‘The Truman Show’ With Bill Simmons, Glen Powell, and Chris Ryan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Chris Ryan are joined by actor Glen Powell to rewatch Jim Carrey’s 1998 classic ‘The Truman Show,’ directed by Peter Weir and starring Laura Linney and Ed Harris. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Ronak Nair, Chia Hao Tat, and Eduardo Ocampo Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan®. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there®. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply online in minutes. Get up to 3 million in coverage with no medical exam, just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/rewatch. That is E T H O S dot com slash rewatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. Today's episode of the Rewatchables is brought to by The Ringer Podcast Network. Where you can find my podcast, you can find Chris Ryan's podcast, The Watch. You can find Craig Horbeck's podcast, where we're a fantasy football show.

• 0:43Bill Simmons?

  Fantasy football, week 10.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:46Bill Simmons?

  This is where the strong become the strong and the weak become the weak.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  That's right. It's, uh, it's nut crunching time for fantasy.

• 0:52Bill Simmons?

  Um, you like when we have celebrities on the Rewatchables because it just throws the chainsaw in the hot tub for the podcast.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I gotta say, the secret's out. We have Glenn Powell. He set the bar pretty high for celebrities on the Rewatchables.

• 1:04Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna say, I, I think we learned some things in this episode. It's good when the celebrity has listened to the podcast and knows The Ringer, knows who we are. It's good when they suggest the movie and they really care, uh, that we did it. And, uh, I don't know. This is also a great movie that you'd actually seen, even though it came out in the 1990s.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a classic. I've seen it many times. Glenn has seen it many times and you can tell based on, uh, his performance.

• 1:27Bill Simmons?

  People are upset that we don't do a lot of Jim Carrey movies, but I've been saving it for Jim Carrey month.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:32Bill Simmons?

  And yet, uh, we just haven't done Jim Carrey month.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  Ace Ventura, I can't wait for Ace Ventura.

• 1:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, we have a bunch of ones. Anyway, uh, Rewatchables coming up next, The Truman Show with Glenn Powell. This episode is presented by PayPal. Let's talk holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility to pay in for no fees, no interest. Save the offer in the PayPal app to get 5% cash back when you pay later. So whether you're shopping for an ugly sweater party, a work gala, or whatever else, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday. Expires 12/31. See paypal.com/promoterms. Subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 2:32Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:33Bill Simmons?

  We've been talking about this pre Top Gun Maverick.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  We have.

• 2:38Bill Simmons?

  Cause you said you liked this podcast.

• 2:40Speaker 02

  I'm a big fan of this podcast, yeah.

• 2:41Bill Simmons?

  And we were like, we gotta get Glenn Powell on CR. And then COVID, Top Gun Maverick. You started making movies left and right and it took five years, but now we're here.

• 2:49Speaker 02

  I'm, it was worth the wait. It's worth the wait. This is, this is honestly like the perfect moment. I really like, there's a lot of comps between The Truman Show and Running Man. And just like the fact that I've gotten a lot, like I've had a long time to like watch y'all's podcasts and watch you guys do what you do. It feels like we've earned it now.

• 3:06Bill Simmons?

  Are you a big rewatcher? Do you have like a stable of movies that you're pumped? Like you kind of like cycle through over and over again?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  I love hosting movie nights at my house. So like, like everybody knows me to like, you know, cook some dinner for people and like host a movie night.

• 3:19Bill Simmons?

  Cook some dinner for people?

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Drinks and dinner, yeah.

• 3:24Bill Simmons?

  Making some brisket.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, just, just, you know, I love man in a grill. So, so what we'll do is we'll just like, you know, have like a little, like a little theater thing in my house. And so what we do is we just like, kind of, you know, choose a movie that a lot of people haven't seen. Basically what you guys do here and we talk about it afterwards. So like, kind of the same debrief, we do like a rewatchables version.

• 3:43Bill Simmons?

  Nice.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  And it's like, it's like, you know, sometimes it's like cool, serious movies, but sometimes you're like, hey, let's watch Three Ninjas. You know what I mean? And like, like, you know, this doesn't hold up.

• 3:55Bill Simmons?

  What was your rom com that hit? Set it off?

• 3:57Speaker 02

  Set, set it up.

• 3:58Bill Simmons?

  Set it up?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:59Bill Simmons?

  What's set it off?

• 3:59Speaker 02

  I'm sure, I'm sure it's another movie.

• 4:01Bill Simmons?

  That's my movie all summer. No, I remember when that hit.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:04Bill Simmons?

  And we were all happy because it was like, and it was like right as Netflix was really emerging as a movie place.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:10Bill Simmons?

  And it was like, oh, our guy. Cause we liked you for Everybody Wants Some. It's like, oh, it's happening. And then you got Top Gun Maverick.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, right after that, right after it came out.

• 4:18Bill Simmons?

  And Miles had, I remember I had Miles on my podcast around there too. And it's like Top Gun Maverick, it's gonna be huge.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  And how many months did it get delayed? Like 18?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like, it was like almost two years. So yeah, it'd have been 2020 and we released summer 2022. So it's been a long time.

• 4:33Bill Simmons?

  We did like a trailer reaction in like 2019.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Somebody asked me, they were like, sitting there like, you know, like sometimes when iPhone like does like, remember when throwback photos? I mean, that was like seven years ago we started shooting that movie.

• 4:46Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. I've never seen a snare like that where then it belatedly comes out and then it's huge. It was great for you, it was great for Miles. But we're gonna talk about Truman Show.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:55Bill Simmons?

  We asked you for a list.

• 4:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:56Bill Simmons?

  You sent us a list of 10 movies.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:59Bill Simmons?

  They're all pretty good choices. We hadn't, we hadn't done any of them.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Three ninjas.

• 5:02Bill Simmons?

  We've already done Running Man. For somebody bigger than that. Three ninjas, yeah, that'd be like the.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Three ninjas is the one no one saw coming.

• 5:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. We're doing that one.

• 5:11Bill Simmons?

  But you said Truman Show was like, near the top or maybe the first one. And I was like, oh, my God.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:16Bill Simmons?

  That'd be amazing. So why? What was it about Truman Show?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  You know, the Truman Show is, you know, for me, it's one of those that, for being kind of like a really messed up premise, if you really like spend time thinking about it.

• 5:28Bill Simmons?

  And we will.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  It's a movie that has like so much joy for people. Like it was like a, that moment in the 90s. I love 90s movies, but I just like, think it was like a perfect role for Jim Carrey. There was like a wish fulfillment. I think like, whenever I try to choose a movie, I always try to think about what the universal emotion is, like something we've all felt, but something that, you know, we're not tapping into. So it feels like there's a collective, a collective feeling around it. And I feel like we've all had that feeling of being manipulated, the idea that like being watched, like that, that, that same sort of feeling. I feel like it's, it's kind of built into humans.

• 6:06Bill Simmons?

  For sure.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  And, and what's so interesting, it's such an ambitious movie that's actually made in kind of like a way that doesn't feel like too sci-fi or like too, you know, too far in the future. Like it feels very much of this world, which makes it like a very kind of, almost like, almost like a religious experience rather than a science fiction experience. It's like, it's a very interesting movie, but I find that everybody I show it to can talk about life. It's like one of my favorite things to do when I watch movies with people. It, it spurs conversations. Like you talk about the movie and everyone has such a different read on it. I mean, you could literally go back to, you know, ancient Greeks, if you wanted to, when you're talking about this movie. You could talk about religion. You could talk about, you know,

• 6:48Speaker 02

  where we are with reality TV shows and like, you know, how society sort of likes to control people, like, you know, like how we check into someone else's reality, but we're not really living in our own. Like there's, there's so many cool things to talk about. So I find that it's a movie that really.

• 7:01Bill Simmons?

  Jesus, he's the fucking host of Pirates. Man, if you could just go re-watch Celtic Sixers.

• 7:08Bill Simmons?

  I really love Jim Carrey. Instead, it was like a long monologue.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  We talked about Dumb and Dumber, like I love. You know, Jim Carrey, this was also one of his movies that I love because it kind of tapped into like a a dramatic side to him. It still used his like superpower.

• 7:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  But, but didn't hold on to it too tightly. It allowed him to do some other things.

• 7:28Bill Simmons?

  Do you have, so like, this is just a great part. So when you're watching this, you're an actor, you're always thinking about projects, like you must see a movie like this and be like, fuck, what a great part. I would have loved to have played Truman.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  I mean, I think there's a lot of different types of actors that could play this role in the fact that I think it's a very well-written part, but I do think when you, when you take on a role, you sort of have to figure out what the sort of guiding attribute is. And this movie could be played as a horror movie.

• 7:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  It could be played, it could be played a million different ways. And the fact that he sort of lives in this blissful kind of like silly world, like the, the stakes of his world are low stakes until something drops out of the sky and kind of take, shakes him out of it. So it's something kind of that actually Jim Carrey, the way he plays it, I think is probably the strongest way.

• 8:13Chris Ryan?

  You know what's cool too is that this movie had such an interesting development history, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And like, there were different permutations of the script. There were different directors up for directing it. There were different actors up for doing it. And each one of them, you're like, oh, that would have been cool. That would have been interesting. But something about Peter Weir and Jim Carrey and what they chose to do with it, you're like, that's timeless. Like, you can't change a note of this movie.

• 8:37Bill Simmons?

  It really was the most Robin Williams part ever that he didn't do.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 8:41Bill Simmons?

  And ironically, he was, not to step on casting whittits, but he was like, kind of mentioned and circled a little bit before they decided on.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  I think, I think pretty much none of this cast was like the original.

• 8:51Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 8:51Speaker 02

  The original.

• 8:52Bill Simmons?

  Wait, since we're talking about parts and being jealous and circling, have you picked your part in Heat Two yet?

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Seems like everybody's in that movie except me.

• 9:01Bill Simmons?

  You're not, you're not in the stories?

• 9:03Speaker 02

  No, man, I looked at the storyboards. I'm not in them.

• 9:06Bill Simmons?

  You were in the Miami Vice remake once, though. I saw those.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  You know, yeah. You know what's really a fun, a fun thing that's happening right now? It's like the first time in my life where a casting announcement comes out and it's like, there's no, there's no truth there, but like, everybody congratulates you on it. I'm like, I'm just gonna let it.

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  But are you ever like, that's pretty sick.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look.

• 9:26Chris Ryan?

  I'm Sunny Crockett.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  You know, honestly, it's, it's a, it's a very, it's a very funny moment in life in my career because like, you, you do, you know, get to sort of retread, like even with Twisters, right?

• 9:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  What a fun road. As a, as a Texas boy who grew up around, you know, tornado alley and like, that was such a seminal movie. You know, Bill Paxton was such a, you know, he's Texas Film Hall of Fame guy, you know, and he's like, what, what they did with that movie was really, really special. And so to kind of retread, you know, that ground was like really fun to do that with Top Gun, you know, it was, was, was amazing. So I, I, that's one of the favorite parts of my career is as like, as a fan of movies, I get to, sometimes get to revisit these.

• 10:06Bill Simmons?

  What do we, what do we, Kilmer's part for him?

• 10:08Chris Ryan?

  Sure, sure. He's already got the short hair after the haircut, you know, can you?

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Can I rock a pony?

• 10:13Bill Simmons?

  Pony or a real pony?

• 10:15Speaker 02

  I was born for a pony.

• 10:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. So I honestly, don't rule out Sunny Crockett. I don't know, what are your cigarette skills?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  It's, it's nonstop.

• 10:25Bill Simmons?

  The cigarettes are huge. No, I could see him doing it.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Could you, could you fake Florida?

• 10:30Speaker 02

  What?

• 10:31Bill Simmons?

  Could you fake Florida? Could you fake South Florida?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't, I don't think you fake Florida, do you? You don't fake Miami.

• 10:36Bill Simmons?

  Can Texas fake?

• 10:38Chris Ryan?

  You just get tanned. What's the problem?

• 10:40Bill Simmons?

  I just want to make sure.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, just one spray tan away. That's what Florida is, yeah.

• 10:43Bill Simmons?

  Truman Show.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:45Bill Simmons?

  What else is on? It's one of the last lines of the movie, the old guys watching.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  I love that movie. Those are my two favorite. I, that's, I mean, we're gonna talk about the Dion Waiters of it all.

• 10:55Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  But, but I, I personally, and there's other great choices, but I think those guys are the best exposition. Sneaky exposition of a movie.

• 11:05Bill Simmons?

  So, basically, this movie is foreshadowing everything that's about to come, which is why it's such a fascinating rewatch. It was great in the moment. I remember when it came out, I saw it in the theater. I had a legal cable box in Boston in the late 90s and they would rerun the pay-per-views. So it'd be like 12, 2:30, 5 o'clock. And I just kind of got sucked into Truman Show for like a week. And there's so many little Easter eggs and little things in there and the more you watch, you're like, fuck, this is like, this movie's kind of fucking me up. And then you start like, are there cameras here? Where, you know, it's one of those where you start like reevaluating, just like walking to Dunkin' Donuts, getting a coffee.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  No, it's kind of amazing. I mean, even just watching it the other night, I like noticed some like, they are very good. I mean, Peter Weir especially is just very good with production design and like the little Easter eggs that they put in there. Even like I saw on like this one little arch in a scene when sort of like, you know, Truman is kind of like, you know, having his freak out with the bus in the public where he's literally kind of starting to put it all together. On the arches, it says, you know, it said, I looked at, I saw this Latin stuff and I was like, I wonder what that is. And it says, it translates to all for one, one for all.

• 12:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  And I thought it was like, oh, that's cool. Just like, I love when there's intention and purpose behind it.

• 12:18Chris Ryan?

  But it's like, they don't base it, they don't foreground that. They're like, hey, if you notice, you notice. Like, there's a bunch of little things like that where it actually will answer some of the questions you might have about how they would pull this off. But they don't make it a major element of the scene because the point of the scene is the emotion or this guy's journey or whatever.

• 12:36Bill Simmons?

  So in my head, like as the years passed, I thought like, oh, reality TV, there was this huge boom. And Truman, like just, I just kind of forgot how early this was.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Isn't it? It's before everything. This kind of weirdly kicked it off. Like this predated by a year or two.

• 12:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I went through, I did the origin. So apparently the first reality show was called Nummer TV on Dutch television. I don't know if you guys have the DVDs.

• 12:58Chris Ryan?

  I have the box set, yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I only watched Dutch television.

• 13:00Bill Simmons?

  Putting People in a House, Real World was 92. I feel like the OJ trial was kind of a reality show. No, it wasn't. It was like an unintentional reality show. Road Rules on MTV was 95. And that's it. So Truman Show comes in 98 and it's like, this whole world is coming. Where anybody can be famous, anyone's like day-to-day life can actually be something. And they were making Ed TV at the same time with McConaughey.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  Was Ed TV before, after?

