‘High Fidelity’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson, and Rob Mahoney

What came first, the music or the misery? The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Joanna Robinson, and Rob Mahoney pick up a shift at Championship Vinyl to revisit ‘High Fidelity,’ starring John Cusack, Jack Black, Lisa Bonet, Iben Hjejle, and Todd Louiso. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, and Chris Thomas 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. We can find The Watch with C.R.

• 0:47Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 0:48Bill Simmons?

  You can find The House of R with Joanna Robinson. Rob Mahoney, first time ever.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  I know.

• 0:54Bill Simmons?

  You did it. You're on The Ringer NBA Show, you're on The Prestige TV.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:58Bill Simmons?

  Podcast, you're on my podcast sometimes and now.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Now this one.

• 1:01Bill Simmons?

  I asked you for a list, I asked Joanna for a list, like, give me 12 movies that we haven't done yet.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Didn't ask me, it's okay.

• 1:08Bill Simmons?

  You just sent me back Sicario. You're like Sicario, Sicario, Sicario.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  I have other ideas.

• 1:14Bill Simmons?

  But there was one movie that was on both lists.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  I mean, the stars completely align for High Fidelity. How could it not?

• 1:20Bill Simmons?

  C.R., you fucking bitch, let's work it out! High Fidelity is next.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  You totally stole that from me.

• 1:27Bill Simmons?

  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.

• 2:06Bill Simmons?

  I have a million places I could start here, but let's start with why both of you picked this. Joanne, you go first.

• 2:12Speaker 02

  Um, probably because we had just done the Big Pick Movie Draft and it was on my mind.

• 2:17Bill Simmons?

  It was.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  So I think that's why it was on my list.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Also, if you work here, like, this is a formative movie for people who care about things obsessively. Like, what else are we doing here if not this kind of thing?

• 2:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  I saw this movie as a teenager and, of course, you see some of that Rob in this Rob. You see some of that, like, there are parts of him that you loathe and there are parts of him that you love. And so it's like, how could you not pick a story like this?

• 2:40Bill Simmons?

  CR, you actually worked in a record store in the late 90s.

• 2:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, from 95 to 2003, I was a record store clerk.

• 2:47Bill Simmons?

  So this movie comes out in 2000.

• 2:48Chris Ryan?

  Assistant manager as well. I don't want to make it sound like I never.

• 2:51Bill Simmons?

  You had some oversight.

• 2:52Chris Ryan?

  My career development was taken off.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  You had keys?

• 2:54Chris Ryan?

  I did.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55Bill Simmons?

  You had keys?

• 2:56Chris Ryan?

  Not to Kim's, but from Newberry, yeah.

• 2:58Bill Simmons?

  So this movie comes out, but you'd already read the book?

• 3:00Chris Ryan?

  I had Nick Hornby. It's set in London. It's like a twin with Fever Pitch in that sort of like Peter Pan, English male, trying to hang on to the things that he loved as a child as he becomes an adult. Yeah.

• 3:14Bill Simmons?

  Was he like your favorite author in the 90s?

• 3:16Chris Ryan?

  He was one of my first, you know, he was one of my first contemporary authors that became like a favorite author.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  That like if there's a new Hornby novel out, you're gonna read it.

• 3:23Chris Ryan?

  So excited after, I felt very seen by those two books.

• 3:27Bill Simmons?

  Were you cool that they were making a movie out of the book?

• 3:30Chris Ryan?

  I know that this is a.

• 3:31Bill Simmons?

  Because that was like a traumatizing 90s, like, oh, you can't touch that book. You're gonna fuck it up.

• 3:35Speaker 02

  I was upset about Chicago.

• 3:37Chris Ryan?

  I was upset.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Really?

• 3:38Chris Ryan?

  I was nervous about Chicago, but I was a huge gross, point-blank fan.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:42Chris Ryan?

  So I was excited for John Cusack with music because he had obviously shown an affinity for like populating his movies with really great bands and really great needle drops.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  I'm surprised for the two of you because you're two of the biggest Anglophiles I know. So moving out of the UK, yes, that's scary, but they make the characters in this obsessed with British music?

• 4:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  So doesn't that speak to you in some way?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  But sure, but I loved the book, like CR, and I just didn't see it working outside of it. And it totally works. Like, it works really well, but I was, I didn't want it and I was wrong. And I'm surprised, you know, they made a TV show on Hulu, which I actually really, really loved as well.

• 4:22Bill Simmons?

  I feel like Covid killed that show.

• 4:24Speaker 02

  It did.

• 4:24Bill Simmons?

  It was right before Covid.

• 4:25Speaker 02

  It's ridiculous that that got cancelled.

• 4:26Bill Simmons?

  I really liked it.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Why?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  But we still haven't had a London-based version of this story and I would, I would take it eagerly.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  That is kinda crazy.

• 4:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, the, the version of it that happens on Hulu, the Hulu show, I think the hardest thing to get over is the idea that there's still like a relatively thriving record store.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:44Chris Ryan?

  There are some, there are some that are still doing well and they're, the vinyl is probably having like its most popular run in a long time in the last couple of years.

• 4:52Bill Simmons?

  That would be the re-entry.

• 4:53Chris Ryan?

  But the idea of like a record store where like multiple people can work for.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Even in 2000.

• 5:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  2000 definitely.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Even in 2000, I was like, that apartment? Rob's like, look at my shitty apartment. I'm like, that apartment?

• 5:06Chris Ryan?

  That apartment's sick.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:09Bill Simmons?

  I have a complicated relationship with this movie because I was probably the exact same age as the guy in the book when it came out. I was obsessive with weird shit like him. My life wasn't going the way I totally wanted it to go at that point. Um, and I also loved the book.

• 5:23Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:24Bill Simmons?

  So it was one of those where I went into it ready to not like it that much, but it's kinda worn me down over the years.

• 5:30Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask you, do you feel like when, when you read this book, had you started writing yet?

• 5:36Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:37Chris Ryan?

  Was it influential?

• 5:39Bill Simmons?

  Um, no, because I always thought his style was just so different than mine.

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Bill Simmons?

  But, eh, see, I don't feel like he invented anything with that. It was a lot of how we conversed in the 90s.

• 5:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Bill Simmons?

  Was we didn't have the internet yet and there was a lot of like, you would have these long arguments about shit for like two, three hours.

• 5:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:59Bill Simmons?

  And you would argue, you would do like list of things or favorite whatever, like this is, all the stuff that like became Bleacher Report. We were just doing in somebody's apartment at 1:30 at night.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Constantly generating listicles.

• 6:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I'm kinda surprised you like this movie because I consider you the patron saint of the top sevens.

• 6:16Bill Simmons?

  Right, that's true.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  What are you even doing with the top five?

• 6:18Bill Simmons?

  You have to make it a little different.

• 6:19Chris Ryan?

  Top 11 QZAC straight to video movies in the 21st century.

• 6:22Bill Simmons?

  Well, here, here's what I realized as I was thinking about it. Like, I, I do think it's the last Gen X movie. I think Gen X kinda dies with this movie in a lot of ways, but then I was trying to think of, this is why I called Closer in a day. Because I was like, this is my list of like the essential Gen X, if you're doing a thread from. Where I'm gonna start to High Fidelity. And it's interesting, because Cusack bookends it. Because his theory was that Say Anything is the first Gen X movie, which I actually agree with. Because he's like Lloyd Dobler, all the things he stands for is Gen X.

• 6:53Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 6:53Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I don't wanna sell anything.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 6:56Bill Simmons?

  Like, he had that whole speech. He's like, I don't know where my path is. That was basically Gen X. Pump Up the Volume, I think, is a Gen X movie. Slacker is the one that I'm not sure about. I have that as an asterisk.

• 7:09Chris Ryan?

  Why wouldn't it be?

• 7:10Bill Simmons?

  Because it's, like Chuck was saying, it's a little bit more like, it almost, it's set in Austin in the 80s. But it is Gen X. It's like, it's on the cusp. Anyway, Singles, Reality Bites, Before Sunset, Kicking and Screaming, Chasing Amy, and High Fidelity. I think are the ones that have to be in there. And then Slacker, I'm not sure about. I wouldn't put Clerks in there because...

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Chasing Amy is definitely the Kevin Smith that you would put on that list.

• 7:34Bill Simmons?

  I think so, because it's, because otherwise, it's five years between Kicking and Screaming and High Fidelity. And I need, like, something.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  Oh, you need, like, posts?

• 7:42Bill Simmons?

  Just to, like, take it. But I, I think the thing that all those movies have in common, except Slacker. You have this male protagonist, doesn't know where his life's going.

• 7:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:51Bill Simmons?

  There's either somebody that he used to be in love with, and he screwed it up. Or he was in love with her, but wasn't sure she was quite good enough for him.

• 7:59Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:59Bill Simmons?

  Or she dumped him. And they're just kinda navigating it, and you're not even positive you like them. This is probably the least likable character of all the leads.

• 8:08Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Mm.

• 8:09Bill Simmons?

  Um, and it's about the woman, and it's always told through the eyes of the male. There's no female Gen X movie, really. That I can remember from the 90s. Was there CR?

• 8:17Chris Ryan?

  Uh, off the top of my head, it's hard to think of one, but there was...

• 8:23Bill Simmons?

  It's always the dude.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Well, a lot of the movies you described are guys talking in room movies, and a lot, guys talking in rooms at women. Like, trying to prove, like, even Ethan Hawke in Before Sunrise and Sunset. It's a lot of, like, let me preach.

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  I would argue that Winona Ryder is the protagonist of Reality Bites.

• 8:37Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's fair, that's a good one. Yeah, and I think you could say in Singles, like, Bridget Fonda's a co-protagonist.

• 8:42Chris Ryan?

  Would you put Heathers in this group? Or is that, like...

• 8:45Bill Simmons?

  I wouldn't, but it's close.

• 8:47Chris Ryan?

  I think Heathers in Say Anything... To me are a different kind of high school movie than the ones that I had gotten previous to that. So they're different than John Hughes.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  But what is Heather's teaching us about Gen X? I guess is the question.

• 9:00Bill Simmons?

  So when you you were younger than Gen X, Ciara was right at the tail end and I was like head first in the middle of it. So when you when you both look at Gen X, what do you see?

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I'm a cusper. I like to claim Gen X when I can.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I like, obviously, the jadedness, I think, is part of it. And clearly, just like the the such a strong pushback against any kind of like sellout culture or enfranchisement in any way. Like, there's such an independent spirit. And with that, I think just comes like a cold, hard, honestly bitter shell to a lot of these movies and stories. And you can see that with Rob through and through, right? Like, he is closing himself off from the world in this book and this movie. Uh, and just like, you know, fiddling through his record collection as a way to keep warm at night. But I think that's kind of what sticks out to me the most about these Gen X stories.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  It's funny that you went through these like Gen X signposts because I was thinking about this. I think this is a great retail movie.

• 9:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:49Speaker 02

  Um, like a hang at the store movie.

• 9:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  And you've got Clerks ninety four, Empire Records ninety five. You've got Mail, which I was a bookstore clerk, so that's what I would count ninety eight.

• 10:00Bill Simmons?

  I think that counts.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  You know, and then you've got this two thousand. It was like a nice little run for like.

• 10:04Bill Simmons?

  I'd even throw Mallrats in there, sort of, kind of, at least the.

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Yes. Most of them are not at working, but yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, hanging out in your retail job is, you know, I think this is all comes from Clerks. Um, but that's my favorite part of this movie. Like, Rob and Laura is interesting to me, but the guys in the store.

• 10:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, and it's a slacker kind of, the bookstore and slacker kind of works for this as well as like a retail hangout place.

• 10:30Bill Simmons?

  One other thing with Gen X that this movie hits perfectly is you're kind of stuck with the people you were stuck with. Wherever you lived. And they weren't exactly, it's like, you're not on the OKC Thunder this year. You're not winning seventy five games. You're kind of on a playing team. But you have all this content you want to talk about and it's like, well, these are the people I guess I have to talk to about this.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  These two guys showed up to work and they never left.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Don't stop, name names, you know?

• 10:54Bill Simmons?

  But like, he's with these two guys that I'm not even sure he really likes and they're not that likeable.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:00Bill Simmons?

  But they're all just kind of together every day doing top five and he's just like, almost like a stand-up doing a bit.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  But that's the joy of the retail job, especially like based around like I would say music or books or something like that where it's just sort of like, you have this base thing in common where you love books or you love music or you love like people worked, I worked at a movie theater, you love movies.

• 11:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  And so even if you like different genres, there is this sort of, you wind up becoming friends with a weird group of people where you have this core thing in common, um, but otherwise your paths would never cross.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  So you're saying what you like is more important than what you are like?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  I actually agree with that.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's at least kind of true, right?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  And I found myself sick to my stomach and I was like, I know we're not supposed to agree with this, but I kind of agree with it.

• 11:41Chris Ryan?

  It's like the dark Finstock award. It's like, it doesn't matter. I agree with Joe. I mean, like, I remember the names of almost everybody I worked with at a record store, but like, forget names of people that I met last year, you know, like, and there is also like, it's a very important time in your life when you're kind of in college, coming out of college, or if you're just like entering the workforce. The retail jobs that I had and the record store jobs specifically that I had, I was like, you know what, if nothing ever else happens to me, I'd be good. Like, I like, I kind of would still work at a record store if I could.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  I get nostalgic for it. I'm like, can I do that on the weekends? Can I go into the bookstore on the weekend?

• 12:21Chris Ryan?

  Intellectually stimulating while being physically mechanical. So like, you just don't have to do that much. You just bullshit with people all day about stuff you're interested in. And then like the things that you're quote unquote responsible for are like alphabetizing and moving things.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  That actually does sound very stupid.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Shelving, a lot of shelving and then you close the store door at the end of the day and then you're done with work.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes, and lots of cigarette breaks.

• 12:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I remember my buddy Gus from high school, we used to play this game called the name game. Where you said Joanna Robinson and then I had to say the next name had to have Joanna Robinson in it. And we would just keep going until you could try to stump the next person. So we did a Robinson Cano and then Frank Robinson. We did it, we did it on a road, we'd be driving somewhere for three hours.

• 13:05Chris Ryan?

  Game.

• 13:06Bill Simmons?

  Just, we didn't have podcasts to listen to. It's like, let's play the name game. And you'd eventually get to some crazy name like Trajan Langdon. It's like, fuck, I have nowhere to go. I don't know another tra- But that's the kind of shit you did in the 90s. You're just killing time with content. And you never, you know, you'd hear somebody's theory or take on some movie or a music album or something of like, that's fucking amazing.

• 13:27Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. Well, there was also-

• 13:28Bill Simmons?

  That you can find on the internet anywhere.

• 13:30Chris Ryan?

  There was no comment section. So people would be like, I'm going down in flames with this take.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:35Chris Ryan?

  And the only comment section is the bar. So I don't have to like worry about this following me around for years if I want to say like, this band is better than Pavement or this band is a, this is a better movie than Apocalypse Now or whatever.

• 13:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:49Chris Ryan?

  You could just have one glorious night and they'd be like, oh, I had four beers. That's why I thought that. But like now, if you, if you know, if you're like, high fidelity is better than Nashville today.

• 13:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Chris Ryan?

  People will frigging like at you for a while and like, it'll be like, well, that was miserable.

• 14:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, drunk takes were huge back in the day.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  I think drunk takes still exist. They're just, you know, experienced and documented differently.

• 14:10Chris Ryan?

  They have consequences.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:12Chris Ryan?

  I love your point about the people that you're stuck with though. Like the, that is one thing that this movie gets really right is the Barry and Dick and Rob trio.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:23Chris Ryan?

  Is like, they spend more time together than anybody else in their lives. But like Rob is just like, they just started appearing here.

• 14:30Bill Simmons?

  Right. It was supposed to be three days a week.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  He says that, but he goes out every night with them.

• 14:34Chris Ryan?

  Of course.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, these are his guys.

• 14:36Chris Ryan?

  Every night with your coworkers from the rest, from the store.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 14:39Chris Ryan?

  Because that would be the people who are getting off work at 9:30 or 10. And you'd be like, okay, let's go see a band. Let's go to the bar.

• 14:45Bill Simmons?

  But then Dick moves to like, I don't know, Austin with Anna and would never talk to these guys ever again.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Never again.

• 14:52Bill Simmons?

  They would never connect, ever.

• 14:53Speaker 02

  I, I moved a lot in my, I worked in bookstore all through my twenties and I moved a lot in my twenties. And every time I went to a new town, I worked in a new bookstore and then you just have built in community. And it was so easy to move to a new town when you have that sort of like retail fam.

• 15:08Chris Ryan?

  Were you like the Patrick Swayze of Roadhouse of bookstores?

• 15:12Bill Simmons?

  He's the cooler.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  The cooler of the cool stores, yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Hey, Joe Robinson's in town.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't pin me down, man.

• 15:19Bill Simmons?

  Who was her Sam Elliott? The Gen X blueprint, I wrote down. I might have missed a couple of things. Turning pop culture into therapy.

• 15:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:29Bill Simmons?

  Reading way, way, way too much into music or movies. Caring way too much about a relationship because you didn't have enough else to care about. That is 100% true. We're just missing like three things. Hanging out with people you didn't like that much, we talked about that. Being tortured that you're not doing what you thought you'd be doing, I think probably is still the case now.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  Truth, yeah.

• 15:48Bill Simmons?

  But in Gen X was like a badge of honor that I don't want to do this. I don't know how I got into this. Like, almost like proud, but not willing to change it.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  But it was almost like there's something virtuous about working like retail or something like that. So you're just like, I'm not making a ton of money. I'm doing this for the passion, X, Y, Z. I feel like millennials, when they complain about not being where they want to be, it's like, because the economy screwed me.

• 16:11Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  And with Gen X, it's like, because I have principles.

• 16:14Chris Ryan?

  Because I didn't want to sell out.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:15Chris Ryan?

  Wouldn't it be nice to have principles, you know?

• 16:17Bill Simmons?

  But think about Rob. He, he was a good DJ.

• 16:21Chris Ryan?

  Allegedly.

• 16:22Bill Simmons?

  He probably made money from it. Like, he was getting complimented and he was the happiest he'd ever been when he did it.

• 16:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Bill Simmons?

  But now he's like in this record store that nobody goes to. And that's just what he decided.

• 16:32Chris Ryan?

  That was also like a very, I don't know if this happened with you in the bookstore, but like, the moment you get any recognition from within the sort of business side of working in a store, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. This is my life plan.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, when you get, I was also a manager and I'm like, I don't want keys.

• 16:49Chris Ryan?

  You should think about doing this for a living. I'm like, whoa.

• 16:52Bill Simmons?

  Two more blueprint things. Settling with someone solid when you're not sure if you can do better, which was a big, even in like Beautiful Girls. He was dating.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Oh, especially Beautiful Girls.

• 17:02Bill Simmons?

  They're doing the ratings and it's like, what is she? And he's like, she's solid, seven and a half. And they're like, seven and a half? And like, yep, solid seven and a half. And he can't decide if that's good enough. That was a big Gen X culture thing. And then you're the same person you used to be and I'm not. Which Laura says to him.

• 17:21Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 17:22Bill Simmons?

  Was a classic Gen X thing of somebody's like, I'm thirty two and I'm doing the exact same things I was doing when I was twenty seven. What happened?

• 17:29Chris Ryan?

  I.

• 17:29Bill Simmons?

  Five years just went by.

• 17:31Chris Ryan?

  And this is like, if you were gonna continue the sort of jumping the lily pads from this movie onwards, the, the man trapped in a boy's.

• 17:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:40Chris Ryan?

  Mind thing is essentially the template for like, the early Apatow movies, you know, like for Knocked Up and like, I just wanna hang out with my friends and just fucking. Play D and D and watch and watch movies. And it's like, yeah, but grow up, right? Like,

• 17:53Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 17:54Chris Ryan?

  You're almost thirty, kind of.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  When you, to go back to the settling for someone in this movie, in High Fidelity, who's settling, do you think?

• 18:03Chris Ryan?

  Well.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  I think it's Laura.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  It's both.

• 18:06Bill Simmons?

  I think it's both sides on that one.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Definitely Laura.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  When, when she says like, I'm too tired not to be with you. There's something kind of romantic about that. I, I, I don't know. There's, there's something about the comforts of finding your seven point five out of ten person.

• 18:21Chris Ryan?

