‘Shampoo’ With Bill Simmons, Cameron Crowe, and Sean Fennessey

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Sean Fennessey are joined by writer-director Cameron Crowe to discuss one of his favorite movies, ‘Shampoo,’ starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Jack Warden, and Goldie Hawn. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, and Eduardo Ocampo A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. 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 Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Halloween's just better with a scary movie and something good to drink. Angry Orchard's limited edition glow-in-the-dark thriller variety pack is the perfect companion. It even includes a mystery flavor can featuring the iconic ghost face from Scream. Don't get angry, get orchard this Halloween. Find Angry Orchard in a store near you or visit angryorchard.com. Angry Orchard, cider company, LLC. Angryorchard.com. Please drink responsibly. Angry Orchard is a hard cider with other natural flavors.

• 0:43Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables is brought to by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find The Big Picture with Sean Fantasy. Oscar season.

• 0:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 0:50Bill Simmons?

  What's your leading contender now for Best Picture?

• 0:52Sean Fennessey?

  One battle after another.

• 0:53Bill Simmons?

  Okay. That's the favorite?

• 0:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think so.

• 0:55Bill Simmons?

  All right. Cameron Crowe is here. You've never done The Rewatchables.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  I have not.

• 0:59Bill Simmons?

  You've had movies on The Rewatchables, including a movie we haven't done yet that is the most asked, why have you done this yet movie, Almost Famous? But as I always tell people, it'll be the last movie we do.

• 1:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, asked not just by fans of the show, but by many employees of The Ringer. When are we doing Almost Famous?

• 1:15Bill Simmons?

  It's also the one that the most people who work for The Ringer have demanded to be on, which is really going to cause some problems, but regardless. And you have a new book, The Uncool.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  I do, but let me thank you for the honor of the Almost Famous Rewatchables Pantheon spot.

• 1:30Bill Simmons?

  It's the last one. It's the walk-off homer. But we asked you, I didn't want to have you on my real podcast because you've already been on it.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  I have.

• 1:40Bill Simmons?

  I was like, yeah, do the Rewatchables.

• 1:41Speaker 02

  Delightfully, I must say. Really enjoyed it.

• 1:43Bill Simmons?

  Asked you for a pick and you picked Shampoo. And we're going to do that next. This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by State Farm. Whether you're debating watching that award-winning sports drama or rewatching your comfort buddy comedy movie for the 10th time, choices are important. When it comes to choosing coverage, a State Farm agent can help you find options that are right for you. Go online at statefarm.com or use the award-winning app to get help from one of their local agents like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.

• 2:27Bill Simmons?

  All right, Shampoo came out in 1975. This was your pick. Why?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  I really started coming on to movies that spoke to the era that I felt we were in. And I loved Mike Nichols' movie, you know, The Graduate and Cardinal Knowledge and stuff. But Shampoo kind of bubbled up into this place where the music was great. I loved the interconnection between the characters. And I just thought like, here's a new generation really in play of movie makers that I'm gonna love. And I've gone back through it over the years. It's fun to talk about. I chose it for us.

• 3:01Bill Simmons?

  So how old were you when Shampoo comes out?

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Uh...

• 3:04Bill Simmons?

  Are you in high school yet?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  I think 18.

• 3:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, okay.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  And it was iconic in the moment, you know? Because Warren Beatty, who was known to be a womanizer and stuff, a ladies' man par excellence, was playing this hairdresser who was using the fact that he was a straight hairdresser to, you know, sleep with, you know, all the women in his friend group. And the complications that happened as a result of that, I just thought like magnificently handled by Robert Toun. Hal Ashby was already my favorite director. So this was the third in a run for Hal Ashby that starts with Harold and Maude. So it's Harold and Maude, Last Detail, and then Shampoo. And you're like, wow, this guy can do a ton of different stuff.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  The actors love him, the words are great, and the music is epic. So I bring it into the lair to discuss.

• 4:02Bill Simmons?

  Good music. Sean, what's your relationship with this movie?

• 4:05Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I was negative seven years old when the film was released. So I don't have that same in-the-moment connection to it. But the 1970s is my favorite period of American filmmaking. Hal Ashby is one of my favorite filmmakers as well. Robert Toun is also in the middle of an insane run. And so like when you're getting your film education as a young person, as I was probably a teenager when I really started diving into all these movies.

• 4:32Sean Fennessey?

  This is one of the big signposts. This is one of the most meaningful generational movies because it's a huge hit.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's politically relevant. It's sexually and socially relevant.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's a huge movie star movie and a movie star persona movie. Some movies are actively riffing on their persona. So it's got all this squishy fun stuff to dig into as a fan. And it's also just very watchable and funny. You know, it's not, it's not a slog. It's not difficult in any way. It's not homework. It's, it's, it's a popcorn movie about its time, which is a very hard thing to pull off. So I've always really liked it and I'm, I'm stoked we're talking about it.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  That's great. Funny characters, really funny characters.

• 5:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, I go through the teenager with cable version of the arc of this movie where you watch it the first time. And it's like, these women are hot. Is there going to be some nudity? Couldn't they, couldn't they have shown more of the sex scene? And then you get older and you're like, this movie's really, then you get into, you go to college and you get into that. I'm now a film critic. I now have thoughts on how they make films. It was like, whoa, some really interesting choices in here. But you're thinking like, ah, this guy's trying to get laid. It's a really funny movie. And then as you get a little older, like, oh, there's some layers to this.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:44Bill Simmons?

  And now I watch this in my 50s and then, and it's not a sex comedy at all. It's really about the late 60s and all of these different things going on. It's all stealth underneath. And it's so cool how it's pretending to be three different movies when it's really the fourth movie.

• 5:58Speaker 02

  That's really well said. And the way he lays in politics and Nixon's being reelected the night of all this. And it's just, it, there's no dogma. There's no like, you know, hitting it on the head with the, the generation is changing. It's like, it's just there. He's just like Nixon is in scenes and stuff and actively like in a scene, you can just see him. He's so large that he's right, right in there with Beatty. It's brilliant.

• 6:23Bill Simmons?

  See Nixon in there, but you also, it's like what you said about with, they're not, they're not overt about this generation does not fit in with this younger generation. It's the little stuff like Jack Gordon, she's like, oh, in the hot tub. Yeah, come on in, dude. And he's like, and he's just fumbling around. It's so funny to watch him at the party, just awkwardly fit in. I don't, I don't feel like movies do that enough anymore.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Where they they'll try to bang you over the head with their versus like this very subtle.

• 6:51Sean Fennessey?

  But that's kind of the point of the movie, right? The point of the movie is all of this stuff is happening.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:56Sean Fennessey?

  The the world is happening and unfolding and decisions about how power operates is happening. But in Beverly Hills and in nineteen seventeen, nineteen sixty eight and and and today, people, myself included, are just just trying to get through their day. They've got their own concerns. They've got their own shit going on. They're trying to open salons. You know, they're trying to record podcasts like I got a lot of stuff I gotta do. I I can't actually participate civically in the way that maybe I should be. And it's it's like empathetic about that struggle, but also most of the characters are kind of buffoonish in a way, too, like and it it likes them, but it also sees that they're really flawed.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:34Sean Fennessey?

  And it's trying to balance this very delicate thing. If it's not trying to hector you about what your politics should be, it's not trying to hector the characters about their failure to identify those things because everyone is kind of, you know, been somehow invoked in this. But you do walk away watching it a second or third time, thinking like, hmm, we're we're a little we're like a little fucked, you know? Like, there's definitely it does have a kind of there's a very bummer ending in in this movie that is very really interesting to talk about, too.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:02Sean Fennessey?

  So it's not just a sex comedy and it's not just a political observation. It is this weird fusion, this mutant idea that is very rare in movies, I think.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Is it? Is it a bravura performance from Beatty? Or is it? Is it quietly bravura? This is the thing that I always wonder because it's so kind of like, huh, he floats through these scenes. He has great stuff to say, but like, it's kind of like, well, some say that's what he was like in that in that in the day. Just his his seduction is, in fact, how he's kind of slightly bewildered by what's happening. But I'm incredibly handsome that like, ha, ha, help me figure out. How I'm gonna sleep with you, but I'm just, I got other things that are bothering me. And, and you know, and it's like, they all fall for it.

• 8:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I wonder, he's one of those actors where you don't know where the person stops and the actor begins.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Like huge for that.

• 8:58Bill Simmons?

  Basically, Heaven Can Wait, which we did a few months ago on rewatchables. I'm not sure there's any difference with this character and Joe Pendleton, because I think

• 9:06Speaker 02

  That's so funny.

• 9:06Bill Simmons?

  Beatty just kind of bleeds into whoever's doing, but I think this is what he's really like. Women liked him. He was always stumbling from one place to the next. Like when he made this movie, apparently he didn't have, he just bought a house. He didn't even have anywhere to live.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:18Bill Simmons?

  And he would just bounce around and have these different relationships.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  The Beverly Wilshire.

• 9:22Bill Simmons?

  Right. So this guy's on a Triumph motorcycle. He's dating like five people at once and he's just kind of bouncing around. And I think that was him.

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard to know if he's incredibly enigmatic or extremely clear to us. Like, cause he's only given five movie performances in the last 40 years. I mean, he doesn't really work very often. It's usually only in films that he directs. He didn't direct this movie, but he clearly had a huge hand in making it.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 9:48Sean Fennessey?

  And so it, it does seem like in this movie, in Heaven Can Wait, a little less so in, in Reds and in Dick Tracy, but even in Bullworth, it's kind of the similar persona that you're talking about. The sort of like bumbling person in charge, but he looks like Warren Beatty. And so like, some great stars are like that.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  With a hairdo.

• 10:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  Slightly fascinating.

• 10:11Bill Simmons?

  Dude, tall, strong, like not like,

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:15Bill Simmons?

  I worked out with a personal trainer to do, like you can see in some of the scenes, like there's a physicality to him.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Bill Simmons?

  And you can kind of see it with every woman, like, ah, they're not going to be able to resist this guy, which I think is a really hard place to get to. Like even in Almost Famous, like Russell Hammond had that. You could be like, I see it.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:32Bill Simmons?

  I, I totally, I would not want to leave my girlfriend alone with this guy for 10 minutes. Like, some people had that, but that was basically Beatty's entire seventies where you're like, I see it.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  No question. He gives himself like a showcase moment in the bathroom scene where he's, he's like, you know, cutting Felicia's, is it Felicia?

• 10:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Jackie, Jackie's hair. So he's cutting Jackie's hair, but he gives himself a moment where he preens just a little bit. You see the physique, you see this like fricking belt and his turquoise and his necklace and everything. And his ass is in the mirror reflected behind it's like.

• 11:02Bill Simmons?

  Shows a little ass crack.

• 11:04Speaker 02

  Okay, we get this. It's three seconds, but you know, you're here for the three seconds and you know what you're trying to do.

• 11:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  But, and so, it's fascinating. There's a, there's a cool little Easter egg of a piece of information that I thought I'd share with you guys.

• 11:19Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 11:20Speaker 02

  So, Paul Simon was like the hottest guy around at that time for doing, you know, a song for a movie.

• 11:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Sounds of Silence, Graduate, all that stuff. So, um, Beatty really was looking for a song to end the movie, but he was also looking for a score from Paul Simon. And I guess, I, we can look it up, but I guess there was quite a dance to get the new song from Paul Simon or the new score. But ultimately, all he came up with was, "Do do do," which plays throughout the movie in every possible way. It's just, but it's just, "Do do do." That's all it is.

• 11:59Bill Simmons?

  It's very strange.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  It's very strange. So meanwhile, I guess Beatty is dating or is about to date Joni Mitchell. And he asks Joni Mitchell for a song. And Joni Mitchell writes a song called Sweet Bird, as in Sweet Bird of Youth, that it, that references kind of the iconography of Beatty and Splendor in the Grass. I mean, it's a, it's a seriously insightful song about the persona and the character. And he heard it and he's like, "Ha, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. Great song, not great for this movie." And if you listen to the song and think about what the power of a song like that would have been over the last scene, it's not the bumbling guy. It's, the movie would know that that was

• 12:43Speaker 02

  a persona under which was incredible insecurity and doubt. But he was like, "No, no, no, no. Don't need that song in the movie. I'll take 'Do do do.'"

• 12:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  And so, it's fascinating. And so,

• 12:55Bill Simmons?

  Well, didn't Carly Simon write "You're So Vain" too about him?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Supposedly, yeah.

• 12:59Bill Simmons?

  That was always the rumor.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, if you get too real. Good song, not for me.

• 13:04Bill Simmons?

  I think if you were an attractive celebrity in the seventies, you definitely climbed in the ring with Beatty at least one night and were circled by him.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  In the ring, you're circled at least.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  I think you, I think you, there was always a moment where he's probably like, oh, you. I haven't met you yet. How are you? I'm Warren Beatty. And just did the Warren Beatty thing on them. And then said, I mean, in this movie, he's breaking up with Julie Christie. He's starting to date Michelle Phillips, who had just broken up with Jack Nicholson. He's propositioning everybody in the, like, he's just, but I think he did it in the same way that the Shampoo character does it, where it's, it never feels like he's

• 13:40Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 13:42Bill Simmons?

  Going for it. It's just kind of, oh, I do, oh my, and then he's stumbling into yet another, another thing.

• 13:47Sean Fennessey?

  It's so funny too, because I think a lot of critics and academics read the movie as kind of an end of the free love era.

• 13:54Bill Simmons?

  Correct.

• 13:54Sean Fennessey?

  You know, sixty-eight being this critical time and everything that's coming soon. But Warren Beatty is still living in the free love era at this time. Like, it hasn't closed for him.

• 14:03Bill Simmons?

  So he said, the book that was written about him, which is really good by Biskin, it's called Star. Beatty's explanation for the movie was Vietnam polarized the town. Shampoo's audience was the audience that didn't want to go to war, that used every means to end the war. Then Watergate destroyed authority in the country, ended trust in politicians. What Shampoo had to say was our generation at the time had to say about America, which is, we're not being honest about the way we're governed. Our leaders are not being honest. We're not honest about what we stand for. I don't think the people today remember very clearly the heat of political passion that existed during this period. Now, nobody gives a shit. Now, he said this fifteen, twenty years ago.

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 14:43Bill Simmons?

  Kind of, kind of still the case to some degree, right?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 14:47Bill Simmons?

  Like, to me, the big theme of this movie is selling out, right? It's people that

• 14:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 14:53Bill Simmons?

  Maybe they could shape what's happening, but they're like, they're kind of good with their lives. I like my house.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:58Bill Simmons?

  I, oh, I'll end up with Jack Warden, even though he's way older than me and I'm still in love with this other guy, but I'll have a better life with this person. That's, that to me is the theme of the movie.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Jill, Goldie Hawn's character, really ends up being the one that like prides herself out of that cycle in a cool way. We never know in the movie.

• 15:21Bill Simmons?

  With the guy with the mustache.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, Tony Bell. What is it, Johnny Pope?

• 15:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, Johnny Pope.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  The director, with the neckerchief. But we never know if she sleeps with him. We never know if she gets the job to go to Egypt, that he's dangling. All we know is that she opts out of the baity stew of people who are selling out to one degree or another. And it's interesting, because even as a little guy seeing it, I knew that Goldie Hawn's character was my favorite character, even though he doesn't really profess love to her in the movie. And it's just kind of subtly put in there that she takes off, and in a heroic way, and actually is the only truth-telling character to George. Like, she's the one that says, "You are not real. You're a phony.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Be true to yourself." And he just, not only doesn't he take it, he really doesn't take it. And barely is believable when he professes a kind of love to her later in the movie. It's an interesting character, but I think Goldie steals the movie.

• 16:27Sean Fennessey?

  She's great. She's the only non-cynic in the movie.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:29Sean Fennessey?

  Every other character has been betrayed or been lied to in a way that was so unforgivable that they then have like metastasized it. She still feels like she's pure. She's at the beginning of something, so maybe...

• 16:44Bill Simmons?

  Well, she gets the only real answer out of him, right? And he's like, "Yeah, I just like having sex with people."

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:49Bill Simmons?

  You're like, "Yeah."

• 16:50Speaker 02

  All of them.

• 16:50Bill Simmons?

  Guilty.

• 16:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I fucked them all. Yeah.

• 16:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, I have to ask, because there's definitely a lot of DNA tissue for Almost Famous, right? Where you have, there's a big party scene, there's Goldie Hawn, you have the daughter, who, Goldie Hawn, I think, would have been Penny Lane 25 years earlier.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  No question.

• 17:08Bill Simmons?

  You have the selling-out piece. Like, what a, it's like, obviously, you see this movie, you love it when you're 18, and then that stuff gets sprinkled.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  It lodged.

• 17:15Bill Simmons?

  When you have the ability to make a movie.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  It imprinted.

• 17:17Bill Simmons?

  But what did you take from it?

• 17:19Speaker 02

  Well, I'll tell you, great question. When Goldie Hawn Jill discovers the earring, you know, in an early scene, and realizes that that he's fucking all of the people.

• 17:32Bill Simmons?

  Right. Everyone's in play.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  You guys, that moment, and I didn't even realize it until I watched Shampoo again recently. The moment where Goldie Hawn goes through the realization cycle is so much like Kate in Almost Famous, What Kind of Beer.

• 17:50Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  And I wanted that kind of moment and didn't even realize that I was going for a moment that her mother had patented in that movie. Because he leaves the camera on her, he lets, you know, Ashby leaves the camera on Goldie and lets her go through it. And it's fucking amazing. And Kate does it too. And Kate's also great in her new movie, this Songs on Blue movie. She's, she, she channels the same kind of reality as Goldie in Shampoo. She's great.

• 18:21Bill Simmons?

  It's so funny that Kate, like, basically is replicating this Goldie persona. It's almost like when Kobe was like, I love Michael Jordan, I'm just gonna... But in this case, they're related, so it makes way more sense. But it's just funny, like, I was watching Goldie Hawn in this movie thinking like, Kate probably could have been the character in this movie, right? I don't know another, another parent-daughter slash son thing where the people, you could just see them switching parts for like 10 years of movies, basically.

• 18:52Sean Fennessey?

  Wait till Ben Simmons starts podcasting. That's when it's gonna happen.

• 18:54Bill Simmons?

  My son takes my job. Wait, can we go back to Beatty for one second?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Let's do it.

• 18:58Bill Simmons?