• 13:26Chris Ryan?

  After, after.

• 13:27Bill Simmons?

  So it was kind of this moment. But then Survivor, Big Brother, 2000, then Bachelor comes and

• 13:33Speaker 02

  You know, the only thing-

• 13:34Bill Simmons?

  We hit that whole world.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  I was gonna compare this to was the, did you ever see the Michael Apted movies, the 7-Up?

• 13:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  The series? Where they follow these kids from seven on and he makes them like every seven years about? And that is like a little bit like, these kids, their whole lives exist within the framework of these movies, but they're, the crucial thing about Truman is that he doesn't know he's participating in something that everybody else does. Whereas all reality shows, people are like, yeah, I did this to be on, on camera, you know?

• 14:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it shifted really fast. I remember when I was working for Kimmel Show the first year, we had our lead guest for one episode was the lady that got voted off second to last on Joe Millionaire.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  Oh my god, wait, what's her name?

• 14:16Bill Simmons?

  Sarah something, I wanna say?

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 14:21Speaker 02

  I, you know, like, I had, I were Joe Millionaire.

• 14:24Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Sarah and I, you know, we are dating.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, dating era, for sure.

• 14:26Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, but that Joe Millionaire was being watched by-

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Sarah Cozer.

• 14:29Bill Simmons?

  Sarah Cozer.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Where'd you go?

• 14:31Bill Simmons?

  Good get. Twenty million plus people-

• 14:33Speaker 02

  I remember that show.

• 14:34Bill Simmons?

  Watching Joe fucking Millionaire.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  It was a huge, it was a huge deal.

• 14:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so it's just like something shifted. Truman Show saw all of it.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Dude, what's a real, I don't know if you guys have seen this show Jury Duty?

• 14:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  But I realized, like, that is, that is Truman Show, that's modern Truman Show.

• 14:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Like, the idea that everybody's in on except one guy.

• 14:50Bill Simmons?

  Guy, I hadn't really thought about that with Jury Duty, but I love that show.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  It's a great show.

• 14:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, Jimmy did a movie for Comedy Central called Windy City Heat, where they just pranked this one guy with all these, this was probably like 2002 range, and the same kind of premise, he was the only one who didn't know what was happening. This Truman Show was, I would say, a little more elaborate, cause they had, I can't wait to do some of the nitpicks.

• 15:11Speaker 02

  The number of actors and extras. I mean, as a first AD, I was literally thinking, like, sometimes I like, I like to like, you know, look at a movie, you know, and kinda go, okay, like, what is, what is the production designer's job? What's the first AD's job? Like, what do they stay up at night? Like, what keeps them up at night?

• 15:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  The first AD on the Truman Show, it's a nightmare.

• 15:29Bill Simmons?

  Just 24 hours a day.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Unwrangleable, 24 hours a day.

• 15:32Bill Simmons?

  They would have people break it, we can get into it, yeah. Well, Top Gun Maverick was probably, that was probably the biggest, most amount of people movie you made?

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Uh, most amount of people movie?

• 15:41Bill Simmons?

  Like, just behind the scenes, like, people doing shit?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  I think it was the, the amount of, um-

• 15:49Speaker 02

  I would just say like institutions that were involved, you know, because I mean, you're dealing with like the United States Navy, you know, you're dealing with the government, like you're dealing with 80 million dollar aircraft and you're flying them like not how they're normally flying them.

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 16:01Speaker 02

  You know, and so there's a lot, I mean, we would have to give briefs in front of the actual Navy every day before we flew. Like I had to tell them altitude, here's my airspace, here's going to be my coordinates, here's the sun position. If this plane's moving at this, you know, like you, and I had to give a brief every morning of exactly what we were doing and you're doing it for the, the, the production, like the, um, like your production department heads. So they're aware of what's happening. So it matches up in the edit.

• 16:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  So you're saying, hey, if I'm looking, you know, at, at, at three o'clock, is the plane going to be there or is it four o'clock or five o'clock? So it all cuts together. Or am I looking down on this plane like where, and you're doing it with little plane sticks and acting everything out. So it was like, but you, you, you have to remember like we are, we're, you're not like fake planes, like we're, we're dealing, we're like, we're putting civilians. Flying like a hundred feet off the ground, it's 500 miles an hour. It's like, it's a big deal.

• 16:55Bill Simmons?

  Plus you had to deal with our guy Cruz, the rewatchables leader by like four movies.

• 17:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Bill Simmons?

  I think he's got a four movie lead over every, over Denzel and everyone else.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  His run in the nineties was.

• 17:05Chris Ryan?

  I think we've done all of them except for like Far and Away at this point.

• 17:08Bill Simmons?

  No, there's.

• 17:09Chris Ryan?

  His nineties movies?

• 17:10Bill Simmons?

  Oh, there's some meat on the bone, Chris Brown.

• 17:12Chris Ryan?

  Is there really?

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh yeah, we got some Mission Impossibles left.

• 17:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's true.

• 17:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was going to count those. I don't think we've done all the right moves. There's some eighties stuff.

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the right moves.

• 17:18Bill Simmons?

  Don't worry, Tom Cruise, we, we got you. The comedian who doesn't want to be a comedian for a movie movie, Hollywood staple.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:26Bill Simmons?

  Bill Murray, The Razor's Edge, Adam Sandler, Punch Drunk Love.

• 17:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 17:30Bill Simmons?

  Will Ferrell, Stranger Than Fiction.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 17:32Bill Simmons?

  They always have to have that one where they're like, I can do more than this in a good way.

• 17:36Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Good Morning Vietnam is Robin Williams' dramatic turn?

• 17:40Bill Simmons?

  I was going to say World, World According to Garp, I think was.

• 17:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I guess that's right.

• 17:42Bill Simmons?

  Cause he's coming out of Mork and Mindy just like, hey, I'm not just like goofy.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Pre Goodwill, or, or, or was the one he did with, um, Insomnia?

• 17:52Bill Simmons?

  That's later.

• 17:52Chris Ryan?

  That's Nolan.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:54Chris Ryan?

  What, and then Awakenings is when?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Awakenings.

• 17:57Bill Simmons?

  Awakenings was early 90s, that was another one. When he, when he was like, I also have serious Robin Williams, I can do that character. How many, how many sides do you have?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  How many sides?

• 18:05Bill Simmons?

  You have Romcom Glenn Powell, Action Glenn Powell.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  I'm trying to cover my bingo board right now. Honestly, you know what the, the fun part about this moment in the job is people give you a very long leash. Right? And, and, and they only basically say no when you've proven that you can't do it. Right? And so what I'm like really trying to do right now is like really just like all the movies that kind of inspired me to do this job. Like all the things that we're talking about, like as just movie fans, I'm kind of going, you know, I don't really think of it from a, like a me side as much as just like a, the types of movies I want to make. And then you, you, you, you always want to know what you're good at. You always want to know like what your, you don't want to, you know, take on something that is like, that just not a fit. But like, at the end of the day, like going into something that kind of scares you is, is a good thing.

• 18:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, he's got some sports movie mortality. Like you're, how old are you now?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Thirty seven, just turned thirty seven two days ago.

• 19:00Bill Simmons?

  But maybe a 10 year window now for sports movies.

• 19:02Chris Ryan?

  He's chucking it in Chad Powers though.

• 19:04Bill Simmons?

  I know, you got Chad Powers.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:06Bill Simmons?

  Everybody wants them.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  It's fun.

• 19:07Bill Simmons?

  I feel like there's like an end of the career baseball movie. Maybe it's like a comedy drama, a little like For Love in the Game.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  I may or may not be building one of those.

• 19:14Bill Simmons?

  Come on.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, trust me, yeah, I, I.

• 19:16Bill Simmons?

  Cause you were good at baseball.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you, thank you, yeah.

• 19:18Chris Ryan?

  What about the Val Kilmer part from Heat? He moves to South America, plays winter ball in Panama, you know? So it could be Heat Three.

• 19:27Bill Simmons?

  That's how they find him, but yeah.

• 19:29Speaker 02

  It's a really weird. He's hitting 400 in the Mexico League. Tonally, we have to, a lot of shifting in the first act, what?

• 19:36Bill Simmons?

  What are your other sports?

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, I would say that like lacrosse would be like fun, a fun one to do.

• 19:42Bill Simmons?

  Lacrosse?

• 19:42Speaker 02

  You know, nobody, there's not really any lacrosse movies.

• 19:44Bill Simmons?

  There's no lacrosse movies.

• 19:45Speaker 02

  Um, that would be really fun.

• 19:47Bill Simmons?

  Aging lacrosse guy?

• 19:47Speaker 02

  I just feel like baseball movies that for me, like obviously Linklater is like a guy that will team up, you know, many times over. But he, talking to him about baseball, it's hard not to like go, oh, what's a, a great baseball movie? Cause he's one of the only guys that. I would say directors out here that really know the sport.

• 20:06Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  And like understand what makes it great.

• 20:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. They're kind of undefeated with movies. They never stop. They keep coming out.

• 20:12Chris Ryan?

  I wanted to ask you, so Peter Weir.

• 20:14Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:15Chris Ryan?

  Kind of, you know, I was thinking about this last night, kind of reminds me of Linklater in that there's not like an overbearing visual style that you're like, that's that guy's movie. You know, it's like a Scorsese shot or a Chris Nolan shot. But he gets incredible performances, like all of his films, this is a third or fourth Peter Weir, like we've done Dead Poets. We've done.

• 20:36Bill Simmons?

  We did Witness.

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  Witness.

• 20:38Bill Simmons?

  We, we'll do Master and Commander at some point.

• 20:40Chris Ryan?

  And Master and Commander at some point. What is it about like the actor's director, like when you're working with Linklater or something like that, like how does he get such naturalistic and human performances out of people and do you see some of that?

• 20:52Bill Simmons?

  It's a really good question, Chris Ryan.

• 20:53Chris Ryan?

  That's a really good question.

• 20:54Bill Simmons?

  On his game today.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  You know, you know what's interesting about Link is that you, you can tell when a director, I always like, I always kind of like sniff it out with a director and kind of, you kind of feel what are they paying attention to? Right? And a lot of times you can feel when a director is like doing things where it's like, obviously there's always a million things to do and when they're paying attention to the background artists, they're seeing how things fill up a frame, they're looking at light, they're looking at camera movement or whatever. Linklater is the first guy that will call out bullshit on performance. He's like, he's like, something's not reading here, but, but we do a lot of the rehearsals to make sure that we're all on the same page.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Like he's a guy that as an actor, there's nothing better than when a director, you, you know, something's bullshit. And then a director goes, hey, I just didn't buy it. You're like, oh, I'm taken care of. Right?

• 21:50Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 21:51Bill Simmons?

  He's got your back.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  He's got your back.

• 21:52Bill Simmons?

  Authenticity. Turns out it matters in Hollywood.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  But, but as it, but as an actor, like a lot of times, like you work with a filmmaker and you're like, they're great shooters. They know how to work the camera, like they know how to shoot, you know, all these different, you know, action or, you know, they're, they're great with, you know, creating tension or thrilling elements, but then you realize you're on your own performance level.

• 22:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:11Speaker 02

  That's when you're kind of living at the monitor, making sure, you know, I, I do that anyway at the beginning of a movie to just to see how it's sort of reading with all the elements, but at the, but it's really nice to have some, a filmmaker who is looking out for you in that way. Cause then you can just play. You know, then you're, then you're, then you understand that the edit's gonna take care of you.

• 22:31Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  You know, you don't have to, you don't have to edit yourself.

• 22:34Bill Simmons?

  You know, I was, I have all these premiere magazines from the 1990s and they wrote about Truman Show in 98. And it was a long interview with Peter Weir. And they asked him like, how, how are you so good at these characters? And he said, cause he, he was making movies in Australia in the seventies, right? He made like.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Picknick and hangar.

• 22:51Bill Simmons?

  Like all those ones.

• 22:53Bill Simmons?

  But he said they had no good screenwriters in, in Australia.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 22:57Bill Simmons?

  And you kind of, if you were a director, you also had to like revise all these shitty scripts. And like, so that really got him when he was younger to learn how to like work with dialogue with actors. And he's like, in a weird way, it like worked out for me. Cause I was always thinking about this when I was a young director. And then as it translated when I got older, I, I, that's why I can work with actors. So I was like, oh, that's really interesting.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  How to make it work.

• 23:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Well, you, you realize that there's a lot, like as an actor, like I always appreciate it, especially in this movie. When certain things are happening for, for Truman in a weird way. And like, you, you only get so many buy-ins in a movie. Like there's a lot of buy-ins that you have to, you know, buy into here about like what he's aware of, what he's not aware of. Like how many lights that have fallen down from the sky that didn't start unraveling his sense of the world. Like, there's a few things like.

• 23:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  To, to build a history of Truman is a very interesting thing. And like sort of what you have to brush under the rug and sort of what you have to kind of honor. And I just thought that you could tell that Peter Weir and, and Jim Carrey were really on the same page with, with like, what, how to react to certain things, right? Like to, to react like, kind of like comedically to it and then like kind of move on with your life.

• 24:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  You know, not let it, not let it marinate too long, cause then the audience is gonna marinate on it too. You know what I mean?

• 24:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Cause he's the audience surrogate, even though we are. Even though we are, have more information than Truman, if he's thinking about it too much, the logic police start kicking in and you do not want that for this movie.

• 24:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I, I mean, he does something, we're just something really cool where he both identifies exactly what somebody's good at. So like Carrie has all this like physical.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:37Chris Ryan?

  He's so gifted at moving, like he's almost like Gene Kelly in this movie. He's like gliding through these scenes, but he also like knows when to like, whether he knows or Carrie knows to when to take it down 5%.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 24:48Chris Ryan?

  So that it doesn't turn into the mask at any moment, like, or it doesn't turn into like kind of a more comic, over the top performance. And I think it's what you're talking about. It keeps us connected to him because he seems just enough like a real guy.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:02Chris Ryan?

  To buy him in this completely unreal situation.

• 25:05Bill Simmons?

  Well, I like that he waited for Carrie for a year. And then they decided he was doing it. He was like, this has to be the guy. And he's like, well, I gotta make Cable guy and the liar liar. They're like, all right. So then he, apparently we're spent like a year just thinking about the movie, storyboarding. And he hadn't done a movie since Fearless in 93. So he, he wanted backstories for all the cast. So he went like deep dive. I'm going to create like, who's Marlon? What's his backstory? How did he grow up?

• 25:33Chris Ryan?

  The Dead Poets characters, like all the actors on Dead Poets were like, we had us do our own biographies for every character. Like we would write our own biographies and rehearse them and talk about stuff that wasn't even going to be in the movie. But he was like, it is just that level of care.