  This is the big weird curve ball that this movie throws is that there is not a gesture in this movie, the way there is in Singles where he's like, I wanna be Mr. New to you, you know, like, there is none of that here. It's basically like, have sex with me after my dad's funeral and then I guess we're back together.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  I guess the gesture is I didn't, or I made the tape for the reporter, but it didn't mean anything to me.

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  I told you about it.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  I disclosed it.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Even though I proposed, even though I was pretty sure you wouldn't say yes.

• 18:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't the gesture, have sex with me, or I'm gonna go home and put my hand in a fire? Or you can put some cigarettes out on me? Those are my three options.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Those are the options.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Sex it is.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  A, B, C.

• 18:56Bill Simmons?

  This is not a romantic movie in the traditional way.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no boom boxes in the rain, just payphones and piles of quarters.

• 19:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I was gonna do this on an answer most later, but these two did not actually get married.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  No chance.

• 19:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is, this is a rap. Craig, can you give us your Gen X thoughts?

• 19:12Speaker 04

  About the generation or?

• 19:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Yeah, when you see Gen X represented in movies and TV. What do you see?

• 19:19Speaker 04

  Well, I don't want to spoil my, because that factors into my entire opinion.

• 19:23Bill Simmons?

  All right, save it. Okay.

• 19:26Bill Simmons?

  I intentionally didn't learn how to pronounce Laura's real life name because I knew I had Joanna here. And nobody pronounces names of actresses and actors better than Joanna.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  Um, great. I'm gonna, picture me last night in my hotel room, wandering around, just muttering this over and over again to see if I can. I came up with Yben Yala. That's what I got. Is that what you got?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  I heard Yala, I heard something like Yala. Like, it just depends on the, you know.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Yben Yala.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  How much, how much Danish spice you want to put on that last pronunciation?

• 19:54Speaker 02

  What do you have, Sierra?

• 19:55Chris Ryan?

  Yala, but like, that was, that was just one version of the internet's response to how to pronounce this woman's name.

• 20:01Bill Simmons?

  Well, for the rest of the pod, we'll be calling her the lady who played Laura.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  I think Yben is doable.

• 20:05Bill Simmons?

  Yben, Yben, my word. Yeah. Well, she said.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Also be very, this is a Scandinavian podcast. I need you to be very careful about this whole situation.

• 20:12Bill Simmons?

  I don't want the Swedes to come after me. She said, she said, I knew tons of guys like Rob. Where it was ages before they understood that relationships and committing and having kids is a good thing. And it doesn't mean that you have to lose yourself for who you are, or what you like to do. Um, and then she said, Rob is the sort of character I would fall for. To me, he symbolizes the whole generation of what matters is not what you're like, but what you like. So that was an interesting way to put it.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  I mean, well, that's the movie.

• 20:39Bill Simmons?

  The things you like, but I, my question is, is that now too? The things you like are what you like, are what you're like.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  What's the difference between podcasters and these guys in the record store, actually?

• 20:49Bill Simmons?

  It's a great question. I don't know.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  I mean, we're here because of what we like, right?

• 20:56Chris Ryan?

  I'm happy about it.

• 20:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, then there's with the Gen Xers, it's, this is a whole different era of hopeless romantics and courting and standing outside somebody in the pouring rain. I don't know if this happens in the same way anymore. Now, somebody just called the police or take a cell phone video.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  Or you just be on hinge being like, eh.

• 21:12Bill Simmons?

  Sorry, dude.

• 21:13Chris Ryan?

  Dig 10 other people.

• 21:14Bill Simmons?

  Come on, come on, Tinder. Uh, my next question. Did this book slash movie create the top five list, like for real? Because I'm going to say no, but I also can't think of what did.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  This is a pre-Apex mountain for top fives?

• 21:28Bill Simmons?

  Maybe, yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  Like Casey Kasem?

• 21:31Bill Simmons?

  Casey Kasem.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:33Bill Simmons?

  No, that's, that might be.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:35Bill Simmons?

  His countdown might have been it.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:37Chris Ryan?

  When does PTI start?

• 21:38Bill Simmons?

  Later, after this.

• 21:40Chris Ryan?

  I know they weren't doing top fives, but they were doing that, like, the, the idea of a countdown and the idea of like a, a sort of menu for the, for the day.

• 21:48Bill Simmons?

  We would do more arguing one thing against another thing.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:52Bill Simmons?

  Versus lists.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  We weren't doing a lot of lists. We were doing what's the, the best.

• 21:56Bill Simmons?

  Like you do like, uh, I don't know, best Harrison Ford movie, or you do Barry Sanders versus Emmett Smith.

• 22:01Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:02Bill Simmons?

  Purns versus Hagler. It was a lot of that. It was a lot of one V one, not lists.

• 22:06Chris Ryan?

  There was, and there was also like, uh, I think this movie or this book kind of introduced the idea to me at least of, or like, I don't remember a time before it, of top five, track one, side one, like very specific lists. And then also adding like sublists into the list or giving excuses for it.

• 22:24Bill Simmons?

  I would say that was really influential, at least for me. Like thinking about like writing columns and being like, how far is too far? And be like, the answer is, like especially when I was doing like the first year of the mailbag or something like, every question's on board. No answer can be detailed enough and fuck it. Let's go for it. See, that book is like, the lists are crazy in the book.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:43Bill Simmons?

  In a good way.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  The only reason I think this is not the outset of the top fives is that Barry in particular has all these like second and third wave opinions about list making.

• 22:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  It's like, oh, you can't do the four safe ones and the one modern classic, or else I'm gonna call you a pussy. So it's like, it's, it's been happening somewhat for a while at this point, right?

• 23:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, there's like.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  It's been iterating.

• 23:02Chris Ryan?

  A couple of, there's a couple of like big bangs. There's like Tarantino in Sleep With Me, doing the Top Gun speech.

• 23:10Bill Simmons?

  So glad you brought this up.

• 23:11Chris Ryan?

  Is like where I first saw the guy in the bar who's like, I have a fucking take that's gonna blow your mind. And it was like, to see that on screen and to know that there were satellite dudes like that in every town.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  Well, this is what the Kevin Smith over is too. It's like just an assemblage of those hot takes.

• 23:29Bill Simmons?

  And kicking, kicking and screaming too. And they, what was the top eight, whatever movies when they did, it's like ding.

• 23:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 23:34Bill Simmons?

  Ding, which was before this movie, but.

• 23:37Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 23:37Bill Simmons?

  Anytime I would see that in a movie, I'd be like. Oh, like the Tarantino thing is the ultimate example. That was so great and so random in that movie and it was like, it became the most memorable part of the movie. But to see somebody do that in a movie, it was like, that's what me and my friends do. We do weird shit like there's more of us. Like it was constantly trying to discover that there was more out there than just this little weird group you had.

• 24:00Chris Ryan?

  There was also this very funny thing. Cause I think that this is actually similar to what goes on now because we have so much access to streaming stuff. But back then, from the nineties to the two thousands, like in ninety five especially on, I remember this huge flood of like used stuff. Like you, you could basically build up a record collection for like a couple of dollars per LP.

• 24:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:27Chris Ryan?

  And you could start being like, I listen to Funkadelic and I listened to industrial music and I listened to Public Enemy and I listened to the Beatles. And it wasn't that expensive to have that kind of breadth of taste.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Chris Ryan?

  Which is why Barry's so interesting because he's got like hipster taste in some ways, but he's also like, I listen to Katrina and the Waves. And Rob, obviously like the, the kind of variance of people's tastes was really interesting for those kinds of arguments and those kinds of lists.

• 24:55Bill Simmons?

  I thought of a better top ten, top five thing. It was Letterman, the top ten list.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 25:00Chris Ryan?

  Of course.

• 25:00Bill Simmons?

  That started like eighty five and that was my show. He, first he did it ironically, he was making the stupidest list possible. And then they became one of the staples of the show and became a serious thing.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And that's, he's like the Gen X Sherpa is David Letterman.

• 25:16Bill Simmons?

  But I wonder like with, with Nick Hornby, like did, did he even know about Letterman?

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure he knew about.

• 25:22Bill Simmons?

  He must have, right?

• 25:24Speaker 02

  Rob, can I ask you?

• 25:25Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  Is this Rob the top pop culture Rob?

• 25:29Chris Ryan?

  The top Rob?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Because I couldn't like-

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  Top five Robs?

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Rob Roy is like-

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Rob Lowe's pretty big.

• 25:36Speaker 02

  No, but that's like fictional Robs.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Oh, fictional Robs?

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Fictional Robs.

• 25:39Bill Simmons?

  Fictional Robs?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  There aren't that many. I was looking.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  Are there fictional Robs? I can't honestly can't-

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Rob Roy was the only other one I could think of.

• 25:45Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean, Rob Stark?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  Rob Stark has two Bs. It doesn't count.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  No, two Bs doesn't count?

• 25:50Chris Ryan?

  You in your hotel room being like fictional Robs and how to pronounce your name.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  Even Yala. Even Yala. I have a normal existence, Chris. Don't worry about it.

• 25:57Bill Simmons?

  How do you add the second B with Rob? Did we ever figure that out? Where does the second B come from?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  It doesn't make any sense.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  It's just George R. Martin's way. He likes to add consonants to things.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Now, was anyone else did the double Rob?

• 26:07Bill Simmons?

  Like, who else does double Rob, double B? Anybody?

• 26:10Chris Ryan?

  Well, there's the Rob report, but that's not, that's not Rob. Like, that's the-

• 26:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Jen with two N's was always at least understandable because it was Jennifer, but it was always suspicious because Jen should have one N.

• 26:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:21Bill Simmons?

  So anytime someone added the second N, they were usually on The Real World or a show like that. It's like, oh, Jen with two N's.

• 26:29Chris Ryan?

  When you were bartending, it was like, don't give Jen with two N's any extra shots.

• 26:32Bill Simmons?

  Jen with two N's, like, oh, she's here tonight.

• 26:37Bill Simmons?

  The cast of this movie, that includes Cusack, who I can't wait to talk about.

• 26:43Bill Simmons?

  Jack Black.

• 26:45Bill Simmons?

  Todd Louiso.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:46Bill Simmons?

  I never knew his name until the research of this movie. I just knew him as the Manny and the guy from this movie, Manny and Dick. I didn't know he had a name in real life. But he also directed Love Liza, which I found out.

• 26:57Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 26:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. It's like directed multiple movies. Couldn't believe it.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  He's so good in this, too. Like, I know Jack Black has all the shine, but like, having the like-

• 27:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Nebbish guy off to the side is like so anxious. He can barely contain himself as he's getting the take off.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  You need him.

• 27:10Chris Ryan?

  I have other things I need to talk to him about, so I'll talk to him about that when I talk about those other things.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  He's putting the beta in beta band, you know?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  You need him to make, like, Barry work is what I think.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they have a beautiful thing going.

• 27:19Bill Simmons?

  It's a good combo. Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lisa Bonet, Sarah Gilbert. Chris Bowers in this movie?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Cut from the movie.

• 27:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  He was cut. I know. He's on IMDb, but he is cut from the movie.

• 27:30Bill Simmons?

  He's briefly in it. Would you say he's in it?

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Is he? He's one of Laura's, he's one of Laura's friends, right?

• 27:34Speaker 01

  So I think his initial scene got cut and then you see like a two-second dinner party sequence after they get back together where he's like bringing a plate to a table or something.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Frank Sabaka's here. Great.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Frank Sabaka barely made the cut.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 27:45Bill Simmons?

  Lily Taylor.

• 27:47Bill Simmons?

  Joan Cusack, Tim Robbins, and one of my all time favorites, Natasha Gregson Wagner.

• 27:57Bill Simmons?

  I always dug her.

• 27:57Chris Ryan?

  Way to go.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  A primo nepo baby.

• 28:00Chris Ryan?

  Good guess by you.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  One of the best.

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  Just had some moments, never sure why it didn't fully come together, but I was always.

• 28:06Chris Ryan?

  And she was married to one of the screenwriters for a while.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, great job by her. Okay, so we'll talk about Jack Black here.

• 28:14Bill Simmons?

  This is a really important Jack Black performance. He still has the movie.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  This is the Jack Black, like this is to me.

• 28:19Bill Simmons?

  This leads to School of Rock, everything else. Is this the best Jack Black performance?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I think so. He said, he said this is his best performance.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  School of Rock is carrying more, though. You know, he gets to come in and be heat checking constantly in this. School of Rock, like he has to be the emotional center of the movie and the Jack Black of the movie.

• 28:35Bill Simmons?

  Would you rather have this, this like version of Jack, Jack Black coming off the bench?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Bill Simmons?

  And just shooting threes, or do you want Jack Black in the Jalen Brown Celtics role right now?

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I kind of want him in the Jalen Brown role.

• 28:46Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  I mean, only in school, only in a specific kind of movie.

• 28:49Chris Ryan?

  I prefer this version of him, Sixth Man Jack Black, but the streets have spoken. And like he is one of the most reliable movie stars in the world now.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  I think he's the number one movie star of Gen Alpha, wouldn't you say?

• 29:02Chris Ryan?

  Probably, yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:03Bill Simmons?

  Well, especially after this last movie, yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  But like Minecraft, Mario Brothers, Jumanji, like all these things that are directed for kids, goosebumps, like he's the king of the kid franchise.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  And I think for generations of people, Jack Black is the biggest movie star in the world.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Super Mario Brothers. Like I guess there really is a straight line, not just to School of Rock, but to like Bowser singing ballads. Like it's very strange world we live in.

• 29:24Chris Ryan?

  I went to a pre-Luka Lakers game last year and he got a bigger round of applause courtside than anybody else like on the floor. And I think like Wemby was playing.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  I mean, he's easily the biggest like thing to come out of this movie without question. And then thinking about.

• 29:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, I didn't know who he was before I saw this movie. I didn't know, like he came out of like a fucking cannon. You're like, what?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Tenacious D was already. Tenacious D was already on HBO, but like I, this, this was like his calling card. Like this was.

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  Which was show was he on?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  There was a Tenacious D.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, Tenacious D show with his band, yeah.

• 29:55Bill Simmons?

  That's sad, I didn't watch it.

• 29:56Chris Ryan?

  Do you remember him in the Day of the Jackal remake with Bruce Willis and Richard Gere where he gets his arms blown off?

• 30:01Speaker 02

  I 100% do. He's also an airborne.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  A very important movie to me.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Famously an airborne.

• 30:07Chris Ryan?

  You know, if you were ever gonna let me pick a rewatchable, it wouldn't be Sicario, it would be the Jackal.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:13Bill Simmons?

  I saw Tenacious D at some point after we moved that hair when it was the right time to see them. And it was like really amazing. He's just such a great stage performer. It captures it, but I still think his best scene is the first scene.

• 30:26Chris Ryan?

  It's one of their great character.

• 30:27Bill Simmons?

  When he comes in and he's doing the stuff with his hands and I, I, there's just nobody like that.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  I also just think there's like soul to Barry, like his ambitions, his disappointment that Rob is willing to back like the teenagers instead of him and all of that stuff like that. Like I just think, I think, you know, Jack Black has talked about how he was so nervous to make this movie. And so I think he's just a little bit more restrained and I like off the leash Jack Black, but I like just like a little bit of restraint. I'm not sure I can go to 11 in every single moment. I like that balance inside of this movie.

• 31:00Bill Simmons?

  How about Zeta Jones? Where does this rank for her? Cause for me, it's like.

• 31:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 31:06Bill Simmons?

  Way up there.

• 31:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I wish she had done more movies like this.

• 31:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, just come in and, and.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  I wish she had just played more quote unquote, normal people, uh, where, you know, obviously she just gets cast in a lot of like really big blockbusters and pretty like comic, comic, not comic book roles, but like really out there roles. And this is just like, Charlie, this is like a lady that you would know.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  She's great. And if I can borrow a Dobbinsism, it's very important. Like her in a Pretenders t-shirt is a very important thing.

• 31:35Bill Simmons?

  This was a specific type of woman that I'm sure still exists that I always had my number.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Which, which ver- like the, the college version or the terrible?

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Catherine Zeta Jones type had your number. I mean, shocking.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  The terrible version.

• 31:46Bill Simmons?

  Just, no, just, you're annoying and I don't even want to put the two hours in here, but you look great and I'm just glad I'm here, but God, you're annoying, but God, you're great. And just that kind of battle.

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  And she, though, she's not in this movie that much, but she's so good in the parts. And she's so, so like just phony and yeah, I just knew people like this and it was, but you couldn't stay away from them.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  I just love that revelation he has because you get the flashback version of her and you're like, you, you believe Rob that she's the most fascinating person that's ever existed. And then he meets her now and he's like, wow, she's the worst. She's absolutely the worst person.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Well, she probably was when he was 22, you know?

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Exactly. But we're just seeing the like, the horny haze.

• 32:27Bill Simmons?

  The great thing for me is that some of these people are still on Instagram now. And you can, they just don't change.

• 32:35Chris Ryan?

  You mean?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I would say this is the core.

• 32:37Bill Simmons?

  The real life Charlies.

• 32:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  I would say they are the core of Instagram.

• 32:41Bill Simmons?

  But I mean, they're like in their 50s now, still.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Making all the top and odd.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  They poured the concrete upon which Instagram is.

• 32:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they really did. They started it. Uh, there's a Lily Taylor cameo. Always fun when the Cusacks are in a movie together.

• 32:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:56Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  How mad do you think Piven is that he's not in this movie?

• 33:00Bill Simmons?

  I had that in Unanswerables. Like, I don't.

• 33:04Bill Simmons?

  They were, they're best friends. And it's a Chicago movie. I don't know what happened. Um, and then my queen Lisa Bonet is in this movie.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Incredible casting. Really, really good work.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Unreal.

• 33:15Chris Ryan?

  Pre-LA Law Susan Day, but black. Yeah.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  It's, it's a good description. Honestly, it kind of works.

• 33:22Bill Simmons?

  Post Partridge Family.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Partridge Family, pre-LA Law. Shockingly accurate.

• 33:27Chris Ryan?

  The way you do it is that it's so crazy. So distracted.

• 33:31Bill Simmons?

  I'm just gonna move on.

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Tosses it off.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:33Bill Simmons?

  Want to do, uh, some Stephen Frears?

• 33:36Speaker 02

  I'd love to do some Stephen Frears.

• 33:37Bill Simmons?

  He does Dangerous Liaisons in this movie.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  You love Dangerous Liaisons. And one of my.

• 33:42Bill Simmons?

  I love Dangerous Liaisons.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  One of my favorite things, like, doing research for this, is how many people.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  Lost their shit about working with Stephen Frears because of Dangerous Liaisons.

• 33:52Chris Ryan?

  Did you skip The Grifters, right?

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:54Chris Ryan?

  The Grifters is in between.

• 33:54Bill Simmons?

  That's the thing. If you put his best movies on next to each other, it's crazy.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Where do you rank?

• 33:59Bill Simmons?

  It's like just all over the place with.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Where do you rank Mary Riley?

• 34:03Bill Simmons?

  See, I never liked Mary Riley. I didn't like Too Skinny.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  You have to say it like that because that's how they said it in all the trailers. No, nobody liked Mary Riley. Julie Roberts doing a bonkers Irish accent.

• 34:12Bill Simmons?

  What was the other one? The big Stephen Frears?

• 34:14Chris Ryan?

  Well, The Grifters.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  My Beautiful Landrette.

• 34:16Chris Ryan?

  My Beautiful Landrette, yeah. Did he do the hit? Is that him?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  I don't think so. But after this, he, he just veers really into, like, sort of Miramax, fuddy duddy, British.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, costume drama, period piece. A lot of very British movies. This is like the most American thing you probably ever.

• 34:32Chris Ryan?

  I always wondered whether, I was trying to figure out who Jim Broadbent is supposed to be in, uh, J. Kelly. You know, the, the British director.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:42Chris Ryan?

  And it's like, it has a little bit of Frears, a little bit of Mike Newell, who's also originally attached to this, uh, or Bogdanovich.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Do you think Frears makes a good sandwich? What do you think?

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  I bet.

• 34:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I bet he does.

• 34:52Bill Simmons?

  Liaisons is on the 26th rewatchable slate.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  It's gotta be.

• 34:57Bill Simmons?

  Watched it just randomly two weeks ago and I was like, I forgot this movie is amazing. This is like an amazing movie. Anyway, uh, this movie is based on the Nick Hornby book. Obviously they gave him 500K.

• 35:09Chris Ryan?