  So, we did this a little bit in The Last Seven Can Wait. It's about like, how aware he was of who he was and what he should be in a movie and what he shouldn't be in a movie.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:08Bill Simmons?

  Like, there's stuff like... Did he ever really get in a fistfight with anybody in a movie? Was he ever a bad guy?

• 19:14Sean Fennessey?

  There's a struggle in The Parallax View.

• 19:16Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 19:17Sean Fennessey?

  In the apartment, I can remember.

• 19:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Bill Simmons?

  He always was kind of close to himself, but we did this the last time. All the movies he turned down. He turned down The Sundance Kid, Michael Corleone, Gordon Gekko. Jack Horner. He turned down The Sting, Great Gatsby, Superman, Splash, Big. Turned down Dave in Decent Proposal, which I think would have been great. Kill Bill and Kill Bill and Misery. And that's all in 20 years. He turned all those down because he was like, it was almost like he didn't want to take risks.

• 19:49Sean Fennessey?

  He would have been great in like 90% of those too.

• 19:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:51Sean Fennessey?

  You can see why the writers and filmmakers wanted him for those parts. So interesting.

• 19:56Bill Simmons?

  If he's in Indecent Proposal, that movie's amazing.

• 19:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Bill Simmons?

  Because it's like, she might not come back. Like this could be it.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  Amazing. Wow.

• 20:05Bill Simmons?

  And then the other one he did that with, that he's actually in, that's really fascinating that I might want to do and rewatch. Was it some point in Truth or Dare? When he's dating Madonna?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 20:13Bill Simmons?

  And he's in there as Warren Beatty, like, kind of interacting with her world and he's so confused by it.

• 20:19Sean Fennessey?

  Not a performance though, but a performance. Like you can, you can, you can measure. But like, you can measure what his screen persona is against that documentary and the fact that there is not such a wide barrier between those two things.

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  So what's his best? What's his number one performance for you?

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 20:39Bill Simmons?

  Sean's gonna go stealth with his pick. I'm just warning you.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna go Shampoo. I just, I like it. Yeah. Yeah. I really like it.

• 20:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think his best movie acting is probably Reds and it feels the furthest away from what he actually is.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  It's a good point.

• 20:54Sean Fennessey?

  And he holds that big movie like that on his shoulders, but I would rather watch this movie any day of the week. I love Parallax View as well.

• 21:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I would go Shampoo as well, only because I can't imagine anyone else playing this part.

• 21:04Speaker 02

  And he lassos that thing that we're talking about. And he's also running the movie.

• 21:08Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Yeah.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  At the same time.

• 21:10Sean Fennessey?

  There is no movie without him, right?

• 21:11Speaker 02

  He's in all of the movie. So I, I love it. I, I need to know more about his relationship with Ashby making the movie. I wonder if it was, you know?

• 21:19Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot of good stuff written about that. In the two Biskin books about.

• 21:25Bill Simmons?

  Hard to tell how much he took over the movie, but he definitely did. And it felt like on the set, there's too many voice. Didn't sound like a very happy set. And there was multiple people kind of weighing in. And then I think Ashby, everybody would always say like, the editing was like the, he was just the master in the editing room. And that was probably where he had the biggest impact on it. But it sounded like on the set. Have you ever had a situation like that where you're making a movie and somebody you're making the movie? You don't have to say who it was, but somebody that you're making the movie with had kind of too big of a voice?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Or tried to have too big of a voice. Yeah, it's happened.

• 21:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  And, you know, you take a walk with the person and you talk to him about it or you, you know, have a beer afterwards and, and talk to them and just, you know, be a player coach and just like, you know, give me your opinions. Let's talk about all of it. I'm a really collaborative person, but it can, it, it doesn't have to spill into a, a, a public jousting, you know?

• 22:20Bill Simmons?

  Right. I can't believe Cruz did this. Like, what a dick.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  You know what I can say? He, uh, he actually was, was the furthest away from this. Cause when he had agreed to Jerry Maguire, um, well, actually when we were talking about him for Jerry Maguire, like all my friends were whispering like, oh, you know, you just, you, the keys to the kingdom go to him immediately. You know that you'll barely get a parking space. This is like, it's gone. You don't have it anymore. Yeah, he'll be in your movie, but you know, you can stay home. It's like, these were the kind of raps that I got. But, but when Cruz read the script, he called and said, um, I love this script. I really relate to this guy. Uh, he was in England doing Eyes Wide Shut and he, and he said, how about if I fly out there and just read it for you guys? And you can tell me if you like it.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  So I called all my friends back and said, he wants to audition. And they're like, well, he's cool.

• 23:12Bill Simmons?

  And he's like the most famous under 35 actor in the world at this point.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he did fly in and he sat in a chair and he read it out loud for us. And we were like, holy fuck. I was playing, uh, Magic Bus by the Who, the song that opens the movie. And he's reading it and it was just like the voice in my head when I wrote it, except better. And, uh, immediately, and maybe he just knew this, that, you know, giving you a taste of that, you were going to do everything you possibly could to keep him in the part and make the movie. And that's the movie. And, and, and then the business of it all happens, which is pretty easy. But he was not gonna spackle himself into a project that he didn't feel was right for everybody involved. He's, you know, he's a guy who's at the top of the call sheet, who isn't the person that tries to influence everything.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  He says, I don't wanna be a director, but I'll show up, you know, on off days to do, you know, off-camera stuff where I'm not even on camera for Jay Moore or someone like that. And their minds are blown because he knows their lines and his lines too. That's who he is.

• 24:16Bill Simmons?

  It's, oh, go ahead.

• 24:17Sean Fennessey?

  I have a question about Jerry Maguire related to shampoo. So, one of the things that's really interesting about this movie is that it's a recent history movie. It's like it's set seven years in the past, but it's essentially attempting to capture something that we understand. Jerry Maguire is like very similar. It's a present-day movie, something you were creating a world that had to be really close to our world for people to buy it. And that feels really hard to do. Like shampoo does it really well. The Beverly Hills of 1968, which still kinda looks like the Beverly Hills of right now. It feels like a real place, shot on location. Like Jerry Maguire feels like it's happening in the world of sports and sports agencies. Like, how do you do that? How do you make something feel real?

• 24:59Speaker 02

  I think like try and get the details right. Like, do your best to have the little things at the corners of the scenes be accurate.

• 25:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, you're like a 10 out of 10 maniac for that, though. I mean, you're like all time, you would get every single detail possible.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  That's why it takes so long to like put the movies together because the research phase is so seductive. It's like, I could talk to one more person and talk about like, you know.

• 25:25Bill Simmons?

  Can you go crazy doing that, though? Being like, oh, the cocktail napkins aren't right.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:30Bill Simmons?

  In the hotel rooms in 1974, the cocktail napkins actually were red.

• 25:34Speaker 02

  They actually made me feel that way when we were doing Almost Famous because there were these crowd shots, San Diego Sports Arena for Stillwater and stuff. And the audience, there was a bunch of the audience there, and we're gonna be on camera, and a lot of them are doing this, you know, like the devil horns. And that didn't exist in 1973. That was like Van Halen era. So, I'm like, we gotta shoot this again, guys. Let me talk to the crowd. Let me talk to the crowd. I'm like, hey, guys, it's Cameron, I'm the director. Just wanna let you know, like, this didn't happen in 1973. Now, meanwhile, the guys are standing around, like, whoever's there visiting from the studio and the people making the movie, they're doing this look.

• 26:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Bill Simmons?

  What a jerk.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Talking about fingers on the extras. And then they say that thing to you. This is the thing that they say, which is so not true. If they're paying attention to that, you're lost, you know, but they are paying attention to that. I'm paying attention to that.

• 26:30Bill Simmons?

  They didn't know YouTube and the rewatchables and all of our podcasts were coming.

• 26:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, you lose me if you've got that going on.

• 26:36Sean Fennessey?

  They had no idea I would watch Almost Famous 350 times, but I will and I would have noticed.

• 26:41Bill Simmons?

  Just wait till we get to one of my nitpicks and shampoo. It's gonna blow your brain. I have a one nitpick where I'm like, I can't believe they did this. One thing on Beatty and Cruise that I was thinking as you were talking about that. It seems like the biggest stars and I think Beatty, in the mid 70s. He's in the conversation for biggest star. He's at least one of the people mentioned.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 27:03Bill Simmons?

  But it seems like they had this force. All of them have a force of personality in different ways. That the people talk about them, what it was like on the set or in the books that are written after. So Cruise is always like, that dude's just fucking gung ho. He's all in. He's ready to do anything it takes. And then you have some of the other people are like, yeah, he's method actor. Didn't really want to talk to anyone on the set. You know, like he would throw himself in the character and the implication is, oh, he seemed like kind of a dick. And then Beatty's like always involved in the movies he's making. So he's like a boss. But he's also an actor. I think that's like the hardest one to navigate.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  It's gotta be.

• 27:42Bill Simmons?

  You're ordering people around, but you're also in the movie, but you're not the director.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  But is he ordering them around like a Beatty character?

• 27:49Bill Simmons?

  Right, totally.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  I don't know. There's something kind of off about this, the third act. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I gotta reread Biskin and just get more of a taste of that.

• 28:00Sean Fennessey?

  It does seem like he seduces.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  Yes, that's it. That's what they say.

• 28:04Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that he draws people in and says, do this. You know, Biskin writes a lot about how he would draw people in for not as much money as maybe they were worth to do things. You know, that he had an ability to convince people to do, to, you know, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn and all these people who were, if not already huge stars, you know, rising stars, making a movie. For this low budget that is like gonna be a huge smash and how much are they making on those movies, all that stuff is kind of interesting about his ability to do that. But also, he kind of loves the seduction. Like, he takes a long time to figure out what kind of movie he's gonna make. And then Robert Townsend says that once he starts, he's like a maniac.

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:40Sean Fennessey?

  Once he's working on the movie, he's obsessed. But he'll take years just developing and chewing over the idea that he comes up with.

• 28:46Speaker 02

  Chewing, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they say that thing of like, when he looks at you, you're the only person in the world.

• 28:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  But you know, I'm just remembering this now. I had the good fortune to write this book on Billy Wilder and spend this time around Billy, and Billy passed away. And one of the first people that said, "Let me be a part of this memorial," Warren Beatty.

• 29:05Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  And he did show up. And he was not George from shampoo. He was like, "What can we do for Billy?" So maybe that's a little bit of the guy who decided on the movie. Because he was straight ahead. I'll tell you another little story that I'm just remembering now, which is wild. When Almost Famous came out, we had a bad opening weekend. We actually got beaten by a reissue of The Exorcist. So a movie from 1973 slaughtered our movie about 1973, which was, you know, brutal. And so I was getting like 75 phone calls a day, and everything was really exciting. Then the opening weekend comes out, things

• 29:50Speaker 02

  start to taper down. Then the LA Times did a story about the budget of Almost Famous. And it was a nasty little story about he spent so much money and he did a lot of tapes.

• 30:00Sean Fennessey?

  I hate when they do that. You were just talking about this.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  We were just complaining about this recently. These assholes. Check it out. No calls the day that article comes out. And we're all sitting around the office, and we're like, "Oh, shit, man. Nobody came to see the movie. The LA Times is like kicking shit on us. This is really a drag, and the phone rings." It's like nine at night and we're still there in the office because we're too despondent to leave.

• 30:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  It's Annette Bening. And she says, hi, it's, it's, it's Annette Bening. Is Cameron there? It's like, yeah. We're just here weeping. And she goes, um, I, I want to put Warren on.

• 30:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  And Warren Beatty comes on the phone. He goes, look, I don't really know you. He goes, but I just want you to know, you made a great movie. And there's no actor in town that wouldn't want to work with you. I just wanted to tell you that. And he hung up.

• 30:54Bill Simmons?

  Wow, I'm gonna just start cold calling people.

• 30:57Speaker 02

  On their worst day.

• 30:58Bill Simmons?

  A cold, cold calling podcast, people have failed. Hey, it's Bill. Keep plugging away, you're good.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  They'll always remember you.

• 31:06Bill Simmons?

  That must have carried you for like a month after that.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  It did. And you know what? When, when we won the Oscar for best screenplay.

• 31:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Uh, I went to the Vanity Fair party and as I was getting there, Beatty and Annette were leaving and I, I saw Annette. I was like, hey, it's Cameron. Thank you for that call. And she's like, Warren, Warren, get back here. And, uh, and he came back and he shook my hand like, see what I said? Came true. And, uh, walked away.

• 31:32Bill Simmons?

  What a great story.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Look at, look at what you jarred here with this, uh.

• 31:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  It's so weird because it, it was lodged in there, but we're so focused on shampoo that I forgot my own, um, kind of Beatty moment that happened, um, which, which was not like George.

• 31:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, and one of the few guys with the weight that, I mean, how many actors in the last 50 years, if you get that call, you've just, your entire year has changed. That this person liked your movie.

• 32:03Sean Fennessey?

  And I, and I don't say this to diminish him at all, but I do wonder if, uh, he is as understood as one of the key participants, creators of this period of American movies. Because he didn't make as many movies.

• 32:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Sean Fennessey?

  And he hasn't made as many movies in the 21st century. And so obviously what we're doing here celebrates what he contributed, but he doesn't, you know, in Red for Past.

• 32:25Bill Simmons?

  He's like too short. I agree with you.

• 32:27Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's just like, it's kind of important to locate his legacy because he did more on individual movies than most of his contemporaries as well, as a producer, as a writer, eventually as a director. And as like a concealer of the projects.

• 32:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:42Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he really, he didn't just wait for someone to call him to say, do you want to be in my movie? And he's distinct in that way. I think from. Almost every single one of his contemporaries, right? I mean, I don't know who else really transitioned as clearly. I mean, I guess you could say Woody Allen is in that conversation.

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't seem like anyone turned him down. If he wanted you for the movie, you just did the movie.

• 33:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:02Bill Simmons?

  Biskin had this interesting theory that I don't know if I agree with, but he thinks, he thinks Beatty was George and Lester. And that was part of the reason he wanted to do the movie. Cause these were, he fancied himself as the sharp businessman with the great house. By the way, he bought this awesome house apparently as he was making this movie. And this Wheeler dealer and, you know, but at the same time, he was also George, the hairdresser, just trying to get laid.

• 33:28Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 33:29Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if that's true, but it's an interesting theory.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  I kind of buy that. He certainly makes a mini hero out of Lester.

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Lester comes out.

• 33:37Sean Fennessey?

  You, you don't hate him at the end.

• 33:39Bill Simmons?

  No, well, it's also Jack Warden.

• 33:40Sean Fennessey?

  It is Jack Warden, yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Bone free.

• 33:42Bill Simmons?

  He also has this, he's this quote in the movie.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  That's really funny.

• 33:46Bill Simmons?

  As long as I can remember, when I see a pretty girl and I go after it and I make her, it's like, I'm going to live forever. And that's where you're like, I don't know who's saying that. Are you the character or are you Barb Beatty? Could be either. All right, we're going to take, we'll take a quick break and then we got to talk about some of the other components of this movie. 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 three 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.

• 34:29Bill Simmons?

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• 35:00Bill Simmons?

  Markups, for instance, I love a good vest. They have a lightweight, down, packable puffer vest, which is an easy fall layer, although nobody loves layers more than Chris Ryan. You can throw it over a sweater, long sleeve, whenever you want to make an outfit feel a little more seasonal. Simple, classic, one of those pieces that works with pretty much everything that's already in your closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. 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. Julie Christie, they dated for a long time.

• 35:41Bill Simmons?

  They made three movies together, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, which Sean owns in five different forms of physical media.

• 35:46Sean Fennessey?

  I do, yep.

• 35:47Bill Simmons?

  Did they have that in 8K UHD yet or no?

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  Just in 4K.

• 35:51Bill Simmons?

  Just in 4K. Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, they broke up in 1974. Famous relationship. There's all kinds of good stories. Supposedly they were on the outs because she made that Donald Sutherland in the movie, where the mayor, Minat, have actually gotten it on in the scene.

• 36:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 36:04Bill Simmons?

  He lost, baby lost his mind. Who knows what's true and not true 50 years later, but they had a very long storied relationship. And then she came back and worked with them again. There's nobody like her now. Who's her now? Nobody.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 36:20Sean Fennessey?

  She's such a perfect counterpoint to his energy too.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:23Sean Fennessey?

  She's so frank, direct, strong. You know, she does have a little like brittle vulnerability, but she is just the absolute awesome counterweight to him being like, oh, well, you know, and just kind of looking off into the distance. They're great together.

• 36:37Bill Simmons?

  Craig, get some butts.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Just a magnificent woman, Julie Christie. Just an unbelievable cocktail of intellect and sex appeal. My God.

• 36:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and confidence and just, and the accent, it's like, what was she missing? That first scene when she comes in and she's wearing like the, the long pants with the, she's just so, there's elegant, confident, just, just a star.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Of her time in Shampoo, dress wise, hair wise. Amazing in Darling, right? Darling is.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Quite the character piece. Yeah, she's, she's, she's wonderful. They're wonderful together.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Kind of heartbreaking in the best way.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  Another one that turned down some, she turned down Reds. Turned down The Verdict.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 37:24Bill Simmons?

  Which would have been.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 37:25Sean Fennessey?

  She was the Charlotte Rampling part?

• 37:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:29Bill Simmons?

  Charlotte's good.

• 37:29Sean Fennessey?

  It worked out.

• 37:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Sean Fennessey?

  It worked out.

• 37:32Bill Simmons?

  And then you have Goldie Hawn, who's not quite Goldie Hawn yet, but she's almost Goldie Hawn. It's in Sugarland Express shampoo, but it was like.

• 37:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't feel until foul play, I don't feel like she could have.

• 37:42Sean Fennessey?

  She had done like.

• 37:42Bill Simmons?

  Open a major movie by.

• 37:43Sean Fennessey?

  Cactus Flower and all. She had done all those movies in the late sixties, early seventies. Laugh-In, obviously.

• 37:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but we didn't know if she could carry an NBA team to the third round of the playoffs yet.

• 37:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You think that's what she does here?

• 37:54Bill Simmons?

  No, foul play.

• 37:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay, foul play.

• 37:57Bill Simmons?

  Foul play, it's like, yeah, I'm here, guys.

• 38:00Bill Simmons?

  And she's another one that I don't, there's not a lot of parallels to her either.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you, do you think there was a big casting call thing for, for that part of Jill? Or did he always know it was Goldie?