• 25:47Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna do, Glenn's gonna do that for Miami Vice, the remake. Sonny Crockett autobiography.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  You guys do it. A sub, a subcategory for Sonny Crockett, Best Ponytail Award. The, the, the, um, the interesting part about, about Truman Show in terms of also what you're talking about backstory.

• 26:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  Every single character in this movie, I always love like the category of like the rack focus movie.

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 02

  Like where you're like, oh, if I rack focus to Laura Linney's character, how did she get cast in that show?

• 26:16Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  What does that look like? Like even the contract of like. Her marrying a person and being like, like, what is that? What is that?

• 26:26Chris Ryan?

  Does she get days off?

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Does she get days off? Like, what does that look like in perpetuity? Like, you know, that? And I just think that there were so many characters like that because this is sort of like, and you cannot make this premise bulletproof. So allowing you to like rack focus to different characters, you know, even Marlon, like,

• 26:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  you know, even the dad, like, the way he comes back. I'm sitting there going, I have so many questions, but everybody's really interesting. And when you have a social experiment like this, I was like, this is a world in which you can kind of constantly rack focus to cool people.

• 26:57Bill Simmons?

  So we got Laura Linney, Ed Harris, Noah Emmerich, fresh from the Beautiful Guys set.

• 27:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:02Bill Simmons?

  Singing Neil Diamond. Peter Kraus, Paul Giamatti. Philip Baker Hall.

• 27:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Bill Simmons?

  I like lollipops in my, where's the butter in my ass? Lollipops in my mouth. This is what I like.

• 27:14Chris Ryan?

  This is right around the same time, too.

• 27:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Chris Ryan?

  Right?

• 27:17Bill Simmons?

  Natasha Makaloon? Is that how you say it?

• 27:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Bill Simmons?

  Just looking, just looking great.

• 27:21Chris Ryan?

  How do you say it? Mackelhon?

• 27:23Bill Simmons?

  Mackelhon.

• 27:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Bill Simmons?

  Looking great. Holland Taylor, Harris Shearer, Carrie's the star, obviously, and Carrie's in this heater from 94 to 2000. This is a seven year run. I think it's probably the best that you could argue for any comedian ever, and it's in the running for best actor run ever. Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Batman Forever, Ace 2, Cable Guy. He hosts SNL during Will Ferrell's first season, and it's probably one of the four best episodes of the history of the show. Liar Liar. He has the Larry Sanders cameo in the last show where he jumps on the desk and sings to Larry Sanders. Man on the Moon, Truman Show, Me, Myself and Irene, and Grinch Stole Christmas, how the Grinch Stole Christmas. In seven years.

• 28:05Chris Ryan?

  When's Eternal Sunshine?

• 28:06Speaker 02

  That's a big bank.

• 28:08Chris Ryan?

  Eternal Sunshine, is that like?

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  After.

• 28:10Chris Ryan?

  After.

• 28:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is, he started, the 2000s, he slowed down a little bit, but I mean, that's like.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  That's a pace, by the way.

• 28:16Bill Simmons?

  That's crazy.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  That's a crazy pace. Seven years.

• 28:18Bill Simmons?

  And all kinds of different performances and, and, you know, even like, he became Andy Kaufman for like four months.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. That documentary is wild.

• 28:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, he really, like, kind of lost his mind a little bit, but this is. Yeah, I don't know, CR, is he the most talented comedian we've ever had for, for, to cross over?

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Into acting, it's probably between him and Robin Williams, right?

• 28:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 28:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, Eddie had a huge box office. I don't know if he's ever had like this diversity of parts. But Robin Williams and Jim Carrey would probably be my, my number.

• 28:46Bill Simmons?

  I think Eddie Murphy could have gotten there, but he had the, he had a similar unbelievable seven year run, but he never figured out the drama side in the same way. That's like the.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  Did he ever, what did he do drama wise?

• 28:56Chris Ryan?

  Dreamgirls and, um, I mean, Boomerang is a rom com, but is pretty.

• 29:01Bill Simmons?

  Boomerang's amazing.

• 29:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he had the, yeah, he, he dabbled, but it never, he never kind of landed it. But Carrie was just, I, it's like, you look at the IMDb and it's like, what the hell?

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Like seminal movies, like, yeah.

• 29:13Bill Simmons?

  Jesus, how did you do all that? Uh, Andrew Nickel wrote this movie in 93. We mentioned that.

• 29:18Chris Ryan?

  Can I throw out a quick Nickel fact here? So I, this quote that he had in a recent enough, like 2023 interview with a Hollywood reporter, was actually like the best summation of like, why this movie works. Is he, they were asking him like, what was your idea for the movie? And he goes, as children, we often think the world revolves around us. I thought it would be interesting if it did. And then he goes, it was that along with my lifelong inescapable paranoia that we are being lied to. And it's, so you basically take Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock and you put it together. And that's what this movie is.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Well, so, wow, that's great.

• 29:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so they did 16 drafts. We were wanting it to be a little funnier. And then reality really started to tick off a little bit too, and made it a little bit easier. Is it better if you don't know reality TV is coming or if you knew reality TV happened?

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  Like as an experience to watch this movie?

• 30:13Speaker 02

  Like watching it in hindsight?

• 30:14Bill Simmons?

  Craig later. Yeah, watching it, knowing that Survivor and Big Brother and The Challenge and all these fucking crazy shows are coming.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Personally love, I mean, look, this movie came out, I was, I was really young when this movie, I was 10 years old when this movie came out. But I, but like watching it now as an adult, I actually get so much joy out of like knowing that reality TV is such an interesting social experiment. And the, the, like, why people watch it, the lengths people are willing to go to watch other people go through things and like how we define reality and like. Just like, just the mercy that we have for people in these scenarios. It's like a very interesting thing that I like watching it now, I think as an adult. I appreciate it because it feels like it's possible. Like, I know it sounds, I, I think, and I think there's like, you know, the, the, the real estate

• 31:07Speaker 02

  question of how you actually build something like this, how you control something like this, but I think on a level, if it were feasible financially or practically, a network would do this in a heartbeat.

• 31:19Chris Ryan?

  I mean, and legally.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  Legally.

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  If it were feasible.

• 31:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:23Bill Simmons?

  I would argue that, like, you're legitimately famous. Like, your life is a little Truman Show-ish every day because you walk around this world, but when people see you in wherever, they're like, hey.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:33Bill Simmons?

  Which is a little like what this movie's doing, but the people can't, they, they kind of, you can just see their body language change when they see him, but it's a little similar, right?

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's been an interesting adjustment is you still walk through the, the, the world the same, and then sometimes you have those moments where you kind of look up and you're like, oh, this is, okay, everybody, you know, it, it is a little bit of a paranoid thriller sometimes.

• 31:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know, it's hard for CR.

• 32:01Chris Ryan?

  It's, it's brutal.

• 32:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break and then I want to talk about the Oscars with this, which I was fascinated by. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life's full of decisions, big and small. Sometimes you can make one that you really stand behind, like the rewatchables. We felt like there was an opening in 2017 for a podcast directly devoted to movies because we had done it on the BS podcast in 2015. We did a 20th anniversary podcast about heat and it felt like that was an idea for a bigger podcast. We stuck to our guns. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create an affordable price for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan.

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. All right, so how many Oscar nominations do you think this movie got?

• 33:03Speaker 02

  All right, um, Ed, Ed Harris, did Ed Harris win or get nominated?

• 33:08Bill Simmons?

  Nominated.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Nominated. Um, I'm sure Peter Weir had to get nominated.

• 33:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  I'm sure Script got nominated.

• 33:14Bill Simmons?

  That's three.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Um, I'm gonna go production design.

• 33:19Bill Simmons?

  No, we're done.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  No, we're done. That's it. Three.

• 33:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, only three.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  No Carrie.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  No Carrie.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  Travesty.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  You know what, though? The, the Oscars, like, there's a different, there's a different path for a comedian getting to that stage, in my opinion.

• 33:33Bill Simmons?

  It's a little bias.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  I, I, I, I, I don't, I don't, I, I think you earn it in a different way.

• 33:37Bill Simmons?

  Taking the NFL, you have to be a one or a two seed to win the MVP, or else they don't take you seriously. Dak Prescott.

• 33:42Speaker 02

  Exactly. He's having a hell of a season.

• 33:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, doesn't matter. He's gotta go 13 and 4. So, Craig, were you shocked that he didn't win, that he didn't get nominated for this?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, 100% he needed to get nominated. Because comedians have been nominated in the past. Like, Robert Downey Jr. got a nom for Tropic Thunder.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I mean, Johnny Depp for Pirates is kind of a comedy role, got nominated.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  But like, those are dramatic actors that are doing a comedic thing and are sort of honored. I think it's a different thing for someone who's a true comedian.

• 34:09Bill Simmons?

  It's a bias.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 02

  I, I, coming to that stage.

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  Robert Williams eventually got over it, um, because I think Good Morning Vietnam was a big one for him.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  This is a wild Oscar, though.

• 34:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, Ben尼 wins for Life is Beautiful, Hank's Private Ryan, Ian McKellen, Gods and Monsters, Nick Nolte of Fliction, and then Ed Nor and American History X. Really, for the-

• 34:26Speaker 02

  That's a good year. That's a good year.

• 34:28Bill Simmons?

  The two-handed dunk, that's what it, that's a guy.

• 34:32Bill Simmons?

  But, uh, but yeah, it's, eh, if you do it over again, I think Carrie's one of the five.

• 34:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:37Bill Simmons?

  And it's certainly one of, I think, one of his two or three bests. Would people say Eternal, Eternal Sunshine over this?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I would, I would have this over Eternal.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  This is a much more tough role, in my opinion.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  I think Eternal Sunshine is a brilliant premise that's like a, a really emotionally driven brilliant premise. I think this one, the, as an actor, you go into a role and you know sort of how high that, that, uh, tightrope is off the ground, is a really high tightrope.

• 35:03Bill Simmons?

  So, Weir got nominated, Spielberg won for Private Ryan, um, and then, and then, uh-

• 35:10Bill Simmons?

  The script, I think it was Shakespeare in Love.

• 35:13Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:13Bill Simmons?

  And I put in, so there you go. Sixty million dollar budget, made two hundred and sixty four million dollars. We used to go see movies.

• 35:19Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 35:20Bill Simmons?

  That was coming back.

• 35:21Chris Ryan?

  That's also like, that's the perfect return on it, like, right? It's like sixty, we're not over our heads here. Two hundred and whatever is like a huge hit.

• 35:28Bill Simmons?

  We didn't have Hollywood Reporter back then going, it still hasn't made the movie money back. They spent two hundred and seventy one million.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is a whole thing where you sit there like, who cares? I'm just like a big believer in cheering for everyone in this business. I think like, that's a, that's a thing that it's really hard to take big swings and have big wins in this business. And like, when, when, you know, a movie wins, like, one, one battle after another, I freaking love this movie.

• 35:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:55Speaker 02

  And I was like, I'm cheering for that thing to win. I hate when people like.

• 35:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Yuck your yum, and you're like, well, but it didn't.

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  They did with Sinners too, which was dumb. Siskel and Ebert gave this movie two thumbs up on TV. And I don't remember seeing this before, an on air apology to Jim Carrey. Because they said, after Ace Ventura Pet Detective, which they hated. They said he would never have a movie career.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  You're kidding.

• 36:18Bill Simmons?

  And four years later, they loved this movie.

• 36:20Chris Ryan?

  People hated Carrey when he first, like, my dad was a film critic, like, these guys. And like, I just remember him, like, sitting through the farting and him just being like, I can't do this. And like, this guy's such a joke. And then like five years later.

• 36:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's an Ace Ventura cutoff line is probably like forty five. Somehow I'm way over it and I still think it's hilarious. But a, a certain type of older person thought it was like the worst thing that ever been inflicted on mankind.

• 36:44Chris Ryan?

  Sixty two year old haggard film critics were like, I can't, I can't do it.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  It's like, I'm done, just shoot me in the head right now. I don't know if it's a soldier, I mean, it really, that is, that is one of those things that, that is the dumbest premise. And it only works because of full commitment.

• 36:57Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  To creating jokes out of nothing.

• 37:00Bill Simmons?

  Can I ask you a question? You're either gonna laugh at that or you're not.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  You're not, you can't explain it now.

• 37:05Bill Simmons?

  And talking this about, you're either gonna hate that or love it, that's it, anyway.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  The rhino in, uh, When Nature Calls, I think is still one of the greatest physical gags of all time.

• 37:13Bill Simmons?

  So Ebert, four stars. Uh, absolutely loved it, talked about, um, how it brought in focus. The new values that technology is forcing on humanity.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:24Bill Simmons?

  Because we can engineer genetics, because we can telecast real lives, of course we must, right? But are these good things to do? The irony is the people who will finally answer that question will be the very ones produced by the process. Raj saw the world coming.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:39Bill Simmons?

  But Gattaca, which was the other one Nickel rope was fascinated in this world too. What's gonna happen when technology takes over?

• 37:45Speaker 02

  And he was like, these two movies are basically related for me.

• 37:48Bill Simmons?

  The good news is technology's fine now. I think it's going great.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  I think we're good, man. Yeah. Nothing on the horizon to worry about.

• 37:54Bill Simmons?

  It's not like those big scary companies or anything, man. It's going awesome.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  I'm sleeping tight.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  It's time for one of our favorite segments, the most rewatchable scene, and it's brought to you today by PayPal. When you want to make the most of your money, head to the PayPal app, save the 5% pay later offer before you check out. They give you the flexibility to pay in for no fees, no interest. All right, we're doing the categories. Thankfully Glenn has listened to the podcast and he's excited. Most rewatchable scene is the start. I'm just gonna throw out the ones I had and if I missed any, tell me, but the opening, how it opens, like the show?

• 38:32Speaker 02

  Kristoff.

• 38:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And you're like, what's going on? I thought Peter Weir directed this movie. But he has that thing where he says, I like how it's a reality show convincing people that it's real life and that it's better than acting. Meanwhile, nothing at all is real. And it's like, okay.

• 38:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the, like the sit down interview.

• 38:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm in. Truman's flashback to being in love with the other girl in high school.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  For, with Lauren, yeah.

• 38:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that whole sequence, the way she looks at him, I like movies when you get an actor to look at another actor like that with like just real love and affection. I think it's underrated.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  She gets the most bang for her buck for probably having a fewest lines in this movie.

• 39:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she has like 12 lines.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  And being like, like literally over the whole movie with just looks.

• 39:15Bill Simmons?

  Yes. Truman starts to figure it out with the radio frequency in the car.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 39:21Bill Simmons?

