the filming, kinda watching and surveying, but you couldn't film them.
1:11:47 Speaker 02 I like the little nuggets, like Peter Weir saying, yeah, they were watching when Harrison Ford punched Italian, they were all like, eh, you know? But like, yeah, the fact that they had a lot of the extras are Mennonites because they would be willing to participate, but the Amish wouldn't was interesting.
1:12:03 Bill Simmons? What's Age the Best, just them not filming any dialogue with the last scene with Book and Rachel is a What's Age the Buster.
1:12:09 Speaker 02 It's horrible to think about the alternative where they just talk to each other for 10 minutes.
1:12:14 Bill Simmons? Big Kahuna Burger Award, best use of food or drink. I mean, this is the corn drop.
1:12:18 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. I guess it is.
1:12:20 Bill Simmons? We have a murder with food.
1:12:21 Speaker 02 It's, you're right.
1:12:22 Bill Simmons? There's a lot of other good options, but there is a corn murder.
1:12:25 Speaker 02 I've been thinking that this could be where we talked about the milk scene.
1:12:28 Bill Simmons? No, the milk scene's great, but we have a corn murder. That has to win.
1:12:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're right. Using corn as a lethal weapon is just tough to talk.
1:12:35 Bill Simmons? Gordon Award, most cinematic shot. I think Sponge bath, all the way they're using the cameras and the mirror and the lighting and.
1:12:43 Speaker 02 I mean.
1:12:43 Bill Simmons? That would be my vote.
1:12:44 Speaker 02 Who am I to argue? I think you could pick that. I think you could pick the look that the book gives Rachel from over the, over the, the roof of the car in the barn. My, this was where I was gonna highlight and toast young Lukas Haas and his eyes.
1:12:58 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:12:59 Speaker 02 I think that, and it's actually, I think, really fascinating to hear John Seal basically like, cause this is, I think, one of the most like iconic shots in movie history, just his, Samuel's eyes through the, the crack in the door.
1:13:09 Bill Simmons? Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:13:10 Speaker 02 And John Seal, he's basically like.
1:13:14 Speaker 02 This shot is out of focus and I never forgot it for my entire career. Like the, the director's always going to pick the best performance, not the crispest shot. And I all, and like I took, I left this movie and I was like, every frame has to be perfect. Like you can't miss it once, but the, the stories about.
1:13:32 Speaker 02 Peter, we are going to young Lukas Haas and saying.
1:13:38 Speaker 02 Cause he didn't want him to see the scene. He didn't want to scar him by showing him a fake murder. And so instead, he went in and said, you're letting the movie down. I need more. I need you to imagine the most terrible thing that you could possibly think of. Not going to show you a clearly fake murder, but I am going to make sure you're in therapy for the rest of your life by putting the burden of this entire film on your shoulders. So that fear in his eyes is basically because Peter Weir was like, kid, you're going to fuck up the entire movie.
1:14:06 Bill Simmons? So when you were eight, that would have been like Cal Ripken getting hurt. What would it have been?
1:14:10 Speaker 02 Oh man, yeah, that would have been, that would have been.
1:14:12 Bill Simmons? Might have been like.
1:14:13 Speaker 02 Some real terror.
1:14:13 Bill Simmons? Bobby Orr, Bobby Orr tearing his knee again. The chess Rockwell Brock Landers were best character name. John Book's pretty good.
1:14:21 Speaker 02 I think it's gotta be John Book. Perfect.
1:14:23 Bill Simmons? I threw in, I didn't tell you this one, the Ed Norton reverse dunk award for did this movie need a random sports scene?
1:14:28 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:14:29 Bill Simmons? It's only an hour 42, something like that. Could we have stuck in a little? The Amish throwing the football around?
1:14:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:14:37 Bill Simmons? Maybe, maybe Daniel and John Book having a catch and he's like, can't really throw it and Daniel's just whipping or maybe there's a touch football game with the Amish. Oh, wearing hats.
1:14:49 Speaker 02 That would be great.
1:14:49 Bill Simmons? Or maybe they're just playing dominoes. I don't know. There's some, the Amish could have been doing something fun.
1:14:54 Speaker 02 I like this, seeing Book and Samuel Bond tossing around the ball.
1:14:57 Bill Simmons? Shuffleboard table?
1:14:58 Speaker 02 That would have been great.
1:14:59 Bill Simmons? The Amish just love shuffleboard.
1:15:00 Speaker 02 I'll take your word for it.
1:15:02 Bill Simmons? Darts, maybe some darts. All right. You have a choice for a flex category. What is it?
1:15:07 Speaker 02 Um, Chris is not here with us today, and so I have decided to honor him.
1:15:11 Bill Simmons? Great.
1:15:11 Speaker 02 By doing the Sean Penn, I brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking.
1:15:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:15:16 Speaker 02 Because the first scene after the climactic shootout and Schaefer, the book besting Schaefer, we pan all of these cars, all of these cops, and Harrison Ford, the coolest person who has ever lived, effortlessly cool, is just leaning casually against the car, smoking.
1:15:36 Bill Simmons? He's firing a lung dart. I did notice that. Yeah.
1:15:38 Speaker 02 It is so clearly just Harrison Ford enjoying a cigarette.
1:15:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:15:41 Speaker 02 And it is perfect. It is perfect. Yeah.
1:15:45 Bill Simmons? Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film.
1:15:48 Speaker 02 This is, I had a hard time with this.
1:15:50 Bill Simmons? I have one.
1:15:51 Speaker 02 Tell me.
1:15:54 Bill Simmons? Hey, Rachel. You're a grieving widow.
1:15:58 Bill Simmons? Why does it seem like you're in the stepdad market pretty fast here?
1:16:03 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:16:03 Bill Simmons? Can you grieve your dude for like a month?
1:16:07 Bill Simmons? I mean, this is like-
1:16:08 Speaker 02 Counterpoint.
1:16:09 Bill Simmons? She's on Tinder, Amish Tinder, basically.
1:16:12 Speaker 02 She's not.
1:16:12 Bill Simmons? Daniel's already like-
1:16:14 Speaker 02 No.
1:16:14 Bill Simmons? lining up. She's giving John Book the googly eyes.
1:16:18 Speaker 02 Yeah. Okay. You're wrong about this.
1:16:20 Bill Simmons? Jacob's in the dirt. Like, I'm not even decomposed yet. What are we doing?
1:16:23 Speaker 02 All right. Here's the counterpoint. Here's why I think you're wrong.
1:16:26 Bill Simmons? I'm not wrong.
1:16:28 Speaker 02 She has no interest in Daniel. Daniel, this was one of my picking nits, actually, is that Daniel
1:16:36 Speaker 02 literally doesn't even wait until after the funeral, at the funeral, at Jacob's funeral. He's hitting on Rachel. He's putting the moves on Rachel.
1:16:45 Bill Simmons? The Amish move fast. You gotta be married in the Amish community.
1:16:47 Speaker 02 Apparently so. Rachel is not interested. It is not about her moving on quickly. It is simply that John, the, the, the appeal of Harrison Ford is, is too, it's impossible to resist.
1:16:58 Bill Simmons? I think she's at the stepdad store.
1:17:00 Speaker 02 She takes off the bonnet, the marital bonnet specifically to go hook up with Harrison Ford. She didn't take that bonnet off her fucking Daniel.
1:17:10 Bill Simmons? How you feel like Jacob's feeling in the ground?
1:17:12 Speaker 02 I think he's like, I also would have fucked Harrison Ford. I get it. I get it.
1:17:18 Bill Simmons? Yeah, she could have, could have had 10 seconds on when Jacob died. It rocked my world.
1:17:23 Speaker 02 They moved on from Jacob quickly. It's true. You're right.
1:17:26 Bill Simmons? He shouldn't even seem that sad after the funeral. She's like, I'm gonna go to the train. Whoa.