• 38:11Bill Simmons?

  It seems from the research, he knew he wanted to make a movie with those two. I don't know what his histories was with Goldie. I'm assuming they probably dated first, but second at some point, but.

• 38:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it sounds like he sought her out.

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Interesting, yeah.

• 38:21Sean Fennessey?

  Wanted her for it.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Smart, smart, really good with casting.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  And her, Jill and Jackie being friends is really interesting because Goldie and Julie Christie's dynamics are so different.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Sean Fennessey?

  But you, you buy it. You could see that they're running in the same kind of circles, right? There's like, strikingly beautiful women do travel in packs. So, you know, it's, you, you, you buy it.

• 38:43Bill Simmons?

  Julie Christie had this quote that she felt bad that Goldie Hawn's part wasn't better and that she wondered if they should have switched parts. I don't think that would have worked at all.

• 38:51Sean Fennessey?

  That was gonna be literally my hot take.

• 38:54Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you wanna do that now?

• 38:55Sean Fennessey?

  Is there any, is there a world where they switch parts in the movies better? I don't, I, I'm just, it's the hot take. So we can explore it.

• 39:03Bill Simmons?

  It's interesting.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is interesting. It's it's different.

• 39:07Bill Simmons?

  It's a side of Goldie Hawn we probably never saw in a movie. Cause I I think that there's a way darker Jackie's a way darker character.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I don't know. I think you get Julie Christie's rage at the end. You get Julie Christie doing the third act in the Goldie Hawn part. That works. She couldn't get that.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:28Sean Fennessey?

  Goldie being a little bit harder edged, a little bit more cynical would have been an interesting.

• 39:34Bill Simmons?

  My only question is the the persona Julio has had. I think she's just on to this guy immediately who he actually is. Whereas Goldie, you could see her being like fooled.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 39:44Bill Simmons?

  For half the movie because she's like so innocent and pretty and happy. I have she's part of my hot take too later.

• 39:50Speaker 02

  Hmm. To to hear Town talk about it, he I think he feels that like Jill is the only one that has a future. So does George, does George actually get the money from Lester to do the salon? Or is George just dead at that point?

• 40:06Sean Fennessey?

  Unanswerable question.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  Is that just, is he just emotionally and spiritually dead and has given up and he too is a sellout?

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  Well, so here's in the I was gonna do this later in the research, but apparently there was an epilogue ending.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 40:18Bill Simmons?

  Town had his version, Beatty had his version because they had these two, they're developing this for seven years. They have they each had their own script. It was one of those things. And then they finally kind of merged the scripts. But they always want to have an epilogue set in nineteen seventy five. And the point of the epilogue, I have it somewhere, was that everybody's life is still a mess. And they couldn't figure out how to land the plane on it.

• 40:45Sean Fennessey?

  So funny. You don't need it.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  And they they just decided to dump it and end it with him on the little mini cliff, which is a way better ending.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Do do do.

• 40:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Sean Fennessey?

  But it works out perfectly because isn't it like ten days after the film comes out that Nixon resigns? So like they got their the exact epilogue they needed in real life, in real time.

• 41:08Bill Simmons?

  Ashby said, the upper class is full of shit, man. You know, they don't give a fuck about anybody. They were all whores. Everybody was selling out all through that picture. That was his take on shampoo. So I think. They're making this in 74? That's the height of everybody's just fed up. Watergate has already happened.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:26Bill Simmons?

  People are just pissed. The, all the assassinations that happened in the 60s. Watergate, now people are like, alright, fuck this.

• 41:32Sean Fennessey?

  I do want to shout out Amy Scott's documentary, Howl, about Hal Ashby, which is an amazing portrait of him. And that, that quote specifically, and him saying those words is in that, in the movie, about shampoo. There's only a limited amount of time devoted to shampoo in the movie. In part because he, it's, it's not a paycheck job for Hal Ashby, but it's like a for hire thing, which most of his other films are not really like that.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:53Sean Fennessey?

  And his role on it is so interesting because all the other actors describe him as being extremely calm while Robert Town and Beatty are fighting throughout the production of the movie. But then, like you said before, he's like, it's, it's all gonna be in the edit. Like, we're good. Like, basically, everybody who's on set here is a genius and we're gonna figure this out. Like, I'm really not worried. And that turned out to be true. Like, there's not a bad performance in this movie.

• 42:14Bill Simmons?

  That documentary is great. And it convinced us to give Amy a Counting Crows doc for the Music Box series that we do that's gonna be on HBO later this month.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Well done, well done.

• 42:26Bill Simmons?

  Jack Warden, quickly.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Oh, my god. Just a powerhouse.

• 42:30Bill Simmons?

  From 75 to 82. Shampoo, All the President's Men, Heaven Can Wait, The Champ, Injustice For All, Being There, Used Cars, and The Verdict. Just ripping them off.

• 42:39Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good.

• 42:39Bill Simmons?

  Heaters. Heaters across the board. Did this guy, did Lester have to be a little bit more evil? Or was this the right casting?

• 42:47Speaker 02

  I think it's right. I think it's so right. When he doesn't beat up Beatty and when he has that scene at the end, it's just...

• 42:53Bill Simmons?

  Like, he's listening to him. It's like, you know.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  Fucking glorious.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  This guy.

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:57Bill Simmons?

  It's like the Robert Loggia part. There's like the Jack, Jack Warden, Robert Loggia, this type of part, the older guy. You can still see them maybe getting a little horny.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:06Bill Simmons?

  You can see them running a company. There's a dark side of them, but not really. I don't know who that, who's that actor now?

• 43:13Speaker 02

  Oh gosh.

• 43:14Bill Simmons?

  I don't think that actor exists now.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 43:16Sean Fennessey?

  Li- like Jack Warden?

• 43:17Bill Simmons?

  Like the Jack Warden, Robert Loggia part.

• 43:19Speaker 02

  The Loggia.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  The guy who would have been in Big, the guy who would have been Lester in this movie. It's a hard one.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  I don't know. Oh, man.

• 43:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that, maybe it's just, it's gone away.

• 43:28Sean Fennessey?

  John Goodman, you know, someone like that, like that, it's someone you don't see very often.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  Oh, John Goodman, coming in on a flight.

• 43:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he just.

• 43:37Bill Simmons?

  But a hit of coming.

• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  But Jack Warden is one of those people who every, he just improves everything he's in. Every time he's in a movie.

• 43:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:43Sean Fennessey?

  Even if the movie's not totally working, you are having fun watching him cook. And I think we talked about that in the verdict, where he's just, he brings a completely different energy to Newman, and you know, he comes in every movie and he's just like, what is this bullshit? Like, that's kind of the attitude of every character that he plays, and he's perfect because he's not a mustache twirling villain. He's a selfish, rich guy, but he's not like, I'm gonna destroy these kids. He's like, I'm losing my youth, and I kind of gotta get my youth back.

• 44:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  How am I gonna do it?

• 44:11Speaker 02

  It's so great when Beatty is like, uh, maybe there's something we can do with your hair, I don't know, with layer it, and get a little, puff it out a little bit, Lester. It's just like, amazing. It's amazing. I, man, I just want to come up with who's the modern day Loggia Warden.

• 44:26Bill Simmons?

  We'll figure, figure it out like four days from now.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  What's your favorite Warden performance, just out of curiosity?

• 44:31Speaker 02

  By far, this, because I can't, I can't get him coming up the, the walkway doing Born Free out of my mind, like, since I saw it, since I was 18, I can't even, I just want to sing it like that all the time. Born Free.

• 44:45Bill Simmons?

  And then you mentioned the Hal Ashby movies that led to this, but then afterwards, he also had Coming Home and Back, and Being There in back to back years.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:53Bill Simmons?

  Coming Home's a fascinating movie. It's a Tubi classic. It's been on Tubi for like, three years straight.

• 45:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I love that movie.

• 45:02Bill Simmons?

  Did very well at the Oscars.

• 45:04Sean Fennessey?

  It did.

• 45:04Bill Simmons?

  Very, very important movie for a lot of people, but there's a feel to it that, out of all the Vietnam movies, it's the most.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  It's different.

• 45:11Bill Simmons?

  Kind of interesting, constructed Vietnam movie.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  It is interesting. It's, it's, it's different. I ca- I look at these, I look at the Harold and Maude, Last Detail, Shampoo Run, like, as its own little pod.

• 45:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 45:24Speaker 02

  I, I, I can't even tell you why, because I know he can, Ashby continues, but those three movies feel like of a piece. And I think my hot take-ish thing is that of those three movies, Shampoo probably has the most bumps in it, like that make it a little dated, you know, like the gay stuff and

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  It's just, there's little things where you go, oh.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  And, and, and over time, I think less so Harold and Maud and Last Detail.

• 45:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  So though the layered and the texture and the depth that allows us to talk like this about Shampoo makes it completely memorable and important. There's something about the flow of the other two that's, that's a different kind of elixir that might make them more seamless, you know? That's just my thought. I don't know how, how recently you guys have seen the other two movies.

• 46:17Sean Fennessey?

  Last Detail is my favorite of the three.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  It's

• 46:19Bill Simmons?

  Spectacular.

• 46:20Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible movie. It's an interesting movie too, because I think without that movie, this movie doesn't happen, or at least not in this way, because, you know, Beatty and Nicholson are close friends and Ashby kind of enters Nicholson's orbit after Last Detail. And so he starts coming up to the house

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 46:36Sean Fennessey?

  On Mulholland Drive and on a Lakers game.

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  And he takes his girlfriend.

• 46:39Sean Fennessey?

  That happens.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  It happened.

• 46:42Bill Simmons?

  Seventies, really something.

• 46:44Sean Fennessey?

  But he finds somebody who, like, he knows how Ashby can hang in this environment with big personalities, with complicated subject matter. You know, like Last Detail also famously, like, one of the, kind of like the roughest language

• 46:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:57Sean Fennessey?

  movies of the time. And then Shampoo pushes it even further.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 47:01Sean Fennessey?

  Some stuff that I'm sure we'll get into about what Julie Christie says in this movie.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:05Sean Fennessey?

  Which in the movies you didn't hear very often.

• 47:06Speaker 02

  And Jack.

• 47:07Bill Simmons?

  By all counts, how was smoking pot morning, afternoon and night?

• 47:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  This is what they say.

• 47:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:13Bill Simmons?

  That was the word in the street.

• 47:15Sean Fennessey?

  Whatever gets you through the night.

• 47:17Bill Simmons?

  Robert Towne, Chinatown, Shampoo, Last Detail, all in a three-year run.

• 47:23Sean Fennessey?

  Did you go through the uncredited thing in the seventies?

• 47:26Bill Simmons?

  I mean, the uncredited, it's, it's basically him and Goldman were attached to 78% of all movies made that succeeded.

• 47:32Sean Fennessey?

  The uncredited list is super wild for him.

• 47:34Bill Simmons?

  You don't even know what's true and not true at this point.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:38Bill Simmons?

  It just seems like everybody brought him on and just wrote him a check and He just made money. Then he has like this weird eighties that include Personal Best, which is a fascinating movie.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:51Bill Simmons?

  Which he wrote and directed. Tequila Sunrise, where he earnestly tried to get Pat Riley to play the Kurt Russell part, which is like one of my favorite weird movie things, like genuinely tried to wrote the part for Pat Riley, tried to convince him to do it.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Did you ever talk to Riley about that?

• 48:06Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if anyone's, Riley's never come on my podcast because he can go fuck themselves. But, um, no, I've, I've never had a buzz. I don't like the heat.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Let's bring him out, Pat Riley.

• 48:16Bill Simmons?

  There he is, right. Uh, Tequila Sunrise, then Days of Thunder, he wrote, and then he goes into the nineties where he's just writing like The Firm, Mission Impossible.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:24Bill Simmons?

  But he did Without Limits, which I think is one of the best sports movies of the last thirty years. Um, but he had this three decade run and each decade was a little different.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  I think like Beatty, he was kind of in so many different places and like, you know, knowing, knowing everybody. I mean, he, he was mixing, what was the movie after Tequila Sunrise that he did?

• 48:46Bill Simmons?

  I can get it, but it was, I mean, Days of Thunder was within two years of that.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Maybe it was, I think it was after Tequila Sunrise. He was mixing in the next studio. And I think, um, we were doing Elizabeth Town.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  And he was completely great, wanted to see a reel of our movie and then showed me a reel of what he was working on. It was, it was, uh, I think he had one note that was kind of great, but it was that, it was that feeling that Beatty, like thing that we're talking about of like, uh, I'm an amoeba that's, I'm kind of present in a lot of stuff all over town.

• 49:18Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  And I, I have an effect on the movies that are being made and I dig it.

• 49:22Sean Fennessey?

  The Two Jakes? Is that what it was?

• 49:24Speaker 02

  The Two Jakes. So he's, he's, and he's also kind of evuncular in his own way. I just thought he was very welcoming to, to a younger guy making this movie.

• 49:34Bill Simmons?

  So you were probably making Singles at that point.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  This was after Singles.

• 49:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah?

• 49:38Speaker 02

  This was Elizabeth Town.

• 49:39Bill Simmons?

  When was The Two Jakes?

• 49:39Sean Fennessey?

  That was ninety.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  Oh, so maybe this is.

• 49:42Bill Simmons?

  It was probably one of his other ones.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  It was one of the ones after. I just, I remember it's something that he was, he had been tinkering on a lot. So he didn't have quite a, a lock on what he was doing, but was very charming about talking about it.

• 49:54Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe he was doing Ask the Dust when you were doing Elizabeth Town?

• 49:57Speaker 02

  No, I'll, I'll figure this out along with the new loggia.

• 50:00Bill Simmons?

  New, new loggia.

• 50:01Sean Fennessey?

  New loggia is a good category.

• 50:03Bill Simmons?

  Are you one of those people that can work on four movies at once? I'm gonna, I'm gonna say no.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  I can, I can, I cannot finish four movies at once, no problem.

• 50:13Bill Simmons?

  You're an all in on a project guy.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, usually, for sure.

• 50:17Sean Fennessey?

  I think Towne just had that, my perception of it was that he had that shaman quality where people would call him and be like, can you help me fix this?

• 50:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, totally, and they have an answer.

• 50:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, he had like a very intense relationship with Warren Beatty and uh,

• 50:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's like me and CR.

• 50:33Bill Simmons?

  They took this forever. At some point, yeah, it was like you and CR. At some point, they had, he started to have the same kind of hair that Warren had, all this shit, like he was like, looking like he was almost doing an impression.

• 50:43Sean Fennessey?

  You don't want to compete with that, that's tough.

• 50:45Bill Simmons?

  Same type of like trying to get the ladies, but then uh, I guess his big contribution in this scene, they had this huge, or to the movie, other than all the other stuff he did, but they had this huge argument about the key scene when he confesses to Goldie Hawn's character that he was actually having sex with everybody. And the big argument was whether he should be standing or sitting. And Towne was like, you have to be sitting, you're bigger than her, it's threatening. She has to be in control, you have to be sitting down because she needs to be in control of the scene and Beatty didn't want to do that and they fought about it, fought about it.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Really?

• 51:18Bill Simmons?

  Got him to sit down and that's why the scene works. Cause she's, she's like this.

• 51:22Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great choice.

• 51:23Bill Simmons?

  And it's, it's better. It wouldn't have worked if he's standing and towering over. But that was interesting.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  I think he's right. I mean, don't you think? Like, if you imagine that scene with him standing, it's, it is way different.

• 51:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:35Bill Simmons?

  And then there was a whole thing, like Beatty has a, it's a co-screenwriting thing. And it's a big, there, there's a lot of stuff written about this, about Towne was pissed about it, but he wouldn't say anything. And then David Geffen was finally like, Towne's pissed about this. And then Beatty got mad at Towne. Towne's like, I'm not pissed. And all the Hollywood shit that we like in these books.

• 51:55Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of lore in this one.

• 51:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, a lot of lore.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Much lore.

• 51:58Bill Simmons?

  Three Oscar nominations in a row for Robert Towne, by the way. Year, year after year, banging them out. Four million dollar budget, made 60 million. Third biggest movie in 1975.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  Lee Grant, who we didn't mention, got nominated for an Oscar.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  Wow. I would say rightly so.

• 52:14Bill Simmons?

  Ebert.

• 52:15Sean Fennessey?

  She won, didn't she?

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  Did she win?

• 52:17Sean Fennessey?

  She won, yeah.

• 52:18Bill Simmons?

  She won the Oscar?

• 52:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 52:19Bill Simmons?

  I probably should have had that in my notes. That seems more important than getting nominated.

• 52:23Sean Fennessey?

  Her speech is really interesting because she, you know, it was like-

• 52:25Speaker 02

  Sean has the speech, come on.

• 52:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I watched the speech last night. She said something interesting about uh, Ashby, which was just that-

• 52:36Sean Fennessey?

  Every, all the actors, she thanked Town and Beatty and was like, they are the shepherds and architects of this movie. She was like, Ashby was the one who basically let us feel like we could fail, like we could take chances, like we could do things and it was gonna be okay. And she's the last person that he thanks, which I thought was interesting because of this, you know, Bermuda Triangle of creativity that this movie is operating inside of.

• 52:59Bill Simmons?

  The screenplay got nominated. We also had Jack Warden getting nominated.

• 53:07Bill Simmons?

  The movie did not got nominated. You know why?

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Tell me.

• 53:11Bill Simmons?

  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, and Nashville.

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 53:15Bill Simmons?

  Good luck. Good luck cracking that crew.

• 53:18Speaker 02

  Number six, baby.

• 53:19Sean Fennessey?

  We have, we do this on every episode. We talk about-

• 53:22Bill Simmons?

  We used to know how to make movies.

• 53:24Sean Fennessey?

  I was just gonna say, is this, is that the best line, the best, this Best Picture lineup of all time?

• 53:29Bill Simmons?

  Cause there's other movies-

• 53:30Sean Fennessey?

  We have asked that question before.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Up there.

• 53:33Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially when you think of the directors that are involved. I mean, holy mackerel. It's pretty great. It's in the, it's gotta be in the top three best, best five, cause there's no weak link at all.

• 53:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's the one I always circle back to.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Are they spurring each other on, is my question? Like, are these filmmakers just like tweaking each other's to go further?

• 53:51Sean Fennessey?

