The Top 10 Garbage Scorsese Movies and ‘The Alto Knights’

Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan to react to some trailer and release calendar news about ‘One Battle After Another,’ ‘Materialists,’ ‘F1,’ ‘Together,’ and ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ (2:41). Then, they discuss Barry Levinson’s new gangster movie ‘The Alto Nights,’ written by Nicholas Pileggi and starring Robert De Niro (18:58). Finally, they sketch out a new mini-genre, “Garbage Scorsese,” a list of films that are deeply indebted to the work of Martin Scorsese but not actually that good (43:45). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Chris Ryan Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders 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.

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is presented by Audi. The all-new, fully-electric Audi Q6 e-tron is a huge leap forward, featuring effortless power, serious acceleration, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. Experience technology that puts you center stage with a panoramic digital stage, plus an optional screen for front seat passengers, so they can kick back with a movie. Q6 e-tron is not just a new EV. It's a new way to experience driving. Learn more at AudiUSA.com. Always pay careful attention to the road and do not drive while distracted.

• 0:39Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey.

• 0:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:41Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the big-picture-y conversation show about garbage Scorsese, trash Marty, Italiano strazate! On today's show, Chris Ryan joins us to discuss the new movie, The Alto Nights, which is directed not by Martin Scorsese, but by Barry Levinson, and it stars Robert De Niro. It certainly owes a debt to Martin Scorsese, who is a patron saint of this podcast. And with that in mind, we'll be breaking down our top 10 garbage Scorsese movies, a loving tribute to the films that are deeply indebted to, but not really on the level of Marty, I would say. Yeah. Chris, are you excited about this endeavor? I plead the fifth. Hell of a start. I'm not gonna incriminate myself.

• 1:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I would tend to incriminate myself.

• 1:24Sean Fennessey?

  Programming reminder, on Wednesday, the next installment of 25 for 25 continues.

• 1:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:30Sean Fennessey?

  It is not The Alto Nights, I assure you. It'll be number 24. Question about the schedule. Okay. Did you not do your 25th film last week? We did do it last week. And now the 24th film is this week. Yes, and then we'll take a little break. Oh, okay. So bi-weekly just means two times a month, some... Two to three times a month. Okay.

• 1:48Amanda Dobbins?

  We're gonna sprinkle them out.

• 1:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's 52 weeks, 25 films. We gotta do-

• 1:53Amanda Dobbins?

  We're starting in March.

• 1:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54Amanda Dobbins?

  So I think we're down to like 30 weeks.

• 1:56Sean Fennessey?

  So you guys are gonna go into 26 with this? No.

• 1:58Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no.

• 1:59Sean Fennessey?

  We'll be done in December. Okay. In fact, maybe the last podcast you hear in December. Will be the number one film. Actually, I don't think that's true.

• 2:06Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 2:06Sean Fennessey?

  Because it's a pretty noisy release time.

• 2:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and also the selection committee would be afterwards, because we can't spoil number one.

• 2:12Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that's a New Year's Day release.

• 2:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, maybe it should be New Year's Eve in honor of your list, you know?

• 2:18Sean Fennessey?

  How wonderful.

• 2:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, the Sean fantasy tradition. That's nice.

• 2:20Sean Fennessey?

  I like that. Yeah, let's do that. Okay. Let's talk about some news.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24Sean Fennessey?

  A lot has happened. We double recorded and had a banked episode, the Tracy Let's Draft. People love Tracy. They were like, bring him back all the time. I'm like, this is an acclaimed playwright living in New York with his wife, Carrie Coon. We can't come on the pod every week, guys. I'm very sorry. I wish he could, but he can't. Trailers and schedule news. Something happened last week that is very important to this show, which is that Warner Brothers shifted some of the chess pieces on their board. One battle after another, the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, it was announced, was moved, as we suspected, from August 8th, only until September 26th.

• 2:58Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 2:59Sean Fennessey?

  It stays on the 2025 calendar. And then one day later, we saw a teaser for the film.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  A teaser for the teaser.

• 3:06Sean Fennessey?

  A teaser for the trailer.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:08Sean Fennessey?

  And I watched it.

• 3:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 3:10Sean Fennessey?

  This movie features Leonardo DiCaprio, guns, a baby.

• 3:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, I got a little nervous about that.

• 3:18Sean Fennessey?

  Tiana Taylor.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Sean Penn.

• 3:20Sean Fennessey?

  Sean Penn's voice.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Sean Penn briefly seen.

• 3:24Sean Fennessey?

  The young actress from Presumed Innocent.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26Sean Fennessey?

  What's her name? Chase Infinity?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  Is that her name?

• 3:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think so. Can you look that up for me?

• 3:32Amanda Dobbins?

  One battle after another, doing it, doing it. Hold on. This is podcasting. Chase Infinity, that's right.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Great job.

• 3:40Amanda Dobbins?

  With an I.

• 3:41Sean Fennessey?

  With an I.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  You finished Presumed Innocent?

• 3:43Sean Fennessey?

  I did finish it. I did not like the last episode. I thought the series through four episodes rocked.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and then it took a really long time.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  It took a turn.

• 3:52Amanda Dobbins?

  I think I might get into Scott Taro, like, the novels this summer, though. That might be my reproject.

• 3:58Sean Fennessey?

  He didn't write One Battle After Another, just so you know.

• 4:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe I'm gonna do Vineland and then all the novels of Scott Taro.

• 4:05Sean Fennessey?

  That would probably be a nice palate cleanser.

• 4:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, One Battle After Another, will you watch the trailer? Because you are a little trailer phobic these days.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  We just talked about this because there is another Andor trailer came out. And we were like, should we even bother? Like, we're sold. We have our money. Let's go. And I don't want to get, but that was like a much more impressionistic, like, here are the themes, but not necessarily giving away any plot points. I think PTA is one of our greatest trailer cutters, and so I will be indulging in this. I have watched this teaser. Forty-two times.

• 4:37Sean Fennessey?

  I, yeah, I had a text exchange with friends about this as well, sort of like, okay, what's your count up to on watching this? Which is a little sad, but also, and a testimony to where movies are in 2025.

• 4:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I definitely watched it multiple times, like, in a room with my two children, you know, and I was like, hold on, boys, mom's gotta watch these machine guns again.

• 4:56Sean Fennessey?

  Quite a, quite a shot. Pregnant Tiana Taylor firing a semi-automatic rifle. Uh, I, you know, I'm really excited. I'm sure when the trailer comes out, we'll do something more specific about it.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Will you guys do a Vineland book club episode or anything?

• 5:07Sean Fennessey?

  I think it just needs to be a big part of the conversation of the movie, right? Because we don't know, it seems like a very loose adaptation that seems to be a modernization in taking a lot of the themes about power and control and government conspiracy into the 21st century.

• 5:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, as discussed, Sean's having a hard time reading.

• 5:23Sean Fennessey?

  I am having a hard, well, I, that, that book.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  You're post-literate.

• 5:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Sean Fennessey?

  No, I mean, I read every day.

• 5:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:29Sean Fennessey?

  I read, I read journalism.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:31Sean Fennessey?

  I read, I read websites.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Discourse.

• 5:33Sean Fennessey?

  So, yeah, I'm struggling to read fiction, but I will complete Vineland.

• 5:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:38Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm not worried about that. And I will watch One Battle After Another trailer multiple times and the film multiple times as well. September 26th.

• 5:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. Would suggest that.

• 5:48Sean Fennessey?

  Would suggest that it will go to a fall festival. In fact, I think the Deadline Report about this schedule shuffle indicated that. Now, PTA movies, I think I was sharing some of these data points with you. He has, his movies have played festivals. I don't know that he loves festivals in general.

• 6:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:04Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, so there is a part of me that is wondering if he would hold it back entirely the way that Phantom Thread was held back entirely and Licorice Pizza was held back entirely from those experiences. But like, The Master, I believe, played Venice. Um, I think There Will Be Blood was at Telluride.

• 6:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 6:22Sean Fennessey?

  I think Inherent Vice was at, was it, wasn't it Cannes? I can't recall where it was, maybe New York Film Festival? So, you're planning on Venice this year?

• 6:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so, yeah.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  I'm going to Telluride this year.

• 6:36Amanda Dobbins?

  You sure you don't want to come for a couple of days? I gotta book the Airbnb soon if we want two bedrooms, so.

• 6:43Sean Fennessey?

  I can't go, unfortunately. I've, I've made my plans, I booked my rooms.

• 6:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I will see Leo on the Lido.

• 6:50Sean Fennessey?

  You may, I do wonder if after the disastrous premiere of Joker Folie Deux.

• 6:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 6:58Sean Fennessey?

  At Venice last year. That Warner Brothers might be a little reluctant to put $180 million Leonardo DiCaprio movie.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  This might come up later.

• 7:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it will, it will. Some more Warner Brothers conversation. In addition, Weapons, the forthcoming movie from Zach Cregger, which has been described as a horror movie version of Magnolia.

• 7:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 7:19Sean Fennessey?

  A multi-character arc horror story from Cregger, has been moved up to August 8th into that one battle after another spot. Cregger directed Barbarian, which Chris and I told you about.

• 7:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 7:30Sean Fennessey?

  Quite vigorously a couple of years ago on the podcast. While you had a concussion. Interesting episode of the show. Maggie Dillon.

• 7:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Stayed with me.

• 7:36Sean Fennessey?

  Maggie Dillon holds the bride, which is a musical adaptation of Frankenstein's Monster Bride story, has been moved to 2026. Testing hasn't been good.

• 7:46Amanda Dobbins?

  All right.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Other Cregger news, just as a little footnote, his Resident Evil project seems to have cast Austin Abrams as its star. So for all the homies who had Wolf's stock in Austin Abrams, or Paper Town's stock in Austin Abrams, it's hidden.

• 8:04Sean Fennessey?

  Austin Abrams also one of the stars of Weapons. So maybe that's where Cregger got the idea from.

• 8:10Sean Fennessey?

  Other trailer news, Materialists, Celine Song's new film starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal, comes to us June 13th, very soon on the show. An adult romantic comedy. What did you think about that trailer?

• 8:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm very excited for romantic comedies.

• 8:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:25Amanda Dobbins?

  And you're gonna have to apologize to Chris Evans, and that seems nice.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we'll see.

• 8:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know, we'll see. I'll be watching with interest.

• 8:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:33Sean Fennessey?

  Romantic comedies, have you seen one?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  I have seen a few, yeah.

• 8:35Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, usually they're.

• 8:37Amanda Dobbins?

  What's your favorite?

• 8:38Speaker 02

  John Woo's Hard Boiled.

• 8:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I love to be among my people.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  No, come on. I love broadcast news. I love, I love romance comedies. Full of your stories is one of my favorite films ever made.

• 8:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, fair enough. That's, that's good.

• 8:50Sean Fennessey?

  Broadcast news, apparently the signal inspiration for Materialist, which is a movie about a matchmaker who falls in love with two men.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Do you think it will be like the matchmaker's role in society in a world of Raya and Hinge will be addressed in this film?

• 9:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I would assume so, but there are, they're, they're like thriving, just so you know.

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Good for them.

• 9:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'm just, matchmakers are thriving?

• 9:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 02

  As a guy who's match has been made, I was just asking a question.