1:17:30 Speaker 02 What do we know?
1:17:31 Bill Simmons? Amtrak.
1:17:32 Speaker 02 What do we know about Jacob? What do we know, really?
1:17:34 Bill Simmons? Jacob might have sucked.
1:17:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:17:35 Bill Simmons? So you didn't, did you have a weak link or no?
1:17:37 Speaker 02 I have one. I didn't feel like super strongly about it, but I don't, um, I don't know that John Bulk, a character who I love and think is, I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, really handsome. Uh, I don't know if he is concerned enough, like appropriately concerned about his partner, Carter and his sister Elaine, like.
1:17:54 Bill Simmons? Be just being murdered by people looking?
1:17:56 Speaker 02 Well, McPhee, like, okay, a cop was killed in a train station. Then McPhee comes to him and tries to kill him in the parking, in the parking garage. He knows Schaefer's in it. And when he's on the phone with Carter and he's like, um, okay, get rid of the documents. You know, there's, this is like a, this is, Schaefer's in on it. Tell no one. And it's like, what should we do? FBI reporter? And he's just like, let me think about it. It's like, Buck, let's see a little bit of urgency, uh, to his sister. Hide my car. It's like, they're probably gonna open the garage.
1:18:30 Bill Simmons? The move is to leak to the newspaper. Get the story out.
1:18:34 Speaker 02 He thought, I, I thought that the ex, the reply to that of like, they're gonna wanna talk to Samuel was like decent cover, but not totally. Yeah, he's not concerned enough that these people who he loves are gonna have harm before then, which of course happens to Carter.
1:18:47 Bill Simmons? What's age the worst? I've never understood the Amish beards. I'm not here to judge facial hair, but just shaving the mustache, but keeping the beard.
1:18:56 Speaker 02 Okay. The good news is no Amish people are gonna listen to this and be offended.
1:19:00 Bill Simmons? Definitely not. They probably don't listen to podcasts. Um, I've just never understood the beard.
1:19:04 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:19:05 Bill Simmons? Nobody's tried it in the NBA. LeBron's not like, here's my, this year I have an Amish beard. I have no mustache, but I have a thick beard. I just don't get the look.
1:19:13 Speaker 02 You're growing a summer beard right now. Would this have been your pick if you weren't currently in the midst of beard season?
1:19:18 Bill Simmons? I was thinking about shaving it and I was just gonna shave the mustache and come in with the Amish beard.
1:19:22 Speaker 02 You could have done it. I see buttons on your shirt, so you're not quite plain enough.
1:19:26 Bill Simmons? I've just never understood the Amish beards. Uh, I have one big one, but do you have any what's age the worst? You love this beard.
1:19:31 Speaker 02 We already talked about that. I think the, the Academy Awards results from this year have aged the worst. We talked about that. I think certainly. Racially profiling T-bone has aged the worst. That's terrible.
1:19:41 Bill Simmons? I had that in Picket Knits, but same thing. He brings this poor Amish widow and her traumatized son to some bar in South Philly.
1:19:50 Speaker 02 Horrible.
1:19:51 Bill Simmons? Pulls out a black guy. Is this him?
1:19:53 Speaker 02 Very bad. That has aged the worst.
1:19:54 Bill Simmons? That was bad.
1:19:55 Speaker 02 Certainly. Yeah. What else do you have? What's your big one?
1:19:57 Bill Simmons? This is the big one.
1:19:58 Speaker 02 Tell me.
1:19:59 Bill Simmons? The slow motion make out scene is bad. It's a bad scene and she starts laughing in the middle. And I texted you last night, there's Top Gun Maverick, Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly flashbacks.
1:20:10 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:20:12 Bill Simmons? You know, I obviously, I got, I started dating my wife in 1998. I haven't had a lot of make out experience with different women since 1998.
1:20:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:20:22 Bill Simmons? But I did back in the day.
1:20:23 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:20:24 Bill Simmons? I don't remember anyone. Well, I don't remember anyone hysterically laughing as I was trying to make out with them. I feel like I would have been completely traumatized.
1:20:32 Speaker 02 Um.
1:20:32 Bill Simmons? That's like not the reaction you want when you're making out with somebody. Just start laughing.
1:20:36 Speaker 02 Well, have you considered?
1:20:37 Bill Simmons? Very strange.
1:20:38 Speaker 02 Listen, have you considered?
1:20:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:20:41 Speaker 02 That with love and respect, you know, the baby blues, you look great. You're not Harrison Ford. And I just.
1:20:48 Bill Simmons? So you think she's like, I can't.
1:20:49 Speaker 02 I think she's like, this is, oh.
1:20:51 Bill Simmons? This is the greatest moment of my life.
1:20:52 Speaker 02 This is happening. Yeah. I think it's like nervous laughter. Yeah. And I think there's, there's something about their kiss that is like, almost feral. Right? And I love that it is like a combination of this like sorrowful, mournful, like we know this is like.
1:21:06 Bill Simmons? I just think they would have been going at it. I think they're just going at it.
1:21:09 Speaker 02 They are. In the next scene, they're like knocking over all of the, all of the, the, the buckets of milk and fucking in the bar.
1:21:16 Bill Simmons? About this, no more laughing during make out, first make out scenes, Hollywood. Just get rid of it.
1:21:22 Speaker 02 It's fair.
1:21:22 Bill Simmons? Vincent Joyce, the word, are we sure this character was actually good at his job? John Book.
1:21:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:21:29 Bill Simmons? Um, what's your plan here?
1:21:31 Speaker 02 Well, I mean, he did get shot.
1:21:34 Bill Simmons? Force.
1:21:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:21:35 Bill Simmons? You're hiding in Amish country, endangering everybody there. You're endangering your partner.
1:21:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:21:39 Bill Simmons? You're endangering your sister and her kids.
1:21:42 Speaker 02 I don't have a lot of counterpoints to this.
1:21:43 Bill Simmons? And you're just like, I'll help you make this barn today. Yeah.
1:21:47 Speaker 02 He had to heal his hole.
1:21:48 Bill Simmons? Is that lemonade?
1:21:50 Speaker 02 The lemonade looks great. It looks very refreshing.
1:21:52 Bill Simmons? Uh, the Ruffalo Hannah Rubinek Partridge Overacting Award. I'm going with Eli's overlap after you've never milked a teat before? And there's a pause and then he's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
1:22:03 Speaker 02 How dare you?
1:22:04 Bill Simmons? Well, I'm just throwing it in there.
1:22:06 Speaker 02 I didn't have one for this. I didn't have one for this. This is a hard one. It's a, it's a very like understated film.
1:22:11 Bill Simmons? Do you have a CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award?
1:22:14 Speaker 02 I do. I don't think you're gonna like it.
1:22:16 Bill Simmons? Okay, let's hear it.
1:22:18 Speaker 02 Okay. Let me see if I can
1:22:22 Speaker 02 express what I mean here. My hottest take about the movie, despite what we talked about already, is undeniably a thriller. I think it is a Western.
1:22:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:22:32 Speaker 02 It is a genre mashup. Fish out of water, love story.
1:22:38 Speaker 02 I don't think it's really a cop movie.
1:22:41 Bill Simmons? Hmm.
1:22:42 Speaker 02 Here's why. It is of course a movie that features cops. But the cop plot is we gotta make Samuel the witness. We have to imperil book Samuel and Rachel. We have to establish book as this fish out of water in Amish country. But it's much more like mechanism and fact than core focus. Like, I don't think the movie is ultimately very interested in. We basically get one brief explanation of like what actually happened.
1:23:15 Bill Simmons? I don't think this is the hottest take because if it was interested in the cops, we would have spent more time in the police station and had one of those like police station scenes with people moving around and the sergeant yelling at somebody. It doesn't care about any of that.
1:23:27 Speaker 02 Exactly. I think Peter Weir would like, agree with this. But I think a lot of people are like, Witness is like a cop movie. I'm like, is it? I don't think of it that way.