  What do you think?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  I think yes. I think yes. I think it equates to music too, and eras of music where there's people that remind you of, of a certain kind of greatness that makes you summon your own greatness is like super powerful and fun. It's fun when you have something to compete against, obviously. And, and I think there was, I don't know, Billy Wilder talked about a greater camaraderie in that time and that he felt that it kinda splintered away in the time before he died. That there was less like elbow jabbing with a smile and a smirk, you know, that made, made it more fun to like go up against your peers.

• 54:30Bill Simmons?

  It's hard to explain the movies and music scene in that decade where you're, it's a combination of things evolving.

• 54:39Bill Simmons?

  People just, just some of the best people we've ever had, just all in one place together. And then like the kind of new shit being created that nobody had heard before. And I, I just don't know if we'll ever see that again.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Not, and in that time, like not all of them knew how to use music or new, modern music. And not all of them knew the, the, uh, new, like, popular music. Or how to use it. Nichols did, obviously.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  And, and, and Ashby to the max. But a lot of them just wanted to lean on score and all that stuff and like grandiose kind of music. So it really stuck out when somebody was able to like land a needle drop where you just went, fuck. That's the marriage where everybody is just high watching it.

• 55:24Bill Simmons?

  We always talk about with writers, if you cover the byline and you know who the writer is, that usually means they're a good writer. Like, oh, I know who that is. And there were so many directors in that decade where you could have been like, oh, that feels like a blank. Movie. And I wonder like if we still have that in the same way with as many directors now. I mean, we make more movies now.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:45Sean Fennessey?

  It's really hard to compare to this, this year, this time, this six or seven year period of films is, in, in America alone is. Just to completely shape my taste and what I'm interested in and what I like for movies.

• 55:58Bill Simmons?

  But movies are back. I don't know if you noticed.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 56:01Bill Simmons?

  It's a good movie year this year.

• 56:02Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of stuff I've liked.

• 56:03Bill Simmons?

  Sean's been.

• 56:04Sean Fennessey?

  I hope movies are gonna be okay.

• 56:05Bill Simmons?

  Sean's nipples have been hard for all of 2025. He's been delighted.

• 56:10Bill Simmons?

  Our guy Roger Ebert, disappointing one for him. We do rewatchables. We always do the Roger Ebert review. Two and a half stars.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Shocking.

• 56:18Sean Fennessey?

  Ooh, tell me about that.

• 56:19Bill Simmons?

  Shampoo is a movie I expected to admire enormously. It was made by some of Hollywood's most gifted talents. And the critical praise from New York has been almost deafening. But the movie didn't quite work for me. Its timing wasn't confident enough to pull off its ambitious conception. And he was basically like, this movie's trying to do a whole bunch of stuff that didn't totally pull off. But sometime, I do think it's a movie you need to watch a couple of times.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 56:42Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot going on.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 56:44Bill Simmons?

  It's not one of those, you're gonna solve it right away.

• 56:46Sean Fennessey?

  I did think he had a really good insight in his review, though. He wrote, "The sexual gymnastics aren't the movie's point, however, and the sex scenes are never developed in an erotic manner. They're directed by Ashby Morris, symptoms of George's dilemma, which is that he likes being loving and kind. He listens to his clients and sometimes even really does care about their problems. But in some final way, he's too blocked to develop a relationship to really give himself." Which I think is a really smart reading of that character and maybe even of baby more broadly, you know? Like, it's weird that he doesn't like the movie. It's so in his wheelhouse.

• 57:19Bill Simmons?

  I bet he upgraded it when he did his thousands. All right.

• 57:22Speaker 02

  He upgrades, he upgrades.

• 57:23Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna do most rewatchable scene, but before we do that, we have to talk about what you brought us for the set.

• 57:28Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I wanted to bring a little something for this hallowed room. And I just figured we'd go with one of the hidden heroes of Jerry Maguire, Kush. Jerry O'Connell as Kush, and there are three of these, I must say. One is it in the hands of Jerry O'Connell, and one I have, and now one belongs to this.

• 57:49Bill Simmons?

  One of the great honors in rewatchable's history.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  Kush's big promo posters.

• 57:54Bill Simmons?

  Was this before Kushlash? Kushlash, Kushlash, Kushlash?

• 57:58Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yeah. And I must say, Jerry O'Connell.

• 58:03Bill Simmons?

  By the way, he looks great in that.

• 58:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's completely selling it.

• 58:05Bill Simmons?

  The Jets are gonna draft him first.

• 58:07Sean Fennessey?

  God willing, if only we could have drafted Kush.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  He sees the future in his eyes. You can see that, right there. It's all, it's all ahead of him and he knows it.

• 58:14Sean Fennessey?

  He's going through his progressions.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Slight paisley backing, I thought you might enjoy. Hint of the undershirt, just nice texture, talking about details.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  This was in his hotel room? Where they, where was this in the actual movie?

• 58:27Speaker 02

  I think this is possibly...

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say it's in the hotel room with his dad when Jerry goes, and they have like all that paraphernalia in the room.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  It is, in the Bow Bridges hotel room.

• 58:37Bill Simmons?

  You did surprise me with this, I'm going blind.

• 58:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's so crazy, though, how, what a perfect match it is with the rest of the decor. Like, it does feel as though you found it on eBay and it is a real quarterback that you've watched in 1979, you know?

• 58:50Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna find the perfect spot for it. Right now, we wanna display it there. I don't wanna, like, Michael Myers was there, I don't wanna...

• 58:56Speaker 02

  No.

• 58:56Bill Simmons?

  I can't, long term, I don't want to piss off Myers.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got you.

• 59:00Bill Simmons?

  You know, because he's a serial killer.

• 59:01Sean Fennessey?

  I do, yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 02

  It'll find a place.

• 59:03Bill Simmons?

  No, it's gonna find a place. It'll be.

• 59:05Speaker 02

  It will gravitate to that special place.

• 59:07Bill Simmons?

  Honestly, the seventy seven Red Sox might be in trouble over in the corner there.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 59:11Bill Simmons?

  But we'll figure out the perfect one. So, thank you for that. I always love when people bring guests. Most rewatchable scene. I'm gonna give you a couple of choices.

• 59:21Bill Simmons?

  George goes to visit Jill after he had sex with Felicia. And she realizes, does the Goldie Hawn character realizes that they're not gonna have sex? And it's just kind of a funny, oh, I'm gonna go make some food. And she's like, wait, what happened? I thought, and then, so the light bulb's going on, like, I wonder if he just had sex? But I just like how they handle that.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Great, it's great.

• 59:43Bill Simmons?

  George, it's short, but George flipping out after he can't get alone when he dumps garbage anywhere. It's just a great Warren Beatty being a star scene. I like when he throws the jacket in, and it's like, oh, wait, I need that jacket. No, fuck this jacket. That chaotic hair salon scene, when everybody's coming in and out, it's like a Three's Company episode.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  Beatty and Christie in the parking lot. Hey, I don't fuck anyone for money. I do it for fun. It's like, oh.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Brutal, brutal.

• 1:00:11Bill Simmons?

  George doing Jackie's hair in the bathroom, which you mentioned.

• 1:00:14Speaker 02

  Big scene.

• 1:00:15Bill Simmons?

  The Carrie Fisher scene.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Big scene.

• 1:00:17Bill Simmons?

  The party with the two Felicia Jackie interactions, but specifically the stare down the second time. They're just fucking locked, like UFC fighters for, it's like ninety seconds.

• 1:00:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Bill Simmons?

  They never, the gaze never changes. Jack Wardham moving through the groovy party like an alien, we talked about that. George confessing his love with Lucy and this guy with diamonds playing kicks in. And then they get found, but I'm gonna give this to Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness Award for Best Needle Drop. It's going down low, and then it kicks up, which I know you're one of the masters of.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  I'm with you, thank you.

• 1:00:54Bill Simmons?

  George admitting to Jill that he slept with a lot of girls. Let's face it, I fucked them all. And then George makes peace with Lester.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Also a good scene.

• 1:01:04Bill Simmons?

  And Jackie dumps George on the mini cliff. Unless there are any other scenes you want to mention. I think those are the nominees.

• 1:01:10Sean Fennessey?

  I just want to, just the first, first, first scene of introducing the movie.

• 1:01:14Bill Simmons?

  In the dark.

• 1:01:15Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't it be nice in the darkness.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  During the sex scene, which is like such a disorienting way to open a movie. You can't really figure out what's going on.

• 1:01:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know that they're having sex. You can't really see Lee Grant at all, even when he gets up.

• 1:01:27Bill Simmons?

  Especially when I'm 13, I'm like, is there a boob?

• 1:01:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:01:29Bill Simmons?

  No, it's nothing.

• 1:01:30Speaker 02

  Yes, my first viewing, I was totally there.

• 1:01:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:33Bill Simmons?

  I can't, can't see anything.

• 1:01:34Sean Fennessey?

  But like that, like leaning forward thing that you're doing when you're watching the movie is a great way to get you interested in what's going on with this guy.

• 1:01:40Speaker 02

  That scene gets done a million times later and you find out that they're, that they're actually just like, you know, moving a piece of furniture or something. And you're like, oh, they weren't really having sex. That movie is like, they're having sex. It's actually happening.

• 1:01:54Bill Simmons?

  So what's your most rewatchable scene?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Man, as you watch it, I, I, I just, as you go through it, I just kind of start thinking, yeah, what about my choice? But my, my choice really is the stare down bistro scene. Because I just think, I was tempted to go with the, the Lucy in the sky with diamonds, like that whole party. I love, love, love. And that really destroyed me when I was a little guy first seeing it. But the orchestration of all the relationships in the bistro scene, Nixon getting reelected, the big wall size picture of Nixon. You know, Jackie getting drunk and Beatty with, with my favorite reading in the movie where he's like, you know, she's going on and on and he's like, you're drunk. It's just fantastic. In any other movie, it's like, you're drunk. Don't you realize what you're doing? He's like, you're drunk.

• 1:02:40Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:02:41Speaker 02

  It's, uh, it's just brilliant. And I, and I think without that scene where you're drawn into the interlocking relationships and you're feeling Jack Warden's pain and all that stuff, the movie isn't as seductively layered without it. So kind of structurally, I go with that.

• 1:02:59Bill Simmons?

  What do you got, Sean?

• 1:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  I love the scene near the very end when, when Lester and George are.

• 1:03:05Bill Simmons?

  That was my scene. That was my pick.

• 1:03:06Sean Fennessey?

  I just think the whole movie is.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  Women only talk about one thing, how. Some guy fucked him over.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  It's like, that's fucking great stuff.

• 1:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, their, their instant camaraderie and just being assholes is very amusing. And it's the whole idea of the movie is in there too, which is sort of like, of course, this rich guy is like, yeah, they're all bad. I don't care. I'm just trying to get through my day, you know, like the, to pack all that into that little moment. And, you know, to just show that like, the, through these guys' eyes, the women are secondary. You know what I mean? They're props. They're like a means to an end of trying to get off.

• 1:03:36Bill Simmons?

  Because they're a whore.

• 1:03:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I know. Kind of really reveals, I think, what they really think about these guys. But also, you know, that it's, it's true and it feels sincere, but also they're critical. Like, it's a really fascinating blend.

• 1:03:48Speaker 02

  It's fascinating. And also Lester, not once, but twice, has a problem with the housekeeping.

• 1:03:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. How do you live like this?

• 1:03:56Sean Fennessey?

  Not a dirty, you have a clean glass in the house.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, how do I have to clean this fucking glass to like pour you a drink that only I am gonna drink? It's just crazy.

• 1:04:03Bill Simmons?

  I think Warden's so good in that scene. He comes in a little menacing.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  So good.

• 1:04:07Bill Simmons?

  And then George, whatever George says about like, your wife, all she wants to do is shop all day. Her daughter hates her and he's like.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  Oh, that's, that's.

• 1:04:14Bill Simmons?

  Daughter hates her?

• 1:04:15Sean Fennessey?

  Hates her, yeah.

• 1:04:15Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean hates her?

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  He hates her.

• 1:04:17Bill Simmons?

  He's just, his whole body like jolts.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  I know. No, it's, it's like, it's amazing.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  There's a great back and forth in that scene where Jack calls, or Jack Warden calls Jackie a whore.

• 1:04:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:27Speaker 03

  And then Beatty goes, no, I think she really likes you. And he goes, really?

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Really? Really? Yeah, she likes you. Well, that helps when she goes off with Lester.

• 1:04:34Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's such a well-written scene too.

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:04:36Bill Simmons?

  And then he's like the perfect actors.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  He's been there all night. That's the awesome thing at the top. Like, I've been here all night. Doing what? You certainly didn't do the housework. This is like, you fucking like sat there steaming about the glasses being dirty.

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  They're just brilliant together.

• 1:04:52Bill Simmons?

  All right, next category. What's the most 1975 thing about this movie? A little tough because it's set in 1968.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:05:00Bill Simmons?

  Um, I'll give you a couple of nominees, though. Warren Beatty's hair.

• 1:05:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:06Bill Simmons?

  Using the word groovy.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:05:10Bill Simmons?

  Every time you're groovy, it's like, that's a word that is gone. Jack, I mean, there's some unfortunate gay bashing in this movie, but he uses the word ferry, which I haven't heard in 25 years.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:05:22Bill Simmons?

  I have LA just seems so sprawling and traffic free and happy to navigate and it's just not like it is now.

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:30Bill Simmons?

  Even when they show the shots of the hill on Sunset, like the houses aren't crammed together. It just seems

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  True.

• 1:05:38Bill Simmons?

  like this happy mid 70s place. The seven years after Nixon got elected subtext is good.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:45Bill Simmons?

  But I am going to go with my winner is riding a motorcycle without a helmet.

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:05:50Bill Simmons?

  Just fucking hopping on the Triumph and moving around. It's just noticeable when you watch it.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Call. It's like mostly it's just not a real action scene.

• 1:05:58Bill Simmons?

  Happier time.

• 1:05:59Sean Fennessey?

  I'll be coming back to the Triumph in a later category.

• 1:06:01Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for this? Anything else?

• 1:06:03Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, even just purely the the style of every character, you know, the haircuts that he's giving to match Felicia and Jackie is like such a chill. It is like more 68 than 75.

• 1:06:17Bill Simmons?

  Maybe that should have been the category. What's the most 1968 thing about this movie?

• 1:06:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Bill Simmons?

  Is the music and yeah. What do you have, Cameron?

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  I would go for the extras and the people populating the party, the big sprawling party.

• 1:06:31Bill Simmons?

  Those people do not exist anymore.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  They don't exist anymore, but also like, why are they there?

• 1:06:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Whose house is that? Which goes to another category, unanswered questions. Like, whose house is that? Is it Lester's house? It looks like Lester's house.

• 1:06:44Sean Fennessey?

  Also, it's election night. So is every election night a Tuesday?

• 1:06:48Bill Simmons?

  And are people partying on election night? I guess in 1968, maybe they were.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  These are supposed to be the counterculture crowd. Like, how do they end up in this house?

• 1:06:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Like, it's not, it's not like it's a shack in Laurel Canyon. This is like

• 1:07:01Sean Fennessey?

  An estate.

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  I don't know who they are, but they aren't really convincing, particularly the guy that offers Jack Warden the joint. He just kind of like, it's just hair, really. He doesn't really have anything to do. And there's a lot of like scarf, you know, scarfed headed women and stuff and you're just like, it's a little, it's a, it's a little caught in a, in a time warp.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  You know who dipped into this? Mad Men. When they would have Don Draper go to LA for those seasons and it was like same kind of thing, like what is this world? Who are these people? How did they get in this house?

• 1:07:32Speaker 02

  Can I say one thing about that? For, for so many movies that like try and do the era and like work real hard to get the extras all dressed up properly and stuff. All they have to do is watch the movie Monterey Pop. Monterey Pop has the best photography of the people in the audience. And it's just, it's, that's what you should go to, to do your, your research on that. Because like, people in that era, and I guess that's 68?

• 1:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think it is 68.

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Okay, so Monterey Pop is 68. So that, that's the era. There's people in the 50s. There's people who looked like they could be there now. It's just like, the, the stew of what people in that era really looked like is there in the, the crowd shots of Monterey Pop. And sadly, that's not shampoo, which is good on so many other details. They just kind of fumble on that. And, um, and it is, it is 1975, 68, or whatever we're looking for.

• 1:08:25Sean Fennessey?

  What do you say? I was trying to think of other 68 movies that would be representative of this too. And I feel like, isn't Medium Cool also 68?

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  Medium Cool.

• 1:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  The HBO West, which is also like, there's, it's all a lot of real people in that movie, even though it's not a documentary. And it's the same thing, like you can see exactly how everyone was styled. This movie is like, some of it is accurate and some of it appears to be like satireizing or riffing loosely on what it remembers seven years ago to be.

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  The Beverly Hills stuff is pretty accurate. It feels pretty accurate. Of course, they're all in tuxes and stuff.

• 1:08:56Bill Simmons?

  Craig, would you rather gone to a party in 1968 or now?

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  1968. I mean, my, well, I'll just-

• 1:09:02Bill Simmons?

  It just seemed like a great time.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  I'll just do it now. The flex category, you guys touched on this. Mine is the Den of Thieves Benihana Award for a scene stealing location. It's just unrecognizable LA of 1968 versus now. It's just completely different. It feels so small, relaxed, approachable.

• 1:09:17Sean Fennessey?

  The height of every building seems lower.

• 1:09:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, the winding roads of the Hollywood Hills. Every single part of it is so appealing and attractive and you completely understand why you would fall in love. I fall in love with it again, just watching it, convincing myself that like right now is somewhat still what it was in 68, which it's clearly not. But it's, it's, it's magical.

• 1:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  There is a way though, in which- It is, it has aged the best in terms of LA too, because this is sort of what it's like to live in LA where like, everybody lives in their house and they don't really leave their house and the houses are kind of dark and the curtains are closed and they're skulking around. And even though this, you think of this as like this sunny paradise, that a lot of people, especially people with a lot of privilege are just like, I don't really want to leave. Like I'm just like, I'm doing my thing in my own house. Like, I don't want to go out tonight, you know? Like, there is still that quality of every time they're in one of these houses, they're not bustling. The only time we see that is at these two parties.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  It's also funny to have a bunch of counterculture people at this mansion, which is also very LA.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  That's what I was saying.

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  They're committing to that, but they also have one rich friend that they're okay using their dad's house.

• 1:10:19Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 03

  And they're okay with that?

• 1:10:21Bill Simmons?