  Wow. Nice to talk to you change back then.

• 35:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, he is a fan of the movie. It was developed for three years with somebody named Mike Newell, who's the director and beautiful girl Scott Rosenberg.

• 35:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:23Bill Simmons?

  Who was the guy who was dating Bridget Moynihan, or maybe even married to her before Tom Brady started dating him. It was a Boston guy and it was always like the all time conundrum. You're like a giant Pats fan.

• 35:35Chris Ryan?

  I'd watch.

• 35:35Bill Simmons?

  But you lose your girl to Tom Brady, your quarterback. It's the great rom com nobody ever made.

• 35:41Chris Ryan?

  Yet.

• 35:42Bill Simmons?

  Yet. Cusack got a hold of it and uh, they moved it from London to Chicago. I can't wait to talk about some of the Cusack um, oral history performances. Just wait.

• 35:57Chris Ryan?

  On the edge of our seats.

• 35:59Bill Simmons?

  Just wait. But he said, uh, when I read the book, I knew where everything was in Chicago. I knew where American Rob went to school and dropped out where he used to spin records. I knew that he does the whole thing. He knew, he just felt like it could all switch over and be a transition. He was right.

• 36:14Chris Ryan?

  To me, this movie actually is like the, one of the rare examples of a hipster movie or like kind of cool movie that actually got in under the wire before all this stuff it was talking about was sort of over. Which is sort of the criticism people lob at singles, which is like, it feels like they're like a year behind everything. This was like actually a great time in Chicago music. All these venues were like iconic, like all my friends who would tour to Chicago be like, do you think we'll be able to play lounge acts or whatever? And the bars, we'll get to all the locations, but it's, it's a great Chicago movie.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  Thirty million dollar budget made forty seven million dollars. It's fine.

• 36:55Bill Simmons?

  Roger Ebert, four stars.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Roger?

• 36:59Bill Simmons?

  Raj came, came in hot.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Came through?

• 37:01Bill Simmons?

  He loved this movie.

• 37:02Chris Ryan?

  What a shock that Raj liked this movie.

• 37:04Bill Simmons?

  He said, "Watching High Fidelity, I had the feeling I could walk out of the theater and meet the same people on the street and want to, which is an even higher compliment." Raj was in.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  The number of people, probably Roger Ebert included, who read this book or watched this movie and said, "I am Rob," is really fascinating to me.

• 37:22Chris Ryan?

  Probably disturbing as well.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what, but like, the number of guys who were like, "That is me, that, that is exactly me." And I was like, "That guy's an asshole." Like an asshole in an arc, but an asshole, okay.

• 37:33Bill Simmons?

  You're, you're missing the other piece of that.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  I'm not missing, what am I missing?

• 37:36Chris Ryan?

  That is the arc, that is the movie.

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  There was that group, but there was the other group who was like, "I'm not Rob, why do you think I'm Rob?"

• 37:44Chris Ryan?

  Right, yes.

• 37:44Bill Simmons?

  And the people who were defensive that they weren't Rob, even though they probably were Rob.

• 37:48Speaker 02

  Were more Rob than the other guys.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  By the way, that's Chuck Close to me, because he, he literally said, like, people come up to him and be like, "You must love High Fidelity, you're just like Rob," and he's like, "I'm not Rob."

• 37:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, just about the meanest thing you could say to somebody, to be honest with you.

• 38:00Bill Simmons?

  Especially Chuck. Chuck doesn't want to be pigeonholed by a movie character, but yeah, so those were the two groups.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 38:06Bill Simmons?

  I remember I left Singles-

• 38:07Speaker 02

  And then the women saying, "I've dated Rob."

• 38:08Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 38:09Bill Simmons?

  I left Singles-

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Guess I dated him and I'll do it again.

• 38:15Bill Simmons?

  I left Singles at the Chestnut Hill Mall and was with a female friend of mine and we left and she thought I was like, I, eh.

• 38:24Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 38:24Bill Simmons?

  I thought, she thought I was like the Campbell Scott charac- character and it really threw me off for the rest of the night.

• 38:29Chris Ryan?

  Because you thought you were the Matt Dillon character?

• 38:32Bill Simmons?

  I was like, "I'm not any of those characters, what are you talking about?" She's like, "No, you're just like that guy," and I'm like, "What?" And, uh, there's nothing worse than being compared to a movie character when you're not, when you don't feel like you're the movie character.

• 38:42Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 38:43Bill Simmons?

  You know what I mean?

• 38:43Speaker 02

  But if I wanted to be anyone in that movie, it might be Campbell Scott in Singles.

• 38:47Chris Ryan?

  If you had to pick?

• 38:48Speaker 02

  If I had to pick?

• 38:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:49Bill Simmons?

  I've just ruined transportation in Seattle and I just- Ordering Chinese food every night.

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Dramatically improved transportation in Seattle.

• 38:57Bill Simmons?

  My thing I spent a year on.

• 38:59Chris Ryan?

  There was a psychic connection with Xavier McDaniel.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  What are your thoughts on garage door openers?

• 39:06Bill Simmons?

  A lot of them. We're gonna take a break and then we're gonna do most rewatchable scene. This episode is brought to by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply online in minutes, get up to 3 million in coverage with no medical exam, just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/rewatch. That is E T H O S dot com slash rewatch. Application times may vary, rates may vary. This episode is brought to you by Truvia. Sweeteners are like movies, the best ones don't leave an aftertaste.

• 39:49Bill Simmons?

  That's why Truvia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener is a smooth, balanced tri blend that delivers sugar like sweetness with zero calories per serving and no aftertaste. If you're looking for a better way to enjoy sweetness with zero calories per serving, you really need to try Truvia Allolos Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. Available online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer. Most rewatchable scene, the beginning. What came first? The music or the misery? What came first, CR?

• 40:29Chris Ryan?

  The music.

• 40:30Bill Simmons?

  I think the misery came first.

• 40:31Chris Ryan?

  You think that there's something inside of a person?

• 40:33Bill Simmons?

  Cause then there was music about the misery, which then it became a cycle.

• 40:36Chris Ryan?

  But when you're young and you're like, I don't know what I am yet. Maybe you have lots of different feelings, but you can't put words to them yet. And then you see like, oh, look at this.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Really, like, my friend's older sister likes The Smiths. What's up with that? Like, that's dark. I get, I get it. That's me, you know, like, there's a certain kind of like, you're, you're basically like molding your personality to the things that you like.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  I think there's nothing stronger, when people talk about music, there's nothing stronger than the song you listened to when you broke up with some, the breakup song. And what that, what, what is the song that got you through this breakup? Or what is the song that always reminds you of that breakup? And so that's like, the epitome of misery in music together.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  But the misery came first, before the, before the music.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  But you mold the music to the misery. Because a lot of people, for a lot of people, the breakup song-

• 41:21Bill Simmons?

  He's thinking day one, Adam and Eve, music was second.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  The cave people were not like, Morrissey, let's go, you know? Not the vibe. That would have been amazing.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  But maybe with their various instruments, they create a percussion version.

• 41:35Bill Simmons?

  Initially misery was first, but then I think as we evolved as human beings, probably the music puts a, a face on the misery.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so much of our li- like, modern lives is how do we simulate danger? Like, we watch sports to get the adrenaline rush, but it's not actually dangerous. And it's like, we tap into sad music to feel something immense. It's not actually like, harmful to us in a way. It's like, they're just feelings, they're just emotions, but it taps you into something different? I don't know.

• 42:04Bill Simmons?

  I remember, it's funny because they play this song in the movie The River, the acoustic version of The River by Bruce Springsteen, one of the great concert album moments of all time, when he tells the five minute story. And I remember driving to Boston to go to a Celtic game, listening to, they, they put out that concert album and he's telling this-

• 42:22Speaker 01

  The live, live street band.

• 42:23Bill Simmons?

  First time I heard this story and he's like, when I was growing up, there were two things my dad hated, me and my guitar. And he does this whole Bruce Springsteen thing. And he was just driving like, this is the, and then, you would hear things like that and they would really resonate in this, you mean, Bruce Springsteen was going through stuff in high school?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:41Bill Simmons?

  Wasn't just me?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  Why do you think they called Jeremy Allen White and not you for the Springsteen biopic?

• 42:46Bill Simmons?

  You think I could have done it, Joanna?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  I think you could have gotten that gold, gold nomination as well, yeah.

• 42:55Bill Simmons?

  Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? Was the other part of this? I would say that's probably fifty fifty. I like when he says, if you really wanted to mess me up, you should have gotten to me earlier. Is a great line.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Very normal thing to say to somebody.

• 43:10Bill Simmons?

  That's, we know right away we're dealing with somebody who's messed up. All right, more rewatchable scenes. Jack Black's first scene we mentioned. Charlie, you fucking bitch, let's work it out. Just that little piece. When he's going to see Marie play.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 43:24Bill Simmons?

  This is so funny when he does the John Doe, Jim was shot dead. And that dude, you know who tipped him off? His fucking girlfriend. And he just walks in.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  We get to see Lisa Bonet. Next one, Laura tells the sister of the four reasons they broke up.

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 43:41Bill Simmons?

  Junkie Sec didn't really enjoy that much.

• 43:45Chris Ryan?

  Was he like, she may have told her two, but perhaps all of the following pieces of information?

• 43:51Speaker 01

  If your list is four or five, like, it's bad.

• 43:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Well, because he does the like, I slept with somebody else while she was pregnant. And he's like, that's one. I was like, that's two.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  Where do we go from there?

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  Rob plays the beta band in the store for everybody and then gets robbed. I like this whole thing about playing the beta band and looking to see who reacted.

• 44:09Chris Ryan?

  It's a real thing.

• 44:10Bill Simmons?

  Classic record store move.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:14Bill Simmons?

  Charlie, Charlie calls Rob back, but then Ian shows up. And then we get the four versions of how he handles Ian. It's great. Laura reading the top five jobs. Did you have some notes on that? The top five jobs?

• 44:27Chris Ryan?

  I honestly felt very seen by that, by that list.

• 44:29Bill Simmons?

  Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, seventy-six to seventy-nine. Producer, Atlantic Records, sixty-four to seventy-one. Singer, director, and architect. The top five.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Seemed like a real invasion of privacy, I gotta say. Like, that's his list, it was in a drawer somewhere. Why did she even find it?

• 44:45Chris Ryan?

  I think all bets are off with Laura and Rob at that point, in terms of invasion of privacy.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  I mean, I get it.

• 44:51Bill Simmons?

  Rob and Laura get back together, but he knows some things missing. And then my pick, which would be DJ Rob doing the concert, introing Sonic Death Monkey.

• 45:00Bill Simmons?

  Who, uh, coming off that album with the two kids, their song, I Sold Mom's Wheelchair.

• 45:06Chris Ryan?

  Kinky Wizard too.

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, then Let's Get It On and the Jack Black, and then we get the ending. I, that, the, the last eight minutes of this movie is fantastic. That'd be my pick. What's yours, Joanna?

• 45:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I think you hit most of mine, but I will say that I want to expand on the beta band and say, it's just that whole entire hand selling sequence, right? Like, Jack Black is hand selling, um, you know, the Jesus and Mary chain, and Dick is, uh, hand selling Stiff Little Fingers, you know, and we're just like-

• 45:31Chris Ryan?

  Just Joe casually dropping hand selling right here is just unbelievable.

• 45:35Speaker 02

  That's what they're doing, hand selling. It's, if you work in a, like, a bookstore, a music store, you're just sort of like, and I like the different styles, right? Like, Rob just plays it passively and he knows he's gonna hook people, right? Jack Black is emotionally manipulating this guy into buying a stack. And then Dick is making like a very personal, like, connection with somebody.

• 45:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you make it so craven for him. He's, he's making a genuine effort with Anna, you know?

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Right, but he's, he's, he's catching some of the strays while he does it, right? Is this the new Green Day? So, I think that, that, because I think this is such a good retail movie, I think the whole busy Saturday hand selling vibe is my favorite.

• 46:12Chris Ryan?

  Do you have a favorite hand selling story? Favorite, like-

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, because, well, um, you can stack anything on Staff Favorites and it'll fly out the, out the door. Yeah. You can put something at point of sale, it'll fly out the door, you know? Yeah.

• 46:28Bill Simmons?

  CR, I, I might have been more in it than you, but the bootleg CD culture in the 90s.

• 46:34Chris Ryan?

  Sure, the live, the live stuff, yeah.

• 46:36Bill Simmons?

  There was a store, actually, in Kenmore Square, there was a store that had a whole bunch of great ones, but they would do the move of,

• 46:44Bill Simmons?

  it would be behind the counter, it's the only one I have, with the high price. I can't sell it.

• 46:49Chris Ryan?

  It's like what Jack Black does with Taffy.

• 46:50Bill Simmons?

  And you would go back, it really worked. You would go back and be like, it's still there, you gonna sell that yet? I don't know. And then eventually, the fifth time, they would sell it to you for $20.

• 46:59Chris Ryan?

  My favorite.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's your favorite?

• 47:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I was recreationally high on Adderall and a mom came into Newberry and was like, my kid really likes corn. Do you have any recommendations? And I was like, your kid doesn't like corn. And I like walked her through like the entire store.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  You pulled the I just called to say I love you move on her?

• 47:17Chris Ryan?

  You gotta get him Fugazi, you gotta get him this. And I was just like, she, I just changed that kid's life. And that my mom's life, but in retrospect, I was so high, she was probably like, I'm gonna call the cops.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  I had, I had a woman come in, she was returning like Hunger Games or something like that. And she was like, this is too violent and for my kid, I'm bringing my kid up religiously. I don't like this. So I sold her His Dark Materials trilogy, where basically like they kill God.

• 47:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  I was like, but she won't know that. Um, so that's my favorite hand selling story. She didn't return it.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  So I did the wine version of that when people order Pinot Grigio and I was like, you don't want Pinot Grigio. It sucks. Get a Chardonnay. You want, try, please try the Chardonnay. And if you don't like it, I'll get you the Pinot Grigio.

• 48:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  Um, your favorite?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  I think it's when they go see Marie Desal play. I mean, it's got, it's got the Dillinger trivia, it's got the Peter fucking Frampton, which is the only way I refer to him by his full God given name now. Um, it's got Daydream about liner notes, it's got everybody swooning and it's got Lisa Bonet in it. Like it, that whole, the whole movie kind of stops for a second and everyone is just kind of marinating in it together.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  It's a great call. It says he's making me rethink my choice.

• 48:28Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 48:28Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, C L?

• 48:29Chris Ryan?

  I'm tied between Jack Black entrance scene, which culminates with Cosby sweater.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:33Chris Ryan?

  And the side one, track one, list making with the Captain Beefheart vinyl problem. And like that whole sequence, cause that is Jack Black being like, oh, a new classic casually slipped into the end of the top five. So that you don't look so boring, interesting. And I just like, that is, you would just have that fight about like the nature of your own list making at that time. And it was just so perfect.

• 49:00Bill Simmons?

  Do you remember before we started Grantland, we went to New York? Cause I still had to meet a couple of people and we all hung out at this bar. And it was like me and you and Katie Bakes and Klosterman.

• 49:12Bill Simmons?

  Maybe like two other people.

• 49:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah.

• 49:14Bill Simmons?

  And all we did for four hours was shit like this, where we're just arguing about this.

• 49:18Chris Ryan?

  Is this a job interview? Like, what is happening?

• 49:20Bill Simmons?

  No, no, I was just saying, this is what Bill's actually like. It wasn't a job interview. Yeah, but it was like, this is what we did. It was like, it was kind of the vibe that I think was gonna, we thought might be the website. But it was like, oh, all these people kind of get it. Um, but that came out of like this weird era.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  I do have to say the Tim Robbins fantasy sequence, the get your patchouli stink out of my store. As someone who worked at Bay Area bookstores for a decade, is my most.

• 49:46Chris Ryan?

  Thoughts about patchouli?

• 49:47Speaker 02

  That's my most quotable line from this movie. Get your patchouli stink out of my store.

• 49:50Chris Ryan?

  How many people did you bash over the head with an air conditioner?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  In my mind, endless.

• 49:55Bill Simmons?

  That was a good job by him, the way he held it up.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:57Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 2000 thing about this movie? I have a few things, but we'll go around. What do you got, T R?

• 50:01Chris Ryan?

  It's really weird, but I noticed it this time, is that when Laura first comes back to pack up her shit, that's when she gets her laptop. And it reminded me of like, yeah, I leave my computer at work. You know, like, like, when I, when I leave work, I don't, I'm not checking my email. I'm not like checking the internet.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  Oh, right.

• 50:19Chris Ryan?

  And it was just sort of like, if that was, if that was now, the laptop would be in her bag first. You know what I mean? She'd be like, I'm taking my computer, I'm taking my phone and all this stuff. So that was, that jumped out at me.

• 50:31Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, Rob?

• 50:32Speaker 01

  That's a hard look in the mirror. Uh, I mean, bands, rock music, I think all that stuff is right there. But also calling the operator to get somebody's home address.

• 50:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely not.

• 50:41Chris Ryan?

  Directory assistance.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Definitely not.

• 50:43Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 50:45Speaker 02

  Rob's sunglasses, which I believe are Oakley's, and they're just like right on the edge of 90s and into like 2000 style. They're just like right on the cusp.

• 50:55Bill Simmons?

  That's good. I have, uh, the last, last days of mixtapes.

• 50:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Bill Simmons?

  Describing someone as Sheryl Crow-ish combined with Partridge Family pre-L A lawsuit's Day but black. I don't know if that would fly now.

• 51:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Bill Simmons?

  Like Craig wouldn't understand any of that. Being tortured by answering machine messages. It's the tail end of that era, too.

• 51:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Smoking indoors?

• 51:18Chris Ryan?

  Well, I was gonna say.

• 51:19Bill Simmons?

  Smoking indoors is always in here.

• 51:20Chris Ryan?

  I. Was gonna ask if any Chicago listeners could just hit us up and let us know, could you still smoke at your workplace in 2000? Cause I don't think so.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  If you owned the store?

• 51:30Chris Ryan?

  That's a, that is the twist.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  That was kinda right on the edge though.

• 51:32Chris Ryan?

  But if you walked into Championship Vinyl and you were just like, these guys have been smoking darts in here with like no windows open.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  But don't you know that Championship Vinyl reeks of cigarette smoke? And it doesn't matter when they stopped, it will still smell like that.

• 51:45Chris Ryan?

  The only person I've ever worked with at a record store were like inveterate chain smokers.

• 51:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:49Chris Ryan?

  But we did it outside.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Sure, sure.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  Two more. Being afraid you'll end up someday working in a virgin mega store. Very 2000s. And then a guy in his late twenties, early thirties named Dick.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 52:03Bill Simmons?

  That guy doesn't exist anymore.

• 52:05Chris Ryan?

  His name, his name's Scout now.

• 52:07Bill Simmons?

  Craig, do you know any Dicks?

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Not a single Dick.

• 52:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Bring back Dick, I guess.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Bring back Dick.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, bring back Dick.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  That's what we're going with?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  That's what I'm going with.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 52:14Speaker 02

  Um.

• 52:14Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna cut that out for social.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Rob, Rob Mahoney.

• 52:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Quick question. Have you ever made a mixtape?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Mixed CD, yes.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  But not a mixtape.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  And I mean, this will shock no one, but after seeing this movie in high school, I'm like, well, I gotta follow Rob Gordon's advice for you gotta start with the banger. You gotta lead it off, then you gotta bring it back down because you don't wanna blow your wad. It was like, there is a philosophy to it. I was very bad at it, but no mixtapes, only mixed CDs.

• 52:37Chris Ryan?

  There's just nothing like messing up a mixtape and being like, shit, I gotta start all over again.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Mad man.

• 52:44Bill Simmons?

  I actually found my.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Get to like stop and start.

• 52:46Bill Simmons?

  I found an actual mixtape I made in 1993 that I made as a Spotify playlist. And here is the order. Feed the Tree by Belly.

• 52:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:56Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 52:56Bill Simmons?

  Cantaloupe, Flip Fantasia. Fuck with Dre Day. Let Me Ride. Geppetto, Into Your Arms, Mr. Jones, Time Capsule by Matthew Sweet, Cannonball, Make You Sweat by Keith Sweat. I don't know why he's on this.

• 53:12Chris Ryan?

  This is so good.

• 53:13Bill Simmons?

  Ordinary World by Duran Duran, Remedy by The Black Crows, Let Me Go by Cake, Anna Begins, Mm, Mm, Mm by The Crash Test Dummies, Loser.

• 53:23Bill Simmons?

  Get off this, Amazing by Aerosmith, Uncertain Smile by The The, Human Behavior by Bjork, and it ends with Indigo Eyes. And I have no idea, I must have.

• 53:32Chris Ryan?

  Human Behavior by Bjork. 93 Bill, just vibing out.

• 53:36Bill Simmons?

  93 Bill, I think just trying to prove he had a lot of layers. And I don't know who he was trying to prove it to.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  I can't tell for me if it's The Counting Crows into Matthew Sweet, or Cake into The Counting Crows. Like, what is the most quintessentially Bill?

• 53:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's all of Rosetta Stone. That we would have been friends when I was 24 is what you learned.

• 53:54Chris Ryan?

  He would be like, you don't want Pino Grigio.

• 53:58Bill Simmons?

  It's a joke, Anna. Just try to share it. What's Age the Best, um, mixtapes.

• 54:03Chris Ryan?

  Have they? Cause of playlists, or?

• 54:05Bill Simmons?

  I think the mixtape is better than the playlist, that I'm gonna make the case. I can do it now.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  It takes so much longer.

• 54:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I get it. Playlist, easier.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:15Bill Simmons?

  Pop them in. Digital, I get all of it, but there's something about the mixtape.

• 54:19Speaker 02

  No, I was agreeing with you.

• 54:20Bill Simmons?

  And not knowing.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  The blood's wetting tears you put into the tape.

• 54:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:23Bill Simmons?

  Well, but also, not knowing where the mixtape's gonna go is the art of the mixtape. And somebody's listening the first time and they don't know the order.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  You didn't write out the tracks on the, on the little like thing?

• 54:34Bill Simmons?

  You tell them, don't look at the things, just listen to it and take a ride on it.

• 54:38Chris Ryan?

  On the cover of the mixtape?

• 54:39Bill Simmons?

  No, I just would write the songs. What did you do?

• 54:41Chris Ryan?

  Sometimes I would make, like, zine style, like, cover art. Yeah.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  That's beautiful.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:46Bill Simmons?

  CR, fucking renegade, Renaissance man. Jesus.

• 54:49Chris Ryan?

  I think you just piloted. Goddamn, CR!

• 54:53Speaker 01

  But how is this not a Spotify feature where you can hide the tracklist? And so you could be surprised in that way.

• 54:58Chris Ryan?

  You can make your own art on Spotify, but you can't hide the tracklist. It's, it's tough.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  That's the next frontier, we gotta mixtape this shit.

• 55:04Bill Simmons?

  So it's almost like the vanish text that Apple has, but for playlists.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  You gotta hover over it if you wanna see the list.

• 55:10Chris Ryan?

  You should request an emergency meeting with the top two guys at Spotify.

• 55:14Bill Simmons?

  Gustav!

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Have you seen High Fidelity?

• 55:16Bill Simmons?

  This is a great idea.

• 55:18Speaker 02

  We're gonna revolutionize playlists, and it's mixtapes.

• 55:21Bill Simmons?

  I have a shitload of What's Age the Best, so give me yours.

• 55:24Chris Ryan?

  I was gonna, so I, I didn't know whether to do this here or Apex Mountain, but this is the best breaking of the fourth wall in cinema history.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  It's really great.

• 55:32Chris Ryan?

  And, with the exception of maybe Ferris Bueller.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  Alfie.

• 55:37Chris Ryan?

  Sustained? Okay, yeah, you're, I mean Alfie's up there. I would say this is my favorite.

• 55:41Bill Simmons?

  What else is on notice? Singles did it.

• 55:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Singles did it. Um, there's a lot of fourth wall breaking momentarily, like in Spaceballs or something like that. But to have it be. I am just addressing the camera and you are getting my-

• 55:55Bill Simmons?

  As your narrative.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  On the L, on the, yeah.

• 55:58Bill Simmons?

  Ironically, it was Klosterman's biggest nitpick with the movie.

• 56:00Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 56:01Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't like the staring into the camera.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  I love it because you can, they're using like swaths of the book in that. He's just like reciting the book. But also, one of my favorite parts of the movie is when Laura comes back and she hears the fourth wall break.

• 56:12Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  A very flea bag moment, you know?

• 56:14Speaker 01

  And when he wakes up the morning after Marie, he's like whispering it so he doesn't wake her. It's like all that stuff, I think, works texturally so well.

• 56:20Chris Ryan?

  The time when Joan Cusack calls him and is like, I don't know how I feel about this Ian guy. And then Marie comes in and he goes out of his office for a minute and talks to Lisa Bonet and then comes back and he goes, "What fucking Ian?"

• 56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was just like in the back and percolating in his brain the whole scene, yeah, yeah.

• 56:38Bill Simmons?

  Could you have done this movie blind?

• 56:40Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I'm, I'm finding that I don't need to look at my notes. Yeah.

• 56:45Bill Simmons?

  What else did you have for what's aged the best?

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  Um, there's a very, very cool Cusack moment, which is, uh, like, I'll give him some honorary dap for smoking here. But the beat that he takes between taking a drag on a cigarette and revealing the four pieces of information that Laura might have told Liz is like, it's everything you need to know about Rob where he like takes this drag and he's like,

• 57:09Chris Ryan?

  "Okay."

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:11Chris Ryan?

  And he's like, "You're an asshole, but not without your charms." Um, and also probably, uh,

• 57:21Chris Ryan?

  probably getting laid off the back of a parent dying because we call this the Jesse from Reality Bites. That was a move back then.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Classic, classic move.

• 57:29Bill Simmons?

  What do you got, Rob?

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," I mean, only gets better with age, to be honest with you.

• 57:33Chris Ryan?

  I think-

• 57:34Bill Simmons?

  One of the all-timers.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Vinyl relative to 2000, to your point, Chris. Like, it has boomed way beyond my wildest expectations, to the point where I never thought I would own a single record. It seemed inconceivable.

• 57:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  When I was 15, I would ever buy one. And now, you know, you got your tidy little collection of your favorites and it's like a nice analog way to experience.

• 57:52Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, Joanna?

• 57:53Speaker 02

  Thirty-something white dudes talking about records and books and movies.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  What are you talking about?

• 57:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Welcome to The Ringer.

• 58:04Bill Simmons?

  I have dickheads working in a record store who don't actually care about customers or selling records is a fucking staple.

• 58:11Speaker 01

  This is what's aged the best?

• 58:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, because that was, that's the way it was and the way it probably still is.

• 58:17Chris Ryan?

  This is, this is like a perfect balance that we had in this country.

• 58:21Bill Simmons?

  I, I still think we have it.

• 58:22Chris Ryan?

  Somehow these places could stay in business.

• 58:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't want to name the store, but I was in a store with Ben and they were just not interested in selling us anything because they were deep in a conversation behind the counter and it was, this has been a thing that's gone on for 30 plus years of like, can you hold on a second? I'm in the middle of this meaningless conversation with somebody I work with.

• 58:40Chris Ryan?

  Or were you like, I'm gonna get on fucking Yelp and kill these guys?

• 58:43Bill Simmons?

  No, I think it's just the culture. The people that are in the store aren't in the store to make money for the store. They're in the store because it's a cool job and they get to hang with their whatever. And it's like.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Hell yeah, comrade Bill. Like power to the people, power to the working man.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  You don't make enough money to care. You also don't make enough money to run down shoplifters. Rob does, but the fact that Barry goes, I'm like, you don't make enough money to do that.

• 59:06Bill Simmons?

  The concept of a grown up Charlie, I just thought was really well executed. Two, what's aged the best? Two great theories from this movie. The, is it better to burn out or fade away? It's just a great question.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  With a lead Jack Black hand acting as he does it.

• 59:22Chris Ryan?

  But that is, that his Stevie Wonder point is like one of those like, we're gonna fight about this for five hours.

• 59:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:27Chris Ryan?

  Because now it's like, I don't think anybody really wants to hear anything negative about Stevie Wonder, but like a dude throwing a Molotov cocktail and being like, Stevie Wonder's greatest failures of the eighties is like, yo, alright, man. You're a dicksmen.

• 59:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that was a classic Molotov cocktail point. You're right. You, which you wouldn't do on the internet in the same way. The other one I loved was, uh, Rob's theory about how he, he tried to move up in weight class with Charlie and how guys have to punch their own weight. It's like one of the great theories that I've always been jealous of. He's like, I'm a, what did he say? He was a welterweight or a middleweight?

• 1:00:02Chris Ryan?

  I think he said he's a middleweight.

• 1:00:04Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I'm a middleweight. What was I thinking going up in class? I was like, that's fucking great.

• 1:00:11Bill Simmons?

  Katrina and the Waves for What's Age the Best. I think this was their only song. And it's probably a top five, the happiest song that anyone's ever made and you just hear it and it's like, hey, let's go. Um, sad bastard music. I just like the phrase.

• 1:00:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Bill Simmons?

  Um, how about movies where there's a cute lead actress and she's really belongs to this movie and I don't know what else she was in. I'm sure she acted in a bunch of stuff.

• 1:00:37Speaker 02

  Like Dana stuff. Yeah.

• 1:00:38Bill Simmons?

  But she belongs to this movie and when I see her, I see her in this.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  In an association. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  Like, I'm glad this wasn't like Gwyneth Paltrow.

• 1:00:46Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:00:47Bill Simmons?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  You mean Yvonne Yala?

• 1:00:50Chris Ryan?

  She's the Gwyneth Paltrow of Denmark, though, you know?

• 1:00:53Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  Well, did you read what Frere said about casting her?

• 1:00:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  That he was like, if we cast an American, she would seem too much like Rob's mom. So we need someone who's like European.

• 1:01:03Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Just because Rob is such a man child and he's like, I need, I need someone who won't feel like she's babysitting.

• 1:01:09Chris Ryan?

  The problem is she still feels like she's babysitting Rob.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  She sure does.

• 1:01:13Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Busy Coffee Houses with people pounding cigarettes, see her?

• 1:01:16Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:01:17Bill Simmons?

  I know you were getting the shakes.

• 1:01:18Chris Ryan?

  I miss it.

• 1:01:20Bill Simmons?

  Overqualified stars doing small cameos. I just wish there was more of them. Like just let's get Tim Robinson when he's red hot.

• 1:01:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna be in like two scenes. Uh, Hulu remake show, I think is Age the Best. I liked it.

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 1:01:32Chris Ryan?

  This is just such a durable property. I just can't believe that they, they gave up on it. And Zoe Kravitz was like, I would still be making that show today.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  She was fighting for it.

• 1:01:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Would Divine Joy Randolph have her Oscar, though, if?

• 1:01:44Chris Ryan?

  Probably not. But she's like, me and Zoe Kravitz text each other about how we wish we were still making High Fidelity.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Bill Simmons?

  All right, here's my best What's Age the Best. Um, there's an Entertainment Weekly 2020 Oral History about this movie. And Cusack's on a heat check in it. To the point that I decided to create a new award for the rewatch ball. It's called the John Cusack Hero Ball Award. For biggest heat check in an oral history anniversary feature. It's unbelievable.

• 1:02:11Chris Ryan?

  This could only go to like three movies.

• 1:02:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it might never be given out again.

• 1:02:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Bill Simmons?

  The cousin to this is the Wikipedia where somebody involved with the movie clearly wrote a lot of the Wikipedia, which is also one of my favorite. Cusack has quotes in this oral history. These are actual quotes. I knew that Jack Black would be my secret weapon. He had made a movie with Tim Robbins and there was this sort of actors gang, blah, blah, blah. I knew the secret was that he was a great musician and a great comedian and hadn't gotten a role with like High Fidelity yet. He's got like 10 of those in this where it's like everything was his idea. He knew this, he knew that, he pulled this off.

• 1:02:49Bill Simmons?

  He got Bob Dylan and gave them most of the time. I was lucky enough to be friendly with him.

• 1:02:55Bill Simmons?

  So I called him up.

• 1:02:58Bill Simmons?

  And I said, do you want to be in this movie, blah, blah, blah. And then he has this quote. My movies, at least the ones where I've been involved in producing or writing or co-creating it. A lot of times they don't get seen or loved right away when they come out. So that's pretty common, but I am proud of it. I put an enormous amount of effort and care into this film. The horror history is like that. He's just heat checking it. I sent it to C R.

• 1:03:23Chris Ryan?

  It was, it was such a bracing read. It doesn't he also just like, I just, I had Springsteen on speed dial, like I got him.

• 1:03:29Bill Simmons?

  He does that. Yeah, it's, it's a spotty reputation for Cusack, I think.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  This is.

• 1:03:35Bill Simmons?

  Piven being his best friend is, says a lot.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  It's telling. Did you read the Frears quote where he was talking about working with him on The Grifters where he's like, I only had two good hours a day with John on The Grifters, so we had to schedule around that. He's like, by the time we did High Fidelity, he had figured it out and he could like show up for a full day of work. But on The Grifters, he only gave me two hours a day and that's it.

• 1:03:55Chris Ryan?

  It's one of, it's him and Nicolas Cage where it's just like, it feels like the world is at their feet. And, and then they go on to make six movies a year that are on Amazon Prime.

• 1:04:06Bill Simmons?

  Ironically, they were in Con Air together.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  Is this John Cusack's last great movie?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

  I mean, Hot Tub Time Machine was a massive movie, but that's probably nine years after this.

• 1:04:17Speaker 02

  Are you stumping for serendipity? What are you stumping for?

• 1:04:18Chris Ryan?

  Is Malkovich after this?

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  No, Malkovich, I was thinking Malkovich too, but it's 99.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Bill Simmons?

  This is the end of the run for him though.

• 1:04:23Chris Ryan?

  Well, yeah, no, I guess like terms of.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  I mean, adaptation's thoroughly in.

• 1:04:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  This, maybe it is.

• 1:04:29Speaker 02

  I think it is.

• 1:04:29Bill Simmons?

  I meant to do this before we did the categories about Cusack, just like going back to The Sure Thing. He's in a couple 80s movies even before The Sure Thing, like he's in Class.

• 1:04:39Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:39Bill Simmons?

  He's in, uh, one of the Hughes movies, maybe Sixteen Candles.

• 1:04:42Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:04:43Speaker 02

  Where he's just a partygoer.

• 1:04:44Bill Simmons?

  He's just in the background and then he became like a main guy and he did Sure Thing and he's Better Off Dead and then Say Anything kind of minted him. And then I think he had a good 90s, um, but Lloyd Dobler, I think was a really important character for an entire generation. So I think people gave him a lot of leeway for a long time and then this movie helped. But I don't, I don't, don't think he sustained it in the way I would have predicted.

• 1:05:08Speaker 02

  He just did a bunch of like, I think, bad rom-coms after, like he took the wrong lesson from High Fidelity where he's like, I'm a rom-com guy now. And that's not what is good about this movie.

• 1:05:18Bill Simmons?

  I'm a rom-com or weird, like psychological thriller guy.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:24Bill Simmons?

  But he probably actually would have been better off, he had a good career, but he probably would have been better off like, uh, I don't know, some sort of HBO show and the, like being like the big love part and Bill Paxton part, something like that.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  Yes, definitely big love.

• 1:05:38Bill Simmons?

  Being Sabaka in The Wire. Something, take a swing, John Cusack.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  I don't think that's the one.

• 1:05:44Speaker 02

  Take Chris Bowers, like, legacy.

• 1:05:47Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for Great Shot Gordon or CR?

• 1:05:49Chris Ryan?

  I don't really, this is a very subtle visual film, but I had, I like this shot of him walking with the Metrograph movie theater in the background and talking about Dillinger.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:05:59Chris Ryan?

  There's not a ton of blinding visual stuff in this.

• 1:06:03Bill Simmons?

  Would you have for Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness or for Best Nino Drop Rock?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  We could do a whole bracket, I think, for this movie. I, it's hard not to pick Stevie Wonder. Like the close, closeout song with Stevie Wonder, but I think Bob Dylan coming out of the funeral is also, that's a fucking powerhouse.

• 1:06:18Bill Simmons?

  What'd you have, Joanna?

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  It's a beta band.

• 1:06:20Chris Ryan?

  I dry, Dry the Rain.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  Dry the Rain.

• 1:06:21Chris Ryan?

  Although, we'll say, puts the CD in and the song starts four minutes into the song.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  I was gonna say the exact same thing. It starts with the hook.

• 1:06:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Bill Simmons?

  Is that a nitpick?

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  We can't do it.

• 1:06:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's, it's.

• 1:06:32Speaker 02

  And A, you wouldn't do it in the record store with They're Such Purists and B, you can't do it on a CD.

• 1:06:36Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  Cause it's not even a vinyl, it's a CD.

• 1:06:38Bill Simmons?

  I have Katrina in the Waves. Because Black switches it and it's like a pure needle drop.

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Can I go back to cinematic shot?

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  And say when he's on the Kinsey Bridge and the camera's hand panels.

• 1:06:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  And he's going back and forth. I think that.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  The five things he loves about or misses about Laura.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Chris Ryan?

  Did you try to pay tribute to that shot when you did your walk and talks in Chicago?

• 1:06:58Bill Simmons?

  You know, I didn't, but I can claim that I did. All right, we're taking a break and then we got a flex category for CR. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits.

• 1:07:38Bill Simmons?

  Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now. This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be a lot harder than finding a decent movie. But that was before Quince. Quince has staple pieces made from premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere. And everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. It's the perfect place to start building a cozy fall outfit without any absurd 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.

• 1:08:24Bill Simmons?

  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. CR, flex category, what do you got?

• 1:08:53Chris Ryan?

  Um, the Den of Thieves Benny Hahn Award for stealing location when Rob is going through before things that Laura might have told Liz. It's the Green Mill, which is the bar from Thief. Sorry.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  Blows the fuck up at Thief. Oh shit.

• 1:09:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:09:10Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one.

• 1:09:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm surprised I didn't notice that. Butch's Girlfriend Award weak link of the film. What do you have, Joanna?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  I think it might be Lily Taylor, who's an actress who I love.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  First of all, how dare you?

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  I love Lily Taylor.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  She's so great in this.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  I, I think that character's too real. For this moment, like, too sad for this moment, and I needed more, like, Elizabeth Banks and forty-year-old virgin energy, I think, from her. I don't know.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  I love the heartbreak. Like, her performance messes me up every time.

• 1:09:40Chris Ryan?

  When they sit down, it's like, are you seeing anybody? I would say to piggyback off of that, I don't know that Rob reckons with, like, the wreckage of his, you know, uh, going back through his back pages interviews with these women where it's like, and he's like, I was basically, like, sexually assaulted after we broke up, and then Sarah being like, I'm off my meds and unemployed, and he's just like, great, okay, moving on, we got.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the names are there.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  That's what I have for What's Age of the Worst.

• 1:10:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  When she's like, it was basically rape, and he's like, yes, I rejected her!

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  And you're like, Rob!

• 1:10:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, not great.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  What's your weakest link? Yeah.

• 1:10:20Bill Simmons?

  I think he just ended up with the wrong girl in the movie.

• 1:10:23Chris Ryan?

  So do you think he ended up with the wrong girl?

• 1:10:25Bill Simmons?

  I think he should have been with the girl from The Reader.

• 1:10:27Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:10:28Bill Simmons?

  My girl Natasha Gregson Wagner.

• 1:10:30Chris Ryan?

  Late-breaking Gregson Wagner?

• 1:10:31Speaker 02

  I think he should, I think he should have chosen himself. I don't think he should have wound up with anyone.

• 1:10:36Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:10:37Bill Simmons?

  I think he should have kicked the tires with, uh, with The Reader girl. I thought...

• 1:10:41Chris Ryan?

  But he's already back together with Laura when that starts.

• 1:10:44Speaker 02

  It's your girlfriend!

• 1:10:45Bill Simmons?

  But that should have been the sign, though.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  Also, then he should have just hopped, hopped onto someone new?

• 1:10:51Bill Simmons?

  He was only with her because he couldn't think of what else to do. Then he clearly had this other person who was like, this is like my soulmate here.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  But that's the issue.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  He's not every time!

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  That is not his soulmate.

• 1:11:02Chris Ryan?

  His whole point is that, of course, you're gonna meet somebody, and they're gonna be distracting, and they're gonna be like the, the tantalizing new thing.

• 1:11:09Bill Simmons?

  What was distracting about her? She was great!

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  Because he had seen her everyday underwear, only her lingerie.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  They only had the cute problems, like buying each other the same Christmas present, you know? It's not a real thing.

• 1:11:19Chris Ryan?

  What's gonna happen when the Chicago Reader negatively reviews the CD single he's put out? And he's just like, what the fuck, you know?

• 1:11:26Bill Simmons?

  Just thought she was a good calming presence.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  No, but I feel like if he hops to the next woman, there's no lesson learned. Back with Laura is a lesson learned, but I think the real lesson should Laura should not have come back.

• 1:11:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, so I had that in answerable questions. Is this a better movie if he ends up with nobody at the end? And I think if they make it 10 years later, I think that's how it ends.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  It's 500 Days of Summer.

• 1:11:47Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Minka Kelly.

• 1:11:50Bill Simmons?

  Well, in the last 20 years, we have shifted to we actually we it feels like a rom com, but we are not going to give you the happy ending. We're going to actually give you the.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  The problem now is like we have so many movies in which they choose themselves at the end. And I think it's like we're like it's so therapized in terms of the robs of the world now in films and TV, like have to work out their problems in a real way.

• 1:12:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  This is so incremental.

• 1:12:12Chris Ryan?

  Guys should not be in therapy. They should DJ.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Well, this is this is a man's journey to thinking about a person for literally the first time who is not himself. It's like the revolutionary idea is I'm going to make a mixtape of stuff she likes, which is what I like.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Can we bring back, can we bring back the hottest take? So CR can do a whole mention being therapy, they should DJ episode.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  I mean, why?

• 1:12:34Bill Simmons?

  You know who created I Choose Me? Joanna knows.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  I know. It's Kelly.

• 1:12:38Bill Simmons?

  Kelly Taylor, not a two and O. Sent Dylan and Brandon packing. She choose she's like, I choose me.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  I think it should be a category, the Kelly Taylor.

• 1:12:44Bill Simmons?

  The Kelly Taylor.

• 1:12:45Speaker 02

  I choose me.

• 1:12:46Chris Ryan?

  Do you guys think that the Rob and Laura getting back together works within the context of the movie being satisfying? Even if you don't think that they belong together?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  What I think is interesting, and I think this is true. I did not reread my copy of High Fidelity in the last 48 hours, but um.

• 1:13:01Chris Ryan?

  If you just had one more night in October.

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  Even Yala, even Yala, as I turn the pages. Um, Rob doesn't do his career shift in the book. Like Laura comes back, but he doesn't have this like, and now I'm a music producer. And I think that's an interesting ad of just like, this is this is another.

• 1:13:17Bill Simmons?

  But yeah.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  This is another area of growth for Rob as he is sort of like growing in his career. And Laura comes back. So it's like he's evolving in multiple ways.

• 1:13:29Bill Simmons?

  It's just, it's, what's funny is we all had the couples in our lives where they got back together like this. And you're like, they're not gonna make it, but then they end up getting married and having kids and then getting divorced.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  There's a deleted scene, there's a lot of great deleted scenes, but there's, but there's one where Laura's talking to Liz, to Joan Kiesak's character, and she's like, maybe I should go back just so that he can break up with me and then it'll be easier. And Liz is like, that's demented. And she's like, I know, but like, that would just calm everything down if I just go back. Let him break up with me and then.

• 1:14:00Chris Ryan?

  That is something that people used to think back then though, where it was like, you just didn't have enough feedback. So you were like, maybe what I'll do, it's like, we want to have sex for three weeks and see what happens.

• 1:14:11Speaker 02

  So that might, there's an interpretation, if that scene stays in the movie, there's an interpretation of the ending of like, that's just what Laura's doing.

• 1:14:16Bill Simmons?

  What was the other deleted scene? That's the famous deleted scene?

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Well, there's a couple. There's Beverly D'Angelo with the, with the.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  The record collection.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  The record collection, which in the TV show was the Parker Posey episode, which was so good. And, uh, and then there's.

• 1:14:29Chris Ryan?

  Harold Ramis, right?

• 1:14:30Speaker 02

  Harold Ramis is his dad, yeah.

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  There's one where, uh, when the reporter asks him to give his top five records, it turns into like a full-blown nervous breakdown where he goes home and has to like revisit and keeps like calling her back to add more records to the list. There's a lot of really fun stuff.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  There's a direct address that I kind of missed, which is like, he's talking to the audience and he's like, yeah, you think I'm an asshole. He's like, okay, take a moment, write down the five worst things you ever did to your partner or never told your partner. And then he like, next scene, he's like, do you write them down? All right, who's the asshole now? You know, and so it's just this like interesting relationship he has with the viewer where he, he keeps saying like, yeah, I'm an asshole. But to your point earlier, it's just like, I feel like he wants the viewer on his side. And that's, that's really demonstrating that.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  I think they do a really good job of not like, almost not quite needing that. Because the movie undercuts Rob all the time. Like he'll go on some super self-indulgent tangent and then like, a dead body at the funeral goes underground. And it's like, this fucking guy, like, there's so many ways where they point at him and so many characters who are constantly making fun of him for who he is, that it like, it is, the movie is judgmental of Rob, even if Rob himself isn't calling stuff out directly.

• 1:15:38Chris Ryan?

  In the oral history, the, uh, the actress who plays Laura.

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Yvonne Yale.

• 1:15:42Chris Ryan?

  Yvonne Yale. Talks about the sex scene with Tim Robbins.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:45Chris Ryan?

  And how it was fun because they were like, this is what's happening inside of Rob's head. So it's not like a real sexy, it's supposed to be what's tormenting him. And I was like, I wonder how many of these scenes you could view as like an unreliable narrator telling you about them. That being said, I don't think the film itself tips its cap towards that very often.

• 1:16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Chris Ryan?

  So I do take the movie at face value when it's depicting events, but.

• 1:16:11Speaker 02

  I think the flashback stuff.

• 1:16:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Speaker 02

  You're like, that's through a lens.

• 1:16:15Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Also, age is the worst. Yes.

• 1:16:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:18Bill Simmons?

  Also, for what's age the worst, the semi stalking, the mean spiritedness, the misogyny, we gotta throw that in, but that was the 90s.

• 1:16:25Speaker 02

  Rob, Rob ages the worst? Rob as a character?

• 1:16:28Bill Simmons?

  Rob as a character.

• 1:16:30Chris Ryan?

  Charlie, you fucking bitch, let's work it out. And what's the funniest and most disturbing thing in this movie?

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  We gotta talk about Cusack's hair.

• 1:16:43Bill Simmons?

  Every time Joanne is on, somehow we get into the hairpiece thing.

• 1:16:46Speaker 02

  The last time it was Robert Redford in your crosshairs. Now it's Cusack. Tell me.

• 1:16:50Bill Simmons?

  Never really answered.

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  No one, no one has definitely answered the Redford question.

• 1:16:53Bill Simmons?

  I had a couple people in my life sending me different screenshots of him in the early 70s, but nope, we'll never know.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  I stand by it's a dying problem, not a, uh, a peace problem.

• 1:17:04Bill Simmons?

  Well, Cusack had the combo of he's wearing wigs in the movies for the throwback scenes, but then it's, it's the real Cusack and it's like, are we, oh no, that's a lot of that. I don't know what's going on.

• 1:17:15Speaker 02

  You think he has fake hair just as Rob? In present tense, Rob.

• 1:17:19Bill Simmons?

  Well, he definitely added hair from the say anything kind of, or Con Air was when it was, we talked about in the Con Air podcast. He comes in with the full mane in Con Air.

• 1:17:28Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of, not continuity problems, but like stuff shot out of order in the sense that you can tell, like he's changed his hair since they shot the exterior.

• 1:17:37Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:17:38Chris Ryan?

  To the interior. And I wonder if it was just like, that's not a huge concern of this movie is like how his hair looks, you know?

• 1:17:44Bill Simmons?

  I have another what's age the worst. Springsteen's cameo just isn't that good. I just wanted more from it.

• 1:17:50Speaker 02

  I like it.

• 1:17:50Bill Simmons?

  It's fine. Bruce Springsteen, can you come up with better than?

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  Well, two things. It sounds like you guys read an E W. Did you read the consequence of sound?

• 1:17:59Chris Ryan?

  I did.

• 1:17:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, which was like constantly reloading. Did you have that issue?

• 1:18:02Chris Ryan?

  I also had that issue. We gotta talk to the server people on consequence of sound.

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  Really tough.

• 1:18:06Bill Simmons?

  All websites right now.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  But they talked a couple thing about the Bruce Springsteen cameo. One, they claimed that Bruce himself is the one who punched up that line where he's like, oh yeah, you'll feel better. They might feel better. That that was like a Bruce ad.

• 1:18:18Chris Ryan?

  Maybe they feel better. Definitely.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Where he's like, no, it's not that they'll feel better. And so, and then also for, copyright reasons, they had to have Bruce noodling something unidentifiable so they could use it.

• 1:18:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 02

  Because they didn't have to pay for it.

• 1:18:35Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  And they made him say on camera, I'm just making this up as I'm playing it so they could like send it to the record company.

• 1:18:43Chris Ryan?

  If they paid for the river, they would have just like paid for, maybe he could have just complained.

• 1:18:48Bill Simmons?

  Have him actually play one of his songs. Play something from Tunnel Love.

• 1:18:52Speaker 02

  Well, then you, then your, then your budget goes up from 30 million to something higher and you're 47 million taken margin.

• 1:18:58Bill Simmons?

  In this movie, you're fine. Uh, Scott Rosenberg wrote the original draft set in Boston, C R.

• 1:19:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:05Bill Simmons?

  How crazy would that have been?

• 1:19:06Chris Ryan?

  That would have ended our lives.

• 1:19:08Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, they moved around and then somehow he ended up getting writing credit anyway. And then my last one, Fourth Age of the Worst. This movie did pretty well, which led to Fever Pitch and Jimmy Fallon being on the fucking infield grass as the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years and I'll never forgive anyone for that. But if this movie doesn't do well, maybe that doesn't happen. So Woods Age of the Worst for me, Joanna. Get Jimmy Fallon off the fucking field. My team just won the World Series.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Fever Pitch in the UK.

• 1:19:35Chris Ryan?

  Punish Nick Hornby.

• 1:19:36Bill Simmons?

  We'd already made Fever Pitch. Why are we making this again? The Ruffalo Hannah Rubenek Partridge overacting word. It's Jack Black, but I'm also, it's not an insult.

• 1:19:45Chris Ryan?

  Don't take it the wrong way. I mean, Julianne Moore, Saul Rubenek, we're, we're a fan.

• 1:19:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we're a fan.

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  It's also Tim Robbins, but I'm also not mad about it.

• 1:19:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's all fine.

• 1:19:55Chris Ryan?

  I do think Natasha Gregson Wagner, who plays Caroline Forster.

• 1:19:58Bill Simmons?

  Care for Rob?

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  This is your first time.

• 1:20:03Chris Ryan?

  First time.

• 1:20:05Speaker 01

  I'm just saying, her flirt dial is cranked up so high, she forgot how to be a normal person.

• 1:20:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was a definite, like, it is happening in Rob's head.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  It's weird, yeah.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  Some Olivia Nuzzi, like, journalism ethics questions.

• 1:20:18Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  We're getting, we're getting.

• 1:20:19Bill Simmons?

  There's no current affairs here. Oh, Jesus, that was great.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  She's been relieved from her post as West Coast editor.

• 1:20:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Joanna's got a flex category.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Okay, I was tempted to do the category that I invented, which is, would a cellphone ruin this movie? I would say social media would ruin this movie.

• 1:20:39Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:20:39Speaker 02

  We all know too much about our, our exes already, or whatever. But I'm actually gonna give it to, uh, the Big Kahuna Burger, best use of food and drink, is when he says Laura's dad died, and Jack Black goes, "Oh, drag," and then just chomps on a burrito. And it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Oh, drag, and then just like, a massive chomp of a, of a, of like a, mm, $2.99 burrito, I would say.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Barry's whole reaction to her dad dying of like, top five songs about death, Alora's dad tribute list.

• 1:21:11Chris Ryan?

  And then all the guys in the, in the record store are like, okay, yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  A solemn acceptance.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  I mean, tell Laura I love her. Absolutely. Break the house down.

• 1:21:18Bill Simmons?

  CR, what do you have for the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award?

• 1:21:22Chris Ryan?

  I have two. I wonder if Joe and I are circling the same thing, which is, kinda the TV show,

• 1:21:29Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if it's better than the movie, but it has, I think it had legs. My hottest take is that there's just no way Rob and Laura even get back together, much less stay together. And that, first of all, the Marie stuff comes out, fucking one day Barry's like, "Hey, this is Marie DeSauw, remember when you were sleeping with her for like, a couple of weeks when you and Laura broke up?"

• 1:21:48Bill Simmons?

  You fucking asshole!

• 1:21:50Chris Ryan?

  And, uh, I just don't think the, I'm making a mixed CD for the Chicago Reader Music Critic.

• 1:21:56Bill Simmons?

  No, it's a rap. She's, she's getting her stuff again.

• 1:21:59Chris Ryan?

  She's just like, oh, cool.

• 1:22:00Bill Simmons?

  It's done.

• 1:22:00Chris Ryan?

  Like, that doesn't, that's not happening, so.

• 1:22:02Bill Simmons?

  It's a rap when he's caught making the tape.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  I don't know that I would say the show is better, but because, by the nature of television, it just has more time to luxuriate in the side plots, like, I'm selling my terrible ex-husband's record collection.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  You know you guys have the balls to, the TV show is better than this movie. And I like this movie. The TV show is better.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  It's not a balls issue.

• 1:22:24Bill Simmons?

  It's absolute crime.

• 1:22:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  It is a crime.

• 1:22:26Bill Simmons?

  That they canceled it.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  I love that show. I love that show.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  The show is good.

• 1:22:30Bill Simmons?

  And it would have had to have been COVID, because otherwise...

• 1:22:33Chris Ryan?

  The best possible, like Zoe Kravitz got to do, like you just got to see her do everything in that show.

• 1:22:37Bill Simmons?

  Also, no offense to Hulu, but I'm gonna offend Hulu. Like, you're not exactly the 96 Bulls.

• 1:22:44Speaker 02

  Great use of Jake Lacy in that show.

• 1:22:46Bill Simmons?

  It's not like, oh, we have to cancel this because of all of our other awesome shows here on Hulu. Like, what the fuck are you guys doing?

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  Lizzie Moss needed more money for Handmaid's Tale, season seven.

• 1:22:55Bill Simmons?

  It's ridiculous. They have like three good shows a year, max.

• 1:22:58Chris Ryan?

  Do this to Iger next time you see him at a Clippers game.

• 1:23:00Bill Simmons?

  It's ridiculous. How do they cancel this? Zoe Kravitz?

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  They fucking blew it. Like, they really had it in their hands. And again, there's no reason to not let it play out, but...

• 1:23:07Bill Simmons?

  Also, not a lot of people at Hulu in 2019. Like, it was still... I don't think Hulu is where it is now. Handmaid's Tale was like one of their first hit shows.

• 1:23:15Speaker 02

  I think everyone was watching Normal People on Hulu during COVID.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  I certainly was.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:19Bill Simmons?

  Absolute bullshit.

• 1:23:20Speaker 02

  You're not a Normal People head, not a celebrity guy.

• 1:23:23Bill Simmons?

  No, I don't know the story behind it, but I guarantee it's like whoever ran Hulu got fired and it was their show and the new person came in. It's like, well, that's not my show. I don't get credit if it does well. And they just got rid of it. That's what always happens.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  I think in terms of scope too, one way that the show would work better, I saw this quote from Ryan Coogler this morning about like, he's adapting the new X-Files thing. And he was talking about how someone in TV had told him, TV is about like the most important journey in somebody's life. And a movie is about the most important moment in somebody's life.

• 1:23:50Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  The most important moment for Rob is at the end, when he's like, I cannot believe I've been putting everyone at a distance. I haven't committed to anything my entire life. This huge revelation in the rain, and his life changes from that point forward. But he needs more time to actually become a not shitty version of Rob.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you don't need to hear Jack Whack playing music for two minutes to be like, I found the light.

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  And so if you play it out over multiple seasons in a TV show format, like this is a journey story, not a moment story ultimately.

• 1:24:17Chris Ryan?

  It would have just been cool if they were more realistic, where it's like, well, okay, after he covers Marvin Gaye and you do one record release party, like, now what?

• 1:24:24Speaker 02

  Now what? Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Now what?

• 1:24:27Bill Simmons?

  Your take, did you have a hottest take?

• 1:24:30Speaker 02

  I agree, just like Laura should say, Laura should not have come back. I will say this movie does some things for Laura that the book doesn't. Like we're at least in her POV sometimes, like there are scenes of Laura without Rob. And I, the moment where he's crying for her at her dad's funeral does a lot of work for me. But in general, Laura should not have come back, I think.

• 1:24:53Bill Simmons?

  Did you do yours?

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  I have one. The top five, you were talking about earlier, Chris, the top five side one, track one debate in the record store. The problem-

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  Thunder Road not being on it?

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  Well, no, the problem with Smells Like Teen Spirit being on the list is not that it's like a cliche pick. It's that that song kinda sucks and nobody wants to talk about it.

• 1:25:10Chris Ryan?

  This is your hottest take?

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  This is my hottest take.

• 1:25:12Chris Ryan?

  Holy shit, Rob.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  At the risk of never coming back on the rewatchables?

• 1:25:18Speaker 02

  You were like, comment sections have killed the hot take essentially. Here comes Rob with Smells Like Teen Spirit is bad, actually.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  This is the Gen X divide, honestly.

• 1:25:27Chris Ryan?

  Wait a second.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:28Chris Ryan?

  I've been listening to you on the chat for like four years and you're just like, yeah, you know, there's a lot to like about the Bulls. And then you're coming for fucking Kurt Gobie.

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  I have better things to say about I O D Sumu than I do about Smells Like Teen Spirit, to be honest with you.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Tell me more about why that, tell me more about that why that song sucks.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I think there's like the emblematic bigger thing, which to me, to me grunge feels so put on. To me, the ethics of grunge do not feel authentic. They don't feel lived or-

• 1:25:57Chris Ryan?

  Wait, now you're coming for the entire ideology?

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  I'm starting big and we're, and we're doing it.

• 1:26:01Speaker 02

  We have to dig on this take, CEO.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Like we start there and then if I were to pick a grunge song, it wouldn't be Nirvana. If I were to pick a Nirvana song, it wouldn't be like the nonsense radio play Nirvana of all things. Like I, I just do not like that song.

• 1:26:15Chris Ryan?

  Wow, I'm speechless.

• 1:26:18Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's it for the Craig, what's your take on the movie?

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Wow, that was great.

• 1:26:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god, damn it. We may have to rename this category to Rob Mahoney's Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit. It's wildly overrated.

• 1:26:31Speaker 02

  Not even overrated, it just sucks.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  I think it kinda sucks.

• 1:26:34Bill Simmons?

  Dude, you would've done very well. Pass the category over.

• 1:26:36Chris Ryan?

  You would've done very well in Bars in the Night.

• 1:26:38Speaker 02

  The Rob Mahoney's.

• 1:26:39Bill Simmons?

  The Rob Mahoney's.

• 1:26:40Speaker 02

  Teen Spirit sucks, actually.

• 1:26:43Chris Ryan?

  I feel like Rob is like Rocky, he's been fighting right-handed this entire time.

• 1:26:50Chris Ryan?

  What's Rob's hottest take gonna be like?

• 1:26:55Bill Simmons?

  It was funny cuz I thought I had a pretty hot take and now I just feel like.

• 1:26:58Speaker 02

  tepid tepid take compared to what Rob just said.

• 1:27:02Bill Simmons?

  I just don't think the music's good enough for this movie.

• 1:27:04Chris Ryan?

  Whoa, what?

• 1:27:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think it's the biggest reason it was it was a rewatchable for me, but not like one of my movies. Cuz I thought it got too deep cutty.

• 1:27:14Speaker 02

  Did you own the soundtrack?

• 1:27:16Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I did, but I actually now probably prefer listening to like, there's a lot of playlists of.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:27:24Chris Ryan?

  All the songs mentioned in the book and in the movie and and also in the TV shows.

• 1:27:28Speaker 02

  Here's me wandering around saying even y'all in my hotel room and I listened to the official. And I was like, this isn't satisfying. And then I listened to like one of those playlists that.

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  It's just not that good. And I think it could have been like one of the great soundtracks of all time and it's not.

• 1:27:42Chris Ryan?

  To the to the movie's credit, a lot of the music is diegetic where it's like, it'll be like playing in the store. At a certain volume. So like they could have had any like they could have had the greatest collection of songs ever. But I think they use music functionally in this movie rather than like Dazed and Confused where it's just like, this is the fucking best song at the best moment.

• 1:28:02Bill Simmons?

  I just think these guys would have been listening to more music from the last 10 years. They're doing this in 2000. I think the 90s, that was like one of the great decades of all time.

• 1:28:11Chris Ryan?

  I know, but like at a record store, you're trying to sell the new shit.

• 1:28:14Bill Simmons?

  I get it, but this is one of my picking nits though.

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:28:16Bill Simmons?

  I'll do him now as part of my hottest take. The Smashing Pumpkins not being in this movie is outrageous. They're a fucking Chicago band. It's 2000. They just had this crazy run.

• 1:28:28Chris Ryan?

  There was a touchy relationship between the Chicago music scene and Smashing Pumpkins.

• 1:28:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but here's the thing, Billy Corgan in the Springsteen spot, I don't know, makes more sense.

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  You want Billy Corgan in for the rock?

• 1:28:39Chris Ryan?

  That's the sage advice you want?

• 1:28:41Bill Simmons?

  I want Billy Corgan in here.

• 1:28:43Chris Ryan?

  Hey, the world is a vampire.

• 1:28:45Speaker 02

  I don't want anything from Billy Corgan.

• 1:28:47Bill Simmons?

  He's so weird. It's a better cameo. So you don't think the Chicago Pumpkins piece?

• 1:28:53Chris Ryan?

  I just think that there was like the bands that they're championing are like Touch and Go and Drag City bands.

• 1:28:58Bill Simmons?

  I get it. So the Pumpkins are like the sellout band?

• 1:29:00Chris Ryan?

  Kinda, yeah.

• 1:29:02Bill Simmons?

  Well, they're only one of the best bands of the 90s. I don't know.

• 1:29:05Speaker 02

  I will say that Billy Corgan would not have aged well. They they pick they pick the boss. And anyone watching now knows who Bruce Springsteen is, but anyone young watching now does not know who Billy Corgan is.

• 1:29:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but but that's the thing in 2000. I don't think these guys are listening to Bruce Springsteen.

• 1:29:21Chris Ryan?

  But if they're rock critics, adjacent geeks who care a lot about like music history canon stuff. Like The River is a very important record.

• 1:29:30Speaker 02

  Like he pulls he pulls up his Fleetwood Mac album. You know what I mean? Like he's talking about landslide.

• 1:29:34Bill Simmons?

  But you guys don't think he wouldn't have cared about the 90s stuff too? I feel like he would have.

• 1:29:37Chris Ryan?

  But he does care about the 90s stuff. He's playing Beta Band. He's like.

• 1:29:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but that's my point. He's he's going like. The old stuff is like the most famous people possible. And then the new stuff is like the deepest possible.

• 1:29:47Speaker 02

  So you want an older, deeper cuts?

• 1:29:50Bill Simmons?

  I didn't understand his taste.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  You want older, deeper cuts or mainstream current is what you're saying?

• 1:29:55Bill Simmons?

  Whatever he's doing are two separate things at the same time, and I didn't understand it.

• 1:30:00Chris Ryan?

  But a lot of new, a lot of older music genres and like bands were getting kind of rediscovered and re and like appropriated by younger people because you could buy their albums for three bucks. So I remember like for most of my life, I thought Fleetwood Mac was like soft rock that I didn't listen to. But then when you can get their records for like three of them for 10 bucks. And you're like, oh shit, there's like really good songs on Rumors and and Tusk. Like you, that's how like that stuff kind of like was.

• 1:30:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but I'm the same age as the guy in that movie. And by the time you're 30, you're not listening to The River anymore. You're listening to like For You by Springsteen. Like you've moved on to deeper cut Springsteen. That's the part. He's still like basic Springsteen, but Springsteen's been in his life the whole time.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  Isn't that kind of the formula though? It was like the old stuff is the canonized stuff. And then the new stuff is like you are digging deep into the bins to find what is like hyper specific to you. That feels coherent to me.

• 1:30:49Chris Ryan?

  I hear what you're saying, though. I'm just, I just.

• 1:30:51Bill Simmons?

  I don't, I don't know how your mass appeal on one side and then deep, deep, deep cut on the other side. Seems weird.

• 1:30:56Speaker 01

  He contains multitudes.

• 1:30:57Chris Ryan?

  I'm just glad that like whoever they picked isn't massively canceled now so that like what I'm dealing with like.

• 1:31:05Bill Simmons?

  Casting what ifs, Jack Black passed. And they just basically bullied him into doing it. The role of Dick was originally offered to David Arquette.

• 1:31:15Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna give that like a small scale yikes.

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  That's way worse.

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Liz Phair.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  That's the one.

• 1:31:20Bill Simmons?

  Was considered for Marie Desau. We'll never know.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  That's a totally different movie.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  What about Bob Dylan for the boss? If it's Dylan instead of Bruce Springsteen?

• 1:31:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I just don't think he ever does it.

• 1:31:35Speaker 02

  No, he wouldn't, but like, would that have? Billy Corgan or Bob Dylan is my question.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  If that's the binary.

• 1:31:41Bill Simmons?

  I just see Billy Corgan so weird. Springsteen wasn't weird enough. I think, well, Bob Dylan is weirder, so he's probably better than Springsteen.

• 1:31:47Chris Ryan?

  Lisa Bonet is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life. I probably would still throw my life away for Liz Phair.

• 1:31:54Chris Ryan?

  I gotta say.

• 1:31:54Bill Simmons?

  The. CR is like, fucking run. This is my jam.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  They talked about how hard that part was to cast, and I think there is something on Lisa Bonet specifically versus Liz Phair, which is Liz Phair is great. But she needs to feel Marie does like an alien to Rob. Like she needs to feel like from another planet, and that's not Liz Phair's whole deal.

• 1:32:13Bill Simmons?

  CR, who are your nineties female musician throw my life away? Who's, who's in your inner circle for that one?

• 1:32:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, well, I, I think Liz Phair is definitely like the number one seed. She's Gonzaga.

• 1:32:24Bill Simmons?

  Number one?

• 1:32:26Chris Ryan?

  I think so. Uh.

• 1:32:31Chris Ryan?

  There was a lot of like fleeting, like the, this, this is a strange conversation to be having in 2025. Like Sarah Shannon from Velocity Girl.

• 1:32:38Bill Simmons?

  I'm saying in the mid nineties, who were your throw the life awayers? That's not a strange conversation. Liz Phair was up there.

• 1:32:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:32:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The girl, like this lead singer from Velocity Girl would be another one. I don't know if you liked them.

• 1:32:52Bill Simmons?

  Did you, well, Julianne Hatfield was from.

• 1:32:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:32:55Bill Simmons?

  The Boston area, so she was a big one for us. There's a couple others. Uh, we really sidetracked big time.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Bill, do you have any other names and burrowing a hole in your pocket that you want to get out there?

• 1:33:04Chris Ryan?

  That feels like a question you want me to ask you.

• 1:33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  We need to reflect it back to you. I like.

• 1:33:08Speaker 02

  Bill?

• 1:33:09Chris Ryan?

  Tony Donnelly, like, like, what else?

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  You were locked in.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  Would you care to go to therapy or just become a DJ?

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna move on.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  We're moving, we're moving.

• 1:33:14Bill Simmons?

  Lost track. Lost track of where we were. Oh, you mentioned how Ramis Beverly D'Angelo.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  Rob Cusack said he wanted I'm So Tired by John Lennon. Um, for this key scene when Rob finally proposed to Laura and they couldn't clear it. John Lennon was also dead at that point, but also I think would have told John Cusack to fuck off. Would be my guess. Best that guy. Todd Louiso counts, right?

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:33:43Bill Simmons?

  Does anyone know his name's Todd Louiso? I see him and I think he's the Manny from Jerry Maguire and he's from this movie and that's how I know him.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Actually, to this point, I think he's such a that guy. His name is Todd Louiso, I think. At least that's how John Cusack pronounced it.

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  Even Yala.

• 1:33:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but there's a better, there's a better that guy than him.

• 1:34:00Speaker 02

  Alex Deser?

• 1:34:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Bill Simmons?

  Alex Deser.

• 1:34:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  From Becker.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  From PCU anyway.

• 1:34:05Chris Ryan?

  From PCU, yeah.

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  He needed two more scenes in this movie.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  Swingers?

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Like, why isn't he a part of all the arguments?

• 1:34:10Bill Simmons?

  He's in for two minutes and I'm like, can he come back? And then, I don't know, he got cut. This place is dead anyway, CR. Dionne Waiters award, Alex Deser, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lisa Bonet, Tim Robbins, or Natasha Wagner.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  I think it's Catherine Zeta-Jones.

• 1:34:26Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Catherine Zeta-Jones.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Strong agree.

• 1:34:28Chris Ryan?

  What do you think?

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:30Bill Simmons?

  She's great. Did we talk about Lisa Bonet enough?

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  Lisa Bonet is amazing in this movie. And, uh, I was watching this movie with someone who's younger than me and she was like, is that Zoe Kravitz? Said, no, Zoe Kravitz is not old enough to be in this movie. Um, but yeah, she's just, she's absolutely smoke show in this movie.

• 1:34:53Chris Ryan?

  I don't think anyone's ever looked more like their parent than Zoe Kravitz.

• 1:34:56Bill Simmons?

  It's funny because we did this last week with.

• 1:34:58Chris Ryan?

  Exactly alike.

• 1:34:59Bill Simmons?

  We did this with Cameron Crowe. We were talking about Kate Hudson-Goldie-Hawn, how crazy was that a mother and daughter that could have played each other's roles?

• 1:35:05Speaker 02

  Kay Gerber is like.

• 1:35:06Bill Simmons?

  And this is the same thing.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  I can see that one for sure.

• 1:35:08Speaker 02

  Kay Gerber, but, but I think, interestingly, in, in the nepo baby world, uh, that Zoe Kravitz has cultivated looking like her mom. Because like when she first starts in like X-Men and stuff like that, like she doesn't really look as much like her mom as she does now.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  This is the new frontier. You gotta lean into it. You gotta lean into it super hard. You gotta wear it. You gotta style yourself similarly. I think, I think it pays off more than people think.

• 1:35:33Bill Simmons?

  She's one of my true queens, CR.

• 1:35:35Chris Ryan?

  Zoe?

• 1:35:35Bill Simmons?

  Along with.

• 1:35:36Chris Ryan?

  Or Lisa.

• 1:35:36Bill Simmons?

  Lisa.

• 1:35:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:38Bill Simmons?

  Along with Michelle Pfeiffer.

• 1:35:39Chris Ryan?

  The Cosby joke in this movie?

• 1:35:41Bill Simmons?

  Diane Lane.

• 1:35:41Speaker 02

  The Cosby sweater joke?

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, great question.

• 1:35:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  Full side swipe.

• 1:35:47Bill Simmons?

  She probably supported it.

• 1:35:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:50Speaker 02

  What if, what if it had been Cosby instead of Bruce Springsteen?

• 1:35:54Chris Ryan?

  They may have re-edited that. They would have been like, can we get Corgi still?

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  Is Corgi available?

• 1:36:01Bill Simmons?

  Recasting couch director city, I'm just throwing this in quick. Can we test drive? Just take, hop in the car with me for Samantha Mathes as Laura?

• 1:36:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, Jesus.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  Just quick drive around the block with that thought?

• 1:36:12Chris Ryan?

  But then, then I get very defensive.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  Who comes up in this category more than Samantha Mathes?

• 1:36:15Bill Simmons?

  I know, I'm, I keep trying with her. I just thought it was a little throwback to the early 90s of Gen X.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  We were talking about her because we were talking about River Phoenix on the Sneakers pod. And their, and their country music movie that they made together.

• 1:36:27Speaker 01

  What about Laura Linney? I was trying to think like how, who could?

• 1:36:30Bill Simmons?

  Early Laura Linney.

• 1:36:31Chris Ryan?

  She's in Congo by now, right?

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  So this is like, you can count on me era. Like, I'm already like, she's already babysitting Mark Ruffalo.

• 1:36:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, early 90s.

• 1:36:38Chris Ryan?

  Oh, so she's, she's in the mix already.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  I, I think like she could really nail this part. The question is, can she be the partier Laura?

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  She's like a whisper away from love, actually.

• 1:36:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The only other one, if you're gonna keep, if you're gonna keep Laura, uh, being from, uh, Europe, what about Fomka Johnson?

• 1:36:56Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  That's powerful. That's a lot for one movie.

• 1:37:00Speaker 02

  She's, she's gene graying, she's gene graying really hard at the moment.

• 1:37:04Chris Ryan?

  Rounders and high fidelity and a two-year run?

• 1:37:06Bill Simmons?

  I think, I think you're bringing too much firepower to that car, Sierra.

• 1:37:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Craig, you got a flex category.

• 1:37:13Speaker 04

  Um, I, I have the cell phone, same thought as Joe, and that this movie, this movie makes, like, not knowing what happens to your ex seem torturous, when in reality, it's actually like the beauty of it.

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:26Speaker 04

  And that now, I mean, Rob would be on a list now if he had this.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they wouldn't let this dude on commercial.

• 1:37:32Speaker 04

  No, if he knew that like somebody was like across the street at a cafe or was posting photos of like a different guy, he would have completely lost his mind.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:37:38Speaker 04

  But the, the other category I want to give, which is kind of odd, is the Saucy Jenkins Award, the actor you can't believe didn't become a bigger star. Jack Black, although you are right, he is literally probably the the most dependable box office star right now. But he is a kid star. And I think it's kind of crazy that Jack Black never really was like an adult comedy movie star. And for how funny he is, he was never even like the top five of like. That's my favorite comedy star. He never really had like the big movie. He had Shallow Hal.

• 1:38:08Chris Ryan?

  Which kind of ended it, right?

• 1:38:09Speaker 04

  They tried Nacho Libre and things like that. He's really funny in Tropic Thunder. But like, I it's crazy that he never had an Austin Powers or an Ace Ventura. He's so physically gifted. And he like never became an adult comedy star, like a big one. And I think that's really weird.

• 1:38:22Speaker 02

  Would you not count School of Rock as like one of those?

• 1:38:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, but he's saying like he never got in the appetite crowd.

• 1:38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I I agree with the larger take.

• 1:38:31Bill Simmons?

  Franchise comedy.

• 1:38:32Speaker 02

  I think.

• 1:38:33Bill Simmons?

  It's a good point. Like, there should have been like probably five School of Rocks.

• 1:38:36Chris Ryan?

  It's weird that they're not thinking of that now. Like, you could just base, I mean, like, it's strange that, like. Somebody wouldn't make a movie with Jack Black now, or it's like, what's your Ace Ventura?

• 1:38:45Bill Simmons?

  Like, could have been like Jim Carrey, like had like a nineteen ninety four Jim Carrey.

• 1:38:49Speaker 04

  Because he was so gifted physically as a comedian.

• 1:38:50Chris Ryan?

  Definitely.

• 1:38:51Speaker 04

  And it it just never try, I mean, he was so good in Tropic Thunder and he he's really good in the roles he's given. But I can't believe he never had his own franchise.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Stay tuned this holiday season for Anaconda.

• 1:39:00Speaker 04

  It's true. It's true.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  Also, the holiday perpetual rewatch for a lot of people. I think he's maybe the weirdest part of that movie, though.

• 1:39:07Bill Simmons?

  I I could argue he's like the weak link of the holiday. I think part of the problem with him was he the Tenacious D thing was pretty all consuming.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:39:15Bill Simmons?

  He was like on the road half the time with them.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  He has said that, like, he was worried about making this movie. Some people have the theory in this Consequence of Sound oral history that he was worried because he was too scared. And he said that as well, but he was also like, but my music career was kicking off and that was something that I was really interested in as well.

• 1:39:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 1:39:35Bill Simmons?

  Um, half assed and researched.

• 1:39:39Bill Simmons?

  Not a lot, except for you can, if you want to know the Marie De Salle CD, what was on it.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:45Chris Ryan?

  This is really funny.

• 1:39:46Bill Simmons?

  After Baby, I Love Your Way, it includes Ghostbusters, Beat It, Baby Got Back. I Will Survive.

• 1:39:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Bill Simmons?

  Mm bop. My Heart Will Go On, The Time Is Now.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  I will kickstart the Marie De Salle Ghostbusters cut. Like, I need Lisa Bonet singing Ghostbusters in my life. I just need it.

• 1:40:03Speaker 02

  You should turn it up.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Turn that thing up.

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  You should turn it up.

• 1:40:08Bill Simmons?

  Tim Robbins said he agreed to take the small roles in High Fidelity and Anchorman because he didn't care about the money, but he wanted to keep the custom-made wings, wigs. And that was part of the deal, that he got to keep the wigs.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  Do you think Susan enjoyed the Ian Grey ponytail wig?

• 1:40:24Chris Ryan?

  This is still serendipity.

• 1:40:24Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:40:29Bill Simmons?

  Got to Give It Up was the original Jack Black song for that scene, and he really wanted to do the other one, so they did the other one. How many movies do you think Joan and John Cusack have appeared in together?

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  So many.

• 1:40:39Bill Simmons?

  Career.

• 1:40:40Chris Ryan?

  Not only that, how many, but are they the best brother sister actor tandem to appear in films together?

• 1:40:46Bill Simmons?

  Who are they competing against?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Jalen Hall?

• 1:40:48Chris Ryan?

  Together? How many Jalen Hall movies are there?

• 1:40:50Speaker 02

  Donnie Darko.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. How does one suck a fuck?

• 1:40:54Speaker 02

  How exactly does one suck a fuck, Rob?

• 1:40:56Bill Simmons?

  You didn't guess. How many?

• 1:40:57Speaker 02

  Five.

• 1:40:58Bill Simmons?

  Ten.

• 1:40:59Speaker 02

  Ten.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:41:00Chris Ryan?

  There's a bunch that they're just, yeah, they're both sporting, not very big in it.

• 1:41:04Speaker 02

  Cause she's also in, um, that Hughes movie that he's.

• 1:41:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Sixteen Candles. She's incredible in Gross Point Blank, too.

• 1:41:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Has that been rewatchable yet, Gross Point Blank?

• 1:41:15Speaker 02

  Because she, like, I like that this is sort of her, like, Girl on the Phone is like kind of her role in this movie, too.

• 1:41:21Chris Ryan?

  Well, and the scene at the funeral between the two of them is one of the best scenes in the movie.

• 1:41:25Speaker 02

  Which is like, we are talking about someone else. Laura.

• 1:41:29Bill Simmons?

  There's a theory that there's five albums that you can see in Rob's apartment, that that's his top five albums.

• 1:41:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:36Bill Simmons?

  And it's Funkadelic, Neil Young, Beach Boys, Sonic Youth, and The Minutemen.

• 1:41:41Chris Ryan?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:41:41Bill Simmons?

  Five.

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  Checks out.

• 1:41:42Chris Ryan?

  It's a pretty good five.

• 1:41:43Bill Simmons?

  Checks out. Good theory.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  Which be Beach Boys album?

• 1:41:45Bill Simmons?

  Uh.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  It's gotta be Pet Sounds.

• 1:41:47Bill Simmons?

  Wild Honey.

• 1:41:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh. See? Little curveball.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:41:50Chris Ryan?

  Classic Rob.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  Classic Rob.

• 1:41:52Bill Simmons?

  Rob got us again. Speaking of Rob, Rob, you have a flex category. Your first one.

• 1:41:56Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:41:56Bill Simmons?

  Probably your last after you get banned from the Rewatch Month.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go out in flames then, you know?

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  For coming for grudge.

• 1:42:03Bill Simmons?

  You took over the hottest take category.

• 1:42:05Chris Ryan?

  What's we send that clip to Courtney Love? Yeah.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely screwed.

• 1:42:08Bill Simmons?

  I, I can't wait for fantasy for that clip.

• 1:42:10Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:42:11Bill Simmons?

  Who, top three people who would go nuts for that clip?

• 1:42:14Chris Ryan?

  Uh, definitely like Yasi and Sean are gonna lose their minds when they hear that.

• 1:42:18Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna show to Yasi.

• 1:42:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:21Bill Simmons?

  Keep that away from Yasi.

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  Rob, you were like establishing yourself as a music guy.

• 1:42:26Bill Simmons?

  I love it. Listen, as, as Avi know, we need more hottest takes in life.

• 1:42:30Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:42:30Bill Simmons?

  Craig tried to bring back cannibalism. That cannibalism is in Pluribus.

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  It's true. Thanks to Craig. I, I heard.

• 1:42:37Bill Simmons?

  Rob, what's your flex?

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm going to attempt the double Seagal. So we've got Steven Seagal shitting on himself for the most unbelievable anecdote from the actual film shoot and the Steven Seagal Hard to Kill Award, did this movie need a better intimacy coordinator?

• 1:42:50Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Apparently the Tim Robbins dream sequence that we've been talking about, uh, it wasn't really directed by Steven Frears at all. He went and gathered all of the women on set who were just like working in hair and makeup or working in craft services and were like, can you guys just tell us what to do? And the result is that Evangelis said, this was the best sex scene I've ever shot and the most, like the most comfortable I've ever been. So I put it to you. Do they need another intimacy coordinator or did they crowdsource an entirely new model? We should be taking advantage.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  He said Steven Frears was essentially like in the corner with his hands over his eyes.

• 1:43:23Speaker 01

  Turn to the corner shielding himself.

• 1:43:26Speaker 02

  As the women of the wardrobe department were like, grab her ass.

• 1:43:28Speaker 01

  That's hot. That's funny. Crawl your hand down her thigh.

• 1:43:31Chris Ryan?

  Kind of like, I have like a small window to do this. So we gotta, we gotta kind of like.

• 1:43:36Bill Simmons?

  Well, maybe this would be a new blueprint for intimacy coordinators that will go terribly wrong on some other movies. That would be my guess.

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:43Bill Simmons?

  So maybe don't crowdsource the crew.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  Maybe not, or be very careful about who you're hiring in the crew, but it turned out to be a hilarious scene.

• 1:43:49Speaker 02

  Fun fact, the cinematographer of this movie, Seamus McGarvey, also was cinematographer on Fifty Shades of Grey. Was he inspired by this sequence? Who's to say?

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  I don't think so, based on what we know about the Fifty Shades of Grey intimacy coordination.

• 1:44:02Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain, Cusack, no.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  What's the argument for no?

• 1:44:07Speaker 02

  Gross Point Blank.

• 1:44:08Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it is.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  But this run, like 97 to 2000, that run, he doesn't like these.

• 1:44:13Bill Simmons?

  You don't like the run?

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  He doesn't like the run. He likes the exact moment. Trust me, I've tried to unlock this door so many times.

• 1:44:19Bill Simmons?

  It's always fun when a new rewatch, this person comes in.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  What's Apex Mountain?

• 1:44:22Bill Simmons?

  It's the most juice. He didn't have the most juice in this movie.

• 1:44:25Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  They literally called him to be like, can you bail out our script because it doesn't work? Can you make this movie work? And he's like, yes, I will do it. I will star in it. I will make an unlikable character quite survivable within the context of the movie. Like you want to spend time with Rob despite the fact that he sucks. I think he's got a lot of juice here.

• 1:44:45Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he never had an Apex Mountain.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  I think 96, 97 is his Apex.

• 1:44:49Bill Simmons?

  But he's in Con Air?

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  City Hall, Gross Point Blank, Con Air.

• 1:44:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I agree. All right, it's here.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  That's like Blockbuster, Prestige, Pacino, you know. But you stretch out a little bit and you go Thin Red Line, Malkovich, this. Yes. Although he probably doesn't even know he was in Thin Red Line.

• 1:45:04Speaker 02

  I'm not sure anyone does. No one knows they were in Thin Red Line.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  You could have been in it, guys. I don't know.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  I was cut out of Thin Red Line.

• 1:45:10Bill Simmons?

  DeWitted Smith singles.

• 1:45:12Speaker 02

  Microbangs.

• 1:45:13Bill Simmons?

  Love Thy Neighbor.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Microbangs.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  I was thinking about that. That was very attractive to me at the time.

• 1:45:19Bill Simmons?

  Jack Black, no.

• 1:45:21Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:45:22Bill Simmons?

  Beta Beat, definitely.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Beta Band?

• 1:45:24Bill Simmons?

  Beta Band, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, Bone, no. Sada Jones, no. Katrina and the Waves, maybe?

• 1:45:32Speaker 01

  Probably just.

• 1:45:32Bill Simmons?

  To that or when the song actually came out?

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  I think that, yeah. Ibanez?

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Ibanez.

• 1:45:38Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  And her microbang.

• 1:45:40Bill Simmons?

  Sad bastard music, maybe. Breaking the fourth wall in a movie, see, I brought that up earlier, possible.

• 1:45:49Chris Ryan?

  Guess he does, like, they do it in Annie Hall. I'm trying to think of like, when that would have been like, I think Ferris Bueller was probably the most like, I was ever like, shit.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  That might be the one.

• 1:45:58Chris Ryan?

  But this is, this is really good.

• 1:45:59Bill Simmons?

  It's Ferris Bueller. That's, you're, you're right. That's what it is. It's Ferris. Or it's Stanley Roper and Thru's Company, one of those two.

• 1:46:06Speaker 02

  Or Fleabag.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Fleabag is great.

• 1:46:07Bill Simmons?

  Or Fleabag. Uh, would you go for Todd Luazo? Is it the Manny? Or is it this?

• 1:46:14Chris Ryan?

  I think it's this.

• 1:46:15Bill Simmons?

  It's this. I think more people know him from the Manny.

• 1:46:17Speaker 02

  Was it, wasn't it on that ABC show? That has the name Ted in it. It was like a workplace comedy. Do you know what I'm talking about?

• 1:46:23Chris Ryan?

  That, Better, not Better Off Ted.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  Better Off Ted?

• 1:46:25Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  That's a thing.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  He wasn't one of the like guys in the lab. I'm maybe confusing him for another guy who looks like him.

• 1:46:31Bill Simmons?

  Chicago movies, no. Book movie combos from the last thirty-five years.

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  In terms of both are good?

• 1:46:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Chris Ryan?

  Thirty-five?

• 1:46:42Bill Simmons?

  Last thirty-five years. We'll go back to nineteen ninety. I think the answer's Fight Club.

• 1:46:46Speaker 02

  Let's just do twenty-five years. Two thousand on. Why, why are we involving the nineties?

• 1:46:50Bill Simmons?

  Cause I wanted to bring Fight Club into it as the answer.

• 1:46:53Chris Ryan?

  What about Mystic River?

• 1:46:55Speaker 02

  Atonement?

• 1:46:56Chris Ryan?

  What?

• 1:46:56Bill Simmons?

  Is that my daughter?

• 1:47:00Chris Ryan?

  Atonement, really good.

• 1:47:03Bill Simmons?

  Fight Club?

• 1:47:04Chris Ryan?

  When was, Bridges of Madison County was in the nineties?

• 1:47:06Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Bridget Jones.

• 1:47:08Chris Ryan?

  Bridget Jones. Holes, obviously.

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  Obviously, holes. Fifty Shades, we already cited, yeah.

• 1:47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 1:47:16Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:47:18Chris Ryan?

  This is tough. This is tough.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  I think this is Cruise.

• 1:47:22Chris Ryan?

  Hanks?

• 1:47:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm ne- I'm never buying Cruise running a record store in Chicago. I'm pretending he likes music.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  It's Cruise as Ian. That's the move.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think Cruise, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  Cruise as Ian would be unreal.

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 1:47:36Bill Simmons?

  So is that doable? Can Cruise win on that? Or does he have to be the lead?

• 1:47:38Chris Ryan?

  It has to be for the lead.

• 1:47:39Speaker 02

  It has to be the lead?

• 1:47:40Chris Ryan?

  You don't think that they, I mean, yes.

• 1:47:41Bill Simmons?

  It's Hanks then.

• 1:47:42Chris Ryan?

  It's Hanks as Rob.

• 1:47:43Speaker 02

  I guess it's Hanks.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Hanks is Rob, but Cruise is Ian slash Ray.

• 1:47:46Bill Simmons?

  What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

• 1:47:48Chris Ryan?

  I think Barry.

• 1:47:49Speaker 02

  So Ferris said that Philip Seymour Hoffman auditioned for this movie for, it seems like Dick.

• 1:47:54Speaker 01

  They were trying to figure out like, where to put him. But do you think he would have been good as Barry? I mean, he basically does that.

• 1:47:58Bill Simmons?

  I thought he would have been, uh, his version of Dick, I think would have been pretty good. It's like a Scotty J crossed.

• 1:48:04Speaker 02

  I don't think you could put him with Jack Black, though.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  But him- Because he basically does a Jack Black role in Twister.

• 1:48:11Bill Simmons?

  Can we talk that out for a minute?

• 1:48:13Speaker 02

  Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jack Black.

• 1:48:15Bill Simmons?

  You don't think Philip Seymour Hoffman would have laid back and been counterpuncher for Jack Black?

• 1:48:19Speaker 02

  I don't think he's capable of fading that much.

• 1:48:22Chris Ryan?

  I feel like it would be like Philip Seymour Hoffman's punch drunk love character. Shut the fuck up, shut up!

• 1:48:31Chris Ryan?

  It's like, hey, man, we're just talking side one, track ones.

• 1:48:35Speaker 02

  He's like, you put some respect on Anna's name.

• 1:48:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:38Bill Simmons?

  Pick and nits. So Jack Black's character, I think we would all agree, was fantastic as a performer. Just not ever playing music in any capacity.

• 1:48:48Chris Ryan?

  Never got a chance.

• 1:48:49Bill Simmons?

  Just working at the store.

• 1:48:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:50Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't have gone to karaoke night, belted it out a couple of times. This guy never sang.

• 1:48:53Chris Ryan?

  I do like the idea that like when he's just like, how come you're not putting my record out? And he's like, because you just won't let anybody hear your stuff. That being said, the influences that he has up on the flyer for his band has got nothing to do with the music that he plays at the end. Like, this is far from like classic soul, like Palehead and Primal Scream and Warp Records.

• 1:49:15Bill Simmons?

  It's all over the place. Laura, being with Ian, this was like a 90s trope. It was the same guy in Singles with the ponytail guy that Kier Seder's character ends up with. Why do they do this?

• 1:49:32Speaker 02

  You're interested in understanding what tantric is, sometimes you're like, have I tried tempeh? I don't know. Maybe I watched a surf ride.

• 1:49:39Chris Ryan?

  But.

• 1:49:40Bill Simmons?

  How many earrings does this man have on his ear? You know, it could be four, it could be five.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Something I said while watching this movie is I'm upset that my ear jewelry and his ear jewelry is essentially the same. I was not happy about that.

• 1:49:50Chris Ryan?

  There was also like a trend back then, because they would, like, the genre of world music was so kind of popular and it was a very like.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Jack Black wearing the Yanni t-shirt, the Yanni tour t-shirt. This is John Corbett's character in Serendipity too, right? Because he's essentially Yanni in that movie.

• 1:50:06Chris Ryan?

  I do think Rob referring to him as some super tramp fan is offensive. That's rude for no reason. Do you like super tramp? Fine, but like. You have a Nirvana? No comment.

• 1:50:17Speaker 02

  He's a Magnolia soundtrack guy.

• 1:50:19Bill Simmons?

  What other hip picks do we have?

• 1:50:20Chris Ryan?

  Uh, the, um, band that they use as a stand-in for, uh, what is it? Vincent, what's the other kid's name? Like the two, the Kinky Wizards band.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, Vincent and Justin.

• 1:50:31Chris Ryan?

  They play Royal Trucks' music as like, this is what they sound like. But Royal Trucks would be a band in the high fidelity world because they were on Drag City, which is a Chicago label. So that just is like breaking, breaking a seal there. Sorry to get nerdy about that. And the way that Louis, the Alex dessert character, holds the Captain Beefheart record shows that he does not hold-

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  We're getting kicked out of that store.

• 1:50:53Chris Ryan?

  Forty dollar LPs because he's like holding it by the corner of the sleeve and bending it and like you're-

• 1:51:00Speaker 02

  You're like, get your patchouli stink out of my store.

• 1:51:02Chris Ryan?

  Well, no, but it's like, it's like that, that record is now worth like five dollars less because of the way you're holding it.

• 1:51:07Bill Simmons?

  So that was the secret sauce right there from CR.

• 1:51:10Speaker 02

  I think, I think it's really good stuff. Uh, I'm gonna go with Rob can't afford that apartment.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  No chance.

• 1:51:15Chris Ryan?

  No. Nor can he afford to pay Dick and Barry.

• 1:51:18Speaker 02

  Is he paying them only for three days a week, even though they show up full time?

• 1:51:21Chris Ryan?

  Like Evanston, like how, how does that happen?

• 1:51:22Bill Simmons?

  What's the ratio of people who couldn't actually afford the apartment they're in in the movie? Is usually fifty fifty?

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  I believe Marie could afford her apartment, possibly.

• 1:51:32Bill Simmons?

  No, and I'm not saying just this movie in general, with movies and TV shows we like, the apartments are always nicer.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  I would say seventy-five, twenty-five.

• 1:51:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Even seventy-five feels low. I feel like overwhelmingly, it's like you just need enough space for one to film in these places a lot of the times. And then there's just no way they'd be realistic for a record.

• 1:51:48Bill Simmons?

  This is a big thing with my wife when we watch stuff.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  It bothers me a lot.

• 1:51:52Bill Simmons?

  She's always really upset with if they don't get the real estate.

• 1:51:55Speaker 02

  I mean, I think especially because in this movie, he's like, look at my shithole apartment.

• 1:51:59Chris Ryan?

  And I'm like, and it's like, it's pretty cool.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  The, I will say, the other thing about Laura moving in with Ian slash Ray is when he tells, when he tells the story of, of their story, she moved in with him right away. So I think this is just something Laura does.

• 1:52:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:12Chris Ryan?

  Serial monogamist.

• 1:52:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:14Chris Ryan?

  Also a little weird because Ian's living in Rob's building, but moves out and then Laura moves in with him.

• 1:52:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  I think that's the sequence.

• 1:52:20Chris Ryan?

  I would need a minute to kind of process that.

• 1:52:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a move. It's a ploy. The my lease is expiring move.

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Does it work?

• 1:52:30Bill Simmons?

  You, you know who it worked for? My wife.

• 1:52:37Bill Simmons?

  Six months in.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  She said to you, my lease is expired, might as well move in.

• 1:52:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she's like, I'm here all the time anyway.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:44Bill Simmons?

  Next thing I knew, I had a roommate.

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  Bill's like, hold on, let me turn down my world music for a second. We gotta move you in.

• 1:52:49Chris Ryan?

  I think I was like six or eight months into a relationship and a girl I was dating got evicted and was like, I can either leave Boston or live with you. And I was like, well, live with me then.

• 1:52:58Speaker 02

  There's just like.

• 1:52:59Chris Ryan?

  It's like, just as long as you know there's four other guys.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  Working, working in retail in San Francisco in the early aughts. There would be couples who would break up and they would like have to stay there because.

• 1:53:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's tough.

• 1:53:10Speaker 02

  Like someone has to sleep on the couch or whatever because you just like can't afford to move. So.

• 1:53:15Bill Simmons?

  That's like an Apple news story you'd read on the side of your iPhone where it's like, the divorced couples who still live together.

• 1:53:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:22Bill Simmons?

  Here in Harper's magazine.

• 1:53:23Chris Ryan?

  The real story of the housing crisis.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Six minute read.

• 1:53:26Bill Simmons?

  Any other pick and nits from anybody?

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  After the funeral, Rob jumps over the white picket fence into the mud. He's covered in mud. And then immediately goes into a car. They have sex. Um, just vile, absolutely disgusting. Do not do that.

• 1:53:40Chris Ryan?

  Completely cleaned off when he gets into the car.

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  But, but how?

• 1:53:43Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:53:43Speaker 02

  Well, I would say it's a torrential downpour for about like 40% of this movie. So that rain was coming down.

• 1:53:49Speaker 01

  But he's shaking the mud off his hands.

• 1:53:51Chris Ryan?

  Everybody has pneumonia. Yeah.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Disgusting.

• 1:53:54Bill Simmons?

  Any nitpicks, Craig?

• 1:53:56Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 1:53:56Bill Simmons?

  Nothing, nothing brewing for you?

• 1:53:58Speaker 04

  No, not yet. I'll let you know.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  Also, just to be clear about the movie's statement on this, sorting your collection autobiographically is deranged, right? Like it's meant to read as deranged?

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  No, but kind of cool.

• 1:54:09Chris Ryan?

  No, it's, how do I explain this?

• 1:54:12Speaker 01

  It's crazy. It's a crazy thing to do.

• 1:54:15Chris Ryan?

  There's, this is, this is, I gotta tell you, there's nothing more satisfying than reorganizing your CD collection or your records.

• 1:54:22Speaker 01

  I agree with that.

• 1:54:22Chris Ryan?

  Just taking them all out, seeing what you got.

• 1:54:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:54:25Chris Ryan?

  And cleanly putting them back away.

• 1:54:27Speaker 02

  But don't leave them stacked because the, you know, the pressure.

• 1:54:30Speaker 01

  The pressure. They'll compress.

• 1:54:31Speaker 02

  Um, Rob, if you took your movies, your DVDs, your Blu-rays, your 4Ks.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:54:35Speaker 02

  And you put, could you put them in autobiographical order?

• 1:54:38Speaker 01

  No chance. There would be like.

• 1:54:39Speaker 02

  Wouldn't it be fun to try? I watched this. I remember I watched this when I was in fifth grade.

• 1:54:45Chris Ryan?

  Maybe.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  Put on Nirvana unplugged.

• 1:54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Who's to separate the one time I went to like CD Warehouse in 2006 from the other time I went to movie Trading Code in 2005?

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  Maybe you're not a real one like this, Rob.

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  I guess not.

• 1:54:57Speaker 02

  Maybe you're not a true fan.

• 1:54:58Speaker 01

  Is it meant to be autobiographical by when you first listened to it or when you bought the record?

• 1:55:02Chris Ryan?

  I think it's supposed to be every song has a story. So every, every record has a story. It's like, oh, I listened to Superchunk when I broke up with my girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. So I have to find it in this year.

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  The soundtrack of your life stuff.

• 1:55:13Chris Ryan?

  I don't think you can do that.

• 1:55:14Speaker 02

  That is one I would listen to Superchunk.

• 1:55:16Chris Ryan?

  Spotify. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:55:18Bill Simmons?

  Any, any other nitpicks? Cause I'm gonna move on to the Wayne Jenkins Award.

• 1:55:21Chris Ryan?

  Do you have a Wayne Jenkins Award?

• 1:55:23Bill Simmons?

  We can skip it. I could also be talked into doing one.

• 1:55:26Chris Ryan?

  I would, I was wondering, I don't have any other nitpicks.

• 1:55:28Speaker 02

  It's Rob's first time. Don't you think you should do it? I would love one.

• 1:55:31Bill Simmons?

  You wanna do a Wayne Jenkins?

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  I don't wanna do one. I would love to experience one.

• 1:55:35Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:55:38Bill Simmons?

  I had Stephen A. Smith

• 1:55:42Bill Simmons?

  as Rob in the scene when Ian slash Ray shows up to the store.

• 1:55:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 1:55:47Bill Simmons?

  As a fifth scenario. Cause we have four scenarios in there. This would be the fifth. I'll pretend you're, you're Ian slash Ray in this.

• 1:55:59Bill Simmons?

  Ian slash Ray.

• 1:56:02Bill Simmons?

  You know, I like you. You know, we're friends. But I did not appreciate how you came into this record store. That's how I'm.

• 1:56:13Bill Simmons?

  I was doing, Stephen A. YouTube does this, does a very low voice.

• 1:56:17Chris Ryan?

  He's got like a very like, I'm warning you not to cross this line kind of thing. Yeah.

• 1:56:20Bill Simmons?

  Ian slash Ray.

• 1:56:24Bill Simmons?

  You know, I like you.

• 1:56:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:26Bill Simmons?

  If you wanna do whatever you wanna do with Laura. I hope y'all are very happy.

• 1:56:32Bill Simmons?

  Just don't come in this record store again. Cause if you come in a second time. We're gonna have a problem.

• 1:56:39Bill Simmons?

  That's Stephen A. YouTube.

• 1:56:40Chris Ryan?

  Really nice, really nice work by you.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  Pregnant pause, low voice.

• 1:56:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:44Speaker 01

  Honestly, you really hit it. Failed threat, also an important part of the formula.

• 1:56:47Bill Simmons?

  Rob, I'm working on it.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And now he'll go to answering fan mail where he like ranks Pokemon or something.

• 1:56:55Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her, who gets it?

• 1:56:57Chris Ryan?

  I think Cusack, right?

• 1:56:59Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna say Jack Black supporting.

• 1:57:01Speaker 02

  Production designer.

• 1:57:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I like that.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Good call. Especially like the record store they built from scratch.

• 1:57:08Bill Simmons?

  Unanswerable questions.

• 1:57:11Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Ethan Hawke?

• 1:57:13Chris Ryan?

  As Rob?

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Aren't, aren't most?

• 1:57:15Speaker 02

  No. No, because you're taking Troy from Reality Bites and you're putting him in this movie.

• 1:57:24Bill Simmons?

  Or I'm zagging from Troy from Reality Bites and doing the evolutionary older Troy from Reality Bites.

• 1:57:31Chris Ryan?

  Like a self-aware Troy.

• 1:57:32Bill Simmons?

  A little more self-aware.

• 1:57:33Speaker 02

  His dad already died.

• 1:57:34Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  Froggy already went accordon and now he's doing this.

• 1:57:37Chris Ryan?

  Hey, that's my bike crashed and burned. He's moved to Chicago and opened a record store, you know?

• 1:57:44Bill Simmons?

  No?

• 1:57:45Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm in for it. Like, I think Cusack is really tremendous in this movie, but I don't know many Cusack movies that Ethan Hawke couldn't also do.

• 1:57:52Speaker 02

  No, well, here's the deal. I think Ethan Hawke is a way better actor than John Cusack. I think John Cusack has a likability.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  He does.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  That Rob really needs, that Ethan doesn't inherently have.

• 1:58:04Bill Simmons?

  This is my next question. Did Ethan Hawke market correct John Cusack?

• 1:58:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, they're pretty parallel, right? I think he's a little younger than him, but...

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  I mean, maybe that's part of the reason Cusack started doing so much other, so many other weird roles. It's like Ethan Hawke grabbed all the sensitive boys and then Cusack had to hit it and do weird drillers.

• 1:58:22Chris Ryan?

  Like, I have to make a movie in Bulgaria with, like, three UFC fighters.

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  Ethan Hawke could do Must Love Dogs.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  But John Cusack could not do Dead Poets Society.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 1:58:33Bill Simmons?

  Must Love Dogs, not a bad movie.

• 1:58:35Speaker 02

  It's a bad movie.

• 1:58:36Chris Ryan?

  It would have been cool.

• 1:58:36Bill Simmons?

  Not a bad movie.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  That's your Diane Lane head talking, I think.

• 1:58:41Bill Simmons?

  Sure.

• 1:58:45Chris Ryan?

  It would have been interesting if they put Ethan Hawke in the Tim Robbins role and made that character like much more down like it would basically like choose your fighter.

• 1:58:54Speaker 02

  Less cartoonish, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:55Chris Ryan?

  And Laura had to choose between the two icons of Gen X.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  That's just reality bites at that point, isn't it?

• 1:59:00Bill Simmons?

  I mean, that's probably a better.

• 1:59:01Speaker 02

  Actually, Stiller is better in that role.

• 1:59:02Bill Simmons?

  That's a better Ian slash Ray thing, right? He owns like a the biggest comic book store in Chicago or some of these.

• 1:59:08Speaker 02

  He's not even a threat.

• 1:59:09Chris Ryan?

  Why would she be with this guy?

• 1:59:11Bill Simmons?

  True, true. Uh, what, what piece of memorabilia?

• 1:59:13Chris Ryan?

  Oh, we had a couple other possible answers. Who's, who should Rob wind up with?

• 1:59:17Bill Simmons?

  Nobody.

• 1:59:18Speaker 02

  Nobody.

• 1:59:19Bill Simmons?

  Or the reader. You know, I'm already in with the reader lady.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  Well, sub question, not is it better to burn out than fade away? But, uh, why doesn't he call Marie DeSalle?

• 1:59:27Chris Ryan?

  I love that you also did the.

• 1:59:28Speaker 01

  It's part of the move. Like when he and Marie part ways and he's like, I'll call you. And she's like, yeah, whatever. Why wouldn't he call her?

• 1:59:36Speaker 02

  Because both of them knew what that was, which was not an actual beginning of anything, but just sort of like, we're both not over the person, the exes that we're talking about.

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  I just don't believe that that guy does not call her again. Even though he's trying to play a real cool.

• 1:59:49Chris Ryan?

  To me, that's like more out of his league than Charlie.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:59:51Chris Ryan?

  That's like more of my like.

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  How about he has a better reaction to Penny's story?

• 1:59:57Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:59:57Speaker 02

  And he winds up with her because he's like, we're having a great date. She has a light up pen.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:01Speaker 02

  And that's what I thought film critics had to have a light up pen, uh, because of this movie, but he's like, we're having, we're, we're getting along. And if he has a better conversation with her in the restaurant that doesn't end with her storming out on the word rape, then maybe those two crazy kids make it work.

• 2:00:15Speaker 01

  All he had to do was not bring it up. All he had to do was not be going through a what does it all mean thing? And it would have been fine.

• 2:00:20Chris Ryan?

  We never talked about the Alison Ashmore, the one in, in like seventh grade, the first kiss, when he's just like, she married Kevin. I'm fine now.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  Kisses me.

• 2:00:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:30Chris Ryan?

  Marries Kevin.

• 2:00:31Speaker 02

  I'm fine now is such a good, like such a funny delivery.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  That's the thing. Could Ethan Hawke do the like, I am alone in a room screaming? Cause that is half of the Cusack performance.

• 2:00:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're right.

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  That, that, I'm not sure he has that.

• 2:00:45Bill Simmons?

  Anymore?

• 2:00:46Chris Ryan?

  Uh, just, what do you, what do we think the ceiling on Rob's DJing is? You know, like-

• 2:00:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you had some thoughts on this?

• 2:00:52Chris Ryan?

  Well, so, in the early 2000s, I would go see Holortronics DJ, and that was Diplo and his partner Low Budget, and they would play a lot of stuff, but like, it had that same kind of like, "I'll play the Neptunes, and then I'll play like an 80s new wave song," and so it was like, that kind of like variety was emerging as a DJ choice, but I don't know, like, they make it seem like Rob is just selling clubs out with his DJing. And I was just like, I'm not so sure that's like a viable-

• 2:01:19Bill Simmons?

  He also didn't have the DJ type of personality.

• 2:01:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:23Bill Simmons?

  Like, did you believe he was a DJ? DJs have a certain vibe to them that I'm not sure John Cusack has. I can't see him being like-

• 2:01:33Bill Simmons?

  DJs gotta do a lot of that to get the crowd going.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  When famous enough that Caroline would remember him, but not so famous she wouldn't remember that he's Rob and not Bob. It's like, it's, it's a weird fine line.

• 2:01:43Speaker 02

  You have a weird thing about-

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Rob and Bob?

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:46Bill Simmons?

  Rob, Bob.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  I think we all do, you know?

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  But like-

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  It's nothing offensive, it's just like, "I am not a Bob."

• 2:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, or a Bobby, or anyone.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  Definitely not a Bobby.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  I mean, nobody wants to be a Bobby.

• 2:01:56Speaker 02

  But you could be a Rob-

• 2:01:58Speaker 02

  But you could be a Rob or a Robert, but not a Bob or a Bobby.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I literally am a Robert, and I'm definitely a Rob.

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  Bob is just like, it's a, they grew up on the other side of the, of the river, you know?

• 2:02:07Chris Ryan?

  You should develop a group chat character called Bob Mahoney. That's where you save your real takes, you know?

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  Chris, have you ever considered Topher?

• 2:02:14Chris Ryan?

  No, no.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:02:17Bill Simmons?

  That's in the Chaz, Chaz camp.

• 2:02:19Chris Ryan?

  That wasn't in the mix until Topher Grace, honestly.

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  I didn't, it, it took years until I figured out that that was short for Christopher.

• 2:02:26Speaker 01

  I just found that out right now.

• 2:02:28Bill Simmons?

  And Liam's the other one, that, Liam's didn't exist for the first 30 years of my life, and then all of a sudden they started-

• 2:02:33Chris Ryan?

  I'm just glad I got past the era of my little league coach calling me Chrissy, you know? That was like-

• 2:02:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:39Speaker 02

  Tough.

• 2:02:39Chris Ryan?

  I was just really worried that was gonna stick, and it didn't.

• 2:02:42Bill Simmons?

  Tony Soprano called Christopher Chrissy a couple times, that's the last time that's happened.

• 2:02:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:47Speaker 02

  What about Will Simmons? Like, your alter ego, Will Simmons?

• 2:02:50Bill Simmons?

  Ah, just, never would have- No, I was Billy for the first like 20 years. Then went to college and dropped the Y.

• 2:02:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh wow.

• 2:02:59Bill Simmons?

  Cause my dad was always Bill and I was Billy, they separated us.

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  So did you just never introduce any yourself to anyone as Billy? You're Bill now.

• 2:03:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'm Bill.

• 2:03:07Speaker 02

  A rebranding?

• 2:03:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm now Bill.

• 2:03:09Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:03:10Bill Simmons?

  Uh, what memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? What one thing?

• 2:03:14Chris Ryan?

  Uh, to be completely honest, it's not quite memorabilia, I want the record store.

• 2:03:19Bill Simmons?

  All the entire record store.

• 2:03:21Chris Ryan?

  I just want a storefront, smoking indoors is allowed, we listen to records all day and argue with each other. Can you probably livestream it?

• 2:03:29Bill Simmons?

  There's a Marie Desal poster that I think would be pretty great.

• 2:03:32Chris Ryan?

  The black and white one?

• 2:03:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the one, you see outside the club, there's a poster of her thing, I thought it was good.

• 2:03:38Speaker 02

  What about the Dicky shirt that he wears and Zoe Kravitz also wears in the TV show?

• 2:03:43Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 2:03:44Speaker 01

  Quite good.

• 2:03:45Speaker 02

  Also, great coat, John Cusack perhaps top five coat actor.

• 2:03:51Chris Ryan?

  The leather jacket?

• 2:03:52Speaker 02

  The long leather jacket, but he's like a really good coat jacket actor, he knows how to like swing a pocket, et cetera, et cetera.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 2:03:59Speaker 02

  How about you, Rob?

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  I would love the flyer for the record release party, which, I mean, it looks, it looks like a woman is giving birth to the name Kinky Wizards in space. But most importantly to me, at the risk of doxing myself, the party's happening literally on my birthday, so I gotta have the flyer, you know?

• 2:04:18Chris Ryan?

  Just more fuel for the Nirvana.

• 2:04:20Speaker 02

  I know, for Courtney Love to steal your identity.

• 2:04:23Bill Simmons?

  Life lesson.

• 2:04:25Chris Ryan?

  Is it, it's not what you like, it's what, not what you're like, it's what you like?

• 2:04:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think that's a pretty good one.

• 2:04:30Speaker 02

  For all the physical media collectors at The Ringer, fetish properties are not unlike porn.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  I mean, it's true.

• 2:04:36Chris Ryan?

  I'd feel bad selling to these guys if I wasn't one of them.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  How about when, when Rob is going through what he misses about Laura, talking about how she has character? It's like, character is not taking it out on people when you're having a bad day. I think there's some truth to that.

• 2:04:49Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 2:04:50Speaker 02

  But more importantly, it's what you like.

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:04:53Chris Ryan?

  I mean, that's the movie.

• 2:04:53Speaker 02

  I know what you were like.

• 2:04:55Bill Simmons?

  Double feature tres?

• 2:04:56Chris Ryan?

  You know, Joe, Joe got me thinking about Clerks, but I had Empire Records written down.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  What about if you, so if you flip the formula and you make a movie that's basically from Laura's perspective, it's also another Nick Hornby book, which is Juliet Naked, where she's like dating a guy.

• 2:05:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:13Speaker 01

  Who is like a Rob.

• 2:05:14Chris Ryan?

  And has Ethan Hawke in it, right?

• 2:05:15Bill Simmons?

  I like that book.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  I think that, like, the movie's pretty good. I think it could work as a double feature.

• 2:05:19Speaker 02

  I would say either Gross Point Blank or About a Boy.

• 2:05:23Bill Simmons?

  I would do Say Anything, bookend it with Cusack, the beginning and end of Gen X.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:28Bill Simmons?

  Uh, who won the movie?

• 2:05:30Speaker 02

  Jack Black.

• 2:05:33Bill Simmons?

  I think Jack Black as well.

• 2:05:34Speaker 02

  His entire career.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, it's hard to argue. I, I think what Cusack gets out of this is pretty powerful. And like, all the iconography of the movie.

• 2:05:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  The cover, the poster, him in the record stores, all Cusack.

• 2:05:45Bill Simmons?

  But Cusack wins because he knew that Jack Black, this was the perfect part for him.

• 2:05:51Speaker 02

  That's right. He made Jack Black.

• 2:05:52Bill Simmons?

  He wins out of this.

• 2:05:53Chris Ryan?

  Springsteen and calling Dylan.

• 2:05:55Bill Simmons?

  I told these guys, Jack Black was gonna be great. I told Dylan when I was on the phone with him.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Picked all the songs in the movie.

• 2:06:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What do you have?

• 2:06:02Chris Ryan?

  I think I have Cusack. I think that there was a road here where he could have done like, an iconic generational role every 10 years. And he kinda did in his teens and his twenties and gets right up to the, the precipice of his 40s and it just goes direct to video.

• 2:06:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:06:19Bill Simmons?

  Too Much Time with Jeremy Pittman. Um, producer Craig.

• 2:06:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:23Bill Simmons?

  What do you got?

• 2:06:24Speaker 04

  Never seen this film.

• 2:06:25Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 2:06:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um.

• 2:06:27Bill Simmons?

  But your wife likes it, though.

• 2:06:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, she saw it a while ago and I think she saw it when she was really young and was like, I, now I'm realizing that I completely didn't get that movie and I need to watch it again. But there's a lot I liked about this movie, but there's no way I could like it as much as the people who actually fit the demo who saw it when it came out. Like, I just think you kinda can't get there unless you were there. It's just not for me. It's not mine. Like, I feel like you guys were like the people in the record store in the movie, like, working there.

• 2:06:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52Speaker 04

  And then I was the dad who watched it.

• 2:06:53Chris Ryan?

  The square dad.

• 2:06:55Speaker 01

  What, are you in a coma?

• 2:06:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm like, I'm not gonna point out the scenes I liked, but you guys are like, you weren't fucking there, you don't understand. But it's funny, this movie being in 2000, I feel like I knew less of the names you guys talked about today than a movie that came out like 1980.

• 2:07:09Chris Ryan?

  Of the actors or like the bands?

• 2:07:10Speaker 04

  Just like the cultural references are just like gone. I don't like, when you were just naming all the singers that you were like attracted to in the 90s, like, I didn't know any of the names you were talking about. Half the bands over my head. It's crazy that, you know, I think. The, the, I was born in nineteen ninety-four. And it's like, your parents, when I, you know, when, right when they have kids, like, that's the time in your life where you like, stop consuming new things, right? And so from, probably from like ninety-four to two thousand, my parents probably watched the least amount of movies they had ever watched. Which is when kind of this comes out. And then when I come to, in like the mid-two thousands, I was completely getting ingested into like the Appetow era. So I think there was just like, it's like, there are these blind spots, and it's why I saw eighties movies before these movies, because my parents loved the eighties movies.

• 2:07:53Speaker 04

  So I think there's like a blind spot from like ninety-four to two thousand, that I just like, have no cultural reference for.

• 2:07:59Bill Simmons?

  And you never read the book?

• 2:08:00Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:08:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. The book's really good, it's worth reading.

• 2:08:03Chris Ryan?

  It really is.

• 2:08:04Speaker 02

  My copy is all water damaged, because I accidentally left it on the lawn of my dorm, and the sprinklers came on. And so it's all like crunchy and wavy, and I was just like, I'm gonna keep it that way.

• 2:08:15Speaker 04

  I also struggle with the like, the emotionally stunted, like, angry at the world, woe is me, like Reality Bites Troy type. I don't, there's something about that that's never called, I don't love that.

• 2:08:27Chris Ryan?

  But that is the Appetow guys too. Like that, you know, in a slightly different. They're just making fun of each other.

• 2:08:32Speaker 02

  They're just more stoned.

• 2:08:33Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 2:08:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, it, it, it turns much more raunchy and slapstick.

• 2:08:37Chris Ryan?

  They're trying to do Mr. Skin.

• 2:08:41Chris Ryan?

  Instead of having a record store.

• 2:08:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's like, it's, it's not as clever, like, the writing is not as clever deliberately. Like, there are still lines in this movie that are very Reality Bites-y, like, John Cusack looking at the camera and being like, it was a state of ill-advised blah blah blah, and you're like, nobody in an Appetow movie talks like that?

• 2:08:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:58Speaker 04

  And it's still very, it's, it's very lyrical in this movie, which is like, kind of a, a example of that nineties style.

• 2:09:03Speaker 02

  Except for my guts have shits for brains, which is a line I would cut from this movie.

• 2:09:09Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to apologize for, we end the pod, that I didn't mention the lady from Mazzy Star as one of my throw my life away people.

• 2:09:16Chris Ryan?

  Well, you didn't, you, you, you did that classic thing where you shoved the boat out, you, you didn't come up behind me. It's like, who, who is your rusher? So, the lady, lady from Mazzy Star, who else?

• 2:09:26Speaker 02

  Julianne Hatfield?

• 2:09:27Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 2:09:27Speaker 04

  Like, who are these people?

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  Matthew Star, you got it.

• 2:09:33Speaker 04

  I don't know what that is.

• 2:09:34Chris Ryan?

  You don't know Fade Into You? You would know that song.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  You would know Fade Into You, yeah.

• 2:09:38Bill Simmons?

  Who was the one that dated Evan Danda?

• 2:09:42Chris Ryan?

  Julianne Hatfield did, didn't she?

• 2:09:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's on there. I feel like we're missing somebody. I'm not prepared for this.

• 2:09:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, you asked me.

• 2:09:50Speaker 02

  This is what I wanted to hear from you either.

• 2:09:51Chris Ryan?

  This is how it feels.

• 2:09:52Speaker 04

  I asked you, but I didn't.

• 2:09:52Speaker 01

  You didn't keep a list on you.

• 2:09:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I didn't like, I didn't, it wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna talk about who I was attracted to for a decade. Like, it was, I just forgot.

• 2:09:59Speaker 04

  You're always doing that in the office, though.

• 2:10:03Speaker 02

  Cracking a cold poppy can.

• 2:10:04Chris Ryan?

  It was also like, there was just like, it was more like types of women. And it was like, you know, it was more like, um, women in Hal Hartley movies or Noah Baumbach movies or whatever.

• 2:10:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, like the girl in Kickin' for, Kickin' and Screamin'.

• 2:10:20Bill Simmons?

  Rob, how was it for you?

• 2:10:21Speaker 01

  Just great.

• 2:10:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:22Speaker 01

  This is the kind of initiation I was, I was hoping and dreaming of, so thank you.

• 2:10:25Speaker 02

  Hoping to just like burn your, your career with that day.

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, this is it. It's, I clearly can't be invited back.

• 2:10:30Bill Simmons?

  Joe, man, a pleasure as always.

• 2:10:32Speaker 02

  That's real.

• 2:10:32Bill Simmons?

  See, R, you're the best. Thanks to Craig Rollback, Gahal as well. Who else is back there?

• 2:10:37Speaker 04

  I don't know who's back there now. C.T., Jack Wilson, shouts out to Eduardo.

• 2:10:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, all right, we'll be back. Uh, how many more this, what, what's today's date?

• 2:10:45Chris Ryan?

  It's, uh, today is like the eighth or ninth or something.

• 2:10:48Speaker 04

  Today's the 10th.

• 2:10:49Chris Ryan?

  10th.

• 2:10:49Speaker 04

  We have, we have, uh, two more in the month of December.

• 2:10:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, wow, there you go. Thanks, guys.

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  Thanks, Bill.

• 2:10:55Speaker 02

  Thanks.

• 2:11:07Bill Simmons?

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