1:23:35 Bill Simmons? No, it's a fish out of water movie. It's like a double, it's a reverse fish out of water.
1:23:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:23:41 Bill Simmons? Like what you said earlier.
1:23:42 Speaker 02 All right, tepid take.
1:23:44 Bill Simmons? That wasn't tepid.
1:23:47 Bill Simmons? I think you're right. I think people like, it's like Witness and there's a gun and it's, but you're right, it's not that movie. Um, I think this is Harrison Ford's best part of any part he ever played.
1:23:59 Speaker 02 What do you mean by best part?
1:24:00 Bill Simmons? I just think this is the best part, character role. And I'm putting it above Indiana Jones and Han Solo.
1:24:07 Speaker 02 Hold on. Best performance or the character is like the most consequential?
1:24:11 Bill Simmons? I just think this had the most meat.
1:24:14 Bill Simmons? I think it's the hardest part he played. So that's how I take. I think it had the hard, it was the hardest thing to land the plane on. And I think only a couple of actors could have played it over the years. I think Redford would have tried, but he wouldn't have had the sexuality. I think Brad Pitt could have done it. I think Leo maybe in like the mid 2000s, late 2000s, possibly.
1:24:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:24:37 Bill Simmons? But for the most part, I think this is a really hard play in the land.
1:24:40 Speaker 02 I agree. I mean, I think, I don't agree necessarily that it's the, that it would be number one on the list, but I agree with everything you said about the part. And I think the performance is great and I think he is uniquely suited.
1:24:49 Bill Simmons? This is in the same movie if they're just the actor in it.
1:24:52 Speaker 02 You're right. I mean, the number of people who can, and the, the challenge of having in like a, a short span of time in the film to look at Rachel during the sponge bath. And then when the dirty cops arrive, like instantly go into action hero mode.
1:25:08 Bill Simmons? I have to trust that he's an action hero. I have to trust that, that he can have this connection with the little kid and with the little kid's mom.
1:25:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:25:17 Bill Simmons? I don't know. I just think it was a really hard role.
1:25:18 Speaker 02 I think it's, it's.
1:25:20 Bill Simmons? I think he makes it look easy is my point. And I don't think that's an easy role.
1:25:24 Speaker 02 I definitely agree with that. My only, I don't disagree with anything you're saying about this role. I would say.
1:25:29 Bill Simmons? Russell Crowe is the other one who could have done it.
1:25:32 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
1:25:32 Bill Simmons? Proof of life, Russell Crowe, 100%.
1:25:34 Speaker 02 He doesn't, yeah, he's not.
1:25:36 Bill Simmons? You're not a proof of lifer.
1:25:38 Speaker 02 It's just not quite the same like animal magnetism when you look at Russell Crowe.
1:25:41 Bill Simmons? Has it in Proof of Life though?
1:25:42 Speaker 02 I guess so. Yeah. I think, okay, here's my only, maybe it's not a counterpoint to your argument. I would put like, I would say maybe it's the case to make like John Book, Han Solo and Indiana Jones, just one A, one B, one C. Is like, okay, Indiana Jones is, you could argue the most.
1:25:57 Bill Simmons? I'd throw in Kimbo just because he's so good in that.
1:25:59 Speaker 02 I think you can make the case, and many people have, that Indiana Jones is the most iconic character in movie history. Right? Then I think you would say about Han Solo.
1:26:10 Speaker 02 He is the, he's at the top of the coaching tree for The Roguish Scoundrel. Nobody has matched it, ever.
1:26:17 Bill Simmons? We covered that in our four and a half hour Star Wars pod.
1:26:19 Speaker 02 Well, get ready to cover it again on Empire, which is actually Han's movie. Should've saved it for that.
1:26:24 Bill Simmons? Well, I saved you for that one.
1:26:27 Speaker 02 I've, I've, I've rare, everybody who works with you and loves you and cherishes you has a like, if you do this without me, I will, really, I'll tell you, I'm okay with it, but I'll carry it to my grave.
1:26:36 Bill Simmons? I would, I would never do Empire.
1:26:37 Speaker 02 Witness was one of them, Empire's one of them. And as you know, Bull Durham, which I assume will be our last pod together before we both retire.
1:26:45 Bill Simmons? Like in two weeks for me. Casting what ifs.
1:26:48 Speaker 02 Well, it's baseball season.
1:26:48 Bill Simmons? No, now I'm energized. I got this new studio. I got my stuff.
1:26:51 Speaker 02 It looks great in here, man.
1:26:52 Bill Simmons? Casting what ifs.
1:26:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:26:54 Bill Simmons? Redford wanted to be in the movie, approached the producers and they kind of pushed it off because they, he had the reputation at that point for, he would come in, start changing stuff. Because Robert Redford, kind of a dick.
1:27:06 Speaker 02 This is my favorite thing you do.
1:27:08 Bill Simmons? It's not a thing. It's just a fact. I'm just a student of Hollywood history.
1:27:12 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:27:13 Bill Simmons? These guys literally were like, no, thanks, Robert Redford. We'd rather, we'd rather find another actor.
1:27:18 Speaker 02 I get it.
1:27:18 Bill Simmons? David Cronenberg turned it down.
1:27:20 Speaker 02 That would have been, I don't understand.
1:27:22 Bill Simmons? I didn't understand.
1:27:22 Speaker 02 I don't understand that as a potential match.
1:27:24 Bill Simmons? Burt Reynolds in his biography said he wanted the lead role, but backed off. That would have been terrible.
1:27:31 Bill Simmons? Apparently Isabella Rossellini was offered the lead and said no. I don't know. It's half assed.
1:27:38 Speaker 02 I, I could see that.
1:27:39 Bill Simmons? I'll just read this for you and you decide how you feel because he is, we should mention Harrison Ford, notoriously a little cranky. That's the reputation.
1:27:48 Speaker 02 Part of his charm. Yeah.
1:27:50 Bill Simmons? When Feldman and Weir were impressed with McGillis right away, Ford took some convincing. He didn't think she was a good choice for the role and only came around and Weir gently chastised him for not trusting the director's instincts. And then it was like, you get a feeling from. The research, I don't think they that Kelly McIlwes and Harrison Ford were like going to Dodger games after this movie. I think it was like, hey, nice working with you. I'll see you later.
1:28:14 Speaker 02 Interesting. They have such unbelievable chemistry that like, it's hard for me to imagine that being true. Like, but
1:28:22 Bill Simmons? Good actors.
1:28:23 Speaker 02 So is your ta- is your read on that that that was about her or that it was more of a product of like Harrison Ford being like, why can we not fill any of these other roles with like, people who have acted before?
1:28:33 Bill Simmons? I think it was like, where did we get this person?
1:28:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, like a lot of like people who hadn't acted before.
1:28:40 Bill Simmons? Yeah. Uh, best that guy award. So John Buck's partner.
1:28:46 Bill Simmons? He's the that guy.
1:28:47 Speaker 02 Carter, yeah.
1:28:47 Bill Simmons? Most famously in Another Forty Eight Hours, a terrible movie that I've watched like 12 times. He uh, he's, he's working for the Iceman. But I just, that guy's, I didn't even know that guy's name. Dion Waiters award, Evil Danny Glover is eligible?
1:29:00 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:29:01 Bill Simmons? Just wanted to mention that.
1:29:02 Speaker 02 Interesting. I didn't think he would be eligible. Okay, that's compelling. I, I thought this was an easy one for Patti LuPone as Buck's sister.
1:29:11 Bill Simmons? With the mullet and
1:29:13 Speaker 02 This is a remarkable use of one of the great theater performers of our time.
1:29:17 Bill Simmons? It's weird because she's making movies for a couple of years there because she was in that Tom Scare Vigilante movie.
1:29:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. Recently starred in Agatha All Along, a wonderful MCU show that I know you watch.