  Hospital, he's buying the Fiji ticket with the makeup bib. The lady still forgot to take the bib off. The bus breaks down. So we got that. Truman tries to escape with Merrill.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:32Bill Simmons?

  Finally drives over the water, they catch him. Now you know it's bad. Quickly, the Moko Coco scene, when he's like-

• 39:38Speaker 02

  That's great. Who are you talking to?

• 39:41Bill Simmons?

  She's just doing that thing.

• 39:44Bill Simmons?

  Marlon's heart to heart with Truman.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  If I'm in on it, everyone, you know, if everyone's in on it, that means I'd have to be on it.

• 39:51Bill Simmons?

  Ah, here's a scumbag.

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but also Kristoff giving him the lines and him kind of being like, god damn it.

• 39:56Bill Simmons?

  Big reveal. So they don't reveal this. It's like the 50 minute mark of the movie.

• 40:00Chris Ryan?

  It's incredible.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:01Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, and now we wind back, there's a crew watching and we're like, holy shit, this was, this is what we're doing? Like, it doesn't really set in, right?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how it all works.

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  Whole universe watching. Truman's crying when he sees his dad.

• 40:16Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  That's a good moment, yeah.

• 40:17Bill Simmons?

  There's a theory he's crying because he knows that his whole life's been a lie.

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 40:22Bill Simmons?

  He's not crying because he's happy to see his dad again. He's crying because he's like, holy shit. Because right after that moment, he's on to everything.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I would love to ask Jim Carrey that question.

• 40:32Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he played it both ways.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:34Bill Simmons?

  We're just like, yeah, dude. Truman escapes in the basement, a little Shawshank-ish.

• 40:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Dark.

• 40:42Bill Simmons?

  Truman's sailboat adventure with Kristoff going heel.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  The great wave machine.

• 40:48Chris Ryan?

  Going Old Testament on him.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was.

• 40:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Do it up, put it up to the danger. I want to point out the score, how good the score is in this movie, especially the scene. And then when he hits the end of the world.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  It's the best.

• 41:01Bill Simmons?

  You're like, wait, what happened?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Maybe one of the most iconic endings to a movie ever.

• 41:06Bill Simmons?

  Truman says goodbye. I don't know, are there any others you would throw in?

• 41:09Speaker 02

  No, I bring it up score. I think the moment that he's kind of discovering things, like where he's turning on that street, and then he's like, he's stopping the bus and he's starting to kind of put it all together. There's the score behind that. I realize that I go, oh, I think in any other director's hands, they start playing it like a little bit more paranoid and kind of built in tension.

• 41:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  He played it triumphantly. And it was an interesting thing where it makes you like root for Truman.

• 41:34Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Like, it's almost like, oh, he's putting it together and we're like on the page of going, oh, let's go Truman. Like, he's putting it together. It's like a-

• 41:41Chris Ryan?

  That's Philip Glass, I think, that they're playing.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Philip Glass, like, but I just thought it was a really brilliant musical cue because it trains the audience to root for him, rather than-

• 41:48Bill Simmons?

  Chris, let's do that with the Miami Vice remix. With the three of, when the three of us. Yeah, yeah. Hash it out. Yeah. So what do you have for most rewatchable?

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Most rewatchable? I think that scene, I think that scene is the most rewatchable scene. Is, is, is him putting it all together.

• 42:02Chris Ryan?

  He's right. Yeah. That's when he discovers the set. It goes through the revolving door and then he just sort of like starting to like.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:07Chris Ryan?

  He's starting to see the ones and zeros out there.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  It's the wish fulfillment of the whole movie, in my opinion.

• 42:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I've seen this movie multiple times and it still takes me back when he hits, when he hits the end.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:16Bill Simmons?

  You're like, oh. Today's edition of the most rewatchable scene was brought to you by PayPal. This is big, bigger than the 12 foot snowman on your lawn right now. You can get 5% cash back when you pay later with PayPal. So whether it's a must have toy or a tiered cheese board, PayPal helps make the most of your money this holiday. Save the offer in the PayPal app expires 12/31. See paypal.com/promoterms, subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457. What's the most 1998 thing about this movie? Did I prepare you for this one?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yep. Uh, most 1998, I think, uh, The Travel Agent.

• 43:01Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one. Glenn came prepared. Glenn set the high bar for any future celebrity guest.

• 43:07Chris Ryan?

  I had a very negative experience with The Travel Agent today and I was just like, how is this happening? Like, I've called you once in 10 years.

• 43:13Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 43:14Chris Ryan?

  You can't make this work for me.

• 43:16Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for 98?

• 43:17Chris Ryan?

  Uh, reality television being like a novel idea. Uh, just sort of the idea that like when you would have seen this movie in 1998, this would have seemed incredibly far fetched. And now it seems like, oh yeah, is there, isn't there a Truman Show on Channel 236? That I don't know about.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. I had young Paul Giamatti. I don't know, it just jumped out to me.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  He's the, wait, wait, he's the best.

• 43:40Bill Simmons?

  Just that it made, seeing young Paul Giamatti made me feel like I was in the mid 1990s. Cause he was in private parts with Howard Stern and just like seeing that version of him.

• 43:49Chris Ryan?

  He's the bellhop in My Best Friend's Wedding.

• 43:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. He just, he had this whole that guy run in the 90s.

• 43:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  Before he became Paul Giamatti.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:56Bill Simmons?

  And then he did, uh, the wine movie that we've already done.

• 43:59Speaker 02

  Sideways, sideways, of course.

• 44:00Bill Simmons?

  That I'm blanking on. Uh, but yes, he did sideways and he became Paul Giamatti. But for 10 years, he was just like this guy with like weird facial hairs and. Anyway, what's age the best? Well, what do you have? Cause I have a bunch.

• 44:13Speaker 02

  Let me see what, let me see what I've seen.

• 44:14Bill Simmons?

  I'll do, I'll do a couple while you're looking up. I like movies when adults play high school kids in flashbacks and I actually feel like they're in high school.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 44:23Bill Simmons?

  Cause people, they usually mangle that.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:25Bill Simmons?

  I actually like believed like Laura Linney was like when they all met together.

• 44:29Chris Ryan?

  Thirty's a good age to go.

• 44:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Chris Ryan?

  You can get away with like.

• 44:31Bill Simmons?

  Just far enough. Carrie actually looked young enough, so I was buying that.

• 44:34Speaker 02

  He, you know what I wrote down for what age the best?

• 44:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Product placement.

• 44:39Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  I, I, I, I think they sort of nail, like they just, they, they kind of brushed it under the rug of the, the, the product placement, but how many, how the entire world.

• 44:46Bill Simmons?

  I had product placement in post-game shows for TV shows. Like recap shows, basically.

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  This movie, this is probably for a different category in a lot of ways, like predicts Amazon. Cause when you're watching an Amazon show, they're also like, you can buy whatever anybody's wearing in this.

• 45:02Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 45:02Chris Ryan?

  You know what I mean? Or you can buy like the stuff that they're using. So it's kind of.

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  The only thing I missed out on was the gambling content. Like we didn't have Truman making a same game parlay.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  I was waiting for this. Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  You, you know what I thought about that? Like there was like this one bar, like they, they keep, I, I never noticed the, the, the, the sort of aprons before, but it's not just a bar, it's a Truman show.

• 45:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's like Bubba Gum's shrimp.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking. I was like, that kind of took me out of it a little bit. I, I kind of wanted to feel a little more universal, but I thought about in that bar, you have to have some gambling in that bar.

• 45:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, he does do two to one odds on he's gonna, he's, uh, uh, like the bartender does do like, I'm taking odds on him getting out of this, getting across the ocean here.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  You should never see the act.

• 45:39Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna do this later. I'll just do this now since you brought it up. So people are going to the bar, they're just having drinks and food.

• 45:44Speaker 02

  At the Truman Show bar.

• 45:45Bill Simmons?

  Truman Show's on. Are they allowed to talk about anything else?

• 45:48Chris Ryan?

  You say that, but if I opened a bar called Miami Vice, where Miami's vice.

• 45:52Bill Simmons?

  Guys, we gotta dress like Miami Vice.

• 45:55Chris Ryan?

  And we just had mojitos.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  It's not a terrible idea. This is, this is what, this is what, um, what was the one that Stallone and Bruce Willis opened? Um, the.

• 46:06Chris Ryan?

  Play Hall, yeah, right.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  You know, there's like, I, I always loved the Rainforest Cafe. I love, I love a themed restaurant.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 46:13Bill Simmons?

  Do you think there were some people that went to the Truman bar and were like? I'll go to the Truman Bar. I'm not fucking talking about the Truman Show. I'm talking about anything else.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  It's got great ribs. They got great ribs.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Product placement could have been a little more subtle. Yeah. At ninety-eight.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  That's, that's my one knock is I think that they, they could have been like, there was the, the twin guys that they pushed them against. And I'm like, he would have figured that out. Laura Linney's like, kinda really selling it.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Like in the middle of that very intense moment, she has to promote.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Moco Coco. But you don't have to do that right now.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I thought the best Sea Crest idea for What's Age the Best, no cats. Just dogs.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Sea Haven.

• 46:51Bill Simmons?

  Sea Haven.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. There is no cats.

• 46:53Bill Simmons?

  Why did I write that secret? There are no cats.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  There's a cat in the control room.

• 46:55Bill Simmons?

  Very dog friendly though. No cats.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Very interesting thing to notice.

• 46:58Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. I just, I'm only saying this for Mallory Rubin, cause she works with us and she's gonna be furious that I enjoyed a world with no cats.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Dude, when I was shooting Expendables three.

• 47:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 02

  In, in Bulgaria.

• 47:10Bill Simmons?

  Say no more. What a, what a start to a sentence.

• 47:14Speaker 02

  There was, there was, there's a city. So the, the city of Sofia, Bulgaria is like overrun with dogs. All dogs.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 02

  And then there's a city called Plavdiv that is overrun with cats. And I visited them like, like, and I was like, what a weird thing to have like.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Do they have any sharks and jets?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking. I was like, this is gonna be a war that happens when these two cities.

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  We just had Mallory there. Report back. The What's Age the Best, the poster, which I think is one of the best posters from this decade. It was done by an artist named Rob Silverman. Uh, hundreds of carried things that he just worked on forever and they paid seventy-five thousand dollars for it.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Seventy-five, that's it?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  That is a great, that is a great. Where'd you say it premiered?

• 47:55Bill Simmons?

  The poster or the?

• 47:56Speaker 02

  No, the, the, the actual movie.

• 47:57Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I don't know.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Was it at a festival or was it like a?

• 47:59Bill Simmons?

  I think it just, I think it was just a regular. I think they pushed it because they wanted it to go for Oscars.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, premiered in June in LA.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  In LA.

• 48:07Bill Simmons?

  It was supposed to be ninety-seven and then the Titanic literally was this big boat coming for everybody and they were like, let's go ninety-eight. Better chance for the Oscars. What else do you have for What's Age the Best?

• 48:17Speaker 02

  Age the Best, um.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  I do, I do think that the, um, the, the ending, the ending is, is perfect.

• 48:28Chris Ryan?

  One of the great endings.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I just think, I think, I think the, the bow at the end, the wish fulfillment of it, you get that thing that I love in movies, which is like the laugh cry.

• 48:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Like where you, you cut to the world, like, like the guy in the bathtub just like slapping the wall, like you, you, you kind of have that emotional reaction where you're like simultaneously sad it's ending, but also like so happy for a guy.

• 48:47Bill Simmons?

  That was Chris's last name with VJ and the end of Joel Embiid's career. Happening at the same time. Is that a laugh cry for you?

• 48:55Speaker 02

  A laugh cry.

• 48:56Bill Simmons?

  In the tub.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Do you have any words to say to the best?

• 48:59Chris Ryan?

  I got a bunch. Uh, this movie passes, um, the Raiders of the Lost Ark screenplay test that I'm inventing, not inventing, but.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 49:07Chris Ryan?

  It's like, I think every 10 pages or 10 minutes of this movie, something really important happens and it makes you so engaged, like on a kind of almost subconscious level with it. You anticipate it almost like a thriller, even though it's like this drama comedy. But I was just.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:23Chris Ryan?

  I was, I realized this last night, at 10 minutes, he can't get on the boat. You're like, why not? 20 minutes, we meet Lauren. 30 minutes, he discovers the set. 40 minutes, he sees the fingers crossed wedding picture.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 49:35Chris Ryan?

  50 minutes, the cop says Truman's name when he's like.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:39Chris Ryan?

  No problem, Truman, or whatever. Thanks, Truman. He's like, what the fuck?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:42Chris Ryan?

  And then at 60, he gets reunited with his dad and you see Kristoff in the control room. And then it's like the last 30 minutes, which is just crazy. But the way that like they have that, that like rhythm to like discovery in this movie.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:54Chris Ryan?

  It's just kind of disorienting enough. And then you're like, oh, okay.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  And it's paced, it's paced out well.

• 50:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 02

  I heard that there was a version of the script in which we don't even realize that Truman is in a simulation until the midpoint.

• 50:09Chris Ryan?

  See, this is what I wanted to ask about is like whether or not you guys think.

• 50:12Bill Simmons?

  That's how they drop it?

• 50:13Chris Ryan?

  Opening 30 seconds or two minutes of the movie.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  It's.

• 50:16Chris Ryan?

  Is what makes it rewatchable because you're like, I kind of know just enough about this being weird. But if you just have it play like a Sixth Sense twist, it's, it's different. You know what I mean?

• 50:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, people are stupid. I think you have to cater to that.

• 50:33Bill Simmons?

  You kind of have to hold their hand every once in a while with something like this. I think that's why. What else do you have?

• 50:37Chris Ryan?

  I had them doing T-Rex 20th Century Boy as like a 1950s sock hop jam. Because like, you know, what is music in this world? And like, how would they have? Like, what does he know about like rock and roll or whatever? Or is time stop in the 50s? And so like, the fact that they're covering a 1970s glam rock song that's obviously very popular, but making it sound like Chuck Berry or something like that.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Oh, that is interesting.

• 51:04Chris Ryan?

  Is a kind of interesting idea about what they would do for like, to keep this guy like engaged with culture inside of this world.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  They just, they just didn't want to pay for the rights.

• 51:14Chris Ryan?

  That is also possible.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  You know, you know what's funny though, is I actually flagged that scene is actually, I think, one of the best directed scenes in the whole movie.

• 51:21Chris Ryan?

  The dance.

• 51:22Speaker 02

  The dance. I think that dance is like poetry.

• 51:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:25Speaker 02

  I, it is done with looks. It's fun. It's paranoid. It's like, it's got a sense of the world to it. And it like, it does so much heavy lifting in a very short amount of time for the whole movie.

• 51:37Bill Simmons?

  I had a, don't get freaked out, deaths at sea in movies.