  The LA in this movie is the LA that as a kid, when I watched all the TV shows, that I was like, man, it just seems great there. When they did like Battle of the Network Stars in Malibu, like, what's that? That's on a cliff with an ocean? Like, what the hell is going on? Or Charlie's Angels, they'd be in the Hollywood Hills, like, oh, that looks awesome.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  The only thing though is, is like, it is smoggy, cloudy LA. It's not always sunny.

• 1:10:44Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:10:45Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like especially the last shot when he's looking out. It's like, that's not the beach, you know? That's not rosy. That's, that's doom.

• 1:10:53Speaker 03

  Even both of the offices, the views from the offices, the movie producer's office, Lester's office are gorgeous. The views, the balcony, is it Jill's house? I mean, Mark, unbelievable.

• 1:11:02Bill Simmons?

  Uh, one more break and then, uh, we're going to What's Aged the Best. 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. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  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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• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  All right, before we do what's aged the best, special category, the Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot.

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  We're here with legendary filmmaker Cameron Crowe.

• 1:12:53Bill Simmons?

  And you're doing this award. This is like, why am I here? Lee Grant walked off the film for two days during the scene when her character comes in after it seems like her daughter might have had sex with one of them and they argued about what her motivations would be and she kept playing it the same way. And he kept telling her to play it differently and she got fed up and she left. And was gone for two days and she came back and Warren said, basically, my bad. He's like, what do I know, I'm only a guy.

• 1:13:23Bill Simmons?

  And that was it.

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:13:25Bill Simmons?

  What would be your, do you have a Steven Seagal shitting on himself award for many of your movies? Just out of curiosity.

• 1:13:32Bill Simmons?

  Do you know this story?

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  Tell me the story.

• 1:13:34Bill Simmons?

  It's some Seagal movie, what was it, like Above the Law, one of those?

• 1:13:37Speaker 03

  Hard to Kill, maybe?

• 1:13:38Bill Simmons?

  He, he, there was some stunt guy in the set and the guy said he could choke anyone out and Seagal's like, there's no way you could choke me out. And the guy's like, oh yeah? And he was like, all right. And it became this thing. And the guy chokes Seagal out and he shits all over himself. This is urban legend, might not have happened, may have happened, but it had to become a category in the rewatchables. That he got choked out and may have shit on himself. Steven Seagal. So anyway, I don't know if you have anything that good.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  Let me think about that.

• 1:14:07Bill Simmons?

  Think about that.

• 1:14:08Speaker 02

  That's a high bar.

• 1:14:09Bill Simmons?

  Think about twenty twenty five lotion.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll, I'll, yeah.

• 1:14:13Bill Simmons?

  And just file that away for the end.

• 1:14:15Sean Fennessey?

  So many unanswered questions.

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  We'll, we'll get back to that.

• 1:14:17Bill Simmons?

  Sean, what do you have for what stage the best?

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I love a Hollywood LA movie that is full of all these smart self referential choices. Like we did the player on this show, like we've done a handful of movies. And so casting Carrie Fisher, who's Debbie Reynolds' daughter. And the way that the movie uses her and uses her as this kind of vessel for a new generation of sexual frankness. And Debbie Reynolds, of course, this representation of kind of like a pert and prim version of Hollywood history is super smart. There's like a series of versions like this, like even just the idea of making a movie about a hairdresser and what the, the role of the hairdresser as a significant participant in not just making Hollywood movies, but Jay Sebring, who was tragically killed. Uh, John, John Peters, you know, who became, you know, a power player in the space.

• 1:15:04Bill Simmons?

  Those were the two people that kind of drove.

• 1:15:06Sean Fennessey?

  And then there was a third one whose name escapes me, but that I think Robert Towne talked about, about somebody that he had met whose ex had, had cut hair and was also an inspiration for this. And that these, I don't think we see hairdressers in quite the same way culturally now.

• 1:15:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Sean Fennessey?

  But it's fascinating because that, that is a really intimate act. You know, to be with someone by yourself, touching them, cutting their hair, developing that physical relationship with them. And then the movie using that and that being such a significant part of, you know, presentation in Hollywood and the way that you look is so paramount to what you're doing. I just love all that in this.

• 1:15:41Bill Simmons?

  Peters was, I mean, he had some big celebrity girlfriends and then eventually just became a producer.

• 1:15:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  But it was all because he was around these women all day who were attached to powerful people.

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  I was kind of surprised in the movie when, uh, I mean, cause George seems to understand people's intimate feelings and stuff. And how when he's got his hands in their hair, they start talking about it and he, it feels like he listens, you know? He, he, and, and, and he knows the power of that. But then he kind of sells himself out at the end saying like, yeah, they all fucking talk about the same thing. Some guy fucked them over. And I'm like, George, come on, you felt more than that.

• 1:16:14Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think he's? Performing for Lester too, though.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:16:17Sean Fennessey?

  He like shapeshifts for people too, like that's. And that's a very, you know, LA sycophantic thing where you like blend into the moment so that you're not making too many waves. Like you gotta be like Lester in this moment, but when you're cutting a woman's hair, you gotta be sympathetic to her experience. Like that reveals a little bit of like the phoniness that is at the heart of the movie too. I don't know, it's really like, to me, it feels very much like LA where like I am sincere every day and I also feel full of shit. And that's a really hard way to be, but I do think the movie really taps into that well.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  I totally agree. Plus, remember he puts that scene in where he's like got this woman's hair like right.

• 1:16:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, that almost looks like a blowjob.

• 1:16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like shaking her around and then like whipping her back up and this like. And then he wants to like give her away in the next scene, like, you know.

• 1:17:01Bill Simmons?

  That would have been a good hottest take is hairdressers were the original podcasters. Doing a podcast all day with ten guests.

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  That is a hot take.

• 1:17:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And getting people to reveal their secrets.

• 1:17:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:17:12Bill Simmons?

  Cause they know, they have to remember stuff about every person they're doing. They're bringing up conversation, they're finding out stuff, they, they probably have more information than.

• 1:17:21Sean Fennessey?

  When you're getting your haircut, are you telling the truth about your life?

• 1:17:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was, cause my, uh, my person is the same person my mom goes to, don't ask.

• 1:17:32Bill Simmons?

  So we, we spent half the time talking about my mom and how crazy my mom is. And it's just like, she really knows about my life.

• 1:17:40Speaker 02

  That's how you communicate.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  Do you have a what stage the best?

• 1:17:42Speaker 02

  I do, I do.

• 1:17:45Speaker 02

  It's the cinematography of Laszlo Kovač, I think, um, who I was lucky enough to work with on Say Anything. He was the, he's the guy that shot Say Anything, so don't think I wasn't aware that I was with the guy that did Shampoo. And Ghostbusters. Exactly, and, and that was on our minds too, definitely. But Laszlo was amazing for a first time director, so helpful and so soulful, had a great crew. Really cared about all the textures and the thing I want to shout out about this movie that I've always tried to learn from. And this is from Beatty, I think, because he does this in Bonnie and Clyde too. He knows what a screen kiss can do.

• 1:18:29Speaker 02

  It's better than sex in a movie. If you get that kiss right. Because, and here's Beatty's secret. And I, and I, I learned this from watching his stuff, which is he gives you the moment before the kiss. The desire before the kiss, which I definitely went for in Jerry Maguire. It's the decision to make the kiss. The moment before they come in is where it's all decided. Because you know, in fact, when the kiss happens, everything's going to change. Beatty does not deny you that moment. He does it especially great in Bonnie and Clyde, and he does it great in this movie with Laszlo. Every kiss matters and it's beautifully shot and it's very packed with emotion. And the kisses in this movie shampoo are great.

• 1:19:14Bill Simmons?

  Such a good point, because they're in the bathroom. He's doing her hair and she's just staring at him with those big fuck me eyes. And then he's kind of doing her hair, but then every once in a while it's like, oh, something's going on. And you could just see it and they're doing it for almost like 45 seconds. And you know, it's going to happen. It's a really hard thing to pull off in a movie.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  It's a hard thing and Jerry Maguire, we really milked it, you know, because they're in there. He's with Renee in the doorway.

• 1:19:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:42Speaker 02

  And it's just, there's all kinds of longing going on. And then he breaks the strap and all this stuff. And it's just like, we just wanted to live in that moment. And I think we have some Paul McCartney music that's kind of like

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  in that actual moment. But no, I just thought, I thought like, that's the thing that like, is a little shining star that happens a couple of times in shampoo. It's the kisses.

• 1:20:06Bill Simmons?

  I had a couple, what's age the best? The Warren, the Warden, Beatty combo, just like, I just love those two guys together. Lester's house, I'm just going to give the Amanda Dobbins award for best piece of real estate. It's a really great house. There's like a tennis court.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  Unbelievable.

• 1:20:22Bill Simmons?

  Upstate, like, like things, I just, I wanted to see like a whole Google Earth shot of how that house was laid out.

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  Where, where is that house?

• 1:20:29Bill Simmons?

  I don't even know where it is.

• 1:20:30Speaker 02

  We have to know where the house is.

• 1:20:31Bill Simmons?

  Beverly Hills, maybe, somewhere in there. Uh, young Carrie Fisher is just hilarious to just see her three years before she's about to become one of the most famous, or two years. First about to become one of the most famous actors in the world.

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  It's her first part.

• 1:20:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:45Speaker 02

  She eats Beatty alive in that scene.

• 1:20:48Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  I think like there is such boldness and she just does not care.

• 1:20:53Bill Simmons?

  Well, we could say it now, she gets the Dion Waiters award for best heat check. It's just, that's done.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:20:59Bill Simmons?

  I, this movie made me wonder, like, did the Star Wars thing, it almost, I wish there was an alternate version of her career where there's no Star Wars and she's just in.

• 1:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  She has more like a Diane Keaton kind of roles.

• 1:21:11Bill Simmons?

  Making all these movies for 15 years, right?

• 1:21:13Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Apps, great, great, great.

• 1:21:15Bill Simmons?

  Cause like in When Harry Met Sally and she's the friend, the sarcastic, kinda insecure friend and she's just really good and it's like, why didn't, were there six more of these for you? But I guess Star Wars just eats you up when you're in that franchise.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  Jerry Maguire trivia, the, the line, um, you know, you're not show friends, you're show people. No, what is it? Um, they're not, what is it? Uh, you're not, it's not show, it's not show friends, it's show business.

• 1:21:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  Um, I heard that from someone and I put it in the movie and they came to me later and said, uh, I actually stole that from Carrie Fisher. That's Carrie Fisher's line.

• 1:21:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:21:50Speaker 02

  So, thank you, Carrie Fisher. Thank you.

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  I have for what's age the best, having a late sixties Gumar. I just put that in for Sean.

• 1:22:00Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you.

• 1:22:00Bill Simmons?

  We always have Gumar jokes, dating back to The Godfather. It was the head of the Gumar era.

• 1:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know that Lester Carp would have identif, would have used the word Gumar to describe Jackie. That's really more, you know.

• 1:22:15Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it's, uh, maybe the nineties were the key.

• 1:22:16Sean Fennessey?

  You need to be like Iliana Douglas to be identified as that, right? That's a different.

• 1:22:20Bill Simmons?

  And then the soundtrack, which features two Beatles songs?

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 1:22:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:22:25Bill Simmons?

  Probably not getting those 10 years later.

• 1:22:29Sean Fennessey?

  But plus Manic Depression by Hendrix.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 1:22:33Sean Fennessey?

  Plus Mr. Soul.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  Mr. Soul is my favorite.

• 1:22:35Bill Simmons?

  Two Jefferson Airplane songs?

• 1:22:37Sean Fennessey?

  Two Jefferson, yeah.

• 1:22:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's nuts.

• 1:22:40Sean Fennessey?

  And, and the, and the Beach Boys.

• 1:22:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Opening, closing.

• 1:22:44Bill Simmons?

  We're up with the Sean fantasy word for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. It's another category, Cameron.

• 1:22:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, there's not a lot in here. So I went with film director William Castle.

• 1:22:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:00Sean Fennessey?

  World renowned for his work, uh, making experiential movie going experiences for scary movies in the 50s and 60s. He shows up in the movie as Sid Roth, who's the guy who proposes Jackie at the 1968 Republican Party.

• 1:23:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:23:15Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and he is a legendary showman in movie history, who is very, there's a Joe Dante movie called Matinee that is loosely based on him and the movies that he made. And yeah, this is a, it's a, that's an interesting choice for a guy like that, who's always trying to sell you on something.

• 1:23:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Sean Fennessey?

  To be the guy at that party.

• 1:23:32Bill Simmons?

  Interesting. Uh, we have a great shock order award for most cinematic shot. I personally would go for the high shot when they end up on the cliff. And they have the high shot to begin with, and you can see all of LA and you know, something's going to go down. I just think it's a really cool one.

• 1:23:48Sean Fennessey?

  I had the same last shot, best shot.

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:51Speaker 02

  I would go with that for sure. Where is that, that location? Do we know?

• 1:23:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know.

• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  You know, I, I researched it and couldn't figure it out, but it's got to be somewhere like up in the hills, like near Mulholland Drive or somewhere in there, that, that whole vortex. Sean, you have a flex category.

• 1:24:07Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:24:08Bill Simmons?

  Did you already do it?

• 1:24:09Sean Fennessey?

  No, I didn't. Uh, you already mentioned it. Well, I'm going to do a different one then. So my flex category is the, I used to fuck guys like you in prison award for craziest quote.

• 1:24:22Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's good.

• 1:24:23Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I was gonna do, I don't fuck anybody for money, I do it for fun. Which you already mentioned, but what if it was, I just knew, I just wish I knew what the hell I was living for. You can lose it all, you know? I mean, you can lose it no matter who you are. What's the sense of having it all? Market went down 10 points last week. Goddamn Lyndon Johnson, maybe Nixon will be better. What's the difference? They're all a bunch of jerks. That's Lester at the end of the movie.

• 1:24:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:49Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think just doing the thesis of the movie.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:24:54Bill Simmons?

  A thesis that might apply in 2025.

• 1:24:57Sean Fennessey?

  Sure does.

• 1:24:59Bill Simmons?

  We have the butcher's girlfriend award for weak link of the film. I'd like to nominate the, I'd like to suck his cock scene. It's just so crazy. And Baby apparently fought for it to be in there, but I almost think it's too crazy. I think she was too classy. See to do that. It always bothered me with this movie.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:25:17Bill Simmons?

  Would be my take. My, I might be wrong.

• 1:25:19Sean Fennessey?

  Think you're supposed to believe she's very drunk.

• 1:25:21Bill Simmons?

  But then, an hour later, she's fine.

• 1:25:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I wouldn't say she's the best drunk acting actress.

• 1:25:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Sean Fennessey?

  Julie Christie, at least not in this. She starts off, what does she start off with, the Dubonnet? Isn't that what she's drinking at the start of it? She's had a few.

• 1:25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:37Bill Simmons?

  Cruise from Few Good Men to Jerry Maguire got way better at being drunk in a scene.

• 1:25:42Speaker 02

  Big time.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  Cause Few Good Men was not.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's really true. That's really true.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  Was not, not as strong. We always had a theory he had never had a drink before, so he was pretending how to act when he had drink. But Jerry Maguire, he, he had.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  How do you direct somebody being drunk? He had a poker, so he had like a prop that was kind of helping him, I know.

• 1:25:59Bill Simmons?

  That's a good question. How do you direct somebody to be drunk?

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Glasses are huge. Hard. It's really hard. They, they kind of either have it or they don't. And if they try too hard, which somebody usually, they usually do that, you just have to scale it back and scale it back so that it's just.

• 1:26:14Bill Simmons?

  So you're like, that was really good.

• 1:26:16Speaker 02

  Just get liquid.

• 1:26:17Bill Simmons?

  Let's try one more. Scale it back 10%.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  Helps. Just to get like, cause usually they're just like, ah, but it's just like, get, get like you're in, you're underwater a little bit is good.

• 1:26:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's good.

• 1:26:29Speaker 02

  Kind of like doing a hula with it.

• 1:26:32Bill Simmons?

  So who's the best drunk scene actor of all time? I mean, Dudley Moore was drunk during all of Arthur.

• 1:26:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't know how he did that.

• 1:26:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's not acting.

• 1:26:40Bill Simmons?

  Arthur did really well.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Sean Fennessey?

  Not acting.

• 1:26:43Bill Simmons?

  Even he wasn't acting.

• 1:26:45Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, we talked about Newman in The Verdict. But it's that, like, that sullen, quiet drunk.

• 1:26:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's almost like it's dark. It's like entrenched in your body drunk.

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's not the should we or should we not follow the advice.

• 1:26:55Bill Simmons?

  The harder one is like the rom com where somebody got too drunk and starts yelling at our hero.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:01Bill Simmons?

  Is usually when it goes really wrong.

• 1:27:03Sean Fennessey?

  Cameron Diaz is really good in My Best Friend's Wedding.

• 1:27:07Bill Simmons?

  That's a great one.

• 1:27:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's some good drunk acting.

• 1:27:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's a good one.

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I think Bill Nighy in Love Actually is pretty good.

• 1:27:13Sean Fennessey?

  That's a great one, too.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  He's gets, he gets pretty liquidy. Especially on, what is it, Christmas Eve, when he shows back up to his manager and you're not sure if they're gonna have sex or something.

• 1:27:24Bill Simmons?

  A couple that's aged the worst, other than, uh, some of the words. The Paul Simon soundtrack, I wrote down before you even mentioned it. I, it's just corny and weird.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  You know I go with that.

• 1:27:34Bill Simmons?

  Strange.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  You know.

• 1:27:36Sean Fennessey?

  It seems like he did write a bunch of songs, at least at that time, that ended up on Still Crazy after all these years.

• 1:27:42Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:27:43Speaker 02

  But you know what happens? They write songs for the movies that ask them for a song and when the song turns out too good, they keep it.

• 1:27:48Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  They don't give you that song.

• 1:27:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they give you the fourth best song.

• 1:27:52Speaker 02

  There's even a thing in the Bruce Springsteen movie where he writes a song for Donna Summer and it's a, is it I'm on Fire or what is it? Yeah, it's like I'm on Fire and John, John Lando in the movie goes like, I'm sure glad you didn't give that song to Donna Summer.

• 1:28:06Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:28:07Speaker 02

  Truth, truth is being told.

• 1:28:09Bill Simmons?