1:29:27 Bill Simmons? It was like, is she trying to be an actor? Meanwhile, she's one of the great theater people.
1:29:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, this is just like
1:29:32 Bill Simmons? I vote for Evil Danny Glover.
1:29:34 Speaker 02 Okay. I do like when Elaine is like, anybody who knows, John knows that's a goddamn lie. That's real Dion Waiters stuff to me.
1:29:42 Bill Simmons? Recasting couch director city.
1:29:46 Speaker 02 You can't.
1:29:49 Speaker 02 Where are you gonna put this other than here?
1:29:52 Bill Simmons? What?
1:29:52 Speaker 02 You can't put this anywhere other than Lancaster or York. Where could this possibly be?
1:29:57 Bill Simmons? What about role?
1:30:00 Bill Simmons? Have somebody for Kelly McGillis' part.
1:30:03 Speaker 02 Tell me.
1:30:06 Bill Simmons? Well, so if you wanted to go like relatively anonymous, I think there's a Gina Davis case.
1:30:12 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:30:13 Bill Simmons? She'd really only been in Fletch and was really been in nothing, but it was just a cute tall brunette with curly hair.
1:30:22 Speaker 02 That's a, I like that.
1:30:22 Bill Simmons? But I think, I think she could have been in it.
1:30:25 Speaker 02 That's a good one. I mean, I think Kelly McGillis is great in this movie.
1:30:30 Bill Simmons? What about my queen, Michelle Pfeiffer? It's a year after Scarface.
1:30:35 Speaker 02 No.
1:30:35 Bill Simmons? This does a lot of Michelle Pfeiffer stuff or just a lot of like staring and longing and faces.
1:30:41 Speaker 02 I mean.
1:30:42 Bill Simmons? Things she's good at. I'm fine with keeping Kelly McGillis. I just want to talk it out.
1:30:45 Speaker 02 I think that like when Peter Weir basically says that famous American actresses know too much to be believable as Rachel. He's sort of talking about like, oh, Michelle Pfeiffer.
1:30:55 Bill Simmons? I think we're fine. I think Gina Davis maybe.
1:30:58 Speaker 02 That's a good one.
1:30:59 Bill Simmons? I'll quickly rip through some half-festering research.
1:31:01 Speaker 02 Tell me.
1:31:03 Bill Simmons? I love Ford spent time with Philly PD homicide. I always loved that anecdote in the rewatchables. Like just how weird that would be for the Philly PD. Like, see, you know that actor, the Han Solo, Han Solo guy?
1:31:15 Speaker 02 Indiana Jones is in the car tonight.
1:31:16 Bill Simmons? He's gonna come with us on a couple.
1:31:20 Speaker 02 I like too that he did the research with the, the ride alongs with the cops and Kelly McGillis went and like lived with an Amish family.
1:31:25 Bill Simmons? Lived with Amish widow and her seven children and learned how to milk cows and practice their dialect.
1:31:30 Speaker 02 And Harrison Ford is basically like, I didn't do any research on the Amish because books not supposed to know about them.
1:31:35 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:31:36 Speaker 02 Makes sense, but is also to me very reminiscent of like a young Rupert Grint, Ron Weasley saying like, Alfonso Cuarón asked us to all do homework assignments on our character for Prisoner of Azkaban. And I didn't turn mine in. And then my excuse was Ron Weasley would not have done his homework.
1:31:51 Bill Simmons? Right.
1:31:52 Speaker 02 Using your character as cover for not doing it. I love it.
1:31:54 Bill Simmons? Harrison Ford's like, I couldn't do research. I was having sex with nine people a day.
1:31:58 Speaker 02 You try to schedule two research trips when you're fucking nine chicks every day.
1:32:02 Bill Simmons? The Amish wouldn't have sex with me? The, uh, the barn raising scene, you mentioned it was a short paragraph. And then they blew it out, but it wasn't supposed to be what that was. So the corn silo death.
1:32:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:32:14 Bill Simmons? The corn was dropped onto the actor, but there was a scuba diving regulator with an air tank underneath.
1:32:20 Speaker 02 This is actually like. You hear this and you're like, it's amazing that no one died. That's insane.
1:32:27 Bill Simmons? Well, that's why they used an actor that I don't even know who that actor was. They're like, dude, look, it's 10% chance you're gonna die in this corn silo.
1:32:33 Speaker 02 Kind of crazy. Like, don't worry, we put a scuba tank there.
1:32:36 Bill Simmons? Yeah, there's scuba there.
1:32:37 Speaker 02 So that when you're actually about to asphyxiate, you can just reach down into the corn and grab it and it'll be fine.
1:32:42 Bill Simmons? That guy's now in a wheelchair. The National Committee for Amish Religious Freedom called for a boycott.
1:32:50 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:32:51 Bill Simmons? And then our guy, Karasawa, said Witness was one of his favorite films of all time.
1:32:56 Speaker 02 This was one of my favorite things I've ever learned.
1:32:58 Bill Simmons? Unbelievable.
1:32:58 Speaker 02 In prepping for rewatchable.
1:32:59 Bill Simmons? What a win for Peter Weir.
1:33:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, like, Karasawa praising your movie must be like one of the greatest things that could happen to a director. I don't know, nothing, I guess. I mean, maybe you go on to make other great movies like Dead Poets Society, but yeah, that was awesome to learn that. I thought that was so cool.
1:33:15 Bill Simmons? We'll take one more break and then we'll finish. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year.
1:33:59 Bill Simmons? Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now. All right, Apex Mountain.
1:34:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:34:07 Bill Simmons? I mean, I don't even know the answer for her support. It's probably not this. It's.
1:34:14 Speaker 02 This is tough.
1:34:15 Bill Simmons? Maybe somewhere in the eighties for him though.
1:34:16 Speaker 02 Oh, for sure.
1:34:17 Bill Simmons? It's this specific, but he does. He has Raiders two, Temple, Indiana Jones, Temple of Doom.
1:34:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:34:25 Bill Simmons? Jedi has come out eighteen months before this. He is, I, I think it actually might be this.
1:34:33 Speaker 02 I think there's a case because.
1:34:34 Bill Simmons? He's the least competition.
1:34:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:34:35 Bill Simmons? For all the parts.
1:34:36 Speaker 02 He got nominated for best actor. Like he, he's leveling up in terms of the prestige.
1:34:41 Bill Simmons? I think he's the first phone call after this movie for any movie he wants.
1:34:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:34:45 Bill Simmons? For a couple of years there.
1:34:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:34:46 Bill Simmons? So maybe it is this.
1:34:47 Speaker 02 You could, it's hard to argue against eighty, eighty-one, eighty-two Empire Raiders, Blade Runner. That's just, how does that even happen?
1:34:56 Bill Simmons? But if you're talking about most juice.
1:34:57 Speaker 02 But then you build up toward it also after doing all those things.
1:35:01 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:35:01 Speaker 02 After being Han Solo and Indiana Jones and Deckard. I got nominated for best actor for playing John Book in this movie that nobody like, everybody passed on and didn't want to make, got nominated for eight Oscars and made a hundred seventeen million dollars. Like, because I'm in it.
1:35:18 Bill Simmons? I'm a hero for the Amish.
1:35:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:35:20 Bill Simmons? McGillis, no, it's Top Gun.
1:35:22 Speaker 02 Top Gun, yeah, for sure.
1:35:24 Bill Simmons? It's her putting on the sunglasses in the elevator trying to get frisky for Cruise. We covered that on the rewatchables a long time ago.
1:35:31 Speaker 02 One of my favorite rewatchables ever.
1:35:32 Bill Simmons? Two studios ago.
1:35:33 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
1:35:33 Bill Simmons? A great one.
1:35:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, another life.
1:35:35 Bill Simmons? Amish movie characters?
1:35:38 Speaker 02 I cannot think of anything else that would be quite at this level.