• 51:42Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 51:43Bill Simmons?

  I think are always riveting. And I was, I almost wanted to do like my, my top tier best ones ever. That's super weird. Cause Ordinary People has a great one.

• 51:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:53Bill Simmons?

  This one has a really good one.

• 51:55Chris Ryan?

  Jaw's pretty good.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  Perfect Storm.

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Bill Simmons?

  Perfect Storm. But the one where you're like, just hold on. And the guy's like, I can't. And they fall back.

• 52:02Chris Ryan?

  Titanic is probably.

• 52:03Bill Simmons?

  Visually, Titanic's another one, but visually it's, it always works.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:07Bill Simmons?

  It's always a home run. It's like, oh, he's not going to be able to hold on, is he? I got it, I got it.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  I mean, that's, that's where the movie takes on a really dark.

• 52:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Dark thing. You're like, oh, what they're willing to do to keep this guy here.

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  So what happened? So he goes under and what do they have? Like a scuba deck?

• 52:19Speaker 02

  They show a clip of it.

• 52:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  They show a clip of like, I think, maybe I'm making this up, but it seemed like the dad was like upset with being taken off.

• 52:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's in the montage when Christoph does his interview.

• 52:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:33Chris Ryan?

  And they show the dad being like upset about it. Right? Yes.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, his storyline was cut off.

• 52:39Chris Ryan?

  The divers are in the water getting the dad. Right.

• 52:41Bill Simmons?

  Quick ones. Big Gahuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink. The Moco Coco Coffee. Should come back.

• 52:46Chris Ryan?

  I had Chef's Pal, Dicer, Grater and Peel All in One.

• 52:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a good one.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  Yep. I think those are the two. I mean, the Moco Coco, I think is maybe the most iconic.

• 52:54Bill Simmons?

  By the way, not a bad name for a. Coffee.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  They could have honestly paid for this movie with the amount of product placement they do within this movie.

• 53:03Bill Simmons?

  Great shot, Gordo, most cinematic shot. What do you have, CR?

• 53:05Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Truman going through the revolving door, like with the kind of like realization that something is changing. Or the last shot of the movie of him walking into the black doorway.

• 53:16Bill Simmons?

  I liked when they, when they finally stopped the storm. And they go the, the over the boat shot and he's like this and you don't know if he's dead or not. And then, I don't know. I just thought that looked cool with the sun come up.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  I loved, I loved Ed Harris touching his face on the, the screen. I thought that was a very like a moment where you started seeing this like father's, this like really messed up father, son thing happening where it's like, he's obsessed with his creation. I was like, that was a moment that's like a very cool visual moment that like kind of sums up the whole dynamic.

• 53:47Bill Simmons?

  Ches Rockwell Brock Laners Award for best character name. I, I Kristoff's really good. It's such a douchey.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Obviously this guy would devote his life to tormenting Truman. His name's Kristoff. He's no last name. It's a, it's a backwards beret too, with the glasses.

• 54:01Bill Simmons?

  Full douche on us.

• 54:02Chris Ryan?

  Truman Burbank is pretty good though.

• 54:03Bill Simmons?

  Truman Burbank's good.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Truman Burbank, I mean Kristoff, by the way, it's the whole, the whole thing that they talk about is like, Chr- Christ.

• 54:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  Kristoff, that he's playing God.

• 54:13Bill Simmons?

  The voice of God.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  You know, and he's like a one name guy, you know, Truman, Truman, you know, like there, they, again, there was like a lot of intention and all that, but I, I think Truman Burbank kind of like, I don't know. I could have had a second draft.

• 54:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:27Bill Simmons?

  Truman Burbank sounds like the left tackle on the Jaguars.

• 54:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:32Bill Simmons?

  CR, you have a flex category.

• 54:33Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I-

• 54:34Bill Simmons?

  This is a category that's not normally in the rundown, but CR has carp launch to pick any category.

• 54:38Chris Ryan?

  So I am choosing in honor of Heat. It's a book about medals award for blatantly best quote or exchange. The one that sticks with me the most because it gets overridden by Truman redoing, uh, good afternoon, good evening, and if I don't see you, good night or whatever. I love when he's like, you never had a camera in my head. The way he says that and like the idea that there has to be a limit to like surveillance or like the way that, how much you can know somebody. And I, I thought that was like such an incredible like grace note to go at him. So I always liked that one.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  My favorite was with the two security guys where you see them like, you know, they're about to, you know, the husband and wife are about to get intimate and you basically cut to the security guards. It's like, you know, they never show it. You know, he's like, you just, you just cut to the curtain. They blow a little bit. He's like, they never show it. It's my favorite way to like, get plot out, like, to literally go like, hey, just like, you're like, what are they showing? What are they not showing? But it is also one of my favorite, like, my favorite, I'm like, I want to live with these guys.

• 55:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, the parking lot attendant guys.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Brilliant line delivery, too.

• 55:45Bill Simmons?

  I have a bonus category, the Ed Norton Reverse Dunk Award for did this movie need a random sports scene?

• 55:53Bill Simmons?

  Like, could there have been a double A baseball situation going on here?

• 55:56Chris Ryan?

  That's a really good question is, does Truman get Yankee scores or something? Or did they create like a fake baseball league for him to follow?

• 56:04Bill Simmons?

  Was there a whole sports staff just writing fake stories about players that didn't exist?

• 56:09Speaker 02

  It's actually a really fun, I mean, this is, this is where the first AD comes in. That's a whole props department.

• 56:14Bill Simmons?

  They're making a full newspaper every day. So what's in the newspaper?

• 56:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, their newspaper seems to be just to cover up their own plot holes. Right? Their newspaper seems to be very reactive to things falling out of the sky.

• 56:27Chris Ryan?

  Right, airplane disasters.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  But I always thought about that in terms of, obviously, they're trying to mimic the real world. So they're trying to not like, create a new reality. So people that are watching the show obviously want to see like, their reality reflected in a weird way. But also, the more you do that, the more you're sort of looking to the outside world. It creates like a, a sense of longing that there's something outside to see heaven, that I thought was like, an interesting.

• 56:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:50Bill Simmons?

  Maybe lacrosse could work. They got the helmets. You don't, you never would know who the players are.

• 56:56Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 56:56Chris Ryan?

  That would be funny if, if he comes out of the studio and he's like, so, like, what's going on in the world of lacrosse?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Like, the writers are just like, scurrying.

• 57:05Bill Simmons?

  The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film. What'd you have for this, Glenn?

• 57:12Speaker 02

  I know a lot of people are probably gonna, I bet you, somebody's gonna say Marlin.

• 57:18Bill Simmons?

  I didn't have Marlon.

• 57:18Speaker 02

  You don't have Marlon on there?

• 57:19Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 57:20Chris Ryan?

  I think it could, there could, so go, go, tell me why.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  I, look, Mar- I actually, I actually don't, I actually don't think Marlon's the, the weak link of the movie. I find that, I find the dad storyline, I think that could have been better.

• 57:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  In my, in my, in my personal opinion, I think he's sort of like, we, we, we could have, we could have, we could have cast the net a little bit wider.

• 57:40Bill Simmons?

  In the research, they said there were extra Marlon scenes that made him, uh, like just a little deeper of a character.

• 57:48Chris Ryan?

  Like more nefarious or like?

• 57:50Bill Simmons?

  No, like he tries to actually help Truman at one point.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  And they cut it out.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  I could totally see that.

• 57:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  The, the reality is, it's, it's a very one dimensional character. Like, I like the idea that they built this entire backstory that he's known him since seven. But the thing that I kept being like really interested in is like, how did that seven year old get cast?

• 58:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  What does his life look like?

• 58:09Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  What is the things that he's been living with? Like, how is this affecting?

• 58:12Bill Simmons?

  Child actor.

• 58:13Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? That's what I'm saying. I'm like, he's a child actor too. He's sort of in this different experience, like he signed up at seven.

• 58:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 02

  I was like really interested in what that, when, when your best friend in the whole world is going through this crisis, like what it actually looks like. I was like, that's cool to.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  Prequel?

• 58:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's a, you know what? I'm kind of surprised that, well, we'll get to that.

• 58:30Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for weak link?

• 58:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I don't have a weakest link really. I think that, I, I hear you about the dad. You know, it's like, I, I wonder whether or not, like, if that had been like Dennis Hopper.

• 58:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:43Chris Ryan?

  Does that hit harder?

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  More famous actor.

• 58:44Chris Ryan?

  Like a hair.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Could have been more emotional.

• 58:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  I feel like that, that storyline, cause I feel like that storyline inherently is a, is a one that opens up a whole can of worms plot wise. Like, how did he sneak back onto the studio? What's the conversation of getting him back on? Like, if he's already having second thoughts about this, like, that's a, that's a whole other thing. But I go, if you had somebody that was like really, like, uh, uh, uh, someone that already had all this like, uh, empathetic or, you know? Empathetic nature, we had a, we had a history like a Hanks or like a Hopper, somebody that we've trusted before. I think you, you engage with that role differently.

• 59:20Bill Simmons?

  I had a, I don't know what was fun about watching this TV show for 24 hours a day.

• 59:26Bill Simmons?

  I think I would have, I would have quickly.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  The curtains blowing when the.

• 59:29Bill Simmons?

  I just think at some point, I'm like, all right, let me guess, he's gonna wake up, say hi to the neighbors, drive to work.

• 59:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, they present it like, there have been moments on the show that are as big as the Princess Diana, Prince Charles wedding.

• 59:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:42Chris Ryan?

  And that like, people are like, make, doing like live aid sized crowds to watch Truman get married. And I get it, cause like, that's the obvious nod that they're making, but it is sort of like, what are you doing on Wednesday at 9:30 PM when Truman's like cutting his nails? Are you at the Truman bar being like, yeah, Truman.

• 1:00:00Speaker 02

  Truman has diarrhea today.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst?

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll, I'll say this, the CGI to pull off the Princess Diana wedding shots.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Speaker 02

  To establish the outside world.

• 1:00:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  I personally think that the What's Age the Worst is like, number one, the CGI of the actual bubble. Right? That, that I was like, okay, we could have, we could have designed.

• 1:00:22Chris Ryan?

  It was so early.

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, you could almost like redo that for the Criterion release or something.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  No, 100%, like we could have just spent a little bit more time on this thing, cause it's kind of like one of the, the wish fulfillment things of the whole movie. But I just think the cutbacks to the real world, I would have wanted to see a little bit more ripple effects of the real world.

• 1:00:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  Interacting.

• 1:00:41Chris Ryan?

  That was mine, what's the like, I honestly, even in, even in 1998, like, it would have been cool if they got a little bit more into the ethical and legal entanglements that this thing would have inevitably. I guess it is cool that it's like, this is just such a runaway hit that even these few naysayers who tried to disrupt it, they just become part of it almost.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:02Chris Ryan?

  And like, when he's talking to Lauren on the, during the interview, and he's like, no, no, no, I love reconnecting with cast members, even though she's, she's saying that he's a liar and like evil, but I do think it would have been cool, like what's, what's like the. What does like the Supreme Court think about like a child being born to a corporation?

• 1:01:20Bill Simmons?

  Lauren would have been, we should have had her on What's Aged the Best as somebody who's now devoted their life to like now. It'd be so much easier to be like, come to my website, here's my Truman podcast. And you'd have nine things.

• 1:01:32Speaker 02

  There is something really fun about also the fact that like, that was one of the things where I'm like, the fact that you took a kid, raised him in this bubble, lied to him in this whole thing, I'm like, there would be a lot of people trying to break into this.

• 1:01:45Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  This place. You know what I mean? That's why I was like, when the dad like snuck back.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  Presidents running on it and I will shut down the Truman Show, day one.

• 1:01:53Bill Simmons?

  What's Aged the Worst? They filmed all the scenes in Truman's house at a residence in Florida that was Matt Gaetz's childhood home.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  I did hear this.

• 1:02:04Chris Ryan?

  I did not know that.

• 1:02:06Bill Simmons?

  So at TV, I just like McConaughey, that was just a tough beat for him to follow this movie with a similar premise. It's where the agent could have maybe been like, no, no, no. Carrie Peter Weir thing, let's stay away.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  It's always happened over the course of time. It's like you release like White House Down and then you release like Olympus is falling.

• 1:02:24Chris Ryan?

  Two Steve Prefontaine reviews.

• 1:02:26Bill Simmons?

  Prefontaine was the best one ever. The two, two in a row. And then one was awesome.

• 1:02:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:30Bill Simmons?

  Without Limits. My last What's Aged the Worst. So Merrill, Laura Linney's character. So professional escort?

• 1:02:39Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 1:02:41Bill Simmons?

  An actor who has a fake marriage with somebody that she's clearly having sex with? And this is, this, what's her next job after this?

• 1:02:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because at 34, and presumably she might have had a child with Truman by this point, but if they're like, look, at 35, you can, you can, we can just get you divorced and you can move out of Sea Haven or whatever.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  We're gonna drown you in the sea.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  What are the late 30s looking like for her after that?

• 1:03:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you know how the Truman Show got a little out of hand?

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  What does the next job look like after the Truman Show?

• 1:03:11Bill Simmons?

  Having texts on camera is a little weird. I never, never understood that.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  She thinks her career is going to look a little different after the Truman Show?

• 1:03:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. She's, I'm gonna be in like out of Africa, right?

• 1:03:22Bill Simmons?

  Ruffalo Hannah, ribbon of Partridge over acting award. Did you have one?

• 1:03:25Chris Ryan?

  I filmmaker Hall makes the most out of, I mean, he's still always amazing.

• 1:03:29Bill Simmons?

  He's chewing up scenery.

• 1:03:30Chris Ryan?

  But he's just like, the network, I'm the president of the network.

• 1:03:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I had it too. That's a good one. All right. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Did you bring a hottest take?

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  I'll tell you my hottest take. I, I, I love Jim Carrey in this movie. My hot take is I do think this movie could have potentially been really good with Tom Hanks.

• 1:03:57Chris Ryan?

  That's good. You gotta go for the head there. That's great. So talk us through it.

• 1:04:01Bill Simmons?

  You almost said Tom Cruise or you said the Tom.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  No, no, no. No, no, the thing with Cruise, it turns into the, the, you know.

• 1:04:08Chris Ryan?