  I mean, honestly, you could have done that with Fever Dog. You could have just said, fuck it. This is a real song. I'm giving this to Pearl Jam.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  Give me a writer credit.

• 1:28:17Speaker 02

  I think maybe not too late. I don't know.

• 1:28:19Bill Simmons?

  If Pearl Jam ever sang Fever Dog in concert.

• 1:28:22Sean Fennessey?

  What would, you would explode into molecules.

• 1:28:24Bill Simmons?

  I just think it'd be really good. I just think there's certain songs that like, they would have been great. There's a couple of Springsteen songs they would have crushed at. Cameron, we always, Sean and I always joke about when you own stock early in somebody. You're the all time with Pearl Jam.

• 1:28:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, PJ stock, yeah.

• 1:28:39Bill Simmons?

  He was like, had, he had Nvidia stock in 2015 with Pearl Jam. They weren't even a band yet.

• 1:28:46Speaker 02

  Come on.

• 1:28:46Bill Simmons?

  They were Mookie Blaylock when you had them in singles.

• 1:28:49Speaker 02

  They were indeed Mookie Blaylock.

• 1:28:50Bill Simmons?

  You were like the original stockholder.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  We put, we put our chips down on that.

• 1:28:55Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. It's so funny that they're still together too. Of all the bands from that era.

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Who, who, and Alice in Chains. I mean, though they've, you know, sadly.

• 1:29:06Bill Simmons?

  The only other what's aged the worst is Carrie Fisher did say years later that Beatty tried to, uh, tried to get it going with her, which is.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:29:14Bill Simmons?

  Seventeen.

• 1:29:14Sean Fennessey?

  Four times, she said.

• 1:29:15Speaker 02

  And is it true that Debbie Reynolds like made sure that she wasn't lit seductively?

• 1:29:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she, she had, Debbie had some notes.

• 1:29:23Sean Fennessey?

  And she tried to get him to change the scripts and she couldn't get him to change.

• 1:29:26Bill Simmons?

  Well, I'm sure she was like, oh shit, this is.

• 1:29:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think they wanted to change Wanna Fuck to Wanna Screw and they couldn't get that over.

• 1:29:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, interesting.

• 1:29:33Bill Simmons?

  Ruff Lohanna, Rubenek Partridge, overacting award. I gotta bring it up, but Warren Beatty, when he's getting broken up with at the end, kind of dials it up a little bit with the crying thing. It's a little out of the comfort zone. I can't say it a hundred percent.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  I'm with you. I'm with you on that.

• 1:29:49Bill Simmons?

  But please.

• 1:29:50Sean Fennessey?

  Don't.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  You keep saying honey over and over.

• 1:29:52Sean Fennessey?

  Honey, no.

• 1:29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like the fake true crime cry.

• 1:29:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't, I just don't think he would actually cry in real life.

• 1:29:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I also had the, the Jay Robinson, the guy who's the real owner of the salon, you know, who's like clear, it's the running number two behind Norman.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, Norman pushes it a little hard.

• 1:30:10Sean Fennessey?

  Turns it up a little bit.

• 1:30:10Speaker 02

  Although it's great when he goes nickel and dime. You gotta learn to nickel and dime, George.

• 1:30:16Bill Simmons?

  So we had the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford, how to take a word. What do you think of that? Luke Wilson is, could have been Harrison Ford's career.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 1:30:24Bill Simmons?

  Chris Ryan's the best hottest take in 400 plus rewatchables episodes.

• 1:30:27Sean Fennessey?

  I almost fell out of my chair.

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  It's fantastic and it's true and it's true.

• 1:30:32Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  I can't tell you how true.

• 1:30:33Bill Simmons?

  There you go.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  Deeply in my soul. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:37Bill Simmons?

  Mine is for this, Sean already did his. Did you have one? Cameron?

• 1:30:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's that it's the, the least rewatchable actually of the three picture run that Ashby was on.

• 1:30:50Bill Simmons?

  That's fair, even though it's probably the most successful.

• 1:30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it, it kinda hurts me to say that in a way because I love Shampoo so much, but when I go back over the other two, I kind of find myself gravitating towards The Last Detail or In the Right Mood, Harold and Maude, of course.

• 1:31:04Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't say, this was the number three movie at the box office this year.

• 1:31:07Speaker 02

  That's crazy.

• 1:31:08Sean Fennessey?

  Sixty million dollars.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  That is crazy.

• 1:31:10Sean Fennessey?

  Seventy five.

• 1:31:10Bill Simmons?

  Good for Warren Beatty.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  How did Last Detail do?

• 1:31:13Bill Simmons?

  Not, not nearly as well.

• 1:31:14Sean Fennessey?

  Twelve or fifteen, more smaller.

• 1:31:16Bill Simmons?

  My hottest take, I think Goldie Hawn in this mid seventies era was the single most adorable actress of all time. And it, it's different than prettiest, sexiest, all that, just like adorable where every human being was like, oh, she seems cool. Or, oh, she's so cute. Or every guy would have had a crush on her. If you're on a movie set with her, you're just gonna have a crush on her period. I can't think of, other people have, have swam in these circles, but I don't think as well, which leads to my second hottest take. Fifteen years too soon. She misses the whole rom com blow up era from eighty nine on, starting with When Harry Met Sally.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:31:56Bill Simmons?

  She, she does, Meg Ryan doesn't exist. Meg Ryan's working down the street. Goldie's taken every part from her for ten years.

• 1:32:06Sean Fennessey?

  Meg Ryan's working down the street.

• 1:32:07Bill Simmons?

  Meg Ryan's gone.

• 1:32:08Sean Fennessey?

  Meg Ryan's delivering mail. Yeah. She wants the Dunkin' Donuts.

• 1:32:13Bill Simmons?

  She's Markinson. She doesn't exist. She's gone. But Goldie Hawn, I just think they didn't have the right kind of, she, they had great movies, but they didn't have these movies that just would have kept it going for her.

• 1:32:26Sean Fennessey?

  She kind of gets it back.

• 1:32:27Speaker 02

  She comes back.

• 1:32:27Sean Fennessey?

  With like First Wives Club and Banger Sisters, which is like kind of in the same zone, but she's not, not quite the rom com.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  But she misses that sweet, sweet, sweet spot.

• 1:32:35Bill Simmons?

  She just could have been in My Best Friend's Wedding type of movies for ten solid years.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  Killing it for sure.

• 1:32:41Bill Simmons?

  I watched Private Benjamin recently and she was, that movie's really good and she's incredible in that movie. And it's a really weird movie that they just wouldn't make anymore.

• 1:32:50Speaker 02

  Incredible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:52Bill Simmons?

  Uh, casting went F's couldn't find any. Best that guy were Johnny Bill is Tony Bill, uh, Tony Bill is Johnny Pope?

• 1:33:00Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, he was an Academy Award winning producer on the film The Sting, so he was, he was not, he was a very well-known person in Hollywood, but he occasionally acted, didn't act very often.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  I love Tony Bill.

• 1:33:11Sean Fennessey?

  He looks like, um,

• 1:33:14Sean Fennessey?

  Warren Beatty on a bad day.

• 1:33:17Sean Fennessey?

  You know what I mean? Like, he looks just enough like him where you're like, yeah, this guy should be at this party.

• 1:33:20Bill Simmons?

  Like he could be the extra?

• 1:33:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 02

  Jack Wharton thinks he's getting it on with George. Come on, you know?

• 1:33:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  He also has a period mustache that kind of is both timeless and caught in the cedar.

• 1:33:31Sean Fennessey?

  But it's like if, if Beatty was in disguise or something in the movie, you know, we're like, why is his brother here?

• 1:33:36Speaker 02

  I love how annoyed he is when Lester gets in the car, like after the bistro. It's.

• 1:33:42Sean Fennessey?

  Want to get a drink?

• 1:33:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33:44Bill Simmons?

  Uh, recasting couch director city. So can I just, I think this movie is very well cast, but can I just offer you ones for Johnny Pope sadly? You know, we just gave him another one.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  Do this, do this.

• 1:33:54Bill Simmons?

  Can I just throw John Cazale in there for the hell of it? Yeah.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  That's pretty great.

• 1:33:59Bill Simmons?

  Just grab his time for two weeks.

• 1:34:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And he could do Ascot, commercial director, you know, we saw him do it as a spray.

• 1:34:05Bill Simmons?

  I think he played like five parts in this movie.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 1:34:08Bill Simmons?

  Get him in there. Uh, you did your flex. Half assed under research. So you mentioned the Paul Simon stuff. Paul Simon did write a title song called Have A Good Time.

• 1:34:18Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:34:19Bill Simmons?

  That, uh, Beatty said no.

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  So we have a good time.

• 1:34:23Bill Simmons?

  And they put it out on the still crazy after all these years of them. You mentioned all the Debbie Reynolds stuff and we did everything else for that. So Apex Mountain is a category we talk about when somebody had the most juice they were ever gonna have in their career. And I actually think Beatty is, this is a yes for him.

• 1:34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:40Bill Simmons?

  Cause this movie, he owned a lot of the backend of it. He put a lot of time into it. It's a huge success. And I just think he can do whatever he wants after this. Not that he couldn't have before. But this is the best example of that. This sets up Reds, this sets up everything he wants to do.

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  It all, for sure.

• 1:34:56Sean Fennessey?

  But is, is he even higher on the mountain and had Heaven Can Wait or at Reds?

• 1:35:05Bill Simmons?

  I, it's, I don't know.

• 1:35:06Sean Fennessey?

  Like after Heaven Can Wait or after Reds, is he, is he even, has he ascended even further?

• 1:35:11Bill Simmons?

  Maybe it's Heaven Can Wait. I, I don't know.

• 1:35:14Speaker 02

  It's a really good point. Is it Heaven Can Wait? How many years after this movie is Heaven Can Wait? Three years. And in between is?

• 1:35:21Bill Simmons?

  He's turning down stuff. He, he was.

• 1:35:23Sean Fennessey?

  What is the fortune before or after this?

• 1:35:25Bill Simmons?

  He's producing, yeah.

• 1:35:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Bill Simmons?

  The most interesting one he turned down was Hardcore with Paul Schrader, a movie we've done on the rewatchables. Turn it off! Turn it off! We've done that one. I don't know. I can't see Warren Beatty. He, he didn't wanna have a daughter. That's why he turned it down.

• 1:35:43Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:43Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:35:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm too young and handsome to have a daughter, so can it be my wife goes to Newport? And they're like, nah, that's not.

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:35:50Bill Simmons?

  It's gotta be a teenage daughter.

• 1:35:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so he, yeah. He has Shampoo and the Fortune in seventy-five and then Heaven Can Wait in seventy-eight and Reds in eighty-one.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  For some reason, I feel by the time of Heaven Can Wait, Beatty is a little less like feral Beatty, you know? Where he's just like in the culture. Heaven Can Wait's kind of like, you know?

• 1:36:10Bill Simmons?

  He's a little more establishment.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  Pass, a nice romantic comedy turn. But he doesn't have his teeth in it the way he does in Shampoo.

• 1:36:19Bill Simmons?

  I think it's this, the more I think about it.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:36:23Bill Simmons?

  Julie Christie, obviously not, because she did Darling and Doctor Zhivago in the same year. Which is like.

• 1:36:29Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good.

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  Hall of Fame, Apex Mountain year.

• 1:36:31Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty good.

• 1:36:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:36:33Bill Simmons?

  Like one of the biggest movies of the sixties and a movie where she won an Oscar. You're not topping that. Goldie Hawn, no. Robert Downe? This is a pretty nice run for him. He's got Chinatown in this, back to back.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:36:48Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say yes.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  I have, I have yes.

• 1:36:50Bill Simmons?

  Jack Ward and no, it's somewhere in the late seventies. Old school Hollywood scenery in a famous Hollywood movie, it's in play. Triumph motorcycles as a character in a movie, definitely.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Definitely.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  And then late sixties, party scenes.

• 1:37:08Bill Simmons?

  Trying to think of a better one.

• 1:37:12Speaker 02

  This was the most sprawling, for sure.

• 1:37:16Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say no on party scenes in general, cause not just cause Cameron.

• 1:37:20Sean Fennessey?

  What about the Peter Sellers movie, The Party?

• 1:37:21Bill Simmons?

  The answer for.

• 1:37:22Speaker 02

  Ah, yes.

• 1:37:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a party.

• 1:37:24Speaker 02

  Good call.

• 1:37:25Bill Simmons?

  Party scenes all time, Apex Mountain. I'm not just saying that because he's here.

• 1:37:29Sean Fennessey?

  Project X.

• 1:37:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm not even gonna look at him.

• 1:37:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Project X.

• 1:37:31Bill Simmons?

  No, it's, it's Russell Hammond in Topeka, Kansas.

• 1:37:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, golden god.

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  You're just not getting a better party scene then. Want to see the staff, I'm not, I'm intentionally not looking at him.

• 1:37:41Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think that was a good party?

• 1:37:44Speaker 02

  Which one, the Topeka party?

• 1:37:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, seemed like a good party.

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, everybody's having a good time.

• 1:37:48Bill Simmons?

  That's what happened in the seventies.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  He's participating with them.

• 1:37:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  It's like, he's one of them. He's there with like, Aaron, when the snake gets eaten. Or the mouse gets eaten by the snake.

• 1:38:01Bill Simmons?

  Next category.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  And it's the nineteen eighty-four thing, you know? When he says like, in eleven years, it's gonna be nineteen eighty-four.

• 1:38:08Bill Simmons?

  Think about that.

• 1:38:08Speaker 02

  Think about that.

• 1:38:12Bill Simmons?

  This next category, we have anyway, but this'll be really fun with you here. Cruise or Hanks? For the lead part.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Who's winning the career total? Is Hanks ahead?

• 1:38:24Sean Fennessey?

  There's only one rational answer.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  Hanks is currently ahead.

• 1:38:26Sean Fennessey?

  And with Cameron here, there's only one rational answer.

• 1:38:29Bill Simmons?

  I think it's definitely Cruise. It's the role, I don't know if Cruise ever would've played, although he did do Eyes Wide Shut, so maybe all bets are off with Cruise.

• 1:38:37Sean Fennessey?

  Frank T J Mackey is the closest.

• 1:38:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:38:39Sean Fennessey?

  Where this collision between like, I'm a sexual god and all this vulnerability.

• 1:38:43Bill Simmons?

  It's definitely Cruise.

• 1:38:44Speaker 02

  It's definitely Cruise.

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:46Speaker 02

  I think he could've done it.

• 1:38:47Sean Fennessey?

  Hank's trying is funny. That would be amusing.

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  That's a different comedy.

• 1:38:50Sean Fennessey?

  Gives the movie a totally different flavor.

• 1:38:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if he could pull up the haircut. His hair's like mine, it just goes up.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  I don't know if I want to see the hairdryer stuck in his snake pants, you know, I don't know.

• 1:39:02Bill Simmons?

  Scorsese or Spielberg to direct?

• 1:39:06Speaker 02

  Scorsese.

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  I agree. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Lester.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  Lester.

• 1:39:13Bill Simmons?

  Had that as well.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  That's a dream to think about.

• 1:39:18Bill Simmons?

  That's one of the great Philip Seymour Hoffman stories is his story. You had him for two days?

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, no, um, I think.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  And he was sick or you had him for a week?

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  Had him for a week.

• 1:39:29Bill Simmons?

  He was sick most of the time?

• 1:39:31Speaker 02

  That's why he's like a little red in the face and stuff and was like kind of coughing and his energy was low, but completely brought it.

• 1:39:40Bill Simmons?

  Did you know as you're filming it, like, this is like a legendary Philip Seymour Hoffman?

• 1:39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Did you know you were changing my life when you were making those scenes in that movie?

• 1:39:47Speaker 02

  I kind of did because it was the first scene we filmed and he was on the street with the, with Patrick Fugit and they were doing the scene where I was walking with the real Lester Banks and so I was watching, you know, him do the very thing that I had done with Lester and I was listening to it on the headset and he sounded like Lester. And I had this moment where I, I wanted to call up David Geffen and just say, uh, talk to him about it because it was, I felt like it was such a gift that I'd been given to be able to do this and in continuity and everything. So they got David Geffen on the phone and said, hello, and I go, David Geffen, it's Cameron here. I just did my first scene and I just like, I can't believe that I'm here on the same street where it all happened and we're filming with the same people, you know, on film that felt exactly the same.

• 1:40:30Speaker 02

  I can't believe, how did I get here? And he goes, Jerry Maguire. Hung up.

• 1:40:35Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:40:40Speaker 02

  How's that for belief?

• 1:40:42Bill Simmons?

  It's right to the chase.

• 1:40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's like.

• 1:40:44Sean Fennessey?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:40:44Speaker 02

  Let's speak truth and, uh, and I'll be gone.

• 1:40:47Bill Simmons?

  So out of all the parts in Almost Famous, which is the one that you felt like you had to get the actor perfectly for the part, just for your own sanity? Was it Lester Banks?

• 1:40:55Speaker 02

  No, it was Patrick Fugit.

• 1:40:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, William Miller.

• 1:40:57Speaker 02

  William Miller.

• 1:40:58Sean Fennessey?

  Gotta be.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  But followed closely by Lester because we saw a lot of people for Lester and, and Gail Levin, the casting director, said at the very beginning, you're going to see everybody in town and you're going to end up with Philip Seymour Hoffman. And it happened exactly like that. And he said, I talked to him and I said to him on the phone, like, please play the part. He goes, okay. And I said, can you come and do like, you know, a couple of weeks of rehearsals to do it? And he was like, I don't think you're gonna need that. I'm like, well, I knew this guy, it's very important to me. He's like a mentor. I gotta get it right. And he goes, you won't need that much part, but that's time, that much time with the part. But like, I'll come out. So I said, thank you so much. And he showed up.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  He came to the office. He didn't have the flu yet, but he was, he was in a, in a pretty good mood. And he sat down and he goes, well, let's just do the scenes. And he did all the scenes back to back. And I said, okay, we're rehearsed. This is, this is great. He was there 45 minutes and he was back to the airport to fly home. That's how dialed in he was on Lester. But like, kind enough to know that that was what was gonna happen, but still came out on the promise of two weeks. Then when he showed up, he had the flu. And so like battled through it. But it gave him a quality that I think was kind of corrosive in a really cool way. He would have brought-

• 1:42:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he seemed like beaten down, so you kind of needed him to be physically sick.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  And, and when we got to the scene where he's supposed to say, you know, like, we're the uncool and stuff. I always saw that as like a victory scene. Like, you know, we're the uncools. Like that, that Todd Rundgren picture that's on his album, Something, Anything, where he's like this. It was in my mind. And it was Phil Hoffman that said, like, why don't we do the scene? Like, we're the only two people awake in the world, me and William Miller. We do it quiet and I'll be sitting.