1:35:42 Bill Simmons? I think it's a yes.
1:35:43 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:35:43 Bill Simmons? Evil Philly police.
1:35:47 Speaker 02 Can't be.
1:35:48 Bill Simmons? Probably can't be, but I also couldn't think of another one.
1:35:50 Speaker 02 Seems impossible.
1:35:52 Bill Simmons? How about corn?
1:35:55 Speaker 02 Silos.
1:35:56 Bill Simmons? Apex bound for corn. Corn actually murdering somebody.
1:35:59 Speaker 02 With love and respect to the Apple TV plus show Silo that I do enjoy. It's good, certainly for corn silos. I think this is number one.
1:36:06 Bill Simmons? Not sure about corn.
1:36:06 Speaker 02 Sponge bass?
1:36:07 Bill Simmons? Corn silos, yeah, Sponge bass.
1:36:10 Speaker 02 It's gotta be this, right?
1:36:12 Bill Simmons? I had some questions about the sponge bath for later, but we can do it now.
1:36:16 Speaker 02 Tell me.
1:36:16 Bill Simmons? Is it, it's just the top of the waist sponge bath?
1:36:19 Speaker 02 Uh, I had, I gotta be honest.
1:36:21 Bill Simmons? We thought sponge baths were kind of like a full body experience.
1:36:24 Speaker 02 I have some questions about that too, especially like it's clearly, it's warm, it's sticky, it's sweaty. I think if you're about to be intimate with someone, you'd wanna do some rinsing in some other areas. I think, uh, that would be my note for Rachel, but you know, she's-
1:36:36 Bill Simmons? Do you really have sponge bath, top half body, lower half body? I would feel like lower half would be the focal point, maybe?
1:36:42 Speaker 02 I think you do it all, ideally.
1:36:44 Bill Simmons? That's what I thought was a sponge bath was.
1:36:46 Speaker 02 Think you do it all, yeah.
1:36:46 Bill Simmons? She's like a half bath.
1:36:47 Speaker 02 Well, when she was sponging Book, when he was, when he was being nursed, you know, he's got the, the poultice and the tea and she's dabbing him. That was presumably all above the waist. I don't think she went below the waist.
1:37:03 Bill Simmons? Yeah. How did John Book go to the bathroom and was there a bedpan? There's questions I didn't even wanna do and probably in answerable questions.
1:37:09 Speaker 02 And yet here you are.
1:37:11 Bill Simmons? Evil Danny Glover, Apex Mount, 100% yes. Although, I will submit his performance in Shooter, movie we've already done in the rewatchables. When him and Ned Beatty are both evil.
1:37:23 Speaker 02 Great one.
1:37:23 Bill Simmons? I really, I love Evil Danny Glover. Uh, good enough, it's, it's, uh, it's, uh, Die Hard.
1:37:29 Speaker 02 Die Hard, yeah. Lukas Haas, yes.
1:37:31 Bill Simmons? Philly Train Station Movie Murders.
1:37:33 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
1:37:34 Bill Simmons? I think it's Blowout.
1:37:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, hmm.
1:37:39 Bill Simmons? This is good, but I think Blowout's better and uses the station better.
1:37:42 Speaker 02 Interesting. I do like the like trip we take with Samuel through the station. We get to like look up at the war memorial. He mistakes the acidic Jew for an Amish man. Like they make good use of the station, they're sitting, they're waiting, they've gotta connect on the train to Baltimore. There's a delay, but yeah, it's a crowded field.
1:37:58 Bill Simmons? Vigo, uh, it's definitely him playing Oregon. What's the guy's name?
1:38:05 Speaker 02 Aragorn?
1:38:06 Bill Simmons? Aragorn.
1:38:07 Speaker 02 So when I say to you, the return of the king, it means nothing to you.
1:38:10 Bill Simmons? Nothing at all.
1:38:11 Speaker 02 Okay, well, that's a shame.
1:38:12 Bill Simmons? Lukas Haas, I think it was.
1:38:14 Speaker 02 It's this.
1:38:15 Bill Simmons? A 2001 Victoria's Secret thing that him and Leo were invited to.
1:38:19 Speaker 02 That's fair. It could be any, any pussy posky, any pussy posse escapade is probably truly his apex, but it could be this. What about Peter Weir? That's a hard one.
1:38:32 Bill Simmons? I think it's Dead Poets.
1:38:33 Speaker 02 I think so too, because this is his first American movie. So even though this was like really successful and well received and heavily nominated, when he then is nominated, what is that, three years, four years later? Four years later, he's nominated again for best director.
1:38:49 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:38:50 Speaker 02 For Dead Poets, that's, that's probably, that's probably.
1:38:52 Bill Simmons? I think that movie had, as much as I love Witness, I think Dead Poets has a little more juice. Like just even in the last 35 plus years with the cast it had.
1:39:02 Speaker 02 They're both great.
1:39:03 Bill Simmons? The meaning for Robin Williams' career, both of them are great, but I think Dead Poets, it's an interesting one. I think both of them have held up spectacularly well, which is crazy.
1:39:11 Speaker 02 I know.
1:39:11 Bill Simmons? This is the eighties.
1:39:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:13 Bill Simmons? Cruise or Hanks?
1:39:15 Speaker 02 I think Cruise, you could, you could, Cruise could be book. I think he could be.
1:39:22 Bill Simmons? So I went Hanks.
1:39:23 Speaker 02 For book?
1:39:24 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:39:25 Speaker 02 No. And I, as you know, I almost always pick Hanks for these. No, I don't think so. What's your case?
1:39:35 Bill Simmons? It's a tough one, because I don't think either of them, I don't think it's a good role for either. But I think Hanks, I could believe more as like a Philly cop.
1:39:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:39:45 Bill Simmons? Chiming with the Amish thing. I think the way he would have played the longing sex stuff with, with Rachel, I just think he would have done it differently. It wouldn't have been as like primal. It would have been more like.
1:39:56 Speaker 02 The counterpoint to Cruise is of course, while we both love Top Gun, we have seen Tom Cruise and Kelly McIlwes in a sex scene before.
1:40:03 Bill Simmons? That's why I couldn't do it.
1:40:04 Speaker 02 And we know what that's like, so you're right.
1:40:06 Bill Simmons? That's why we couldn't do it. We already know that the chemistry thing was tough with them.
1:40:09 Speaker 02 You're right. Yeah.
1:40:10 Bill Simmons? So.
1:40:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:40:11 Bill Simmons? Scorsese or Spielberg? I went with Spielberg.
1:40:14 Speaker 02 I think it's Spielberg. I do think the version of this that Scorsese does, where he really dials up the like neo noir thriller cop aspect is fascinating. Did you see that he apparently turned this down? Scorsese?
1:40:26 Bill Simmons? I didn't know whether I should believe.
1:40:28 Speaker 02 Is that bullshit?
1:40:28 Bill Simmons? I thought that that set off my detector.
1:40:30 Speaker 02 That was interesting to think about, but then what it really sent me down a rabbit hole of exploring was why Martin Scorsese and Harrison Ford have never worked together, which is crazy. I mean, obviously like the Cape Fear like alternate history is established.
1:40:42 Bill Simmons? Probably a late 70s party incident would be my guess. Yeah.
1:40:46 Speaker 02 This is why you're you.
1:40:47 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:40:48 Speaker 02 This is why you're you. Yeah.
1:40:50 Bill Simmons? Also, he was with Melissa Matheson, who's with Spielberg and Scorsese and Spielberg are buddies. There's probably some history. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? It's a tough one.
1:41:01 Speaker 02 So he's 18 years old and 85, too young to be one of the cops.
1:41:05 Bill Simmons? No, but you could take any age. That's part of the game. You could go old Philip Seymour Hoffman.
1:41:09 Speaker 02 Hmm. I could see him. The thing is, there ultimately aren't that many roles of prominence in the movie.