  Minority Report.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  You know, it's like, what you don't want to do is you don't want to feel like a paranoid thriller. The reason Jim Carrey is so good in this movie is it takes, it brushes all that away. It's a guy who's grown up in a, you know, a very manicured existence. I will say that for me, Hanks represents the everyman that you sort of root for. Like he sort of feels like a guy, like some of these moments would just be a little more subtle. I don't know if they'd be as much fun to watch, but I would engage with the movie. I think with the Tom Hanks in a different way because he doesn't feel like an everyman. Like you, again, we talked about it, only get so many buy-ins of the movie. I feel like the buy-in is that now you have a normal guy who's realizing that he's not normal. Jim Carrey is so over the top as a person.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Obviously, his existence has been manicured, so you could justify that. But I find that Hanks would represent a little bit more of an everyman who's realizing that he represents something to the world. And that debate of do I leave this existence or, or stay here? I think, I think it'd just be a different, it would be a different movie, but I would love to see what that movie looks like.

• 1:05:13Bill Simmons?

  Cruise, definitely. They add a running scene over the bridge.

• 1:05:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Sailboat scene at the end would just be so dope.

• 1:05:21Bill Simmons?

  He's definitely hanging from the sailboat.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  No, he's hanging from the moon, man.

• 1:05:24Bill Simmons?

  He's filming his own sailboat scene. He said, no, no, this has to be an actual, a sailboat accident.

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  This is gonna be the actual moon.

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Speaker 02

  I want you to hit me with real waves.

• 1:05:33Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for us to take?

• 1:05:34Chris Ryan?

  Uh, kinda similar to what Glenn said, I would have, the first director attached this movie was Brian De Palma.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:05:41Chris Ryan?

  And I would love to see the sex crazed, paranoid Truman's cutting up magazine pictures of women and trying to recreate Lauren. Like, we get maybe Melanie Griffith playing Merrill, you know, there's like a-

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:55Chris Ryan?

  Just a lot more like, I think of the sort of debased psychology of this character.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  They definitely have sex on the beach.

• 1:06:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it could've come out that way, and I just think that would've been amazing.

• 1:06:06Bill Simmons?

  All right, mine's a little complex.

• 1:06:09Bill Simmons?

  I think 1998 is in the running for the greatest checking all the boxes movie year we've ever had.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:06:15Bill Simmons?

  So I'm gonna give you all these different categories that I created five minutes ago.

• 1:06:21Bill Simmons?

  All these different types of movies that can come out in a year.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Bill Simmons?

  Drama, Saving Private Ryan. Provocative drama, American History X. Foreign, Life is Beautiful. Beloved movie nerd movie, Out of Sight. Guys movie, Rounders. Great comedy, There's Something About Mary. Cult comedy, Big Lebowski. Goofy comedy, Wedding Singer. Conspiracy, Enemy of the State. Political, Primary Colors. War, Thin Red Line. Sports movie, He Got Game. Horror, Halloween H2O. Action, Armageddon. Well done for me and CR action, Ronin.

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, CR. Sci-fi, Truman Show. Sci-fi horror, Blade. Rom-com, You've Got Mail. Black rom-com, Stella Got a Groove Back. Corny drama, Patch Adams. High school, Can't Hardly Wait. Fucked up indie movie, Your Friends and Neighbors. You seen that one?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:07:11Bill Simmons?

  It's a fucked up indie movie. TV turn movie, X-Files. Animated, A Bug's Life. And kids, Parent Trap.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  That's a damn good movie year.

• 1:07:18Bill Simmons?

  If you use all that, like, think about how many categories I just listed, and we have an awesome one for each one. Let's get, let's go back.

• 1:07:25Speaker 02

  It's a shame.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  98. Let's put 98. Yeah, let's, let's make this happen again in 26.

• 1:07:30Chris Ryan?

  It would be amazing if Fantasy had been here and he was like, actually, it's 1934.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  Tucky Barnum's like, you know, like.

• 1:07:39Bill Simmons?

  But I just, I felt like we had so much more variety. I know TV's ruined some of this and some of the stuff goes scripted. Like if you did Chad Powers.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Bill Simmons?

  In 98, it just would have been a 90 minute sports movie.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Well, I think one of the things that we talked about is, is potentially doing it as a movie. But what you start to realize is we, in the way that I conceptualize it is I was like, do I want to see the Breaking Bad movie? Before the Breaking Bad show. No, you want to watch Walter White.

• 1:08:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  Incrementally make decisions.

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:08:05Speaker 02

  That change, you know, you want, you want to be with him on every single one of those things. It doesn't have as much satisfaction if you.

• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  But in 98, you don't have that choice. They're like.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:08:13Bill Simmons?

  You have a hundred minutes max.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Bill Simmons?

  And it's $14 million and you can have two stars.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:19Bill Simmons?

  Go.

• 1:08:19Chris Ryan?

  It's also like this is, you go back to those years and you look at like the, the calendar of releases, like you were at the movies once a week. If not two or three, you know what I mean?

• 1:08:28Bill Simmons?

  That'll come back. We had a lot, this was an awesome movie year and it feels like.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Bill Simmons?

  Feels like we're, we're climbing back.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  I also feel like when, you know, people always think that like TikTok or Instagram, like, you know, siphon, you know, eyeballs away from movies. I also feel like it also connects us into those cultural moments that really resonate. Like I feel like those things say like, hey, this thing's awesome. I just think you can't, there's like this era that I feel like people just accepted that people went to the movies. There's like the 98 where you're like, all those movies are killer movies.

• 1:08:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  And now that there was like a thing where like, oh, we, we just, we just accepted that people go to the movies. And there wasn't as much like artistry or intention behind it. And I think we're coming back to where it's like, the only way you open a movie is when it's really damn good.

• 1:09:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:09:09Chris Ryan?

  The word of mouth.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  Plugging Running Man, November 14th.

• 1:09:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we're getting that.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  It's, but it's like, but that's the only way you actually get to people to go to the movies. Cause like ahead of time, like two, three weeks ahead of time, you know, if it's a stinker or not.

• 1:09:21Bill Simmons?

  You might with Running Man, you might just have to be like, gotta see in the IMAX. That just seems to work now. Like rewatchable's episode of Glenn Powell, you gotta see in the IMAX.

• 1:09:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, because you know what?

• 1:09:30Bill Simmons?

  It's totally different.

• 1:09:32Chris Ryan?

  The second time I saw one battle, I just saw it like, you know, in a, in a relatively half full, like regular AMC theater. And I was like, this is still awesome.

• 1:09:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:40Chris Ryan?

  You know, like, you know, it's like, you don't always have to like go to the greatest possible experience.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  I will say when we. Shooting, like, it always bums me out when people tell me like they saw Top Gun on an airplane. I'm like, brother, you just missed out on the whole, like, I'm up there, you know, they're just puking and passing out in jets and like, you know, we shoot it all in IMAX. You invented cameras for things. There was like so much, and I'm like, to experience that movie in IMAX was such a blast. Like, even, it's like, it's like watching-

• 1:10:06Chris Ryan?

  Dudes were saluting the screen in theaters. We're like-

• 1:10:10Bill Simmons?

  That was, that was like the first Welcome Back to Movies theater movie in a while. Let's take one more break and then we gotta zoom through the rest of this. 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 Minnehoshan 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.

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  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. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now.

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• 1:11:48Bill Simmons?

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• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order, 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show. Casting What-ifs. Carrie's price tag was 20 million a movie at the time, 10 less than Glenn. But he took 12. Took a little discount, and he said it was the fastest he'd ever accepted a role. There's some stuff about, they talked to Sam Jackson about it. My shit detector went off. I didn't believe it. Gary Oldman was the other one.

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  Gary, when they did screen tests for.

• 1:13:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I don't think they actually offered it to him. Yeah, it's a Carrie fallback. Dennis Hopper was supposed to be Kristoff and was Kristoff and filmed two days of scenes, and then they.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  Talked to Ed Harris about this. I shot a movie with Ed Harris, and he said he got cast like a couple of days before he shot this.

• 1:13:25Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:13:26Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 1:13:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So Hopper said he got fired after two days because Weir and Scott Rudin, the producer, didn't like him. Hopper leaves. They try to get Jack Nicholson. Nicholson's buddies with Hopper is like, I can't do that. So they end up with that Harrison. And Brian De Palma turned it down, as CR mentioned, uh, which is a, a different movie.

• 1:13:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Bill Simmons?

  To say the least.

• 1:13:50Chris Ryan?

  Terry Gilliam and Barry Sonnenfeld were also circling.

• 1:13:53Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 1:13:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Terry Gilliam would have made a very interesting film out of this.

• 1:13:57Bill Simmons?

  Best that guy award, it can't go to Giomati because he's now Paul Giomati. But the Asian guy from Karate Kid 2.

• 1:14:03Chris Ryan?

  I knew you were gonna get that.

• 1:14:04Bill Simmons?

  Of course I was.

• 1:14:05Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:14:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the guy Daniel-san fights in the end. The evil guy.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  What you mean Snyder?

• 1:14:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, oh, the big guy.

• 1:14:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  You're talking about the big guy?

• 1:14:14Bill Simmons?

  No, the guy Daniel-san, Karate Kid 2.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  Wait, he's in this movie?

• 1:14:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, he's in the Japanese family that's hanging out at the table watching.

• 1:14:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:22Chris Ryan?

  That's, that's.

• 1:14:23Bill Simmons?

  You're kidding.

• 1:14:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  I totally missed that.

• 1:14:25Bill Simmons?

  He, he regrouped after Daniel-san kicked his ass.

• 1:14:28Speaker 02

  It got really into Truman Show.

• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Dion Waiters award, are we giving this to Natasha?

• 1:14:33Chris Ryan?

  No, this goes to Giomati. Giomati's in like four scenes. He is ridiculous in this movie. Like, this is a nothing, nothing burger part.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really is.

• 1:14:42Chris Ryan?

  And when he's just like, he doesn't even care if he drowns. I'm like, oh, my God, man.

• 1:14:47Speaker 02

  It's very grounded.

• 1:14:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  It's a very grounded performance for knowing that he probably shot two days on a soundstage.

• 1:14:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Bill Simmons?

  You agree with Giomati?

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  No, you know, you know what I, you know what a role is? The, the, the, the woman who's next to Giomati.

• 1:15:00Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yes, yeah.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  I find what's really, really funny about that performance.

• 1:15:03Chris Ryan?

  Chloe, I think her name is.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  Chloe. She, they shoot her. I don't, I wonder what happened in the edit, cause they shoot her like she's a super important character in several of the most pivotal moments.

• 1:15:13Chris Ryan?

  But she never says anything.

• 1:15:14Speaker 02

  But she never says anything. Like, you know what I mean? So I was like, something happened, I think.

• 1:15:18Chris Ryan?

  They just cut her part out, yeah.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  Maybe she's dating Peter Weir. You know, it's like, like something, like a bad fallout in, in post or something. I don't know what happened, but I, there's a.

• 1:15:26Bill Simmons?

  I'll show her.

• 1:15:27Speaker 02

  Do you ever, do you ever see like in like, in movies sometimes where like all of a sudden you see like somebody like that's framed up, important? Like they, they, they have a really good, it's like deep focus, like perfect line. And you're like, that, that is, that character comes.

• 1:15:38Chris Ryan?

  Did that ever happen to you, like on your coming, like coming up days?

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  I've been cut out of stuff before. But, but, but I always just notice it in movies where I'm like, oh, that thing is framed importantly, and she was framed.

• 1:15:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  And all the climactic moments, she's, yeah.

• 1:15:51Bill Simmons?

  Recasting couch director city. As Marlon, can I, can I test drive Sam Jackson for you guys?

• 1:15:58Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's interesting.

• 1:15:59Bill Simmons?

  Just drive away.

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  What, why?

• 1:16:01Bill Simmons?

  Just, I don't know, just.

• 1:16:02Chris Ryan?

  Volatile, you know?

• 1:16:04Bill Simmons?

  Little more of a, maybe I just wanted a little extra from Marlon. And I'm not sure what I wanted, but some sort of, whose side is he on? I just felt like there was more there. There's more meat on that bone.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:15Bill Simmons?

  I don't know who the actor, but that was one I thought.

• 1:16:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it could have been, maybe he could have been the, the cross the street neighbors that Truman's always greeting.

• 1:16:22Bill Simmons?

  Good morning, motherfucker!

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  See, it is so intense. This is nuts. Craig, you have flex category.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know how we have the Vincent Chase Award for, are we sure this character is actually good at his job? I wanna, I wanna nominate the opposite award. And now we're calling it the Kristoff Truman Show Award for the character who is unbelievably good at their job.

• 1:16:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Truman, I mean Kristoff threw a perfect game for 35 years. Fucking Jerry Bruckheimer. I mean, pretty much just him in this room sniffed out the fact that Truman was, was faking sleeping. He's feeding lines to everybody live, like, the guy is cooking at the highest level.

• 1:17:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, 24 hours a day.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  24 hours a day, it's just him. He's like the best, best instincts ever.

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Another thing, that, that, that if we're talking about, they were talking about the GDP of this economy, that booth had to be bigger than that.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  They really, they, they got, they got the, the studio called and cut the budget last minute on, in a few, on a few.

• 1:17:20Chris Ryan?

  So the implication though is that they, they have put a dome over Burbank, California, basically, right?

• 1:17:25Speaker 02

  And they show the continental United States is huge.

• 1:17:28Bill Simmons?

  Are we doing this, yeah, I mean, this was obviously the biggest nitpick. How fucking big was this place? How did they have all the water? How did they have all the electricity? How did nothing ever go wrong? That's one of my.

• 1:17:38Speaker 02

  Like even like the Staples Center has had four accidents, you know, in 20 years.

• 1:17:43Bill Simmons?

  Like the sphere.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  It's basically like Disney World or something.

• 1:17:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, also, that, one of my nitpicks was that, I was like, are, are, are, are lights falling from the sky? Are, are isolated thunderstorms happening? Are, are the frequency things happening? Is, why is this happening now?

• 1:18:01Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  That I could have just used a little external pressure to understand why, why things are going wrong now. Cause you're right, Kristoff has thrown a perfect game.

• 1:18:10Bill Simmons?

  I mean, my God, 35 years he's been doing this. Really, the radio frequency, if that doesn't happen.

• 1:18:15Chris Ryan?

  Maybe they're still making it. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:18:18Bill Simmons?

  Half ass center of research, just quickly, this was filmed in seaside Florida, which is a master planned community in the Florida panhandle. I have no idea what that means. What is master planned?

• 1:18:31Chris Ryan?

  Oh, it's like a planned community. Manufactured homes vibes? Disney was gonna do that stuff, like where it was like, you would have like these towns that were like.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  They do. Disney has one in Palm Springs.

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  Very manicured, like nobody's building their own house. It's like, here's the floor planner.

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  Look cool.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Disney has one called Cotino in Palm Springs right now.

• 1:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Was this what they were doing in Succession and the, with, this was Kendall Roy's thing?

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:50Bill Simmons?