• 9:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, congratulations to you.

• 9:13Sean Fennessey?

  Did you ever consider something like that?

• 9:15Speaker 02

  No, I never needed it. I just had a magnetism, you know?

• 9:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, absolutely. Many people are saying, many men are saying.

• 9:25Sean Fennessey?

  F1.

• 9:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:27Sean Fennessey?

  We got an extended look at the new Brad Pitt F1 racing movie. Uh, the, the, the first film from your boy from Top Gun Maverick, Joseph Kozinski's in Spiderhead.

• 9:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which I did watch because you guys made a whole big deal out of it.

• 9:42Sean Fennessey?

  Spiderhead I enjoyed.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:43Sean Fennessey?

  Um, F1, here's what I clocked in F1. Obviously a lot of cars going very fast. Obviously a lot of, is he over the hill? I'm too old for this shit from Brad Pitt. And then a lot of pushing people in hallways.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think there were three scenes where someone was pushed in a hallway.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  Could all be happening in the same scene. We don't know.

• 10:01Sean Fennessey?

  Well, at one point it was Brad Pitt and Carrie Condon slamming each other against a wall.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  That's the Top Gun kiss.

• 10:06Sean Fennessey?

  Making out, yeah. Um.

• 10:09Sean Fennessey?

  My intent is up about this one. A little concerned by the rote framework of this story. Might not matter ultimately if the action is great. Kozinski visually does not miss, but yeah, just, just holding my breath a little bit.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  I'm in the, the, the show me the movie zone with this one. Don't need to see another trailer.

• 10:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Agree. I, I did not watch this one because I was like, I don't want it to be, you know, if I'm gonna see them slam into a hallway multiple times, let, let it be in, during the film or during the 45,000 times I re-watch it with my son.

• 10:39Sean Fennessey?

  Seems healthy. Will you watch the sex scenes together?

• 10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, no, we won't.

• 10:44Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta think about that. This is coming up.

• 10:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. It's like, it is true that as soon as we get to, we don't usually make it to the

• 10:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's the best part of Top Gun Maverick is you can watch it with any age because there's no intercourse.

• 10:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But as soon as Tom Cruise like goes in our house, he's like, I'm just turning this off.

• 11:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's what he wants.

• 11:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Max is like, I'm not interested in this. So.

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we'll have to teach him about Jennifer Connelly one day, won't we?

• 11:07Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he likes that. When he, the boat scene is very important. You know, you're in the Navy now. So.

• 11:13Sean Fennessey?

  Did you watch the trailer for Together? This is the new Alison Brie, Dave Franco movie, which was a sensation at Sundance.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Didn't because it's twisty, high concept, right? And so I was just like, this seems like I'm in and I'll just watch it.

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't really give away anything that isn't in the logline, but it's a really, really.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Haven't even read the logline.

• 11:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, I won't, I won't spoil anything about it for you, other than just to say it's a very well-made trailer for a movie that has a lot of heat on it.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Alison Brie, Dave Franco, married in real life, of course. And gosh, how did not spoil it for you guys? It's kind of at the start of you taking some time off from the show, I think. So this might, this might be a CR and Sean affair. Just putting that out there for you.

• 11:52Amanda Dobbins?

  It's also on my birthday. So.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  Oh, happy birthday.

• 11:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's your birthday movie.

• 11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you should read about what it's about. It could be an interesting movie for you and Zach to spend some time with. Uh, I was hoping that we would have a Phoenician scheme trailer by the time we recorded this episode because Chris and I are headed to Boston, but alas, no. Reportedly Wes Anderson's new movie, which is out in two months.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  On Instagram. From the streets of Boston.

• 12:13Sean Fennessey?

  Have you considered doing that about content?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  I don't, I haven't found a piece of content that I, that would rise to the level of it's time to go live.

• 12:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I give you a pro tip? Make sure that you have your passwords and logins nailed down before you want to go live. Cause that got in the way of me being able to go live during the Oscars.

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Make you re-verify your.

• 12:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but I was also gonna, I was gonna do it from the big pic count and.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  What were you gonna do it about?

• 12:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, the red carpet. I don't know. I was just, you know, I was vibing. We had like 30 minutes between when we did this and when this show, the Oscars started. Uh, but then I couldn't log in.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  There was a, an Odyssey night shoot outside of a fort. That I was gonna maybe jump on about, yeah, like, like a fortification. There was like a battle outside of a fort.

• 12:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  In Greece, yeah.

• 12:59Sean Fennessey?

  Did you just use the full term for fort?

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Well, you were like fort.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  Like Fort Sumpter?

• 13:05Speaker 02

  No, like, like whatever, what would you call?

• 13:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Like an ancient fort.

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. What would you call that?

• 13:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Like the remains of one?

• 13:11Speaker 02

  A palace, I guess, like a city, city palace.

• 13:13Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, why?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Walls of the city.

• 13:15Sean Fennessey?

  Again, I don't know why I'm being asked questions about the Odyssey R when it's all there for you.

• 13:19Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, I considered going live because I thought it would be cool if I was like in the lower part of the screen with the microphone being like, as you can see Christopher Nolan shooting a night up here.

• 13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  And, uh, you know, typically we don't refer to Greek cities as forts, but in a lot of ways it's a fortification.

• 13:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Why don't we?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Why don't I do that?

• 13:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, why don't we refer to them as forts?

• 13:40Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I, cause, cause he blinked when I said it. It wasn't, cause it was like, oh, you mean Fort Ticonderoga? And it's like, no, I mean fucking, you know, Hester's out there. He's trying to get in, you know?

• 13:52Sean Fennessey?

  I'm wait, I'm, I'm still waiting for the Odyssey R to launch.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 13:55Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I feel like it shouldn't even be on Ringer Movies. It should be your own channel.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  You're trying to divest me from the Ringer?

• 14:03Sean Fennessey?

  No, I just, I think there, you have a greater chance of success individually.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  The Phoenician scheme. Wes Anderson's spy film.

• 14:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I'm in. That's another one. It's like, that'd be great if they release a trailer, but I don't need a trailer. Just show me the movie, you know?

• 14:19Speaker 02

  I think I've said this a couple of times in auctions and stuff, but Michael Sarah is the most logical person to be in a Wes Anderson movie who's never been in a Wes Anderson movie.

• 14:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great point and I agree with you completely. And I look forward to it. I think there's a, it's a star studded cast as well. I think Benicio is back, a number of other, is ScarJo back for this one as well?

• 14:37Speaker 02

  I believe she is.

• 14:38Sean Fennessey?

  So, yeah, very much looking forward to that. I don't think I've seen even a still from the movie yet too, which is interesting. And it's coming out very, very, very soon. Two months. Uh, last piece of news, Chris added this. We also texted vigorously about it over the weekend. What is this news?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  I have the headline here, Leatherface, but he fucks. Because JT Mulner, director of Strange Darling, and Glenn Powell are apparently in pole position, no F1, to launch a Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot, remake, reimagining. Now, Glenn Powell would apparently be appearing in the film and producing, so he will be hands-on.

• 15:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  And the question here is, is this Leatherface's origin story? Is he a hot, young Texan? And then he gets corrupted by Leather and Faces? Or is he gonna switch it up and Glenn Powell's the final girl? JT Mulner, obviously, like, if you see segments from Strange Darling, they're not, I would say, they lovingly pay homage to the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, um, in a great way. So he is a perfect director for this. If we are gonna just recycle this stuff, I can't wait for this movie.

• 15:54Sean Fennessey?

  I'm very excited. I'm a little bit dubious about Texas Chainsaw as IP.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. They've tried it. They tried to be like the larger Leatherface family. We've tried to go, go back as a group of influencers to start the town again, right?

• 16:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I did a huge episode about it with Alex Ross Perry during COVID, where, because there was a recently, a Netflix movie about three years ago that was like, that influencer version that you're describing, not good at all. And most of the sequels are not good. I think the two Toby Hooper movies are really good. Some people have some love for Leatherface, which is, I think, 1990. I don't know if the story ports over. The first film is so singular.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Was there a Platinum Dunes version of it?

• 16:35Sean Fennessey?

  There was, yeah. Um, it's not very good.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 16:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think Alexandra Daddario is the star, I wanna say. You seen any of these?

• 16:43Amanda Dobbins?

  What? Sometimes it's like, what are you guys talking about? You know, but then it's like you can't remember.

• 16:48Sean Fennessey?

  Great films.

• 16:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, you know, meaningful conversations that we had. In European locations.

• 16:55Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds like I'm redefining meaningful. You know, what is meaningful? Is it Alexandra Daddario's work?

• 16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm happy. I liked Strange Darling, despite myself. And I, which is a tribute to J T Molner. And, you know, I root for Glenn Powell.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  I don't mean to waste your time.

• 17:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Belaboring this point.

• 17:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  But can I ask you, as a star watcher? Glenn Powell currently, honestly, among other things, best known for being in Top Gun Maverick.

• 17:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  As well as the Sydney Sweeney movie and, you know, all the other stuff. Hitman, Twister. Top Gun Maverick, Twisters, uh, the upcoming Running Man reboot.

• 17:29Sean Fennessey?

  Hitman.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  And now Texas Chainsaw Massacre, those four.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Like all reviving other properties rather than forging his own way.

• 17:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  Any concern on your part, or is that just the way things go in 2025?

• 17:43Amanda Dobbins?

  At least it's not superhero.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 17:45Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's, it's kind of like two paths. If you want to operate at his level or at the level that he wants to be.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  You can either remake stuff or you can put on a cape.

• 17:54Sean Fennessey?

  No, it's, I think he's doing the playbook. The other movie that you didn't mention is John Patton Ford's Huntington, which is an 824 drama.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm not saying he's not making other good movies. I'm just saying he has got multiple reboot properties going.

• 18:09Sean Fennessey?

  The Running Man, which I think we're going to learn a lot about at CinemaCon next week. I have very high hopes for, not just because it's an Edgar Wright movie, but it's the perfect kind of movie to be remade. Cause the original is just not that great. And the story, the, the King story is such a good story and a good idea for a movie.

• 18:26Sean Fennessey?

  I've got some doubts about Texas Chainsaw. I really like J T Molner as a director, but again, I'm, I'm, it's not my favorite. Twisters, I enjoyed.

• 18:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Lot of fun.

• 18:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think he needed a movie like that.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  That was your problem. We were good on Twisters.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  I enjoyed Twisters.

• 18:37Sean Fennessey?

  I just think he needed something really mainstream where he was the guy. He was, he was the, the action hero lead.

• 18:45Sean Fennessey?

  You did like it?

• 18:46Speaker 02

  I thought it was fine.

• 18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  No, yeah, he was, yeah, he didn't like it.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  I blew, my, my heart blew away with Kieran Shipka in the beginning of that film.

• 18:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, spoiler, but that was dramatic.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  If you haven't seen Twisters, sorry.

• 18:58Sean Fennessey?

  How do I make a hard shift into The Alto Knights?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Talk about rebooting stuff.

• 19:03Sean Fennessey?

  Ayo. Thank you for your service.

• 19:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 19:07Sean Fennessey?

  The Alto Knights, as I said, is this new film from Barry Levinson, who's one of the most accomplished directors in Hollywood.

• 19:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:13Sean Fennessey?