1:41:16 Bill Simmons? I was thinking Uncle Eli, maybe Uncle Eli is not as old. And you just give him a nice little beard and he's just being Philip Seymour Hoffman. Or, because then you could have had for the SpongeBob dancing scene, he could have been like, "Yo, Buck, how's the peeping?" "How's the peeping?"
1:41:34 Speaker 02 "How's the peeping?" That would have been good. That would have been great.
1:41:37 Bill Simmons? Pick a Nits. We mentioned grabbing a black suspect out of the bar randomly and ramming him against the car to your terrified Amish widow.
1:41:46 Speaker 02 Terrible.
1:41:47 Bill Simmons? All right. So.
1:41:50 Bill Simmons? They save his gunshot infection with a poultice.
1:41:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, three parts milk, two parts linseed oil.
1:41:55 Bill Simmons? Yeah, I did. I did some research on this one. It uh, it was a little shaky.
1:42:01 Speaker 02 I also had underpicking that should John Book be alive? Yeah, I mean.
1:42:07 Bill Simmons? Or did John Book leave and then got some sort of terrible cancer like a month later?
1:42:12 Speaker 02 So the loss of blood alone, you just think he should have died, but the red and obviously like we hear it's more, he's hot, he's got a fever. It seems like he should have gotten it.
1:42:21 Bill Simmons? He's talking gibberish?
1:42:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, he's having fever dreams. Like he should have probably died from an infection. I think probably I'm glad he didn't, but he should have.
1:42:29 Bill Simmons? They're like, did we, we ran out of linseed oil. You've got to go downtown.
1:42:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:42:33 Bill Simmons? Put that with the milk.
1:42:34 Speaker 02 Put some more on the call. Also, like.
1:42:37 Speaker 02 I'm glad that everything else that happens in the movie happens, but.
1:42:41 Speaker 02 He got shot? He's like building a barn mere days.
1:42:46 Bill Simmons? He's fine. Yeah, he's throwing punches.
1:42:47 Speaker 02 It's, I mean, saying he can milk a cow, sure, but like he's hoisting Samuel up an entire level of a barn into the loft. Doesn't that hurt?
1:42:56 Bill Simmons? Amazing recovery. Bullet went right in and out.
1:42:58 Speaker 02 Incredible.
1:42:58 Bill Simmons? And I did the corn suffocation thing already. What did you have? Anything else?
1:43:02 Speaker 02 Okay, I do. This is where I don't want to like pick nits with the Samuel witnesses a murder scene because it's iconic, but. Nobody hears Samuel taking a piss. Does that make sense?
1:43:17 Bill Simmons? And they don't check the stall.
1:43:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, and like Fergie says, because Samuel has that little kind of like little chirp he makes so that, and then McPhee is like, starts to check the stalls. And Fergie's like, I did that already. But you did it already, but did you? Did you miss the Amish kid taking a piss in an unlocked, open stall? And then there's some splashing of the water at the sink. So you think maybe that would cover it? But the cop they kill stops washing his face because he's like, something's happening. He looks around, there's no sound. They should hear Samuel taking a piss. I don't think that totally.
1:43:52 Bill Simmons? Well, to extend that. This kid who has not really seen anything in his life, all of a sudden has the wherewithal to be like, I'm gonna hide under some. I like it, I support it, but it could be picked.
1:44:04 Speaker 02 That's an interesting one. Like, would you have just kind of almost on like a base instinct?
1:44:08 Bill Simmons? Would he just be like frozen?
1:44:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, would you go to hide?
1:44:11 Bill Simmons? Or does the fact that he hasn't had his brain washed by Tom and Jerry cartoons, Brady Bunch reruns?
1:44:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:44:18 Bill Simmons? That he would actually have a fresh brain to know?
1:44:20 Speaker 02 That's right. Maybe the like animal instincts are purer there. That's possible.
1:44:25 Speaker 02 Here's one for you.
1:44:26 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:44:27 Speaker 02 We both really like the parking garage shootout. It's great. However.
1:44:31 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:44:31 Speaker 02 On the picking nits front, two things. One, why does McPhee go alone? Why doesn't he bring Fergie? Why don't they go all in on killing Book?
1:44:42 Bill Simmons? Right. Tag team it?
1:44:44 Speaker 02 Book has gone to Schaefer and he's like, it's McPhee. Okay. He's not here. I can't ask him. He's in Florida on vacation. And then obviously.
1:44:52 Bill Simmons? Maybe it was bowling night for Fergie.
1:44:54 Speaker 02 Sure. You're going after.
1:44:56 Bill Simmons? Softball game.
1:44:57 Speaker 02 Captain, Detective Captain John Book to preserve your PCP crime ring.
1:45:05 Bill Simmons? Yeah. $22 million at stake.
1:45:07 Speaker 02 22 mil. You have to ensure that he's, he's killed. So this is a two-part picking nit. Why don't they go in stronger? And then
1:45:17 Speaker 02 what is the explanation, excuse for McPhee leaving? That's the only chance they have to get the drop.
1:45:24 Bill Simmons? I have a mild picking nit with dirty cops when there's this much money. What do they do with the money? Because.
1:45:30 Speaker 02 This is a great, this is a great question. You can't spend it or then you know.
1:45:34 Bill Simmons? You'd be like, hey, I just bought this $7 million condo in Lake Arrowhead or something.
1:45:39 Speaker 02 Right.
1:45:39 Bill Simmons? Be like, you're a fucking police sergeant. How'd you do that? So you basically just have to bury the money?
1:45:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, you're saving it for retirement.
1:45:46 Bill Simmons? Cause they cut to Paul's house at one point and he's just like having the cookout with the hot dogs.
1:45:52 Speaker 02 Nice home.
1:45:52 Bill Simmons? Back, nice home.
1:45:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:45:54 Bill Simmons? But the $22 billion in PCP, which I guess they're splitting.
1:45:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:45:58 Bill Simmons? Three ways. He's getting at least five, six mil. What do you, do you just have to, is there a a time where you're like, when I turn 60, that's when I'm gonna buy a fucking Porsche?
1:46:07 Speaker 02 Yeah. Maybe they're investing, right? Growing the fortune. They've got some like goodies.
1:46:12 Bill Simmons? Somebody's noticing something.
1:46:13 Speaker 02 Hidden away. Yeah, well, somebody did notice something.
1:46:16 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:46:19 Bill Simmons? Sequel, prequel, prestige, all black cast are untouchable. This is untouchable.
1:46:23 Speaker 02 Untouchable.
1:46:24 Bill Simmons? I played it, played out in my head, like, what a prestige. And I just like, no, this is perfect. We're in and out in.
1:46:32 Speaker 02 The tension would be hard to maintain over a full season, I think. It's so perfect. It's just south of two hours. Perfect.
1:46:39 Bill Simmons? Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson? No, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs? Or Wilford Brimley in The Firm?
1:46:50 Speaker 02 I think the answer here is obvious.
1:46:52 Bill Simmons? Is it Wayne? No.
1:46:54 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
1:46:55 Bill Simmons? You think it's Wayne Jenkins? Cause the Baltimore Philly thing?
1:46:58 Speaker 02 Exactly. The, the, the dirty cop ring has extended to Baltimore.
1:47:01 Bill Simmons? Oh, to Wayne Jenkins?
1:47:03 Speaker 02 They call Wayne in as a reinforcement. Their fellow dirty cop, Wayne is a dirty cop, their fellow dirty cop. He just gets on the Acela, gets on the Amtrak, pops up.
1:47:13 Speaker 02 I didn't know we were dealing with super milker.
1:47:17 Speaker 02 Going down to the grain silo, hon? Perfect.
1:47:21 Bill Simmons? Look at you, fucking, I'm a super cop.
1:47:23 Speaker 02 Raising a barn?