  The living with the old people could have media, people coming to visit them. Uh, Laura Linney studied Sears catalogs from the 50s to develop her poses. I thought that was interesting. Greta Gerwig consulted Weir for Barbie, because she wanted to create that world, which made total sense when I saw that. Before the boat stops, we see the number 139 on its sail, which is, I guess, for some Psalm 139. Some stuff in there. And then, uh, Carrie improvised a bunch of stuff, including the Trumania bit when he was drawing on the mirror. Last thing, um, there's this thing called Truman syndrome. You aware of this?

• 1:19:30Bill Simmons?

  That started in the 2000s with people who have some version of schizophrenia where they believe their lives are reality television shows. And the writers said, Andrew Nichols said, you know, you made it when you have a disease named after you. These people would be constantly think they're being filmed.

• 1:19:46Chris Ryan?

  I have, uh, two more. One is another nickel thing, which is, the original script is set in Manhattan. It's an alternate, alternative Manhattan. And it was much darker. There was an innocent passenger attack on a subway that was supposed to test Truman's courage, which is, well, Truman Show Death Wish, kinda like that. And, uh, Truman had a platonic relationship with a prostitute who he dressed as Sylvia. That would have been the De Palma part.

• 1:20:12Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:20:14Bill Simmons?

  That sounds amazing.

• 1:20:15Chris Ryan?

  And then Peter Weir, when this movie was like, I think after the movie came out, he said he had a crazy idea at one time, which was impossible technically. I would have loved to have had a video camera installed in every theater the film was being seen in. At one point, the projectionist would cut the power and it would cut to the viewers in the cinema watching the movie, but I thought it would be best to leave that idea untested.

• 1:20:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one of those great idea can't actually happen.

• 1:20:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  That's a bit much.

• 1:20:44Bill Simmons?

  We get podcasts pitched to us like that. Well, what if we're hanging out upside like an NBA game and we're in the, next to the Jumbotron, doing a live broadcast of it. It's like, sounds good. Apex Mountain.

• 1:20:59Bill Simmons?

  Jim Carrey, I'm gonna say yes.

• 1:21:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  Is Apex Mountain for Jim Carrey?

• 1:21:02Bill Simmons?

  I think it would. This is right in the middle of this crazy run that he had. 1998, he's got, he's had all this success. This is his first drama. It's well received. Liar Liar's around there. I think he's like the most powerful actor in Hollywood, other than maybe Hanks and Cruise, but Cruise is doing Eyes Wide Shut at this point.

• 1:21:20Chris Ryan?

  This is also a movie where you're like, well, you can do anything.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're actually right.

• 1:21:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Cause this is like, yeah, you're right. This is the end. There's, this is like, not the end of the run, but it is the third act of that, that crazy seven year run that you're talking about.

• 1:21:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it is. Laura Linney, not yet. Ed Harris.

• 1:21:36Chris Ryan?

  What is Laura Linney's Apex Mountain, just out of curiosity?

• 1:21:39Bill Simmons?

  I mean, she's had a bunch of them. Probably somewhere in the early 2000s, right? When she does You Can Count on Me and she just becomes one of the most respected actresses.

• 1:21:49Chris Ryan?

  Is that when Primal Fear? Is Primal Fear is right around here?

• 1:21:51Bill Simmons?

  96. Yeah, it's somewhere in here.

• 1:21:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:21:54Bill Simmons?

  Um, Ed Harris, I don't know, probably early 90s.

• 1:21:57Chris Ryan?

  This is like when he's doing action movies and stuff like that. He's in a couple of Michael Bay.

• 1:22:01Speaker 02

  Apollo 13s is.

• 1:22:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Chris Ryan?

  It's right around here. Yeah.

• 1:22:04Bill Simmons?

  Hidden camera movies, yes. Death at Sea, I still think Ordinary Peoples.

• 1:22:09Chris Ryan?

  Well, you made that category up.

• 1:22:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  You can kind of weird it out. I thought you'd be with it. You were like, what's going on?

• 1:22:15Chris Ryan?

  I'm with you, but it's just one of those things where it's like, I, I have no idea.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  I don't have an opinion quite yet. I gotta think about it.

• 1:22:21Chris Ryan?

  These things.

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Peter Weir, Dead Poets?

• 1:22:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:22:26Chris Ryan?

  You think this over Dead Poets?

• 1:22:28Speaker 02

  You know, the thing about, I, I, I think this is a way more complex. I think the vision of this movie is way more complex than Dead Poets.

• 1:22:34Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  I think, I think even, even just the way, the, the camera angles of like where you hide things, how you build this thing. It's, it's much more of a world building thing. I think this is a very tough movie to direct.

• 1:22:45Chris Ryan?

  Huh.

• 1:22:46Bill Simmons?

  Mocha cocoa coffee, definitely.

• 1:22:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Bill Simmons?

  Noah Emmerich, probably still beautiful girls. It's a big scenes. He alerted the guys. He alerted the guys that the Matt Down characters get the shit kicked out of them. I don't know. Reality TV warning movies, definitely.

• 1:23:05Bill Simmons?

  That's all I had for Apex Mountain. Cruiser Hanks, we said Hanks. Scorsese or Spielberg, Spielberg.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  Spielberg.

• 1:23:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:11Bill Simmons?

  What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Clearly Truman's buddy.

• 1:23:14Speaker 02

  That Marlon, he would have crushed.

• 1:23:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he would have easily. I think he was probably too young in 98.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  That's a great casting, though. That's.

• 1:23:21Chris Ryan?

  He could have played the Peter Kraus role, like the guy who works in the insurance agency with him.

• 1:23:25Bill Simmons?

  What if it was Marlon, but he played it exactly like Freddy in Cal, Cal's Mr. Ripley?

• 1:23:31Chris Ryan?

  Hey Truman.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  Hey Truman, how's the peeping?

• 1:23:33Chris Ryan?

  It's the peeping.

• 1:23:34Bill Simmons?

  Picking nits. So in, I'm not even talking 98, when Truman's a kid, were the cameras and wifi really this good?

• 1:23:43Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:23:43Bill Simmons?

  Like in like 1981?

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  It's a very good point.

• 1:23:45Bill Simmons?

  We were able to do this?

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  Hardwired, yeah, everything's hardwired. You're right.

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  I was carrying in high school in the late eighties, carrying around like, you know, this giant video camera that would like sink your shoulder after 10 minutes.

• 1:23:57Chris Ryan?

  They shot 28 days later on like DV cameras that were really small, like, I don't know, when that comes out, like 2001. And that, you can barely watch that movie now because of like the, the film quality. So I don't think Truman Show realistically would have looked like this, obviously, yeah.

• 1:24:14Bill Simmons?

  We mentioned, how did you pay all the actors and extras? And was this just their job forever? And what was in it for them? If you really want to be, would you have wanted to be an actor in this for 10 years?

• 1:24:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it depends where, like, you know, one of my favorite scenes is, is when he gets on the bus and the guy like pretends to like, like stall out the car and whatever. It reminded me like, it felt like we were in the far corners of the universe where like, he wasn't expecting this to happen. All the, all the background on the bus, like just kind of get up and like move like nobody's like has like their own life. They're like, oh, this, nobody thought the C team was really gonna make it on screen. Like it, I did, I did sort of like that world creation. It felt intentional that nobody felt real.

• 1:24:55Chris Ryan?

  It brings up a really good thing though, cause on the bus, the little girl breaks.

• 1:24:59Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:25:00Chris Ryan?

  And is looking at him and is like, is that him? Is that him? How would you get kids to behave themselves on this show? You know what I mean? Like, how would you get a bunch of children to not be like, I watch your TV show.

• 1:25:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, exactly. You wouldn't. But that's why this movie, we forgot to mention this, so what's age the best, Craig? Hour 41.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  Now, I would argue, and this is one of the rare cases where I could have taken 10 more minutes of this movie.

• 1:25:22Bill Simmons?

  Craig's very passionate and no movie should be more than 100 minutes unless there's an incredible reason.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Two hours occasionally, but I do, there was some, I just, you know, I love a quick movie, but I, they're like the, the woman they introduced to like be his new love interest? That's not explored at all. You probably could have taken a scene of that. I could have seen him unraveling a little bit more, trying to figure things out a little bit more. I don't know. I could have taken 10 more minutes. Hour 43 is tight.

• 1:25:45Bill Simmons?

  We've done rewatchables where Craig just looks the movie up and it's like 89 minutes and he's like, yes, sir. We know we were doing way better.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  All my 80's movies, man.

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  What, any more picking nits for you?

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, just the idea that Christoph like goes full Old Testament on him at the end and no one is like sort of stopping like, I thought that was like an opportunity to really world build, show the chaos of a man who's like desperate to keep this, his creation alive. I thought, I thought it felt too calm up in the.

• 1:26:17Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's also just like, what's the plan if he's like, oh, okay, I'll stay. And Christoph now has a TV show that costs like 500 million dollars a year.

• 1:26:24Speaker 02

  The amount of money, also like, he's not the only one invested. Like, there's clearly a giant machine invested in him not getting out of this thing. I just thought, I thought there was interesting ways to explore that.

• 1:26:35Bill Simmons?

  So, one picking it I had, so he was just gonna kill Truman? What happens if Truman died in the boat?

• 1:26:40Chris Ryan?

  I think he was trying to. Okay, so I think that's left to

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Pretty risky.

• 1:26:44Chris Ryan?

  To the audience to decide, but I was interpreting it as he's trying to traumatize this guy so much in the water that he turns around and goes back and never tries to leave again. And that they can sort of like, now we can try to fix this, but I don't know if he was ever gonna murder him. Although he does say, he was born on camera, he'll die on camera, kinda, right? Like

• 1:27:04Speaker 02

  Means like, I created you.

• 1:27:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Speaker 02

  You know, like, that's what, that's what feels very Old Testament, like, where it's like, I created you, I can take you, I brought you in, I, you know, everything that you've experienced, that's any sort of value I have been a part of. I thought it was a very, I think it's a very, very, that, that was one of my favorite parts is the, the, the conversation that happens to the moon, like, right before he leaves. It's such a

• 1:27:28Chris Ryan?

  You can listen, you can speak Truman, I can hear you.

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so good.

• 1:27:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, speaking of that, my one picking it, it's basically the reverse of the overacting award. If, if I have lived my entire life and found out that it's been a television show, and then I sail a boat across the sea and it runs into like, a piece of drywall, I'm freaking out. Like, I'm losing my mind. It's like Jack Waltz with the, with that horse head in it. Yeah. I'm like, ah! Ah! There's no like, oh, weird, I'm gonna go try and find a door. I am losing my mind.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  That's a great point.

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  Truman jerking off, having sex, all that stuff, like

• 1:28:10Chris Ryan?

  That's

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  I, I know they just went to commercial, or whatever they did.

• 1:28:14Chris Ryan?

  Well, they never cut to commercial.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  Taking a dump. There's a lot of stuff that, if you don't know you're being filmed all the time, maybe it wouldn't have been great for Truman.

• 1:28:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  I don't know. Also, also, never showing a, a second shift in the moon.

• 1:28:28Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:28:28Speaker 02

  Ooh. Same, same cast of six characters in the moon, 24 hours a day.

• 1:28:32Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:28:33Speaker 02

  For 35 seasons.

• 1:28:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's a tough gig.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  You know. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all by cast are untouchable. We, you talked to me in a prequel. Nope. Them as kids, um.

• 1:28:44Bill Simmons?

  Prestige TV, maybe, but I think this is an untouchable. I think Prestige TV would have been an interesting approach.

• 1:28:50Chris Ryan?

  Can I pitch you on a sequel?

• 1:28:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:52Chris Ryan?

  So he has a kid with Laura Linney. He impregnates her and then while she's pregnant, or maybe even before he knows she's pregnant, he escapes. The new baby is born into the new world.

• 1:29:01Bill Simmons?

  New Truman.

• 1:29:02Chris Ryan?

  And is now the new young Truman and it's now him trying to infiltrate to get back in.

• 1:29:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:29:06Chris Ryan?

  To get his son out.

• 1:29:07Bill Simmons?

  Solid. That's a solid movie, dude. I'm into that. I'm into that. Glenn just signed on.

• 1:29:12Speaker 02

  Bro.

• 1:29:13Bill Simmons?

  Are we doing this? He's dropping from 20 to 12.

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  Sorry, I just got a drop out of Miami Vice.

• 1:29:21Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell? That would have been interesting in this community. Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Consmore.

• 1:29:31Chris Ryan?

  Do you know who Nell is, Glenn? Cause I still don't.

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  What?

• 1:29:34Chris Ryan?

  The Jodie Foster character, Nell. Do you know what that means? Cause I don't.

• 1:29:37Bill Simmons?

  In what movie? Jodie Foster made a movie called Nell where she lived in the woods and talked her own language and I think she got nominated for an Oscar.

• 1:29:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Bill Simmons?

  And it's now comedy.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  I've never seen this movie.

• 1:29:49Bill Simmons?

  Just like does that for two hours.

• 1:29:51Chris Ryan?

  It's like her and Liam Neeson and Liam Neeson's like, I will help you learn English, Nell.

• 1:29:57Bill Simmons?

  You know what I kind of? It's really something.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  One of my, one of my kind of fans, we, we, we have a, a production office on the universe a lot and one of my, my fantasies is to create fake movie posters with some of my like actor buddies and just see if people lie like they've like actually seen.

• 1:30:12Chris Ryan?

  That was really good, yeah.

• 1:30:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a great idea.

• 1:30:14Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like Nell would definitely be like that. You remember like she's in the woods, she's doing the thing.

• 1:30:18Chris Ryan?

  He was like, are you fucking with me?

• 1:30:21Bill Simmons?

  It's really bad. We'll send you the trailer.

• 1:30:24Chris Ryan?

  We didn't actually do, do you want to do Collinsworth?

• 1:30:27Bill Simmons?

  No, you, were you gonna do?

• 1:30:28Chris Ryan?

  I'll do, I'll do say, this is what would have happened if Wayne Jenkins, did you ever watch We Own the City with Jon Bernthal? This isn't gonna hit as hard then.

• 1:30:37Bill Simmons?

  No, it's gonna, you gotta do it. He was a crazy Baltimore cop.

• 1:30:41Chris Ryan?

  If Bernthal was playing the Peter Kraus part. Goddamn Truman, I didn't know I was working with the BTK killer. You better start cutting, you better stop cutting pictures of ladies up from those fashion magazines or they're gonna be making a Ryan Murphy limited series about you. Now get him the fuck out of here. So he plays a Baltimore cop in this show.

• 1:31:02Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:31:02Chris Ryan?

  Where he basically does that speech, but.

• 1:31:05Speaker 02

  Could you add that to my development slate as well?

• 1:31:07Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:31:08Bill Simmons?

  Ryan Murphy, definitely.

• 1:31:10Speaker 02

  I did find that not in one moment that movie did the cut up magazines look like a human face.