  And it's been some time since he's made a great movie. This movie did not break that streak. Uh, it's written by Nicholas Pileggi, who of course is a famed New York journalist and screenwriter, whose book Wise Guy was the basis of Goodfellas. He's written many screenplays over the years, was married to Nora Ephron. Um, he reportedly is close friends with David Zaslove, who runs Warner Brothers, which is one of the reasons why this movie exists.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 19:35Sean Fennessey?

  Are you being serious?

• 19:35Speaker 02

  No, I'm not being serious.

• 19:36Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, uh, the movie stars Robert De Niro in a dual role.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Hmm, first time? Him doing that?

• 19:42Sean Fennessey?

  I believe so, though, though, don't quote me on that.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  I'm not.

• 19:46Sean Fennessey?

  He plays a pair of 1950s mob bosses, Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. This movie also features Debra Messing, Amanda's favorite actress, Cosmo Jarvis, Catherine

• 19:55Speaker 02

  My favorite actor, yeah.

• 19:56Sean Fennessey?

  Cosmo, I, well, I want to talk to you about Cosmo. Um, Catherine Narducci, you may recall as Artie Buco's wife from The Sopranos, and Michael Rispoli, who you may recall did not get the role of Tony Soprano in The Sopranos.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Plays Albert Anastasia in this movie.

• 20:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, this movie is about the power struggle between Vito and Frank, who were friends turned frenemies, um, top bosses of the mafia. There becomes a huge conflict between them when Vito orders a hit on that, on Frank. And then this movie attempts to chart this kind of uneasy survival of the New York mafia from the 1950s to the 1970s and these two powerhouse figures.

• 20:36Sean Fennessey?

  Amanda, I'll start with you. What did you think of this movie?

• 20:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I was so bored. I was unbelievably bored by this film. And not to be rude or ageist, but spent a lot of time being like, who are these old people on the screen? And why won't they stop talking?

• 20:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess it should be something of interest to us and that the DNA that you just listed would appeal to us. But they did not pull it off in any way, shape or form.

• 21:07Sean Fennessey?

  Chris, what'd you think?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  As bored as it could possibly be was a subject matter that I'm incredibly interested in. So never like detached from Earth's atmosphere and floated away while I was watching this. But obviously a movie that decided to be all things rather than one thing to its, to its own, probably.

• 21:26Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean by that?

• 21:27Speaker 02

  Well, I think every time it kind of started to touch on a subject that would have been interesting, whether it was Vito and Frank's lifelong relationship and their origins, or the movement of the mafia towards bringing heroin into the country and being like distributors of heroin in the late 50s, to any number of other subplots that happen. I, you know, if you could have grabbed on to any one of those things, I think it would have been excellent. But instead it tried to tell 50 different stories and also tell it in such a way that I think almost bordered on Netflix true crime doc rather than like a narrative film. So he's a lot of direct to camera exposition dumps,

• 22:11Speaker 02

  a lot of use of like broadcast TV for expo, a lot of use of voiceover, which we'll get to as we talk about garbage Scorsese. So just a lot of like tricks that I think were about, let's do a Wikipedia history dump rather than tell a story.

• 22:28Amanda Dobbins?

  While swing music plays, yeah.

• 22:30Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. This is not very good at all. It feels like it has the bones of a movie that would have mattered quite a bit 30 years ago, but we're so far past the desire.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  When it was originally written, wasn't it?

• 22:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think so, yeah. And it is a movie that is absolutely, has a huge relationship to Goodfellas and Casino and the Scorsese films and a number of other New York crime stories about the sort of rise and sustainability and ultimate downfall of the mafia in the United States. Levinson is an odd choice for a movie like this. I don't know that he necessarily has a style. He rose to fame in the, you know, first as a writer and then as a filmmaker in the 80s with movies like Diner, Personal Favorite of Yours, The Natural, Tin Men, Good Morning Vietnam. Very talky dramedies was kind of his stock in trade. Reaches the

• 23:20Sean Fennessey?

  absolute pinnacle of Hollywood with Rain Man, another talky dramedy, very character focused. And then kind of goes on this like, pretty extended mid to downfall period of like, a lot of really mediocre movies with big stars over a long period of time. There's not a lot of history of like, crime movies here on this list?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Well, okay, so we could say that this is, as the image behind us suggests, from the hitmakers of Goodfellas, The Irishman and Bugsy. So Bugsy would be the most obvious, like, brother film for this in Levinson's filmography. He's done some crime stuff with homicide, I guess. And then the time period is his singular obsession, or one of his great obsessions, obviously.

• 24:08Sean Fennessey?

  1950s America and the sort of the lie underneath the sheen of the 1950s is something that he is very focused on. But he's usually focused on ordinary people, very regular people. He seems, he's a middle-class guy from Baltimore, that seems to be what he most kind of drives his interest in this time period. I mean, Bugsy to me is a big failure of a movie. It's a movie that kind of has all of the component parts. You've got Beatty and Keitel, and you've got this Toback script, and it's Oscar nominated and all this stuff. And then you watch it, it's just kind of like a slog. And it reminds me a lot of this movie, which has like no juice, no energy. There's no, like, the pacing of the script is very strange. Doesn't really feel like, I don't, I couldn't tell if all of that hyper focusing on archival photos and De Niro delivering

• 24:53Sean Fennessey?

  25 years after the conclusion of the story into camera.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  As he does like a sort of Kodachrome, Kodak slideshow of, of his life, basically.

• 25:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which I think also, if you don't know the story of Genovese and Costello, then it kind of is like, so Costello lives, you know, like it kind of just gives away the game immediately. You're like, why, so why are they, why did they frame the movie like this? Cause if you watch Goodfellas for the first time, you may know that it's based on the life of Henry Hill, but you probably didn't know how it concluded unless you were reading the New York Post every day back then. So I think that's a very odd choice structurally. And let's talk about De Niro.

• 25:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is actually not bad, what he does in the movie. I think he's too old for this part.

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  The, you put this in the notes and I completely agree with it. It clearly seems like the Vito part was written for Joe Pesci or Joe Pesci-esque figure.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:44Sean Fennessey?

  And he's doing a kind of Joe Pesci.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:47Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think badly.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  No, but that, I think the, the depiction of Vito is while exciting, you know, cause he's just got this hair trigger temper and like anything anyone says, he can be like, nah, I don't think so, fuck you. Like, you know, like he has a kind of like energy to him. It's a, it's a little underbaked in terms of like, I know that Barry Levinson has talked about how this was originally thought of as a Frank Costello piece. It was supposed to be a movie about Frank Costello. And then at, over the course of development, De Niro was like, I want to play both parts. It's going to be like these two sides of like.

• 26:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Of a mobster.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I, I think that was probably to the film's detriment. Although weirdly, De Niro does look like both of these guys. The makeup job is really good and I will say. To the film's credit, Dante Spinotti shot it, who's a wonderful cinematographer. It does have a warmth to it that at times is enjoyable. The production design is pretty top notch. Like, it looks cool in places. And the makeup is obviously very, very well done, where he looks pretty much like the photos of these two guys, if that matters to you. I know that when you're going into something like this, you're like, how photorealistic is it?

• 26:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it was a nice camel coat in that park scene where he's doing his interview. Nice Central Park West apartment.

• 27:05Sean Fennessey?

  Was that you conducting the interview?

• 27:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that was me, because I didn't know anything about what was happening, except I guess that Frank Costello lives. Yes, if this stunt casting is meant to show like two sides of one person, or like they have a lot in common, but also that, you know, you can make decisions and turn out this way, or you can make out decisions and meet this fate. I would agree with Chris that this script and maybe even the performance doesn't really, you know, pay out on that experiment. And it mostly just is Robert De Niro doing a Joe Pesci impression. The movie needs some of that life. It needs.

• 27:49Sean Fennessey?

  Well, because the Costello side of it is essentially a guy watching TV. I don't really understand making Costello the center of this story. Because Costello is Ace Rothstein from Casino Without Vegas. I mean, he is like a kind of diplomat leader, you know? He's somebody who is willing to put himself before Congress, who's sort of like the gentleman chap of the mafia.

• 28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's installed, I believe, in the history of the mafia. I think the movie kind of makes it sound like he took it from Vito, but in fact, like, he was installed when Lucky Luciano fled to Italy.

• 28:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, and Vito had gone to prison. So Vito did a stint in prison, which is the sort of like engine of the movie, is that Vito disappears for a while, and when he returns, he wants his quarterback, so to speak. And he doesn't get it. The movie, I think, is like a fun little portal into a period of history that I don't know how much of this you've read about or care about. We've read about it a lot. Growing up in New York, especially the sort of latter stages of this story, particularly leading to Vinnie Chin, the Cosmo Jarvis character, who went on to become an iconic staple of New York tabloids, because he was, as they very briefly mentioned at the end of this movie, pretending to be crazy for like 15 years on the streets of New York, wearing a bathrobe and muttering to himself to avoid being arrested for being the head of the New York mafia.

• 29:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, how many hours a day do you have to commit to that performance?

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you don't have like 24/7. He was on the post every day. He was on the cover like eight times a year.

• 29:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, like it's 11, like I gotta put the bathrobe on.

• 29:17Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta do that.

• 29:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And then you go back in. Can I ask you something?

• 29:21Sean Fennessey?

  Me? Yeah, sure.

• 29:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I don't know as much about this, the history of the mafia, or, you know, I haven't done my independent research.

• 29:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Amanda Dobbins?

  What is it that leads both of you to spend hours at a time doing independent?

• 29:34Sean Fennessey?

  Like, what? It's really interesting. I mean, crime in general is really interesting, especially crime that has kind of like ornate construction. And the mafia has all these codes and these conceits and these, this way that they live by. And I got into it because of movies. I got into it and then The Sopranos. Like, the movies show you these things. Also, I've told this story before, I think I told it on the Goodfellas podcast, but I grew up across the street from a really, really kind guy named Dominic Natali. He was our across the street neighbor and his wife Angela. And their daughter married Nick Pileggi's uncle. So, or, excuse me, married Nick Pileggi's nephew. So, I met Nick Pileggi when I was a kid. I was surrounded by Italian-American culture. I was, Dom and Angela babysat me until I was 10 years old.

• 30:19Sean Fennessey?

  And so like the kind of like Mambo Italiano, you know, Goodfellas Scorsese culture was just kind of a part of my life when I was a young kid and my dad, of course, was a cop.

• 30:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  So my dad would go over to that to Dom's house and they would start talking about this stuff. And Dom was like a real Italian guy and my dad was a real Irish cop. And I could feel like the friction between those two experiences. And so it naturally like makes you curious about things. The problem with like, this is the ultimate, like, could have been an email movie, though. You know, like, we don't really like, there's no, there's no dramatic dynamic.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Ground, just to answer your question, like, I also like grew up when the mafia was still somewhat present in South Philadelphia and they had, you know, if you watch Irishman, you'll see a lot of the Philadelphia stuff.

• 31:07Amanda Dobbins?

  I guess, I guess it's just like an Atlanta thing.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  There was always rumors of the mayor of.

• 31:11Sean Fennessey?