1:47:25 Bill Simmons? Yeah, you're right. That's definitely Wayne Jenkins. Short, short trip for him, less than an hour and a half.
1:47:30 Speaker 02 Exactly. Easy.
1:47:32 Bill Simmons? Just one Oscar who gets it.
1:47:34 Speaker 02 Harrison Ford. Come on.
1:47:35 Bill Simmons? I'm going movie.
1:47:37 Speaker 02 I do think this should have won Best Picture for sure. And I think it's sort of silly that it didn't. But over the span of history, the fact that Harrison Ford doesn't have an Oscar is, I honestly, I think crazy.
1:47:48 Bill Simmons? Well, he'll get the honorary Oscar before he, um, what, how old is he? Like 85 now?
1:47:54 Speaker 02 He's 83.
1:47:55 Bill Simmons? 83.
1:47:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:47:56 Bill Simmons? Probably an answerable question.
1:47:57 Speaker 02 It looks great, still.
1:48:00 Bill Simmons? I have four really good ones for you, but do you have any good ones?
1:48:03 Speaker 02 Um.
1:48:05 Bill Simmons? I'm happy to power through.
1:48:05 Speaker 02 I mean, I have some, I don't know if they're good. I guess you'll be the judge of that. What happens, Jacob? Uh, Rachel's basically supposed to be like 28 years old. What happened to Jacob? Did he get kicked by a mule?
1:48:15 Bill Simmons? I had that and then I had the asterisk of, are we sure Daniel didn't kill Jacob?
1:48:19 Speaker 02 Love this.
1:48:20 Bill Simmons? Love this. It's like, hey, we were milking the cow, kicked him in the head, and now he's dead.
1:48:25 Speaker 02 This is great. I mean, it could have been, could have been illness, obviously. He could have, he could have been sick, but like, I like the idea of some sort of farm-related incident and that Daniel might have been orchestrating it.
1:48:36 Bill Simmons? Well, the Amish didn't believe in any form of violence. So if Daniel had it in him, I think he punches the bully or something.
1:48:41 Speaker 02 True, you're right. Daniel's not capable of that.
1:48:43 Bill Simmons? Here's the, here's the actual answer.
1:48:44 Speaker 02 But maybe he celebrated it.
1:48:45 Bill Simmons? This is, this is a society where you treat a gunshot wound with milk and linseed oil. So Daniel probably got bronchitis and just died.
1:48:54 Speaker 02 It's entirely possible.
1:48:55 Bill Simmons? He's like, I can't breathe. They're like, Daniel, here's some butter. Put this on your forehead and then stand upside down and the bronchitis will go away.
1:49:06 Speaker 02 As two people who are often afflicted with bronchitis, maybe we should try it. I mean.
1:49:10 Bill Simmons? With some linseed oil?
1:49:11 Speaker 02 The three parts milk, two parts linseed oil, it worked. You know, listen, Kiburn, Jamie Lasseter gets his fucking hand chopped off and Kiburn's like, boil some wine. And it was fine. It was fine.
1:49:22 Bill Simmons? I never liked that they did that.
1:49:25 Speaker 02 I was that hand.
1:49:28 Bill Simmons? Did Book? Did Book and Rachel have sex or not?
1:49:32 Speaker 02 Definitely. This is, I think, canon.
1:49:35 Bill Simmons? Definitely?
1:49:35 Speaker 02 Because there's, it's, it is in the many different featurettes on the DVD. There's, there's a video essay called, see if I can remember all this, Show Don't Tell. And in that, it is explicitly stated that in the screenplay, there is a sex scene. So we're just decided not to show it.
1:49:58 Bill Simmons? Okay.
1:50:00 Speaker 02 They kiss.
1:50:01 Bill Simmons? So apparently it's answerable.
1:50:02 Speaker 02 On the hill, the inky sky, and then they go fuck. My, I had this on my list, but not did they fuck. My question to you for unanswerable questions is, where did they fuck? Do they just fuck right there in the grass? Like the Drackey under the night sky?
1:50:16 Bill Simmons? Probably right on top of Jacob's grave. Like just really ram it up to him.
1:50:23 Bill Simmons? Hey Jacob, you're already bummed out enough.
1:50:25 Speaker 02 It's entirely possible. I like to think that they-
1:50:27 Bill Simmons? They probably went to one of those new barns that weren't done yet. Be like, hey, there's a barn like five barns down. They're not finished with it yet.
1:50:34 Speaker 02 I hope they just went to the barn where the tension was so palpable during the dance.
1:50:39 Bill Simmons? It's a double shunning for her.
1:50:41 Speaker 02 Fuck in the car, fuck on the hay, fuck on the ladder, heading up to the loft, fuck on the back of the cow.
1:50:48 Bill Simmons? I mean, he's gotta have nine different spots.
1:50:52 Speaker 02 Was Daniel able to ever sexually satisfy Rachel after she had this experience with John Book?
1:51:00 Bill Simmons? I did think of that. Well, I said earlier that the alternate ending of her just-
1:51:05 Speaker 02 Yeah. She's always thinking about Book. Always. I feel bad for Daniel. I do.
1:51:10 Bill Simmons? Did Book and Samuel stay in touch?
1:51:13 Speaker 02 This was one of mine as well. Did they ever see each other again?
1:51:16 Bill Simmons? Did he write him a letter? Did he go back?
1:51:19 Speaker 02 I really hope so.
1:51:19 Bill Simmons? I felt like Book went back. I think he went back to say hi to everybody and-
1:51:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think he checked in.
1:51:24 Bill Simmons? Daniel probably didn't love it.
1:51:26 Speaker 02 I think he checked in. I think that was probably the end for Daniel and Rachel of their intimate acquaintance as a married couple, once Book returned, but-
1:51:34 Bill Simmons? Book got a letter from Samuel. Eli's dead. He got a hangnail and it got infected and he dropped dead. Because we decided to pour hot butter on it and got infected. Here's my number one unanswerable question.
1:51:48 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:51:49 Bill Simmons? Could Mallory Ribbon have been Amish?
1:51:52 Speaker 02 Is John Book there? Because if John Book is there and I can have sex with him in a barn or anywhere, the answer is yes.
1:52:01 Bill Simmons? John Book's not there.
1:52:03 Speaker 02 I'm less interested now. I think I'm less interested.
1:52:06 Bill Simmons? Can I make the case?
1:52:07 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:52:08 Bill Simmons? Well, yeah, I don't think you have TV.
1:52:11 Speaker 02 I couldn't live without TV.
1:52:12 Bill Simmons? It seems like you do have books.
1:52:14 Speaker 02 Sure.
1:52:14 Bill Simmons? I think the food looks extraordinary.
1:52:17 Speaker 02 The food looks good.
1:52:17 Bill Simmons? You're getting all fresh produce.
1:52:20 Speaker 02 Farm-to-table, yeah, locally sourced.
1:52:22 Bill Simmons? I was checking out some of the food spreads. Just seems like kinda stuff you would like.
1:52:26 Speaker 02 Butter and like ice cream made from fresh cream. Fresh cream in my coffee. Yeah, as you know, I, a very healthy person focused on wellness and nutrition, put heavy whipping cream in my coffee every day. It's delicious.
1:52:44 Speaker 02 And so I do think in that, it's so good.
1:52:46 Bill Simmons? You don't really do that, do you?
1:52:47 Speaker 02 Yes, I do. Yeah.
1:52:48 Bill Simmons? Oh, my lord.
1:52:49 Speaker 02 If I'm out in the wild, I'll get oat milk, uh, just to, you know, manage the situation. But at home, I do have heavy whipped cream.
1:52:54 Bill Simmons? That sounds delicious.
1:52:55 Speaker 02 It's great. I'd really recommend it. It's really good. Uh, so that part is appealing.
1:52:59 Bill Simmons? I got rid of half and half for like, two weeks once, like seven years ago, and started doing almond milk in my coffee.