• 1:42:49Bill Simmons?

  Well, cool.

• 1:42:49Speaker 02

  And, yeah, it was spectacular.

• 1:42:52Bill Simmons?

  Then you cut the scene where he's like, William, how's the peeping? How's the peeping? Didn't make sense.

• 1:43:00Speaker 02

  Didn't make sense, why, why, why? But yes, Lester, he would have been the Lester of our current time.

• 1:43:06Bill Simmons?

  Have you met his son?

• 1:43:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:43:08Bill Simmons?

  Cooper?

• 1:43:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I dig him, but I haven't met him. Really?

• 1:43:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we have, we have some mutual friends. And he's very cool about his dad. He's just like, you know, and he's a really good actor. But he's just like, ask me anything about my dad. Like, my dad was awesome. Like, I'm totally cool talking about it.

• 1:43:25Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:43:26Bill Simmons?

  He's a really good actor. All right, picking nets. Would, would Felicia have been more upset that George probably- We just fucked her seventeen year old daughter. I feel like, yes.

• 1:43:36Sean Fennessey?

  Let's suspect, yes.

• 1:43:37Bill Simmons?

  So maybe Beatty was correct?

• 1:43:40Sean Fennessey?

  So you, you, you too have notes on Lee Grant's performance.

• 1:43:44Bill Simmons?

  I'm just trying to, I, I can't judge the nineteen sixty eight.

• 1:43:47Sean Fennessey?

  I think there's a case to be made that there's like a shell shock protectionist quality that goes into play when something like that happens where you're just like block it out.

• 1:43:54Bill Simmons?

  Pretend it didn't happen?

• 1:43:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:56Bill Simmons?

  Okay. What do you have for picking nits? What's your biggest one?

• 1:44:00Speaker 02

  Just like the, the thing that doesn't quite work.

• 1:44:03Bill Simmons?

  The thing like, come on, after you've seen a movie seven times and you're like, all right, that blah, blah, blah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 02

  I had a note. What was it? It was, uh. Yeah, it was like, I, I, I just got confused whose house the party was and stuff. So that to me was like, why do they all end up there? And I don't quite get why Lester is upset to go there and it's kind of supposed to be his house. So I, I kind of got tripped up there, but that may not be the most stellar choice, but that, that kind of rubbed at me. Uh, one of the things that I was curious about is like, are we supposed to think that she slept with Johnny Pope on the night of the party, Jill?

• 1:44:37Bill Simmons?

  It's potentially ambiguous.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  It's ambiguous. Like, like Beatty accuses her of it or kind of hints at it, I think. But are we supposed to think it happened?

• 1:44:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he like has to come into the house, but she says no, which indicates that like he would follow her into the house because they had been intimate, but we don't really know what happened.

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  And is she sleeping with him to, to get the part? Or does she have more agency than that and she's just gonna be who she is, man? And I, I don't know. It's a little. It may not be the perfect answer, but.

• 1:45:08Sean Fennessey?

  How do you get a loan when you're a hairdresser to open a salon?

• 1:45:12Bill Simmons?

  In nineteen sixty eight?

• 1:45:13Sean Fennessey?

  What do you got to present to the bank? What's a good, like, what's the process there? Like, do you bring in clients and say like, these clients are coming with me? Like, how, what, what was George's plan?

• 1:45:22Bill Simmons?

  I think that's why they shut him down.

• 1:45:24Sean Fennessey?

  But like, if you were actually trying to do that, how would you do? You probably just need an independent investor. You can't get a bank to do it. Um, but it, just this whole process pursuing that is very funny where he's thinks he's gonna be able to get this. And he's just like, just trust me, bro. I got, I, I got clients. Um, that whole thing is all a little squishy as well.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  I was a little squishy on how low the ask was. It's like ten thousand or something. So Lester has to really think about it. It's like, does this guy really have money or is he, even in nineteen sixty eight, or is he a fraud?

• 1:45:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. How rich is he?

• 1:45:56Bill Simmons?

  I have two for the party. This will be a good example of how picking nits works. One is pretty stealth. The valets just get the cars way too quick. It's a huge party.

• 1:46:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great note.

• 1:46:06Bill Simmons?

  Cars are parked. You're out at that party, you're out there for 20 minutes.

• 1:46:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:46:10Bill Simmons?

  Other people are out, people are smoking, you're talking to people, the valet show. These, these cars are ready in it, in it. But this is the bigger one.

• 1:46:21Bill Simmons?

  How does the motorcycle get to the last party? We see him in a car with Julie Christie going to the party, then the second thing. But he leaves the last party on his Triumph motorcycle. How?

• 1:46:32Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:46:32Bill Simmons?

  He didn't take the motorcycle there.

• 1:46:34Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 1:46:34Speaker 02

  Nice call, man.

• 1:46:35Sean Fennessey?

  Should we delete this episode? What the hell? This movie is null and void. Oh, my gosh.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:46:41Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, maybe, maybe he made a call and someone brought it over.

• 1:46:46Bill Simmons?

  Well, since Cameron's here, we have to do a couple of picking nits for Jerry Maguire.

• 1:46:49Speaker 02

  Please.

• 1:46:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:46:51Bill Simmons?

  Why would Denver?

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Don't let.

• 1:46:53Bill Simmons?

  Why would Denver want to trade up for Frank Cushman in 1996 when they had John Elway? Where was your sports consultant on that one?

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  Can we travel back in time and just get in a room and work this out?

• 1:47:04Bill Simmons?

  What did they need another quarterback?

• 1:47:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, maybe they were thinking about, you know, how to continue the legacy of great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:11Speaker 02

  Guys, it was a parallel universe, please.

• 1:47:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  All things are possible. Jesus. Don't you want to live there?

• 1:47:18Bill Simmons?

  Dorothy had, Dorothy had a young kid and health benefits. Is she really quitting? She's got a young child.

• 1:47:25Sean Fennessey?

  This did come up in our discussion of the film, I think.

• 1:47:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Sean Fennessey?

  Pretty risky move, but she was inspired, right?

• 1:47:29Bill Simmons?

  She was inspired.

• 1:47:30Speaker 02

  I will go with you. And this is, this is, this is very close to the theme of the movie, you guys. This is like you, the people you don't expect who show up.

• 1:47:40Bill Simmons?

  That, that's a good answer.

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  When you need somebody, it's the people you planned on, on being there for you. Don't show up. And that's usually how it works.

• 1:47:47Sean Fennessey?

  When you were suspended by ESPN, where was I? Right by your side.

• 1:47:50Bill Simmons?

  You were.

• 1:47:51Sean Fennessey?

  I was right by your side.

• 1:47:52Bill Simmons?

  You didn't care about health benefits?

• 1:47:53Sean Fennessey?

  I did not.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  Warren Beatty calling, the night of the LA Times story. It's like, fuck, where did that guy come from? All my friends, silent. It's like, this is, this is, this is why Dorothy makes that move. She is that character.

• 1:48:05Speaker 03

  Sean, what if you had a child?

• 1:48:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Sean Fennessey?

  Would I have followed Bill?

• 1:48:09Bill Simmons?

  He's still at ESPN.

• 1:48:12Bill Simmons?

  He's producing NBA Countdown. This was the big one. We've argued about this. In the movie, how he got back to the divorced women's support group after the Monday Night Football game.

• 1:48:26Sean Fennessey?

  How long had that meeting been going on?

• 1:48:27Bill Simmons?

  So the Monday Night Football game starts 9:07 Eastern, 1995. 7:07 Phoenix time, or is that 8:07 Phoenix time? So one hour back?

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  One hour.

• 1:48:37Sean Fennessey?

  One hour.

• 1:48:37Bill Simmons?

  One hour back, 7:07. Game ends 10:30. Press conference. Airport, pre-9/11, though.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  The time travel happens in the airport run.

• 1:48:46Bill Simmons?

  11:30?

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  That's where the splice happens.

• 1:48:49Bill Simmons?

  Lands in LAX. So the divorced women's group is still going at 1:00 in the morning?

• 1:48:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:55Bill Simmons?

  Okay, so we just have to buy into that?

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  They have fucking problems, man. They gotta work through some shit.

• 1:49:01Bill Simmons?

  Is there coffee?

• 1:49:01Speaker 02

  Everybody's tired, you can tell.

• 1:49:03Bill Simmons?

  Is there coffee at that point? Is it like 11:30, like I need a little caffeine?

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

  By the time he gets there, my mom is counseling everybody in the room. It's like, you know, all their stories are gone and she's just talking about neuropathways and stuff.

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  I mean, I like your close attention to this, but you know.

• 1:49:19Bill Simmons?

  See, this is what we do.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  I'm here to help you through this stuff.

• 1:49:23Sean Fennessey?

  There's intentionality, yeah.

• 1:49:24Bill Simmons?

  The biggest, the best one of all the ones we just mentioned, though, is the Triumph Motorcycle's not at that last party. It's just not. Just one Oscar. You can only give one Oscar to anything in the movie. What do you give it to?

• 1:49:35Speaker 02

  Can I give it to the guy that does the Indian chant at the bistro?

• 1:49:39Bill Simmons?

  Best supporting actor?

• 1:49:40Speaker 02

  I just want to give it to him. Or the woman who's next to Jackie when she's talking about like wanting to suck his cock.

• 1:49:47Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  The woman.

• 1:49:47Sean Fennessey?

  Her reaction.

• 1:49:48Speaker 02

  At the table.

• 1:49:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh, because like, yeah.

• 1:49:52Bill Simmons?

  Well, Lee Grant won it, so I guess that's the answer. It's our answer. Somebody actually won the Oscar.

• 1:49:56Sean Fennessey?

  I would make a case for Town. I think the script is amazing.

• 1:49:58Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:50:01Bill Simmons?

  Uh, probably an answerable questions. We already did all mine, unless you guys have any other ones.

• 1:50:06Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I mean, did George ever get a salon? Did Lester pay for it? Did Lester and Jackie make it?

• 1:50:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a definite no.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:14Bill Simmons?

  I think they made it.

• 1:50:15Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm saying I'm agreeing with they broke up. But how long and did she move on to another situation? No.

• 1:50:22Bill Simmons?

  I think she found somebody else who had some money and.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  I'm with you. That's what happens. Does George get the shop at all?

• 1:50:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna say he's too much of a.

• 1:50:32Speaker 02

  He's a flake.

• 1:50:33Bill Simmons?

  He's too much of a flake. I don't think he could run a business.

• 1:50:35Speaker 02

  Did anybody talk about what happens to George? Any of the filmmakers?

• 1:50:39Bill Simmons?

  Bounced around a few hair salons. I think there might have been some late seventies cocaine.

• 1:50:45Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:50:46Bill Simmons?

  A path for him. Try this. The stuff's great.

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  No tragic end.

• 1:50:50Bill Simmons?

  Two years later, he's just getting fired from his third salon.

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  I got you.

• 1:50:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it goes kind of badly for George.

• 1:51:01Bill Simmons?

  What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I think the Triumph is eligible.

• 1:51:08Speaker 02

  That's what I chose. I am not a motorcycle person. In fact, I don't want to get on a motorcycle. I don't want to ride in one. I'm scared of them. And yet I want the motorcycle. That's how cool that motorcycle is.

• 1:51:17Bill Simmons?

  The brown leather jacket, I think, is in the running too. The jacket he has for the one he whips in the garbage.

• 1:51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just, I didn't know if it was iconic enough. It seemed kind of thin and shiny in a way.

• 1:51:31Bill Simmons?

  Like cheap.

• 1:51:32Speaker 02

  Just me. A little cheap, a little cheap, and maybe that's good character.

• 1:51:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. What about the blow dryer?

• 1:51:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a good one. Autograph. Yeah, that's good.

• 1:51:43Speaker 02

  It depends. It's like, do you want a usable prop? You know, do you want something like the Triumph where you can just like ride around on it? Is the Triumph just for show?

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, got it. I feel like it's this should category should be modified a little bit to be the rewatchable studio prop from the movie. What could you put in a glass case in this room? What would be in the cush spot? Cush corner, yeah. I would go with the earring, just because it's like. That's good. It's like the scene in the apartment, you know, like the cracked mirror. It's just everything kind of spins on it and it's just. It's just there.

• 1:52:21Bill Simmons?

  Are you aware of the memorabilia auction rise for Hollywood stuff? You must be.

• 1:52:25Speaker 02

  A little bit, yeah.

• 1:52:26Bill Simmons?

  Like the Shawshank Bible going for like four hundred and fifty thousand dollars?

• 1:52:29Speaker 02

  Damn, I didn't know about that.

• 1:52:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like shit's shit's going down.

• 1:52:37Bill Simmons?

  Greg's excited in the corner. He's like, wait, what?

• 1:52:40Speaker 02

  He keeps, he keep it all. The Penny Lane coat, could we get some?

• 1:52:44Bill Simmons?

  No, I think-

• 1:52:44Sean Fennessey?

  Are you asking us to bid on it, or?

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  No, I'm just like asking, just like, you know, I'm like Lester here.

• 1:52:49Bill Simmons?

  I would say just from almost, from almost famous-

• 1:52:51Speaker 02

  How much do you think they'd get for us?

• 1:52:52Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't it be the Russell him and guitar used in the concert scene? We'd probably have the highest-

• 1:52:56Speaker 02

  Lloyd's boombox, maybe? Something like that?

• 1:52:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's-

• 1:52:58Bill Simmons?

  Lloyd's boombox?

• 1:52:59Sean Fennessey?

  Oh my god.

• 1:53:00Bill Simmons?

  You don't have that, do you?

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  It's in my garage.

• 1:53:01Sean Fennessey?

  Oh my god.

• 1:53:02Bill Simmons?

  Come on!

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  How much is it worth to you?

• 1:53:05Bill Simmons?

  Oh my god!

• 1:53:06Sean Fennessey?

  Don't sell it, don't sell it.

• 1:53:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that you can't sell it.

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  No, never, never. I never saw that stuff.

• 1:53:10Bill Simmons?

  That's like, yeah, that's up there.

• 1:53:12Sean Fennessey?

  Did you see it came back, that it was memed again when Cusack was at the Cubs game? Did you see? And he had his arms up and people were putting the boombox up?

• 1:53:18Speaker 02

  I did, I'm surprised.

• 1:53:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's eternal, man.

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  It's so, it's so amazing.

• 1:53:22Bill Simmons?

  My daughter said this era is coming back, the Lloyd Dobler era is coming back.

• 1:53:26Sean Fennessey?

  God willing.

• 1:53:26Bill Simmons?

  That's her, her theory, this show, Summer I Turned Pretty on Amazon. Everyone loves this character Conrad, and he's a big like, he's, he's like a quarter yearner person. And, and my daughter, who's 20, was like, this is, women wanna be courted. Like, nobody courts us anymore, and that's why we like Conrad. And I was like, it sounds like you would like Lloyd Dobler.

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  Lloyd is the only one that I would write and have thought about writing more about, you know, more of the-

• 1:53:52Sean Fennessey?

  More of his story?

• 1:53:53Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Lloyd now? He owns a series of Muay Thai studios in Northern California?

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  Or any number of eras. Um, just, he's so much fun to write for, write that character. I loved it. I love it still.

• 1:54:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's a little, that's dangerous to say out loud.

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  And guys, filmed by Lazlo Kovacs, the boombox scene is fucking filmed by the guy that filmed shampoo.

• 1:54:14Bill Simmons?

  Also a very important song choice scene.

• 1:54:18Speaker 02

  Indeed, yeah. Only one song worked, and we did try everything.

• 1:54:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:54:22Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock wore best life lesson, everyone sells out.

• 1:54:27Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if I grew the lesson, but-

• 1:54:28Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't have to be that way.

• 1:54:29Bill Simmons?

  But, but that's the lesson of the movie, or the theme, right?

• 1:54:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:33Bill Simmons?

  We're all gonna sell out at some point.

• 1:54:35Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's kind of like an acid burn takeaway in the year that Jaws comes out, and kinda changes movies forever. You know, that like, you could say this is the arc, the highest arc of being able to end a movie where everyone loses.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:49Sean Fennessey?

  And then-

• 1:54:49Bill Simmons?

  Did you have anything different?

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  Just that Jill is the only one that, that, that claws her way out of that, so, um- So optimism and hope do, uh, does, does triumph in, in some way, even in this kind of circumstance.

• 1:55:07Bill Simmons?

  So Jill represents the Jimmy Carter presidency.

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  Or.

• 1:55:10Bill Simmons?

  I'm just.

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  Or.

• 1:55:11Sean Fennessey?

  Keep going, yeah.

• 1:55:13Speaker 02

  Sound like, yeah.

• 1:55:13Bill Simmons?

  Sound like, give me more.

• 1:55:14Speaker 02

  But what did, didn't Towns say Jill is, is attempt to write what a seventies woman was going to be? You know, who had more control over herself and, and was able to make her own choices and not be so dependent on finances or, or, or men? And that's his attempt to like, have a little bit of a happy ending to it. So I kind of go with that as a mini lesson. There's a way out of this, sellout generation.

• 1:55:40Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for double feature choice?

• 1:55:44Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote the parallax view down as basically just like the two sides of the Beatty persona where like, there's not a single laugh in the parallax view. The whole time you're like, what the?

• 1:55:54Bill Simmons?

  And it's right, the movie right before this.

• 1:55:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and it's right before this.

• 1:55:57Speaker 02

  Interesting. I was called Joyce. I went Rules of the Game. Which I, I think was, you know, uh, a father of this movie in a way. The inner relationships, the, the kind of wistful feeling that Jean Renoir, the, the director who acts in Rules of the Game has. It's, I would love to watch the two of them together.

• 1:56:21Bill Simmons?

  I had Nashville. I just went nineteen seventy-five sprawling.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  That's cool.

• 1:56:25Bill Simmons?

  Two different areas.

• 1:56:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:27Sean Fennessey?

  Both political, both full of music.

• 1:56:29Bill Simmons?

  And then who won the movie? It's gotta be Beatty.

• 1:56:31Sean Fennessey?

  Beatty.

• 1:56:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  Beatty, all the way.