  Why are you not more interested in, you know, Jeezy and Big Meech and the trap?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  One of the problems with this film, though, is that it is essentially covering the ground that some of the greatest American films ever made is already covered. So the Cofava hearings are dramatized in Godfather 2. You know, like, the Appalachian meeting is referenced in Goodfellas. It's nice to see it on screen here. But it, this essentially functions as a prequel to The Irishman. Something that happens in between moments of Henry Hill's youth and adulthood in Goodfellas.

• 31:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. It's kind of the parts they skip in Goodfellas.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  And is essentially Godfather 2. You know, Vito, Don Bartsini in Godfather is based on Vito. Frank Costello is one of the inspirations for Vito Corleone, like, we got it. Like, you can't, and it's not like, oh, man, maybe Godfather 2 and Goodfellas and Irishman left some meat on the bone here. And one of the things that I found a little bit melancholy about watching this movie is I remember all of the Irishman stuff being like, we wanted to tell this story one more time with the wisdom of age. And I got Joe, De Niro gets Joe Pesci to do Irishman. Joe Pesci's like, we've done this, we've done this. I don't want to do the mafia thing again. He's like, yeah, but like, this is about these guys looking back on the end of their lives and thinking about the violence and the destruction.

• 32:35Sean Fennessey?

  Was it all worth it? What was it for?

• 32:36Speaker 02

  And. It's kind of like the, it's like, oh, and then you just did it again.

• 32:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  You know, because you could, or because you had bills to pay or whatever. And it's a little bit tough.

• 32:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Irishman is, is the signature old man mafia movie. Most of those, these movies that are great tend to end with people in middle age either getting shot or sent to witness protection.

• 32:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and also crucially directed by Martin Scorsese.

• 33:02Sean Fennessey?

  Or Francis Ford Coppola.

• 33:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah, yeah, right.

• 33:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's a tough balance there. Barry Levinson, as far as I know, is also not Italian American. Not that that really necessarily matters. You didn't have to be Italian American to make this movie great, but it's just kind of a, it's, it's just a footnote movie in the story of a studio to me. That's really what it amounts to is we're in this period with Warner Brothers where they're taking some big chances on high level auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson, like Bong Joon Ho, like Maggie Gyllenhaal. And they're also, you know, this has been described in reports as kind of a favor to the studio chief for his friends.

• 33:37Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, you know, I don't want to be ageist, but I'm going to just talk about this very quickly. So Barry Levinson is 82. De Niro is also in his 80s. Dante Spinadi is in his 80s. Nicholas Plessis, I think, is 94.

• 33:54Sean Fennessey?

  These are wildly accomplished legends.

• 33:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, giants of the screen.

• 33:58Sean Fennessey?

  They are huge, huge figures. Dante Spinadi shot Manhunter, you know what I mean? Nick Plessis wrote fucking Goodfellas. Like, they're in the Hall of Fame forever.

• 34:06Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, this is not what I'd be doing in my 80s if I did that. I just wouldn't be doing this. I don't, I don't know what I'd be doing.

• 34:12Amanda Dobbins?

  This is.

• 34:12Sean Fennessey?

  Not that, not, not working that hard.

• 34:14Amanda Dobbins?

  This question like looms over this podcast of what you will be doing, you know? And you always say this, you know, that at some point you believe you will reach.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Wine, wine country.

• 34:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, like an emotional, mental state where you're like, I'm out and I'm going to wine country. And I think, I, I wonder if that's true.

• 34:35Sean Fennessey?

  So I, okay, let me pose this to you both.

• 34:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:38Sean Fennessey?

  We don't have to make this a psychological examination, because I want to know genuinely what you two think. I think you do things like, to a much lesser extent, podcasting, but make art, make this work for Hollywood because you like money? And you particularly like sort of acclaim and attention and the energy that comes with a new project. Right? Is that fair to say? Is there anything else that you get out of it?

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Exactly why I think they did this.

• 35:04Sean Fennessey?

  And is that what it is? Because that's not something I'm addicted to. Like that, particularly when I'm like, when I'm 60, I'm good.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  I'll be completely candid that there are elements of this movie that make me feel like a professional group of people maybe took it over to just finish it and get, here's what we shot and here's what I did.

• 35:19Amanda Dobbins?

  And now we're just gonna stitch it together.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  A lot of the like, here's archival footage of a big band performance. And you're just like, why is this happening? Like, they're not watching a big band. There's no characters taking part in this. It's just an interstitial moment that like feels like it was stapled into the movie because they're like, well, here's, we have this part and this part and this part. And I, with all due respect to the incredible achievements of these guys, I don't really feel like this has a lot of authorship, obviously attached to it. So I do think it's what you said, which is like, these, I think it's, it's very addictive and very difficult to be like, what I want is to fade into obscurity.

• 35:56Amanda Dobbins?

  You fast forwarded past money.

• 35:59Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't, I said at the beginning, that's.

• 36:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but it's like money and, but I, you know.

• 36:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think the third option is obviously like, a creative act is energizing in and of itself.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's people out there who know we're working. They're working to stay alive. Like, I get it.

• 36:14Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not, I'm not trying to judge. I think when it's iterative, it feels a little strange. Where it's like for Robert De Niro, the signature mafia actor of his time,

• 36:25Sean Fennessey?

  to go back to the well at this stage, even though it does put him on the poster in a big movie that gets a wide release from a major studio, just kind of feels like a waste of time. And we know him to be a very adventurous actor, although I know he likes money too. So I guess I'm just kind of turning it over in my head because as I'm watching the movie, I was like, if I, it is reflected in the story. Like when we see Frank Costello at the end, when we have these characters who are thinking back on like, why did I do this? What was it worth? It's much more penetrating in The Irishman, those big questions, but it's, it's a part of the Alto Knights too.

• 36:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Can I, so I asked my dad, the number one Barry Levinson fan on this earth, to go see this film, which he did. And he was, he was disappointed. He sent me an email with his thoughts, but this is the last sentence of his email. He said, for an older viewer, my dad is younger than any of the people.

• 37:14Sean Fennessey?

  Is your dad retired?

• 37:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And he is retired.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  He's retired.

• 37:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But this is his perspective for an older viewer. This is the way the world ends experience. This actor starred in Mean Streets and this director put homicide together? Question mark. And now we're doing this. So that's pretty depressing.

• 37:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 37:32Sean Fennessey?

  It is depressing. But at the same time, I don't know.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  I really want to, I'm personally really resistant to doing a Skys falling thing. But it is. It is hard to not acknowledge that like, is like, this is what we're gonna, like, what we're cashing in, like, political capital to make. And this is the thing you're forcing someone to like, green light. And I mean, it was put out like with hardly any fanfare. It was, it died on the vine.

• 38:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Why don't you share your viewing experience?

• 38:04Speaker 02

  God awful. 11 a.m. A man, I think FaceTimed the entire film to his friend. And it was me and just one other guy. And we were in like, deep seats. So it's like, it wasn't like bothering me, but every once in a while I would hear on the phone, someone be like, damn.

• 38:21Sean Fennessey?

  I saw it. I saw it at 3:30 p.m.

• 38:26Sean Fennessey?

  At an AMC. And it was me and four other singles.

• 38:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:30Sean Fennessey?

  Four, four men and myself in a, in the prime theater at the Americana, right next to the IMAX.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  To watch listeners. Yeah.

• 38:40Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of single men interested in crime and storytelling.

• 38:45Sean Fennessey?

  It was quiet. There was no FaceTiming in the room, but it was, there was no energy.

• 38:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Six or seven people in mine, which was noon on a Friday. And there might have been another woman. I do think that she.

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  So two women have seen this movie.

• 39:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Really understandably checked her phone at some point. But, you know, who among us? And I wouldn't say that like, the audience was really involved in what was going on on screen. You know, there wasn't like a lot of energy surging towards the screen, if you will.

• 39:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is a depressing movie. I don't want to draw too many conclusions about what you're describing because on the flip side Warner Brothers is making the PTA movie.

• 39:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 39:24Sean Fennessey?

  Did make Mickey 17. It is doing all this other stuff that is going to be considered very risky and then it's going to come out and not be financially successful and people are going to stroke their chins and be like, I told you so. And then we're never going to get any good movies. So if this is the price to pay for five.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Is this the price to pay? Have we just arrived that this is the economics of movies?

• 39:42Sean Fennessey?

  In Hollywood, it used to be this. It used to be, I'll give one for my buddy so that the other person can have a shot. Now it's you have to make five IP driven projects and maybe we'll make one cool movie. So to me, this actually does feel like an old fashioned version of how it used to be.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  I mean, even adjusted for inflation, the way that budgets seem to be expanding right now, which is why I think there's so much pocket watching of Warner Brothers is that if it's like just if one battle after another is a $70 million movie or a $60 million movie, everybody's just like, like, what a great, what a great thing. Like, are we just not adjusting for triple digit budgets being what we need to like attach to any film now?

• 40:22Sean Fennessey?

  I try to not spend too much time talking about budgets on the show because they're all, none of them are honest.

• 40:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And then the marketing and the, yeah, like how much money is allocated to each film.

• 40:33Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. And so sometimes you'll see a movie and it'll say it was a $30 million movie, but like, Anora.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Anora spent more money on the movie.

• 40:39Sean Fennessey?

  Awards campaign's been more on the movie. So, and like whatever PTA gets to spend, I don't care. It's like, he's been making movies on smaller budgets his entire career. So it doesn't mean a lot to me. The idea of like somebody like Bong or Ryan Coogler getting big budgets, I think is just straight up good. Just like you're talking about filmmakers in the prime of their career who have earned the right by dint of their success to get to do more. And whether they work or not is up for debate, obviously. This one just feels like

• 41:06Sean Fennessey?

  closing business at the end of a run.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:08Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like this is maybe the last movie that Levinson will make. It's probably not the last thing De Niro will do. He's on a fucking streaming show on Netflix this year too. But.

• 41:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh yeah. How'd that pan out? Did you finish it?

• 41:18Speaker 02

  Not great. You want me to spoil it?

• 41:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Sean Fennessey?

  Spoilers for Zero Day.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Uh, he is an ex-president who is now investigating the cyber attack on the country. And it turns out that the cyber attack was partially orchestrated by his daughter, a very AOC coded congresswoman played by Lizzie Kaplan.

• 41:38Speaker 02

  And it is to shake America out of its stupor.

• 41:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. Wow. So what is, what's Bobby gonna do with that info?

• 41:46Speaker 02

  I can't remember the exact code of the film.

• 41:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  I think Angela Bassett remains in office.

• 41:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I mean, this is just, you know.

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Angela Bassett.

• 41:55Sean Fennessey?

  President Angela Bassett and Lizzie Kaplan is the daughter of a former president?

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, Lizzie Kaplan and Matthew Modine orchestrated a cyber attack.

• 42:03Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Okay.

• 42:05Amanda Dobbins?

  This does not make me excited about aging. That's just kinda.

• 42:09Sean Fennessey?

  Is there anything that does make you excited about aging?

• 42:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know. When you talk about the life of, you know, when I'm done and I can just like hit Napa.

• 42:18Sean Fennessey?

  Late 50s in wine country is where I'm headed. Yeah.

• 42:20Amanda Dobbins?

  That sounds great, but if like, as, you know.

• 42:23Sean Fennessey?

  You never stop making content?

• 42:24Amanda Dobbins?