• 1:31:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  I could have, I could have used, if he spent all this time every day, I could have used like.

• 1:31:20Chris Ryan?

  It was a really good.

• 1:31:21Bill Simmons?

  Really disturbing. Vehicle to show like how fucked in the head he was getting from this whole experience.

• 1:31:25Chris Ryan?

  Do you think though, there is like first take for the Truman Show? Like there's sports talk shows all day where it's like Truman needs to step up. He has not gotten promoted at Sea Haven Insurance for a long time. And we're starting to wonder if he's still got it.

• 1:31:42Speaker 02

  Can I tell you, that, that is like where I was like, like if you, that's where like for me, like the real world stuff, when we cut to the guy in the bathtub or the bar, like I was like, oh, we could have gotten so much more world building in such a smaller sense, like the people that like have talk shows that are literally built around this guy, like analyzing what's happening, like.

• 1:32:01Bill Simmons?

  What was that guy's name? Mike Michelson?

• 1:32:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Bill Simmons?

  He was like the post game host, hair sharers guy?

• 1:32:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. But like, why can't we have Jim Rome come on for a second there?

• 1:32:09Speaker 02

  And just be like, you're in the jungle, we're talking Truman today.

• 1:32:15Bill Simmons?

  Just one Oscar who gets it? I have Weir. I think, I actually think that was the best case for him. I thought this movie was so well crafted.

• 1:32:23Chris Ryan?

  Over Spielberg for Saving Private Ryan?

• 1:32:24Bill Simmons?

  No, but if, if only one got it.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  I think he is the best case.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:32:28Bill Simmons?

  I thought the way it's filmed, it was really ahead of its time. It feels like a 2015 movie almost. That was 1998.

• 1:32:35Chris Ryan?

  Andrew Nickel, only just because I just think this is one of the great original screenplays of that decade. And it just seems like so cool that he went from, this is like a dark thriller set in New York City, to I can, I can just rewrite this over and over and over again until we get it to where it is. Now, I know there's a lot of improv and probably other stuff going on, but still.

• 1:32:55Speaker 02

  Did Andrew Nickel write this draft, the Sea Haven draft, or he drafted New York?

• 1:32:58Chris Ryan?

  He, he said he wrote like 12, 12 versions of this. Yeah.

• 1:33:01Bill Simmons?

  Unanswerable questions. Was, was Christoph evil? I think is a good one.

• 1:33:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Bill Simmons?

  Like was he actually like an evil guy?

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  Leaning toward yes, but he might have just been deranged. I don't really know the answer, because he becomes kind of evil as this movie goes along.

• 1:33:19Speaker 02

  You also, I always love how people justify their ways in the world, like with all great villains, like they don't look at themselves. You can like pop into those, those moments and go like, oh wow, this guy's like what he did. But like, he's sort of like looking at himself as a father figure. He's really, like the way he's justifying his place, he's protecting him from the evil outside. Like he's like almost nurturing this, this guy that he truly loves. Like that's, that's his mentality. That's why I was like, he doesn't, I mean, I think you could definitely get into the politics of kidnapping a child and raising him in a bubble. But, but I think, I think, I think for him, I think that's one of the great performances. I love how committed Ed Harris is to the.

• 1:33:58Chris Ryan?

  You know what I didn't notice until this most recent watch is Harry Shearer, when he's interviewing Kristoff, goes, and I know you really guard your privacy. Can you imagine the irony of this guy being a guarded person? But he's like, this guy has to be on camera all the time. It makes it that much more like profound what he's doing.

• 1:34:17Bill Simmons?

  I, I think for an answer, well, you get to move in the Zouattine Award for what happened the next day. What, what hap, what were Truman's next 24 hours like?

• 1:34:24Chris Ryan?

  Great to be.

• 1:34:25Speaker 02

  California Pizza Kitchen.

• 1:34:26Bill Simmons?

  He's like, oh my God.

• 1:34:27Speaker 02

  In Burbank.

• 1:34:28Bill Simmons?

  What's going on out here? Yeah. So he's in.

• 1:34:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  The TMZ bus?

• 1:34:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:34:34Bill Simmons?

  We think he's in California?

• 1:34:35Chris Ryan?

  He's in Burbank.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  He's in Burbank.

• 1:34:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:37Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:34:38Chris Ryan?

  Foster's Freeze.

• 1:34:39Bill Simmons?

  So he's just kind of wandering down Hollywood Boulevard, just doing this.

• 1:34:42Chris Ryan?

  Just like a lot of guys on Hollywood Boulevard. Yeah.

• 1:34:44Speaker 02

  I, I think they say it's Burbank. I think it's more Van Nuys. I think it probably bleeds a little bit into Burbank just to get the.

• 1:34:49Chris Ryan?

  He walks down Hollywood Boulevard and he's like, I'll go back in the dump.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So I don't know where he goes.

• 1:34:57Chris Ryan?

  What did you do today? I met Spider-Man.

• 1:34:59Speaker 02

  This is a lot.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  Spider-Man and Batman. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie?

• 1:35:07Speaker 02

  I'm going Christoph Buret.

• 1:35:09Chris Ryan?

  Really good, really good. Uh, I guess I would take the, the, the dicer peeler grater that, that Lenny had.

• 1:35:17Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one. I was thinking his ring, but actually what I would want is the original poster that the guy made.

• 1:35:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:35:24Bill Simmons?

  First edition.

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:35:26Bill Simmons?

  Here's the prototype of the poster we're gonna use, I think would be.

• 1:35:28Speaker 02

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstak award, best life lesson.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  What else is on?

• 1:35:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Or just.

• 1:35:36Bill Simmons?

  It was like, yeah, we spent 35 years with this guy. Hey, change channel.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Chris Ryan?

  Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean people aren't out to get me.

• 1:35:43Bill Simmons?

  Right. Best double feature choice? The Matrix?

• 1:35:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's interesting. Would you, I would go, uh, Gattaca, under seen, other Andrew Nickel. He directed that one. Pretty cool.

• 1:35:55Speaker 02

  I'd go The Game.

• 1:35:56Chris Ryan?

  The Game. Yes. Good call.

• 1:35:58Bill Simmons?

  Glenn's like, I'll go The Running Man.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  The Running Man, premiering November 14th. Honestly, guys, great double feature. I'm just saying.

• 1:36:05Bill Simmons?

  Uh, who won the movie?

• 1:36:07Chris Ryan?

  I think Carrie.

• 1:36:08Bill Simmons?

  Is there Peter Weir case?

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  What was it?

• 1:36:12Bill Simmons?

  I think it is Carrie, but I think the, the Peter Weir, like, he needed this one.

• 1:36:17Chris Ryan?

  Master and Commander is like the next one after this, I believe.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I don't know if he, I don't think that means he won it necessarily. I think, I think, I think, I think Carrie, I think Carrie won.

• 1:36:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:25Bill Simmons?

  It's Carrie. Craig, what do you got? Craig, now, had you seen this movie?

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, many times.

• 1:36:29Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  And this is one of those movies that, I don't know when is the first time I watched it, but just kind of always felt like, like, one of the first few movies my dad showed me when I was like, growing up. It's like, oh, you gotta see The Sandlot, you gotta see Die Hard, you gotta see Truman Show. It's just like, always been in the lexicon, I feel like, the Truman Show. So, yeah, I haven't seen it in a while, though. It's just one of the all-time concepts. Like, the first five minutes of the film, there's no way you're turning it off. It's incredibly rewatchable.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  And it only, it's only getting, aging better and better. It's so prophetic. People do, like, there are YouTubers now, or influencers, like, Emma Chamberlain, who's at Spotify, or like Kai Senate. Those people will literally stream their lives 24/7. Like, Emma Chamberlain and Kai Senate will film themselves sleeping every night.

• 1:37:12Bill Simmons?

  Jeez.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  So I mean, we're kind of living in that reality where people are willing to do this, which is pretty crazy.

• 1:37:18Chris Ryan?

  The closest thing I ever get to that is like, there's a guy who has a YouTube channel, but he edits these, but it's like, he goes camping with his dog and he like cooks like these really gourmet meals.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  I believe he recently, he's shut down, he stopped doing it.

• 1:37:31Chris Ryan?

  Did he?

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  Yes, but I know who's actually here talking about it.

• 1:37:33Chris Ryan?

  But it was like, oh, like this is really relaxing to watch this guy like set up his campsite, make a like a T-bone with like a bunch of sides, his dog's kind of hanging out. And I was like, this is beautiful, but like, it's like, they're like 30 minutes, they're not like 24 hours or something like that.

• 1:37:48Speaker 02

  I think there's always like, from the, from the beginning of like entertainment, I think like people crave truth and crave reality. The irony is like, on this one, it's like all manicured, it's all fake. So like, there's a whole commentary on like what we're being fed in terms of reality shows and what actually is real. But I do think the Kai Senate thing, the reason that people are so engaged is like, that thing does not cut.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  And he's doing nothing.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  And people are engaging just on the idea that they're experiencing something real, even if it's.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's a bit of a, there's a kind of a pushback, a boomerang effect now where we've kind of been in the, in the 21st century media world for so long and everything has been manicured. We're so aware of that, that now things are turning the other way. And we actually want that kind of raw material and the influencers are, they know that and they're like, yeah, I'll film myself 24/7. Like you can watch me get up in the morning. And it's interesting.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  I wonder if part of it is like that it's just a more lonely society post-COVID. People are let, people maybe aren't around each other as much.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Parasocial relationships.

• 1:38:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you have like this, oh, Kai's my guy. And that's like your friend that you've never met.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  It's also interesting in Truman Show, like I was, I was thinking about against the Rack Focus movie of looking at the old women with the, with the Truman pillow, the guy in the bathtub, the other bar. It's like, there's a sense of power that people get being like a little omniscient, like, you know, a little, a little like having like a place of like going, well, at least I'm, I'm more aware than this like person, like at least my life's not this, like or whatever it is. Like, the fact that they're not partaking in life, they're glued to those couches and they're watching a guy live a fake reality, but it represents real reality. Like this is the reality they're living in. I think it's a very fascinating, you know, study of how we engage with the world.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:26Speaker 02

  It's the people that are technically providing us content on TikTok, you meet them in real life, they are glued to their phones. They are not participating in shit. And it's like, it's just a fascinating, you know.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:39Bill Simmons?

  I can't say anything because I watched the NFL for 14 straight hours on Sunday. Literally from 6:30 to 8:30. 14 straight hours and at one point I went on the treadmill for 45 minutes just to feel like I was doing something.

• 1:39:51Chris Ryan?

  To get the blood flowing in the lower half of your body.

• 1:39:53Bill Simmons?

  So, you know, we all have our things.

• 1:39:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:56Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, it is, it is, we talked about the reality TV angle, but the social media angle of this movie, I think is definitely the 2020s.

• 1:40:03Chris Ryan?

  Did you guys, so is Running Man, is your, without giving too much away, is your Running Man set a little in the future? Or is it kind of like, how did you, where did you guys?

• 1:40:11Speaker 02

  Well, the original Stephen King book takes place in 2025, which is, which is wild.

• 1:40:16Chris Ryan?

  Is that true?

• 1:40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Chris Ryan?

  I didn't know that.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  The original Running Man book, Richard Bachman, AKA Stephen King, wrote it, I believe in 82.

• 1:40:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:24Speaker 02

  And it's set in 2025, where all of this stuff, like in terms of like, you know, deep fakes and then sort of where we are with reality TV and how sort of the, the bloodlust of the world, all that stuff is like, it's all already baked into the book, which is, which is crazy. We, the world looks, we don't, we don't really specify a date, but it's, it's, it's a little five minutes in the future.

• 1:40:46Chris Ryan?

  Okay, okay. And then with Edgar, like, were you somebody who was like, I'm watching Hot Fuzz like once a year, pretty much? Like, had you been a fan of his forever?

• 1:40:56Speaker 02

  I've been a fan of Edgar my whole life. I mean, Edgar Wright movies for me are some of the most well crafted movies of any filmmaker out there. And he's played in all these different genres. And I think the thing that when you look at like Hot Fuzz, when you look at, you know, Baby Driver, you're like, this is an action director, a guy that can like literally, even though it's a comedy, Hot Fuzz, you watch it and you're like, you're kind of parroting, you know, uh, you know, Michael Bay shots, you know, these sort of crazy parallax shots, these big, big slow mo shootout things. But they're undeniably amazing action sequences. And, and so getting to watch Edgar on this movie like truly unleash and like take that weapon and just like send it, it was just awesome. It was just awesome.

• 1:41:35Bill Simmons?

  You're high on this movie. I could tell. We can usually sit through the.

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. I'm telling you, this movie, this movie rocks. Like when I tell you, it rocks. Like, I got to watch it with all the theater owners the other night and it played like a rock concert. They were like, they were losing their mind. It's, it's, again, not to say like, we should watch this podcast in IMAX, but you should also watch, you should also watch Running in IMAX because it's like, it's like one of those that was like, it, it, it, it plays in a big screen format.

• 1:42:00Chris Ryan?

  That's really cool.

• 1:42:01Bill Simmons?

  Would, would Cruise be proud?

• 1:42:03Speaker 02

  Cruise, Cruise is gonna see it. I get to show it to him in a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's, he's gonna love it. Honestly.

• 1:42:08Bill Simmons?

  Do you lean on Cruz? Do you ask him advice and stuff?

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  He's like one of those guys that's so... You know what's really great about Cruz is think about his like education, like the 90s that you're talking about. He's played in all these different genres. His skillset and his education is so singular.

• 1:42:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Speaker 02

  There's very few people right now in this phase of my career I can ask like a question to that I'm like, hey, when you're getting blown off a bridge and they're about to light this thing up, like, what are you, what are you thinking about?

• 1:42:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  Like, you know what I mean? He's like, hey.

• 1:42:37Bill Simmons?

  I'm thinking it sounds great.

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? Like, when you start talking about like certain, it's not so much like, hey, like, running, you know, running, whether it's running on camera or like how to sell an action movie properly to an audience, like what you're thinking about, like, in the general architecture, what your role within it is, like, there's very few people you can ask over the course of time that have done it at a certain level. So, yeah, like, you don't, I don't necessarily do it on every movie, but on, on this one, like, this was, it was a huge resource.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  And then are you ever like, what the hell is up with the ending advice? Watch Shut.

• 1:43:10Bill Simmons?

  Can we watch through that one more time? Glenn Powell, true pleasure. Thanks for doing this.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  Thanks for doing this, guys.

• 1:43:16Bill Simmons?

  See, our pleasure as always. Thank you to Craig Horlbeck. Thanks to Gahal and Ronic as well. And we'll see you next week. Good luck with the Running Man.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:43:23Bill Simmons?

  November 14th.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

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