• 1:56:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. This is where we ask producer Craig, who hasn't seen a lot of these movies, especially before the two thousands. What he thought?

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  Loved it. Totally loved it. Um, I'm, I'm increasingly starting to love all the movies from this era, but the charisma.

• 1:56:46Bill Simmons?

  We've corrupted them.

• 1:56:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, the charisma of all the actors in this movie just jumps off the screen so much. I also just appreciate that this movie's trying to, both trying to say something and is also just a good time and very enjoyable. And it feels like more and more now, movies that are trying to say something have to be serious or depressing. And a lot of your movies say something but are fun hanks and are enjoyable and laid back. And I don't know, this movie is just so unrecognizable to everything that's going on today in so many ways. Like, we talked about LA, but I mean, just the fact that it's such a small movie, such a small story, and it made sixty million dollars, which is the equivalent of three hundred and sixty today. It made three hundred million adjusted for inflation domestic, which is the same that Jurassic, the new Jurassic Park made this year.

• 1:57:32Speaker 03

  Like, it is just so remarkable that a movie this small can do what it did back then. Um, but yeah, I just loved it across the board. It was amazing.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  So great.

• 1:57:40Bill Simmons?

  It was both small but had major stars in it, which always helps.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  This is a really hard thing to do. It's, and it's also really true to make a point and sugarcoat it enough in like charisma, great casting and all that stuff where you just, it goes down so easy. And it's not about, you must remember this, which does make those movies so serious.

• 1:57:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:59Speaker 02

  I, I love it when you realize later how much was packed into the shit that made you laugh.

• 1:58:05Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes it's good to have major stars in a movie like this and other times it isn't. Like I was, like the, the sliding doors of Almost Famous was if Brad Pitt's Russell Hamid is it a better or a worse movie, right? And that almost happened. And I actually think it's better that he wasn't, even though I love Brad Pitt.

• 1:58:22Sean Fennessey?

  But in this case, it's so important that Beatty, who we, everyone knew at the time to be a ladies' man, to make a movie about being a ladies' man. And he never made a movie like this. So the, the idea of him leveraging that persona for everybody was genius.

• 1:58:36Bill Simmons?

  Like Burt Reynolds couldn't have been this.

• 1:58:39Sean Fennessey?

  He could have done it, it just wouldn't have been as good.

• 1:58:41Bill Simmons?

  It would have been, it wouldn't have, it would have. Felt off.

• 1:58:43Speaker 02

  For sure, it would have felt off. I have a question for you guys.

• 1:58:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:46Speaker 02

  What is the best use of celebrity? In a movie like like big stars, what's your favorite use of big stars? When they're slightly off brand or when they go full into brand.

• 1:58:58Bill Simmons?

  So we we talk about this a lot. The thing I always say is every once in a while I want. The A lister to be an A lister. Just like do. Like in Cruise, Cruise, Jerry Maguire is one of the ones we mentioned, right? He's like an interview the vampire the year before. Dyed hair is and he's in far and away and.

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:19Bill Simmons?

  And uh. Sometimes people just need to be. The person we fell in love with in a movie in a movie. It's a it sounds like stupid, but I don't think it's stupid. I just every few years be the person.

• 1:59:31Speaker 02

  Be that person.

• 1:59:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I always think of Denzel as an interesting example of this because he very rarely transforms. He's always Denzel.

• 1:59:39Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:59:39Sean Fennessey?

  He doesn't dye his hair blonde. And. His movies are varying quality, right? And when they're good, they're the best movies of all time. And when they're bad, they can be pretty bad. And yet there's something always very watchable about him.

• 1:59:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:51Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you'll watch him kind of make any I've watched every equalizer movie and I really enjoy myself watching them. Another actor, I don't think I would have any time for those movies. So I do think that that is a but that's. The one percent of the one percent of major stars. I mean, you know better than anybody like how hard it is to find somebody who you. The audience will be like, I'm with you no matter what.

• 2:00:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:12Bill Simmons?

  Which I think Shalhoub might have that quality.

• 2:00:15Speaker 02

  I I agree.

• 2:00:16Bill Simmons?

  He's the he's the next one of the under thirty guys. Leo definitely had it.

• 2:00:20Sean Fennessey?

  Marty like that's not a very likeable character and yet you're with him throughout that movie.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  Did you see it coming early on Shalhoub?

• 2:00:27Bill Simmons?

  You know.

• 2:00:27Speaker 02

  That he had that.

• 2:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, in Homeland, season one, when he played the the young. He had the boyfriend of the girl's mother, yeah.

• 2:00:35Bill Simmons?

  I didn't see that one right away with him. Cause he was really good in Call Me By Your Name, but I I certainly didn't think he was going to be like the next guy. Leo was a little different because. He was clearly really good. And I'm I've told this story about seeing him in a Growing Pains episode when. He was this adopted kid in growing paint and he was just so much better than everybody. He was crying and flipping out. It was like, oh my God, who's. But it wasn't until this boy's life where you're like,

• 2:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:01:00Bill Simmons?

  Oh, protect this person at all costs.

• 2:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  With Shalhoub, I've just been saying that this next movie, I think, is the like, the ultimate test of if the thing that a lot of your movies have, that a lot of movies over the last seventy five years have, it still exists. That like, can you, can you make an original movie, character based drama? That is not IP, that is not an event movie? And will people show up primarily because of who the star is? And is there enough of a wave of excitement for him that they'll buy into it because of that?

• 2:01:31Speaker 03

  And Shalhoub has evolved into what Leo didn't have to do twenty years ago, which is Shalhoub knows how to sell his movie. And is actively involved in the marketing of the film.

• 2:01:39Speaker 02

  I saw that viral piece.

• 2:01:40Speaker 03

  And he's, he's just has great instincts for that, which is something Leo didn't have to do and actively refused. He didn't do SNL. He wouldn't do stuff like that. Tim leans all in.

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  When they know kind of like how to use themselves and like how much you can, you can kind of like move the aperture. But like, really, it's got to be this kind of thing and they're smart enough to know that like going wildly off in another direction might be artistically satisfying and, you know, sexy, but it's not going to work.

• 2:02:05Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 2:02:05Speaker 02

  And, and Cruz is a little bit like that. Like I, I heard him talking to somebody once who wanted him to do basically a cameo. And, uh, and wouldn't it be fun if? And he was, he was, he was really smart about it. He said like, I could do it. But it would mess up your movie because I would, I would, that ship would tilt in a way that it would take on water. And I, I almost wish it wasn't that way, but when I'm in a movie, it kind of has to be right there. And TJ Mackie is the only time where I kind of could mess around and be a smaller character doing such and such, but still use the thing. But like, basically, I have found over time that if you put me in a movie, I kind of draw attention.

• 2:02:50Speaker 02

  And so it's got to be kind of used in that way. And I thought that was so super smart.

• 2:02:56Bill Simmons?

  You know what's interesting is PTA feels the exact opposite. He loves bringing like major, major famous people into his movie and, and kind of explaining. I don't even know if there's a right answer because I agree more with the Cruz angle. Of like, I don't want to get taken out of the movie I'm watching because somebody's so famous.

• 2:03:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:15Bill Simmons?

  You're like, oh, this person's in there?

• 2:03:16Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 2:03:17Bill Simmons?

  But yeah, it's, it's. I mean, if I was an up and coming star, I would just want to work with good directors.

• 2:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:03:24Bill Simmons?

  I think that blueprint's been established.

• 2:03:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:26Bill Simmons?

  That's how you're gonna win. But I do think the superhero capes screwed everything up for an entire generation. You felt like-

• 2:03:34Speaker 02

  Totally agree.

• 2:03:34Bill Simmons?

  It was like, can you make it to the point where I might get a superhero movie? And that was your goal, instead of like, ooh, good directors want to work with me.

• 2:03:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:42Bill Simmons?

  You hit a point in the 90s where people were like, if I'm in that guy's movie, I'm gonna come off well. And that's where-

• 2:03:48Speaker 02

  That's the best place to be.

• 2:03:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that would be my chalume, advice. Just go where the directors are, dude.

• 2:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think he got the best advice ever from Leonardo DiCaprio, right? He said, no hard drugs, no superheroes. Wow. It's great advice.

• 2:04:01Bill Simmons?

  And keep a little mystique.

• 2:04:03Speaker 02

  Keep a little mystique is huge.

• 2:04:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  Because you can blow that so easily. And you're basically asked to blow it constantly. Because we gotta sell the movie. We gotta do this and this and this and this. And the people that know to hold back, those are the ones that you lean forward and you go to.

• 2:04:22Bill Simmons?

  That was Nicholson.

• 2:04:23Speaker 02

  That was Nicholson.

• 2:04:24Bill Simmons?

  Nicholson was like, coming up next on the Tonight Show. It's Jack Nicholson. Like, if he went on anything, you were stunned.

• 2:04:32Speaker 02

  They wanted him to be on the cover of Rolling Stone once, and I remember. And he sent back the message, like, I don't want to appear as myself on the cover, and I won't do it. I also won't be on TV, because then I'll be in your living room and I'll be your friend. I'm not your friend. I'm supposed to be very big. And I'm supposed to be somebody that you come to see because you don't know enough about me. And, um, sorry.

• 2:04:58Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's what made it so crazy. When he came to the 84 finals in Boston, and he was just there as a Laker fan. Everybody was like, oh my god, Nicholson's here. This is up there, like, giving us the middle finger. Like, we just felt like it broke our brains.

• 2:05:13Speaker 02

  Which is mystique.

• 2:05:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:14Speaker 02

  The coolest.

• 2:05:15Bill Simmons?

  They did it. Leo's done a great job. I mean, Leo's in his 50s now, and I still don't feel like I know that much about him.

• 2:05:20Speaker 02

  Which, you know-

• 2:05:21Bill Simmons?

  And then he likes the ladies.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  You gotta love.

• 2:05:22Bill Simmons?

  That's about it. Um, you want to talk about your book for a quick second? How long were you working on it?

• 2:05:28Speaker 02

  I don't know, a couple of years, definitely. It was, it was writing for pure joy. I just like, we had, I'd done enough scripts at the time and we had worked on a musical of Almost Famous and I just felt like, I want to get back to like the analog thing a little bit and write about, learn about my dad and some stuff that happened growing up that I didn't really know enough or had written about and to also tell some of the stories behind the stories that I'd written for Rolling Stone. And so this is just me, basically, the first language of writing, just writing for pure joy on yellow legal tablets. I had like 800 pages and cut it down.

• 2:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Finger still worked.

• 2:06:04Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 2:06:05Bill Simmons?

  My finger stopped working.

• 2:06:06Speaker 02

  It's my favorite.

• 2:06:07Bill Simmons?

  Sean's don't work anymore.

• 2:06:08Speaker 02

  It's my favorite kind of writing. Do they work?

• 2:06:12Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  On Letterboxd, right? No, it's good.

• 2:06:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I guess you do write some Letterboxd stuff for once.

• 2:06:20Sean Fennessey?

  Every once in a while, yeah.

• 2:06:21Bill Simmons?

  I write emails, that's about it at this point.

• 2:06:23Speaker 02

  And do it really well.

• 2:06:23Bill Simmons?

  I wrote like five million words. I mean, what do people want from me? I wrote for 15 straight years.

• 2:06:29Speaker 02

  Except for Mystique.

• 2:06:30Bill Simmons?

  10,000 words a week for 15 years, 20 years.

• 2:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  They're demanding more, they're demanding more from you.

• 2:06:35Speaker 02

  I love writing. I just love it. I love it and I love directing where the, where the words come to life with the actors, kind of actors that we were talking about. It's the most fun. You know what's the most fun of directing, besides putting the music on the scenes? The little things that an audience finds that cracks them up that you had no idea was funny. Cause that means you've built characters that they care about. So like the little things.

• 2:06:57Sean Fennessey?

  What's an example of that in one of your movies someone told you about?

• 2:07:02Speaker 02

  I don't know, like in Jerry Maguire, I can come up with, with Bonnie Hunt saying, "Don't cry at the beginning of the day, cry at the end, like I do," which, which, you know, we thought was like a funny little filler line and it's like, gets huge laughs. Um, in Almost Famous, Eric Stonestreet saying, "You got a message from your mother. She's a handful." Biggest laugh in the movie.

• 2:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  That's a great.

• 2:07:23Speaker 02

  The clerk saying, "She's a handful." So like, that's the fun, the stuff that makes you really laugh because you know, you're, you, you've, you've cut that line a million times and somehow it snuck back in and it ends up like bringing the house down. It's the most fun. And you never find out until the first time you show the movie and it never changes.

• 2:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the only experience I've had with that with that doing documentaries, same thing. You're it's always shocking what hits. You just have because you've seen all the cuts of stuff and you have no idea.

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  It's sometimes it can be a word.

• 2:07:53Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that one? Really?

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:07:55Bill Simmons?

  You can't believe it.

• 2:07:56Speaker 02

  It can be a word.

• 2:07:57Bill Simmons?

  For a movie, it's gotta be more fun.

• 2:07:58Speaker 02

  Sometimes it's a gesture. It's wild. Um, and, and so, you know, I just, I love doing it. And, and the book is really an extension of personal writing, which is my favorite kind of movie making and my favorite kind of writing.

• 2:08:12Bill Simmons?

  I'm glad you're writing again.

• 2:08:13Speaker 02

  And songs.

• 2:08:14Bill Simmons?

  I mean, shit.

• 2:08:14Speaker 02

  The personal stuff.

• 2:08:15Bill Simmons?

  Had one of the most unique careers. Wouldn't, wouldn't the Rolling Stone, how old were you?

• 2:08:21Speaker 02

  Fifteen when I started.

• 2:08:24Bill Simmons?

  Think about that.

• 2:08:26Sean Fennessey?

  Will you do like a?

• 2:08:27Bill Simmons?

  Think about that, Sean. How old's your daughter?

• 2:08:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm a huge failure. What do you want me to say?

• 2:08:32Bill Simmons?

  How old's your daughter?

• 2:08:33Sean Fennessey?

  I've accomplished nothing. I agree.

• 2:08:34Bill Simmons?

  How old's your daughter?

• 2:08:35Sean Fennessey?

  My daughter's four.

• 2:08:36Bill Simmons?

  So 11 years from now, writing for Rolling Stone? That seems inconceivable.

• 2:08:39Sean Fennessey?

  I don't see that happening for a variety of reasons. Um, but, uh, I will explain to her how special Cameron's life and work is.

• 2:08:48Bill Simmons?

  I just think that's crazy that you were able to fulfill a task at age 15. I was like barely handing term papers in.

• 2:08:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's, will you, will you do like a, a follow up to this? Cause this is only a part of your life. This isn't everything that you've done.

• 2:09:03Speaker 02

  I probably will. Uh, the next one is going to be a collection of the journalism that happened during the time. Cause this is, this is kind of like how the stories happened and everything. So the, the next one, um, is going to be a collection of the, the, the stories from the time. And also I re-interviewed a lot of the same people, Fleetwood Mac and even Bowie. And I just, in the last 15 years, I went around and, and talked again to a lot of the people that we did those big cover stories on. And it was fascinating how they related to their younger selves. And so that's in there too. And then maybe I'll, I'll write more, but I want to make some movies now.

• 2:09:38Bill Simmons?

  What was the best concert?

• 2:09:39Speaker 02

  Especially talking to you guys.

• 2:09:40Bill Simmons?

  I know you, you rejuvenated.

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  Come on, man. Come on.

• 2:09:43Bill Simmons?

  What was the best, single best concert you ever went to?

• 2:09:45Speaker 02

  Uh, The Who, San Diego. Um, one of the first concerts, maybe the second concert I ever went to. Amazing, amazing concert. I, I had like a cheap seat. And I snuck down right before The Who came on and the audience like huge, like all the, the general seating people just like crammed up to the front and I got caught up in it and I got slammed to the front of the barrier. And so they were six feet away from me.

• 2:10:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh my god.

• 2:10:14Speaker 02

  And The Who come out, fucking Keith Moon tumbles onto the drum set across the stage and they, and Daltrey comes out swinging his mic and Entwistle puts on his, his bass and then Townsend comes out in the silver jumpsuit with the crown and he goes, hello San Diego, what a pleasure to be here in your trash can. Because the sports arena looks like a trash can. I'm like, fuck. He knows San Diego, he knows everything. And then the audience crushed me into the barrier and I couldn't breathe, but.

• 2:10:43Bill Simmons?

  At some point.

• 2:10:44Speaker 02

  That was the best.

• 2:10:44Bill Simmons?

  That's great. At some point, can you write a book about movies the way Tarantino did? I love the Tarantino book. Just like eight, nine movies that meant something, you know why?

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:10:54Bill Simmons?

  I think it's an easy layup book for you.

• 2:10:56Speaker 02

  Thanks. I mean, and it would be.

• 2:10:58Sean Fennessey?

  This was chapter one.

• 2:10:58Speaker 02

  It would be about the personal, um, the personal experience that you have with the movie.

• 2:11:03Bill Simmons?

  I think every great director should be forced to write a book like that.

• 2:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Forced?

• 2:11:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, forced.

• 2:11:07Sean Fennessey?

  Like in a fascist regime where they all have to write books?

• 2:11:09Bill Simmons?

  Trump like does a decree.

• 2:11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Great. Okay. Well, we'll get to that.

• 2:11:12Bill Simmons?

  Here's what I've decided. We're gonna have these people. It's gonna be great.

• 2:11:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's the kind of thing I would ask him for if I got his ear. I'd be like, can you please send down a decree that Cameron Crowe write a movie book just for me to read?

• 2:11:22Bill Simmons?

  And protect movie theaters. Can you do that too? Cameron Crowe, this was a true pleasure. Good luck with the book.

• 2:11:28Speaker 02

  So great. Thanks, you guys.

• 2:11:29Bill Simmons?

  For our Kush sign.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  Well Kush will be here to bless your future experiences.

• 2:11:33Bill Simmons?

  I'll figure it out. It'll be, it'll be prominently somewhere.

• 2:11:36Speaker 02

  Just as long as you hear a little strains of Kush lash when you look at it.

• 2:11:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. This is great though. Thanks. Thanks to you guys. Thanks to Craig as well.

• 2:11:43Speaker 02

  Thanks, Craig.

• 2:11:44Bill Simmons?

  Thanks to Eduardo and we'll see you in the rewatchables next week.

• 2:11:46Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Thanks for letting me come in and hang.

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