  If this is how the world ends, as my dad put it, I don't know.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  I will be following Robert De Niro's lead where if necessary, I will podcast with another man played by me in full makeup.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  And I'll, we'll just argue about Severance, season four, which will probably have come out by the time I'm 80.

• 42:48Sean Fennessey?

  I was wondering if you were gonna make me really belly laugh when you just did. Um, CR, who, who would, who'd be the best person to wear CR old man makeup?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  No, that's me.

• 42:57Sean Fennessey?

  No, but like what other actor is opposite you?

• 42:58Speaker 02

  Jack shoot, I'm, we're gonna shoot this side of me and then I'm gonna shoot that side of me.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  I don't need any.

• 43:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And then with you in the corner, just being like, so what's happening here?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Christopher Nolan shooting at night here.

• 43:10Sean Fennessey?

  Honest question.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:12Sean Fennessey?

  I could not ask Chris a more honest question. This is direct. If you could replace Andy Greenwald on the watch with AI Chris Ryan so that you could talk to yourself, would you do it?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Never do it. It's why I love podding with you guys. Love podding with Andy. It's, it's, it's the chemistry with you guys. It's, it's not replicable, you know? I'll probably quit when you guys are done.

• 43:30Sean Fennessey?

  You'll quit when we're done?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not gonna just start up again with like a bunch of other people, right?

• 43:34Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean? You gotta bring in a bunch of 26 year olds to fluff you, placate your ego.

• 43:45Sean Fennessey?

  Garbage Scorsese. Mm-hmm. This is interesting. You know, Martin Scorsese is really in the news right now in a couple of ways. One, he makes, I'm sure people have seen, if they've seen the trailer, a very funny cameo, very funny cameo in the studio, the new Apple TV Plus series from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg that comes out on Wednesday.

• 44:02Speaker 02

  I would say his single greatest acting performance.

• 44:04Sean Fennessey?

  He's so funny in the show. You haven't had a chance to see this yet, right? No, I'm very excited.

• 44:07Speaker 02

  Perhaps Taxi Driver, but he's, you know.

• 44:10Sean Fennessey?

  He's good in a lot of movies, honestly, but he's very good in this one. This is a TV show. And then also, you know, very quietly, the movie Magazine Dreams was released over the weekend. I don't, you guys haven't had a chance to see it, right?

• 44:19Speaker 02

  I haven't, no.

• 44:20Sean Fennessey?

  So I saw it at Sundance two years ago, maybe even more than that, I can't recall. This is a new movie starring Jonathan Majors, directed by Elijah Bynum, who will come up again in this conversation. And after Jonathan Majors got into some trouble and was eventually convicted of domestic violence charges, the movie very much went away. But when it came out at Sundance, I saw it, I think I gave it a pretty negative review on the podcast, but he is, his performance is amazing in the movie. But the movie is just straight up, what if Taxi Driver but a bodybuilder? It's about like a sort of deeply unbalanced, violent individual who's motivated by this one goal, who can't see the world around him, and goes to crazy ends. The movie is hard to watch, no fun.

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  You know, ripping off stuff that we've seen before, but like, it is a prime example, I think, of not just the mafia being a part of what does it mean to be Garbage Scorsese. You know, that certainly Goodfellas is probably the movie that looms largest over a generation of film directors who saw it and sought to bring that energy. Right. And if you just take a movie with like, a bunch of young, cool guys, and you put a couple of needle drops from the 50s and the 70s and say, go, then you're doing Garbage Scorsese. But then there's other versions of it, you know, that Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, and

• 45:39Speaker 02

  King of Comedy.

• 45:40Sean Fennessey?

  King of Comedy for sure, and, you know, The Departed, and all the way through. Are huge influences and not just the crime stuff specifically, but the tonality, I think, of his movies.

• 45:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 45:50Sean Fennessey?

  The like sick sense of humor, the slickness through which he tells it.

• 45:54Amanda Dobbins?

  The self-loathing.

• 45:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, a lot of inner hatred, a lot of like rejection of where you come from, but an inescapability of that identity.

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  There are some Scorsese movies that I think don't really apply, you know? I don't see a lot of like Age of Innocence.

• 46:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:08Sean Fennessey?

  Silence.

• 46:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Their loss.

• 46:09Sean Fennessey?

  I agreed, more, more people should be watching Silence.

• 46:12Speaker 02

  Do you think Little Women is the garbage Scorsese of Age of Innocence?

• 46:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't, I don't know, there's not a lot of self-loathing in that. Also, you know, that movie does feature more women than your average Scorsese movie, which is not a shot at Scorsese. And he has written some, you know, he has directed some great women parts and performances, but like, that's still about a man, you know, not.

• 46:46Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's directed more women to Oscars than men.

• 46:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's just the, the, the woman-ness and, and again, there's not as much self-hatred in Little Women.

• 46:59Sean Fennessey?

  What else do you think of when you think of this kind of a movie?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Well, I think for garbage genre pods that we do, it's useful probably to relate the film that you're talking about, the garbage movie that you're talking about to one of the original texts. So that was sort of my operating philosophy in my selections. I did want to ask you guys whether or not you had any trouble picking movies because you couldn't tell where garbage Scorsese ended and garbage Tarantino began.

• 47:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I'm glad you asked.

• 47:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Interesting.

• 47:29Sean Fennessey?

  I made a long list and there is bunched in the long list from 92 through 99. There's a lot of, is this Pulp Fiction or is this Goodfellas?

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:41Sean Fennessey?

  And there is a smashing together, you know, like they're kind of like faux Tarantinos, the like things to do in Denver when you're deads. Also have a ton of Scorsese in them.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:50Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think the scripts are usually very Tarantino and the filmmaking style is usually very Scorsese. So I think there is maybe more crossover.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:58Sean Fennessey?

  Than.

• 47:58Speaker 02

  Maybe like there's more like pop culture references and there's more like guys sitting around a table like kind of discussing their version of the like a virgin lyrics or whatever.

• 48:07Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly, exactly. Um, but I think that, I mean, it goes back to the eighties. That's how I know that it's not just the Tarantino thing.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  I would say that a lot of, I would say I, I leaned more contemporary films. So I, uh, in my selections, but I'm happy to jump in wherever.

• 48:22Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of the eighties stuff that I wrote down are mostly good movies that bear a very strong Scorsese influence. So, I mean, Scarface is.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:32Sean Fennessey?

  You know, obviously a huge pay owes in debt to Scorsese and Coppola in many ways, even though it's made by one of their friends and it's.

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Quintessentially.

• 48:42Sean Fennessey?

  Cuban Miami tale and not an Italian tale.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:45Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but just like the energy, the violence, the quick cutting, the use of pop music and the score. Um, and then like the Pope of Greenwich Village, Pritzy's Honor. Um, Michael Semino's Year of the Dragon.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 48:59Sean Fennessey?

  Mona Lisa, um, Wall Street, the Oliver Stone movie is very Scorsese. You know, very different from Platoon. Um, you know, Married to the Mob, Black Rain. These are all movies that are like slick crime focused movies that have some laughs, have some extravagant violence. But a lot of those movies are really good. So, so like they're not garbage, you know, they're just influenced by Martin Scorsese's stuff.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  It's also interesting that Scorsese's style has evolved over the years. I mean, he still obviously has um, a style that he uses, I think more for films like Silence. That's a little bit more contemplative. But even the Wolf of Wall Street. Killers of the Flower Moon, Irishman, even Departed, I would even say, he started messing around with this, where it's taking elements of like what we associate with like Scorsese's style, and tweaking it to the point where it's almost avant-garde, starting scenes, restarting scenes.

• 50:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, like DJ effect.

• 50:01Amanda Dobbins?

  He's experimenting with himself.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the music, using pop needle drops as an almost disorienting kind of like, we're gonna run it backwards and then start it later in the song and then start it from the beginning.

• 50:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  And he's, he's kind of always messing around with what we expect, even though he delivers very reliable thrills. But I found that, that whole thing, that the fact that he has evolved so much in the last 15 years, changed like how I looked at like, it's harder to identify.

• 50:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is what makes him one of the greats and has been so rewarding about the last 15 years, is that he is very much engaging with the types of movies that he makes, and the idea of what a Scorsese is. And I do feel like when we are, when we make our garbage, garbage Scorsese list, it will be referencing the same movies that he has basically been referencing in the last 15 years of work. Which is, you know, kind of ends with Goodfellas and I guess Casino, but like, you know, here's a question, like, is Casino eligible?

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:09Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, is, is The Departed eligible?

• 51:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, because in a way, they are like, there's like Scorsese plays himself, but they are, and, and I think, and it's like unfair, because both of those movies are good, and I think that there is something interesting about Scorsese, like, working with his own genre conventions or whatever, but like, it's kind of what we mean.

• 51:33Sean Fennessey?

  No, Casino is the more interesting example to me. The Departed is like, that's a script that is an adaptation of an Asian film, that has gone, went through like many different iterations, and he kind of brought his very, that style that Chris is talking about, where he's just like chopping up his own shit. Um, it feels like a little, it's Boston, you know, it's like a little bit different. Casino is like, these are kind of the same characters in a lot of ways. It's the same arc, it's the same, you know, the other thing that a lot of garbage Scorsese movies have is narration, bad narration historically. So I think that's kind of an inspired call. I think there are some movies that predate Casino. But even when Casino was released, I remember this as a teenager.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 52:10Sean Fennessey?

  They were like, this again?

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:11Sean Fennessey?

  He's going back to this well? Which I think is a little silly. You'd be like, John Carpenter made another scary thriller? Like this is sometimes this is what you do.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  You basically needed five years to kind of separate the two pieces and be able to appreciate Casino on its own merits, rather than as an extension of... And then the same way now, you can kind of look back at...

• 52:29Sean Fennessey?

  But for the record, no one will ever be able to appreciate your thoughts about Casino, because they were not properly recorded.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I was working with Brian Wilson that day, and he just decided not to mic me up.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  But you can look back at Goodfellas Casino and Irishman as his Godfather trilogy, you know? And it has its own prequel with Mean Streets, you know? It's great. Marty?

• 52:54Sean Fennessey?

  Where do you start this? Because I like what Amanda said, Casino is an amusing wrinkle to the list.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  I'll start with my most... Should I just throw one out there?

• 53:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  I can start with my most recent selection. Bike Riders.

• 53:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Also on mine.

• 53:06Sean Fennessey?

  Undeniably.

• 53:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  A chock full of needle drops, somewhat ironically detached narration.

• 53:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Spanning decades, or at least several years of a subculture, featuring some very obvious, like, main character being pulled in two different directions by his domestic life and his criminal life. Just a lot of the hallmarks of it, I think, you know, Jeff Nichols based this film off of a book of photographs, but filled it in with basically, what if Goodfellas on bikes? And I mean that as a compliment, I did enjoy Bike Riders.

• 53:50Sean Fennessey?

  You think we should work backwards in time, so that we get to the early 90s?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  If you'd like to.

• 53:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 53:55Sean Fennessey?

  Would you like to nominate one?

• 53:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, Bike Riders was on my list. I don't, I mean, then I have to... I have a 2019 nominee.

• 54:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 54:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Does that count?

• 54:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, of course.