1:53:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:06 Bill Simmons? And every day I was just sad the whole day.
1:53:08 Speaker 02 It's not the same.
1:53:09 Bill Simmons? And I was like, you know what? Coffee's the highlight of my day.
1:53:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:53:13 Bill Simmons? Makes me the happiest. I love it. I love having 20 ounces of coffee and going through texts and
1:53:18 Speaker 02 Try it with heavy whipped cream.
1:53:19 Bill Simmons? Steaming with the daygoes.
1:53:20 Speaker 02 Get back to me.
1:53:20 Bill Simmons? And why would I want to make that experience worse?
1:53:22 Speaker 02 You wouldn't. You shouldn't.
1:53:24 Bill Simmons? Heavy whipped cream, that's
1:53:25 Speaker 02 Give it a, give it a try.
1:53:26 Bill Simmons? Really unbelievable.
1:53:27 Speaker 02 I don't think that I could deal without, like, I, I don't think I could survive without electricity. Organized religion, not really for me. I, I'm a believer in a, a nice showerhead. You know, I like a nice showerhead.
1:53:41 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:53:42 Speaker 02 Sponge bath, not really for me.
1:53:43 Bill Simmons? I think the number one thing for me would be the no coffee. That's the immediate deal breaker for me. I could do, I could handle a sponge bath.
1:53:48 Speaker 02 They have coffee. We got the like, that's great coffee moment, right? So they have coffee. They've, they're growing crops. They have, they have food.
1:53:55 Bill Simmons? But is it like Folgers coffee or like actual, like, do you think they buy like the?
1:53:59 Speaker 02 I don't know.
1:54:00 Bill Simmons? All right, you're right. So they do have the coffee.
1:54:02 Speaker 02 Coffee, you'd be fine on that front, but you couldn't watch sports.
1:54:05 Bill Simmons? No sports at all.
1:54:06 Speaker 02 Podcasts. You couldn't record podcasts.
1:54:09 Bill Simmons? No sports would be a deal breaker.
1:54:10 Speaker 02 Very tough. Very tough.
1:54:13 Bill Simmons? I think I'd probably run out of things to say to people like Daniel after a couple of minutes.
1:54:17 Speaker 02 Same. You can't watch porn. You just have to watch somebody in your house take a sponge bath. That's as good as a guest. I don't know. It's limiting, honestly.
1:54:24 Bill Simmons? Like, what is minute four of a Daniel conversation looking like? So what'd you do today? Uh, we helped Bob build a barn. Uh, how was it? It was good.
1:54:33 Speaker 02 Same as the last barn. Yeah.
1:54:35 Bill Simmons? Yeah, went up. Cool.
1:54:38 Bill Simmons? Uh, the Zouattin Air Award for what happened the next day.
1:54:41 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:54:42 Bill Simmons? So she married Daniel.
1:54:45 Speaker 02 I mean, not immediately, but the courtship begins.
1:54:47 Bill Simmons? Titanic level.
1:54:48 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:54:49 Bill Simmons? I had one night with a guy and it rocked my world to the point where I threw this $2.5 billion necklace in the water.
1:54:55 Speaker 02 I think so.
1:54:56 Bill Simmons? I think that was her version of this.
1:54:58 Speaker 02 I completely agree. I think that that that moment is occupying a lot of her, her interior life moving forward.
1:55:05 Bill Simmons? What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I had a hard time with this one.
1:55:10 Speaker 02 This was harder than it typically is for the movies because like, um, I'm inclined to say I would pick the sponge that Rachel used to give John.
1:55:17 Bill Simmons? Yeah, that'd be weird.
1:55:17 Speaker 02 Sponge bath because like it touched him, but do other people know what that is? If they see it on my shelf, maybe not. Uh, the milking hat, you know, that could be fun, but.
1:55:27 Bill Simmons? The Harris support Amish hat?
1:55:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, the, yeah, the Amish hat or the milking hat.
1:55:31 Bill Simmons? I didn't have any of those.
1:55:32 Speaker 02 I ultimately went with the birdhouse.
1:55:34 Bill Simmons? Oh, that's a really good one.
1:55:35 Speaker 02 Because it, it's like a bookend of the film.
1:55:37 Bill Simmons? Great idea.
1:55:38 Speaker 02 He crashes into it. He puts it back.
1:55:39 Bill Simmons? Way better than mine.
1:55:40 Speaker 02 Like tearing something down, building it back up, Harrison Ford carpentry. That's my pick.
1:55:46 Bill Simmons? That's way better than mine.
1:55:47 Speaker 02 What was yours?
1:55:49 Bill Simmons? Um.
1:55:52 Bill Simmons? Jacob's sad tombstone. No, I didn't have one.
1:55:55 Speaker 02 The bonnet, Rachel's bonnet, Samuel's wooden toy. You could do the car.
1:56:00 Bill Simmons? No, the birdhouse is great. Coach Finstock award, best life lesson. There's never only one way.
1:56:06 Speaker 02 That's what I had.
1:56:07 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:56:07 Speaker 02 Good old Eli.
1:56:08 Bill Simmons? What'd you have for best double feature choice?
1:56:10 Speaker 02 So I would pair this with Mosquito Coast. I think the two.
1:56:13 Bill Simmons? Ah, Little River Phoenix.
1:56:15 Speaker 02 Uh, the, the Harrison Ford, Peter Weir team ups in consecutive years. And I think also like, the character of Ally that Ford plays in Mosquito Coast is so distinct from like any of his other roles. And it's really like kind of the anti John book.
1:56:31 Bill Simmons? Longer hair. Yeah.
1:56:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, the long hair, the glasses. It's good. I watched it. I rewatched it two years ago when I was just basically like mainlining every Harrison Ford movie in anticipation of Dial of Destiny.
1:56:43 Bill Simmons? Yeah.
1:56:43 Speaker 02 And, uh, Mosquito Coast is fucked up, but pretty, pretty good movie. Underrated, I think.
1:56:49 Bill Simmons? The director is always a fun two hours regardless of what the movie is. I like, I like his stuff. Uh, who won the movie Harrison Ford?
1:56:56 Speaker 02 Harrison Ford. Correct.
1:56:58 Bill Simmons? Well, we don't have Craig this week because he's on vacation.
1:57:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, I want to know what he thinks.
1:57:03 Bill Simmons? Maybe we'll get it. Maybe, maybe next one he'll come back.
1:57:07 Speaker 02 That would be great. You should just text him while he's on vacation and, you know, say, Craig, it's 4:30. Time for milking.
1:57:16 Bill Simmons? Grab that teat.
1:57:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:57:20 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Craig. Anyway, thanks to Chris.
1:57:22 Speaker 02 Chris, our guy.
1:57:23 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Ronic.
1:57:24 Speaker 02 Ronic.
1:57:25 Bill Simmons? Thanks to Kevin for coming over today and making sure the studio was going good.
1:57:29 Speaker 02 The best.
1:57:30 Bill Simmons? And then we'll be back with another Rewatchables episode next week. This is it. We did Witness, finally.
1:57:35 Speaker 02 I'm thrilled. An honor, a privilege.
1:57:37 Bill Simmons? And shout out to our girl, Jo.
1:57:39 Speaker 02 Good old Jo. We love Jo. We miss Jo. Jo loves this movie.
1:57:43 Bill Simmons? I know.
1:57:43 Speaker 02 Dobbins loves this movie.
1:57:45 Bill Simmons? It's a classic.
1:57:46 Speaker 02 It's a great one.
1:57:47 Bill Simmons? This was, it could only be you. We couldn't have more people on this. It had to be your, your thing.
1:57:51 Speaker 02 We've been waiting for this one for a while.
1:57:53 Bill Simmons? Hopefully Harrison 40 years. Mallory Rubin, thank you.
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Previous ‘Sinners’ With Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, and Wesley Morris Next ‘American Gangster’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated