Movie Review: The Devil’s Advocate [TEASER]

Are lawyers literally the devil? Is toe sucking satanic? Have you voted yet? Thank you to our wonderful subscribers! If you're not a 5-4 Premium member, you're not hearing every episode! To hear this and other Premium-only episodes, access to our Slack community, and more, join at fivefourpod.com/support. 5 to 4 is presented by Prologue Projects. This episode was produced by Allison Rodgers. Leon Neyfakh provides editorial support. Our website was designed by Peter Murphy. Our artwork is by Teddy Blanks at Chips NY, and our theme song is by Spatial Relations. Our Sponsors: * Check out Mint Mobile and use my code mintmobile.com/fivefour for a great deal: https://www.mintmobile.com * Check out Quince and use my code FIVEFOUR for a great deal: https://www.quince.com Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Not fucking guilty!

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Oh my god, you fucking fucking shit!

• 0:06Speaker 00

  38 minutes, modular.

• 0:11Speaker 00

  38 minutes, modular. I'm too good!

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Hey, everyone. This is Leon from Prologue Projects. On this week's subscriber-only episode of Five to Four, Peter, Rhiannon, and Michael are offering a salve for your election day anxiety and taking this moment to discuss The Devil's Advocate, a film from 1997 that dares to ask the question, "What if lawyers are literally evil?" The film stars Keanu Reeves as a hotshot Florida defense attorney who is recruited to work for a New York City law firm run by a sinister partner played by Al Pacino. We hope this episode gives you a much-needed break from the news on midterms day. But remember to go out and vote if you haven't already. If you want to watch the election results roll in with the Five to Four crew, Peter, Rhi, and Michael are doing a live Zoom tonight at 8:00 PM Eastern

• 1:04Speaker 02

  with our arch-enemy Patreon subscribers. This is Five to Four, a podcast about how much the Supreme Court and lawyers in general suck.

• 1:16Peter Shamshiri?

  Welcome to Five to Four, where we dissect and analyze the Supreme Court cases that have kept our civil rights waiting, like you, waiting in line to vote right now. I'm Peter. I'm here with Michael.

• 1:27Michael Liroff?

  Hey, everybody.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  Hello. Happy Election Day, everybody. Anybody else shitting their pants?

• 1:31Peter Shamshiri?

  Midterm day, folks.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34Peter Shamshiri?

  No matter what happens, we're all in this together, you know? This beautiful experiment called America.

• 1:43Michael Liroff?

  Yeah.

• 1:43Peter Shamshiri?

  Just kidding. If this goes even a little bit wrong, I'll be losing my fucking mind.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50Peter Shamshiri?

  It sucks that all the polls, as of now, as of the time of recording, are super favorable. And it's like, so we can only be disappointed, right?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58Peter Shamshiri?

  This is like being the best team in the championship game.

• 2:02Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 2:02Peter Shamshiri?

  Either what you expect to happen, happens, or horrible disappointment, right? Those are the two options.

• 2:09Michael Liroff?

  Right.

• 2:09Peter Shamshiri?

  Anyway, we are, at the end of the day, an electoralist podcast, so we hope that you are, in fact, waiting in line to vote.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  We're an "exercise your right to vote or you don't deserve to call yourself American" podcast.

• 2:22Peter Shamshiri?

  That's right. But at the end of the day, we did not want to add to your election day stress, so we're doing a movie episode.

• 2:30Michael Liroff?

  But before we start, I wanted to tell you to cold on air, on recording, about this new play, this new musical.

• 2:39Peter Shamshiri?

  Yes. You've told us that you had a story, and you've been keeping this in your pocket for a good 48 hours now.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Michael's been texting in the group chat that he wants to tell us about a musical.

• 2:50Michael Liroff?

  So it's called Midnight.

• 2:51Peter Shamshiri?

  Okay.

• 2:52Michael Liroff?

  It's set in this pre-Civil War South. Already, get excited. And there are 12 cast members, six black, six white. The black people playing enslaved African-Americans, and the white people playing their owners.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  People.

• 3:07Michael Liroff?

  The main character is enslaved and working alongside his owner and building a house together. They discover a bond of mutual admiration and friendship, and ultimately, gay love.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 3:24Michael Liroff?

  And that's just the first act. And then, at the end of the first act, at the end of the first act,

• 3:31Michael Liroff?

  this is, I'm very excited about this. At the end of the first act, our enslaved main character says to his lover slash owner, "Well, you can't really understand me unless you, like, walk a mile in my shoes." And then they break the fourth wall and sing to the audience that it's time to suspend disbelief because all the black characters are going to Freaky Friday body swap with all the white characters.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  What?

• 3:55Michael Liroff?

  And then, all the black actors and white actors disrobe onstage and swap costumes. And then, in the second act, all the black actors play white.

• 4:06Peter Shamshiri?

  Hey, folks, if you want to hear the rest of this episode, you're going to have to subscribe. This episode is one of our premium Patreon-only episodes. Membership starts at just $5 a month. So if you want to hear the rest, join us at patreon.com/54pod. That's 54pod, all spelled out. Members get a bunch of stuff. Not only do you get access to the premium episodes, but access to subscriber-only events, discounts on merch. And at the $10 a month level, you get bigger discounts on merch and membership in the incredibly rowdy Five to Four Slack. So again, that's patreon.com/54pod. 54pod, all spelled out. Become a member today.