• 54:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And this was, this was on your long list, but... I do think Hustlers fits. Um, you know, an underworld in this case, case of a group of strippers in New York, who are working together to, um, you know, illegally obtain some, you know, money, but also like, there's some righteousness on their side.

• 54:31Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, like weird framing device that doesn't like totally work, but it's not like quite.

• 54:37Sean Fennessey?

  Is it like the interview at the police department?

• 54:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, it's a, no, no, no. It's, um, Jessica Pressler.

• 54:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right.

• 54:43Amanda Dobbins?

  New York Magazine journalist who wrote the, yeah.

• 54:45Sean Fennessey?

  Julia Stiles.

• 54:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, is, is like doing the interview.

• 54:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 54:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So it's not quite narration, but again, like someone after the fact, the, the main person who gets swept up in the, um, in the case and needle drops of a kind.

• 55:01Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and of, and like of a type of place.

• 55:04Sean Fennessey?

  Criminal.

• 55:05Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, you know, and a, and a period piece of sorts.

• 55:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 55:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Fun movie.

• 55:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good one. There's some obvious ones that I don't want to, like, we could do Joker, because Joker is like such an overt homage.

• 55:17Speaker 02

  I, I have one for you that sort of riffs off of Joker a little bit. Uh, I have two films from 2017.

• 55:22Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Uh, one is You Were Never Really Here, um, which is Lynn Ramsey's, I would say, variation on Taxi Driver. In fact, it is what if the overhead slo-mo shot in Taxi Driver was an entire film?

• 55:36Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Psychologically, emotionally, uh, Joaquin Phoenix plays this, uh, a, a venging angel assassin.

• 55:45Sean Fennessey?

  Vigilante.

• 55:45Speaker 02

  Who is essentially, uh, going out trying to free people from child trafficking until he finds himself at the center of a political conspiracy. And it's actually like a pretty disturbing film and a, and a very prescient one of where like fever dreams kind of were going in American culture, but it doesn't necessarily feature the frenetic Scorsese that we're talking about, but is certainly, uh, it's the Paul Schrader side of Scorsese, I would say.

• 56:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's an interesting one. I saw that cited in a lot of places as sort of like Scorsese-esque because of that Taxi Driver construction. Really interesting movie. If, I think Lynn Ramsey, I don't think she's made a movie since this movie.

• 56:24Speaker 02

  She's got one coming.

• 56:24Sean Fennessey?

  But she has one coming. Die My Love with Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence later this year. Um.

• 56:31Sean Fennessey?

  I will nominate Hot Summer Nights, which is a 2017 movie as well, directed by Elijah Bynum, who made magazine dreams. You and I saw this movie at South by Southwest, Chris. And have you ever seen this movie?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:44Sean Fennessey?

  This is one of the earliest films starring Timothy Chalamet. He plays a young man, spending his summer at Cape Cod, and getting into trouble. It's a little bit of like, it's Cape Cod Goodfellas, in a lot of ways. First half of Goodfellas. Teenage kid, starting to deal drugs, starting to get in too deep, falls in love with a girl played by Micah Monroe.

• 57:06Sean Fennessey?

  Thomas Jane and Emery Cohen as high-level dirtbags. I don't think this movie's good at all, but...

• 57:14Speaker 02

  Did we say that when we walked out? We were like, damn.

• 57:18Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I don't think so. I don't think it was the, um...

• 57:22Speaker 02

  No, but you know what it was, is I think it was like...

• 57:24Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't the long shot effect.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  When we first saw this movie, I think we both walked out. It's like, three hours long. It's pretty long.

• 57:28Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what the final cut is, because I haven't seen it since we saw it.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  We walked out of this movie, we were like, it's almost uncomfortable how much, like, of the stuff that we are into is in that movie.

• 57:38Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's definitely true. I think it's very much like, guy who watched Boogie Nights but didn't realize Paul Thomas Anderson was ripping off Martin Scorsese.

• 57:48Sean Fennessey?

  That's kind of how it feels. You know, like, snap zooms, and tracking shots, and bad narration, and all of these kind of signatures. And like, a young guy who's kind of innocent, but kind of a dirtbag. But like, you're rooting for him, but he's not doing the right thing. And if only he could just get his shit together. But, um, it's interesting to watch Timmy, if people haven't seen this, at this stage of his career, without like, a really strong guiding hand? Because his performance is like, a little all over the place. But it is exactly what I'm thinking of when I say garbage Scorsese. Okay, let's do some more. What do you got?

• 58:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, me again?

• 58:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, okay, I don't want to like, now that we've introduced the chronological element, I'm like, oh, am I gonna?

• 58:26Sean Fennessey?

  You can go too far back.

• 58:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, it's fine.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  It can be loose.

• 58:30Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, this one is sort of obvious because there are many directors we love who are just like, well, now I'm gonna do my gangster, like my mob movies.

• 58:40Sean Fennessey?

  Alah Barry Levinson, yeah.

• 58:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so Ridley Scott has tried it several times, but American Gangster seems pretty like dead on.

• 58:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:48Amanda Dobbins?

  In terms of, you've got Denzel, you've got Russell Crowe as like, as the cop, you know, they're like circling each other throughout the movie. And also like our anticipation for like, we really did think it was gonna be Ridley Scott, like finally made, you know, his version of Martin Scorsese movie, and then it was the garbage version.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, very affectionate about this movie.

• 59:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I, yeah, sure.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  I completely agree with you.

• 59:12Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what I mean? It's like, it's, it's not, we like all of the, it's very, I mean, it's a fucked up movie, it's, it's not cozy, but like, it is comforting that it hits all of the beats.

• 59:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The worst part of this movie is the best part of the movie, which is the final 10 minutes when Crowe and Denzel go toe to toe after Denzel's been arrested and they're spending time together and interacting. And you're like, why is the movie not these two guys interacting? There's like the heavyweight movie stars of their time. And so they like tease you out with that, like, it's meant to be like a heat, kind of like, wait for it, wait for it, but following Frank Lucas and following this kind of.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  07? What was this?

• 59:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, 07.

• 59:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is it 07? I thought it was older, newer than that.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  Cause I feel like this was this in no country where the Brolin songs.

• 1:00:01Sean Fennessey?

  Brolin is fantastic.

• 1:00:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you would be.

• 1:00:04Sean Fennessey?

  Brolin's death scene is incredible with the blood splattering on the.

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Only thing better is, is Idris.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Fuck you gonna do, Frank?

• 1:00:14Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's become one of the great memes.

• 1:00:19Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Chris, you got another one?

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, how about I'll throw a kind of out of, this is, this is the one I was thinking of where I was like, I can't tell where Marty ends and Quentin begins is Observe and Report.

• 1:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:31Speaker 02

  Uh, which is a little bit of the crime Scorsese with the, uh, deluded clown Scorsese of, of King of Comedy. But it's Seth Rogen plays, uh, a mall cop, basically, who wants to, has big dreams of being a police officer. Um, it's a very uncomfortable but very wild movie. Jodie Hill, who's obviously in the Danny McBride, David Gordon Green, uh, school, made this. This was, is this the last feature he made?

• 1:01:02Sean Fennessey?

  No, he made the, I think, The Way of the Whitetail Deer.

• 1:01:06Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right, with Brolin.

• 1:01:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  Which I also saw at South by Southwest.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so, um, this is, this is a, this is one that I, I was thinking of because it combined a couple of different kinds of Scorsese gestures. And also has a lot of, you know, drops and fun filmmaking stuff.

• 1:01:23Sean Fennessey?

  Very funny Anna Faris performance in that movie. Um, hmm, I think the, I think the, one of the, there's two, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take two. There's two big dogs. Alright. And we can talk about them if you've seen both of these movies. One is Blow, which is, uh, Ted Demme's 2001 film starring Johnny Depp about a drug trafficker gets in way over his head. That is the most like, give me shelter, needle drop. Right, yeah. Rip-off attempt. Ted Demme, director I like, like great director, co-creator of, you know, MTV Raps, along other things. Um, and then Alpha Dog, which is one that occurred to me late, directed by Nick Cassavetes, John Cassavetes' son.

• 1:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  Um, that is about like some young kids who get in over their heads with a drug dealer and terrible things happen. I think notable is maybe the first Justin Timberlake movie. Yeah, I was gonna say, that's the one with Justin Timberlake, right?

• 1:02:17Speaker 02

  That's Emile Hirsch is in this?

• 1:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  It's Emile Hirsch, um, Ben Foster plays an absolutely crazy guy in this movie. Bruce Willis is in it, Amanda Seyfried, JT, Harry Dean Stanton, like it's a pretty sick cast.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:27Sean Fennessey?

  But one of those movies that like, both of these movies, I know people love Blow because they saw it when they were nine or whatever, but it's like, it's not good. I'm sorry to tell you guys, um.

• 1:02:38Sean Fennessey?

  Alpha Dog was announced as like a big event. And I remember sitting in theaters and being like, what? What does that? Why is this? Why do people love this? But same thing, like a lot of setup, a lot of like groups of guys where like the trust starts to dissipate and things go wrong. And the energy seems really high until it all falls apart. Doesn't totally work. Alpha Dog, no? You must have been there as a JT fan.

• 1:03:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course. I was just more doing the math on how old Bobby was when he would have seen Blow and he was not old enough to. You weren't nine when it came out, so that's tough.

• 1:03:12Sean Fennessey?

  What year did it come out? 2001. I was, yeah, five.

• 1:03:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17Sean Fennessey?

  Five years old. You see it in theaters at five? Um, maybe, but I probably blocked it out, I think.

• 1:03:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:24Sean Fennessey?

  Five year old me wasn't ready for that.

• 1:03:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we put Casino on?

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Casino is a good call.

• 1:03:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  Nineties.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  I have, oh, well, I had two more 2000s.

• 1:03:38Sean Fennessey?

  Fire away.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Still 21st century ones. One is Guillaume Canet's Blood Ties.

• 1:03:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:03:46Sean Fennessey?

  I've seen it.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Clive Owen and Billy Crudup.

• 1:03:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Milla Coles.

• 1:03:50Sean Fennessey?

  Co-written by James Gray.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  And it was co-written by James Gray. Does it steal from any specific Scorsese film? Not necessarily as much as it feels like it is taking place in the neighborhood over from Mean Streets. It's set in 1974 in New York and it's very James Gray. It's brothers and dads and lovers and, you know, religion and whether or not we can lead just lives or whatever. But vibe wise, the filmmaking and the sort of the scenery of it is just like, we should just make more Mean Streets. Like there should just be more movies that are like adjacent to Mean Streets. So I had that.

• 1:04:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's a fascinating movie. I've never talked to James about this one. It's definitely like, what if a French guy made Mean Streets? Including with French actors at times.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Marion Cotillard's in it.

• 1:04:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Marion Cotillard, like trying real hard to not be Marion Cotillard and it's like, hmm. Doesn't totally come off, you know, Mattias Shonar's also who's been known to play like a Brooklyn tough, who's definitely just from Denmark, you know, like doing his best to not be from Scandinavia.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  What's the one that he's in the Gendalfini with, the drop, right?

• 1:04:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I had the drop on this long list as well. Yeah, Blood Ties is fun. Blood Ties has an incredible soundtrack.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  Awesome. One of the great. What's the song that they used in the trailer? Oh, my God, dude, it's so good.

• 1:05:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, Bad Girl by Lee Moses is the one that goes so hard. But there's Sam Cooke, Ace Frehley, Tommy James and the Shandells, Janis Ian. This is like, you know, Martin Scorsese roulette on this one. It's a good call. You want to do another one or no?

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I was just gonna say American Hustle.

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:27Sean Fennessey?

  Super garbagey. Emphasis on the garbage.

• 1:05:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Really garbage. I just dislike this movie so much that. But yeah, but yes.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  About.

• 1:05:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  People trying to come up in the world through ill-gotten means and ill-gotten ways and.

• 1:05:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Big cocaine energy.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  Lot of cocaine energy. It feels kind of like 80s Scorsese, right before and right after, kind of getting clean. Kind of has a little bit of, I guess it's before Wolf of Wall Street, but that same.

• 1:05:55Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little New York, New York. You know, where it's like way too slow, but way too fast at the same time.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  And a lot of VO.

• 1:06:02Sean Fennessey?

  Lots of, yeah, voiceover. That feels like it's stitching together fractured parts of a script. Again, I stand by, I love Amy Adams in that movie. I think that's like one of her best performances. Everybody else feels like they're like just a little bit. Oh, Cooper is very entertaining when Cooper like flips.

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:17Sean Fennessey?

  That part is fun.

• 1:06:19Sean Fennessey?

  Gosh, there's a lot. I thought of Running Scared, not the 80s version, but the 2006 version starring the late Paul Walker.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:06:28Sean Fennessey?

  Really cool movie with Vera Farmiga.

• 1:06:33Sean Fennessey?

  Christopher McQuarrie's Way of the Gun. Which is his, I think his directorial debut after winning an Academy Award for The Usual Suspects. Ryan Phillippe and Benicio del Toro. Which is very.

• 1:06:44Amanda Dobbins?

  I feel like we could just Google Ryan Phillippe's like screen credits and then they all just get poured.

• 1:06:48Sean Fennessey?

  There's a lot of Scorsese for sure. I mean, the first two movies from Guy Ritchie are undeniable. Part of this. Yeah, Lock, Stock and Snatch are both deeply.

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  You think that those are more Scorsese than Tarantino? It's almost like.

• 1:07:02Sean Fennessey?

  I think they're both.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Sean Fennessey?

  Just like Way of the Gun, I think is both. I think Usual Suspects in its way is both. But the two that stick out to me the most, I don't know if you've seen these. I know you've seen at least one of them, maybe probably both of them.

• 1:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  When I was, when I, I'll, I'll tell the story. I played baseball in high school.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  You didn't ump yourself, though.

• 1:07:25Sean Fennessey?

  No, that was, that was for the little leaguers.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Sean Fennessey?

  When I was a teenager, I was on the baseball team. Our coach was Rob Graziano. Can imagine a Rob Graziano, huge, huge fan of, of, of the films of Martin Scorsese. And, um. You know, I, he, he's a great coach, mentor to me, wonderful guy. And he put me onto a movie called Amongst Friends, which was, uh, made in 1993 and was directed by a guy named Rob Weiss. Here's the log line for the movie. Andy, Billy and Trevor are three friends living the life of privilege on Long Island. Out of boredom, the inseparable trio are drawn into the action of the gangster criminal underworld inhabited by Andy's bookie grandfather.

• 1:08:11Sean Fennessey?

  My coach, Graz, Mr. Graziano, was like, this is probably the best movie since Goodfellas.

• 1:08:17Amanda Dobbins?

  In 1993?

• 1:08:18Sean Fennessey?

  In 1993.

• 1:08:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, so I mean, that's like three years, but whatever.

• 1:08:22Sean Fennessey?

  Not as long as you might think, but, um. It's, it's discussed at length in, um, in John Pearson's Spike Mike Slackers and Dykes. And it was a part of this like wave of small crime movies that were made in the aftermath of not just Goodfellas, but like Reservoir Dogs and all the early nineties movies. And so I saw it and I was like, this movie is incredible. You know, I was like 11 when it came out.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  You finally felt seen.

• 1:08:49Sean Fennessey?

  I, I did. I was like, I too can be a piece of shit in the criminal underworld as a child of privilege on Long Island. And I'm looking at it on Letterboxd right now and it's only been watched by one of, one mutual.

• 1:08:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:09:00Sean Fennessey?

  Dave Weigel, the Semaphore reporter.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, who is a bit of a cinephile himself, if you follow him on Letterboxd. And he's given it one star. That's the only person who's seen this movie.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  I've, I've seen it. I just didn't log it. Do we have to go retroactively?

• 1:09:13Sean Fennessey?

  I don't do that.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Log every movie we've ever seen?

• 1:09:14Sean Fennessey?

  Almost every day I get somebody on social media being like, the feeling when I log a movie that Sean Fantasy has never seen. And it's like.

• 1:09:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, I can't.

• 1:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's like Roman Holiday or something. And I'm like, sir, I've seen Roman Holiday.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  So like somebody will at you and then, damn.

• 1:09:27Sean Fennessey?

  Like screenshot their Letterboxd, you'll be like, you haven't seen this, bro. And I'm like, come on, guys. Like, I didn't, I logged every movie I've ever seen. Who has time for that? Not me.

• 1:09:34Amanda Dobbins?

  You're not responding to them.

• 1:09:36Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:09:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Except for right now, in this video.

• 1:09:37Sean Fennessey?

  I brought it up, which shame on me.

• 1:09:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:40Sean Fennessey?

  So Amongst Friends is one of those, and then the other one is Laws of Gravity, which is, I know is a CR classic.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Just talked about this with Richard Price.

• 1:09:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. So, so speak on it now.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  Well, I just, so Nick Gomez was this up and coming indie filmmaker in the 90s, and was very much kind of like the other side of what Sean is talking about, which is like, person with a camera, gets their friends together, makes a little crime movie for 50,000 bucks and gets it in festivals. And he went on to have a really cool career. He directed New Jersey Drive after this and worked in on homicide life on the street. So, uh, but was like a very cool interview at the time.

• 1:10:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:15Speaker 02

  And when he made Laws of Gravity, which is basically like, early, early, incredibly attractive Eddie Falco, I just have to say.

• 1:10:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  Peter Green as like the wild cat, like, I just got out of jail energy. And then I can't, Adam, I can't remember the guy's name, is the sort of straight friend who's trying to keep it up.

• 1:10:33Sean Fennessey?

  Adam Trees.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, trying to keep it together.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  Nick Gomez made this, and then like, all the interviews is like, what are you gonna do next? What are you gonna do next? And he was like, well, I'd love to do Clockers. I'd love to do Richard Price's Clockers, but I think Clockers is gonna be like Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, which is what it was originally gonna be. And then it wound up being Spike Lee and Harvey Keitel, and Spike Lee rewrote Richard Price's script.

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  And Richard Price, like, he saw a lot of things in it that I did not. And he's very gentlemanly about it.

• 1:10:59Sean Fennessey?

  Clockers is also on my long list, as is Nick Gomez's New Jersey Drive. You know, in the 90s, there's a real, this is a real boom time.

• 1:11:05Speaker 02

  I have Donnie Brasco.

• 1:11:06Sean Fennessey?

  Donnie Brasco is a huge one. Donnie Brasco, directed by the Brit Mike Newell.

• 1:11:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  The Brit.

• 1:11:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, in between.

• 1:11:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's Four Weddings and a Funeral, right?

• 1:11:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, uh, yes, and then also Notting Hill. So, that's like what he was, yeah.

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Is this, he did do Four Weddings and a Funeral, right?

• 1:11:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I think so.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  Richard Curtis didn't do?

• 1:11:26Amanda Dobbins?

  He wrote it.

• 1:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  He wrote it.

• 1:11:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but he doesn't start, um, yes.

• 1:11:31Sean Fennessey?

  And then there's a bunch of more, sort of more mainstream studio movies that I think way, oh, a huge debt, you mentioned Clockers. Get Shorty, which is an Elmore Leonard adaptation, but is very like, movie made for people who've seen all the Scorsese movies.

• 1:11:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  Paul Thomas Anderson's Heart 8, is undeniably influenced by a lot of these films, like a blend of like an Altman and Scorsese movie. The Wachowskis Bound, which we just mentioned on a future episode of this show.

• 1:11:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Spoiler.

• 1:11:58Sean Fennessey?

  Or just a good tease.

• 1:11:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:12:00Sean Fennessey?

  Suicide Kings.

• 1:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  Remember that movie?

• 1:12:04Speaker 02

  I sure do.

• 1:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  It seemed like a very important movie at the time.

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's the other thing with the garbage Scorsese movies. When they hit, you're like.

• 1:12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, this is gonna be.

• 1:12:10Sean Fennessey?

  A new voice.

• 1:12:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:12:11Sean Fennessey?

  And then it's not.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  Would you call Bronx Tale a Scorsese garbage Scorsese?

• 1:12:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  Old Chaz?

• 1:12:17Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's, I mean, cause that's De Niro.

• 1:12:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:12:20Sean Fennessey?

  One of only two movies directed by Robert De Niro. Can you name the other one?

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  The Good Shepherd.

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. Well, Chris knows, cause he's been reading the CIA files on John F. Kennedy's assassination. Did you know that The Good Shepherd?

• 1:12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Sean Fennessey?

  This was recently pointed out by Alex Ross Perry to me. Is entirely made up.

• 1:12:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's not based on anything.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I know, it's, he's basically a fictional character that goes through all the like, sort of major, you know, eras of CIA.

• 1:12:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So when you wrote it, why did you write it that way?

• 1:12:49Speaker 02

  Did Steve Zalian write that? Who wrote that?

• 1:12:51Sean Fennessey?

  I think so. I think that's correct.

• 1:12:52Speaker 02

  Um, I didn't have any more older films. The last one that I had. The last one I had was Good Time. It's after Brothers.

• 1:13:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  It's more contemporary film.

• 1:13:04Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great example. Is it garbagey?

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  No, I think it's great. But I, I, I just wanted to throw it out there. It's like, it has the, has the kinetic energy of.

• 1:13:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Of Mean Streets.

• 1:13:13Sean Fennessey?

  What about Smoking Aces? Good Shepherd, just to save you guys from the notes, was not written by Steve Zalian. It was written by Eric Roth.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 1:13:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:13:20Sean Fennessey?

  One of the other masters of adaptation. The other gray beard of screenwriting genius. Um, Smoking Aces?

• 1:13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  Seen that? Ryan Reynolds?

• 1:13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Sean Fennessey?

  Andy Garcia? Chris Pine?

• 1:13:35Sean Fennessey?

  Ray Liotta?

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  Common?

• 1:13:37Sean Fennessey?

  Common. Alicia Keys?

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Alicia Keys plays a sniper in that movie, right?

• 1:13:42Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Joe Carnahan is directing.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Ripped.

• 1:13:46Sean Fennessey?

  Rip.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Rip.

• 1:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  Which is the new film starring.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  Was Jeff Bridges and somebody else.

• 1:13:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's R.I.P.D.

• 1:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:52Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, R.I.P.D. Very different from Rip, which is a Ben Affleck, Matt Damon movie coming soon from Joe Carnahan. Excited about that?

• 1:13:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, of course I am.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  That's also Apple TV, correct?

• 1:14:02Sean Fennessey?

  Apple TV plus.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Sean Fennessey?

  Don't forget the plus.

• 1:14:04Speaker 02

  I don't have that, so.

• 1:14:05Sean Fennessey?

  You don't have the plus. You have the 3.99 subscription.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  They just show me ads for AirPods every five minutes.

• 1:14:11Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think, um, do you think garbage Scorsese movies are good?

• 1:14:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they are some of my favorites.

• 1:14:17Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think they're good?

• 1:14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Some of them, they're comforting, you know? There's nothing wrong with, uh, I mean, I guess there can be a lot wrong with reheating the work cinematic master just to watch people shooting each other, but, uh, it's, it's an homage. It's done with love for the most part. It's because we all want to feel what we felt when we first saw Goodfellas.

• 1:14:40Sean Fennessey?

  Is it love or is it a lack of creativity?

• 1:14:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it could be both, but you know, not everyone can be Martin Scorsese, you know?

• 1:14:47Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  We just, we don't, genius does not walk among us every single day. So sometimes, I know, you're Chris or you're AI Chris sitting across the table from him.

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  Or other Chris prosthetic nose saying, great point, Chris.

• 1:15:01Amanda Dobbins?

  So it's, but that's okay. It's like, that still makes you laugh, you know? So.

• 1:15:07Sean Fennessey?

  How come you don't do character work like that?

• 1:15:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Me?

• 1:15:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, like it in prosthetics and would you consider it?

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  She does a lot of physical comedy.

• 1:15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Sean Fennessey?

  More pratfalls.

• 1:15:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. I do.

• 1:15:17Sean Fennessey?

  More the Buster Keaton of podcasting, Martin Scorsese over here.

• 1:15:20Speaker 02

  That's what I was thinking about that. Is it, is it a sign that we lack a little bit of creativity as a filmmaking community? That this, this wonderful man has inspired so many knockoffs?

• 1:15:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's hard because

• 1:15:34Sean Fennessey?

  I think what happens is like, I thought of War Dogs, right? The Todd Phillips movie, which is very clearly garbage Scorsese.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  When don't we think of War Dogs?

• 1:15:42Sean Fennessey?

  Another movie that on paper, I'm like, this is all the pieces to the puzzle, except it's not good.

• 1:15:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 1:15:47Speaker 02

  Great Bradley Cooper performance.

• 1:15:49Sean Fennessey?

  Very entertaining. Um.

• 1:15:54Sean Fennessey?

  I wonder what that movie would be like if Martin Scorsese was never born. You know what I mean?

• 1:15:59Speaker 02

  Counterpoint, Martin Scorsese himself is something of an encyclopedia of filmmaking. You know, and that all of his films feature, you know, French New Wave, Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, whatever, what have you. So in truth, ripping off Scorsese is merely paying homage to the great films of all time.

• 1:16:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. It's not, it's not.

• 1:16:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Cause he's omnivorous, but also he has a very specific style that he, I mean, part of it is just that for the first half of his career, I mean, obviously he's made a million movies and has done all sorts of things, but through Goodfellas, or I guess through Casino, there is a very specific thematic stylistic through line that is, like, they're not just ripping off Scorsese, they're ripping off just like a little mini genre that he created and everyone truly loved.

• 1:16:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think the tricky thing of garbage Scorsese, I think you're right, is that it's an adoption of style, but not theme and motivation. So like what undergirds all the great Scorsese movies is this like battle between fate and consequence and faith and desire, you know, these like big ideas that are kind of coursing through him using broad dramatic genre to tell stories about people in crisis.

• 1:17:28Sean Fennessey?

  I guess War Dogs is kind of that, but it's more like Miles Teller's baby needs a crib, so he's got to become an arms dealer.

• 1:17:36Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't that the plot of the movie? You know, it's like a cool script, but it's like, it's not about Harvey Keitel's tortured soul and mean streets.

• 1:17:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, I, listen, that's why.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Where it's like, he's gonna be a priest or he's gonna shoot guys in the head, you know, like it's different.

• 1:17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why it's garbage, you know?

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  That's why it's garbage. That's why it's garbage. Uh, last question, or my last question was, what filmmaker since Scorsese, and I was still active, in fact, somehow has attached two projects right now?

• 1:18:05Sean Fennessey?

  I think four.

• 1:18:06Speaker 02

  Well, there's The Hawaii Departed, there's Marilyn Robinson's Home, there's, what are the other two?

• 1:18:14Sean Fennessey?

  Devil in the White City is apparently still-

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  And he's absolutely cooking on Fox Nation right now with the Saints doc.

• 1:18:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which you've, you have an upcoming episode about that to watch.

• 1:18:24Speaker 02

  That's the first episode of me interviewing me.

• 1:18:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think the Devil in the White City with Leo is still possible.

• 1:18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:18:31Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think also his film about Jesus Christ with Kent Jones is apparently still happening.

• 1:18:37Sean Fennessey?

  He was attached to The Wager, the David Grand nonfiction book.

• 1:18:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Was there a Hawaii one?

• 1:18:41Sean Fennessey?

  That was the first one, the one with The Rock.

• 1:18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  That one seems like they made a quite a big production out of announcing that.

• 1:18:48Sean Fennessey?

  I'm waiting to hear from Martin Scorsese about that.

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  The Rock came out and was like, it's so great to be working with like the great Marty Scorsese.

• 1:18:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Speaker 02

  So that made it sound like that was gonna happen.

• 1:18:58Sean Fennessey?

  Are you implying that The Rock always tells the truth?

• 1:19:00Speaker 02

  No, but I am implying that Emily Blunt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese and The Rock want to go to Hawaii.

• 1:19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  As do I.

• 1:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, here's my thing about that.

• 1:19:12Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I subscribe to your theory that people will often make movies like this to go on extravagant vacations and to be surrounded by beauty and history. But like The Rock could just, he could go to afford to go Hawaii. He just made Moana 2. Like, I'm pretty sure he's been to Hawaii.

• 1:19:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Of all the people, like, I don't think Marty does really want to go to Hawaii.

• 1:19:29Sean Fennessey?

  You know what he wants to do?

• 1:19:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Watch movies.

• 1:19:31Sean Fennessey?

  Sit in a dark room like me, watch films.

• 1:19:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's running out of time.

• 1:19:35Speaker 02

  Worried about Marty on the set of The Wager. You know, a lot of water, you know, a lot of like thrown guys around and that. So I'd like him to stay put. Stick with Christ, you know?

• 1:19:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:46Speaker 02

  He, there was a, I was looking at unmade Martin Scorsese projects blog posts. And there was one called Jesus Christ in New York, where it was just like modern day JC walking through.

• 1:19:58Sean Fennessey?

  That was about me in 2006.

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  At a fucking dipset mixtape listening session.

• 1:20:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm just, I'm really excited for Odyssey, our second season, which will be about The Wager, you know?

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  I'd like-

• 1:20:18Sean Fennessey?

  We're looking for projects right now.

• 1:20:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Once they're done in Greece, we'll just get you in that water tank, you know?

• 1:20:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can you, just for Alice purposes, can you just record a page by page reading of The Wager so that I can play it for her on the Yoto every night?

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Do you think that that would calm her?

• 1:20:32Sean Fennessey?

  I think it might, yeah.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  I'll read it right in a corinna.

• 1:20:36Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that would certainly put her to sleep. You know, hey now. Uh, closing thoughts? You feel good?

• 1:20:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we said we were gonna do a top 10 and this is like 15.

• 1:20:45Sean Fennessey?

  We do that every time.

• 1:20:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:46Sean Fennessey?

  You want to do the top 10?

• 1:20:47Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I just didn't know whether you wanted some sort of-

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Lop off Good Time because Good Time is actually a good movie and I broke the reverse chronological order.

• 1:20:55Sean Fennessey?

  Bike riders, hustlers, hot summer nights, hmm, American hustle, hmm, American gangster. Put American in your movie. Alpha Dog, Blow, Donnie Brasco, Amongst Friends, Laws of Gravity.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it would have been better to have Casino.

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  A lot of your choices.

• 1:21:19Sean Fennessey?

  Casino is the most honorable mention. A lot of my choices?

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  The umpire and the player.

• 1:21:24Amanda Dobbins?

  You're not, that wasn't good list making, you know?

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  I love you, but like you were just like, you were like, I made some great calls there.

• 1:21:34Sean Fennessey?

  I made the long list, came up with the idea.

• 1:21:37Amanda Dobbins?

  You did a great job. We appreciate you always. And like, you know?

• 1:21:41Sean Fennessey?

  Make your list, fire away. Go ahead, big time.

• 1:21:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Bobby deleted the long list.

• 1:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's right here, it's on Letterboxd. I sent it to you.

• 1:21:48Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know, but like our-

• 1:21:49Sean Fennessey?

  Did you know that I made it and I shared it with you, but nobody else has it?

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's private. It's only us.

• 1:21:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:21:53Sean Fennessey?

  So only you guys have it.

• 1:21:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:56Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful. Will you now release it to the public?

• 1:21:59Speaker 02

  Did we have edit privileges?

• 1:22:00Sean Fennessey?

  Not after the way that you acted towards me.

• 1:22:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't do anything.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Could we have added things to the list?

• 1:22:05Sean Fennessey?

  I, maybe, I don't know. I don't know. I'm gonna call Jim Letterboxd right now.

• 1:22:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:22:10Sean Fennessey?

  Jim?

• 1:22:12Sean Fennessey?

  Um, okay, great. Well, like I said, 25 for 25, coming later this week. No tips.

• 1:22:19Speaker 02

  You guys do Snow White yet?

• 1:22:22Amanda Dobbins?

  We're not doing it even, like, I really, I wanna do Disney Princess Hell with Princess Dad over here, but he's, yeah, he's not available to, at this moment, so we'll wait for the next-

• 1:22:33Sean Fennessey?

  I'm shipping up to Boston.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:22:34Amanda Dobbins?

  The next princess movie will get in the mix.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  It'll be me and Sean on a duck boat talking, talking Odyssey night shoots.

• 1:22:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, I'm looking for some micro-processes. It's gonna be a while before I can see Snow White.

• 1:22:48Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to our producer, Bobby Wagner. Thank you to Jack Sanders. Sierra, what do you got cooking up?

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  Not much. I'm going to Boston. Yeah. It's all just-

• 1:22:56Sean Fennessey?

  What's on the watch when you're in Boston?

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Uh, we're recording it tomorrow. It'll be Dope Thief, The Pit, and maybe some Top Chef, maybe some... Top Chef hasn't really-

• 1:23:06Amanda Dobbins?

  You've really been neglecting Top Chef. As someone who only knows what's happening on Top Chef, when you recap it, and I appreciate that you wanna honor Kaia's relationship to Top Chef, and you don't wanna spoil it for her.

• 1:23:19Speaker 02

  We spoil The Pit every week for her.

• 1:23:21Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? I think Kaia can catch up on Top Chef. I love you, Kaia. She does a great job on your Instagram.

• 1:23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, she does.

• 1:23:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, she knows how to use all the stickers.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  She does.

• 1:23:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:32Sean Fennessey?

  Let me tell you something about The Pit. I haven't seen one minute of it. It's one of those shows that's like a show that somebody on a TV show is watching, and they're like, "I love this show." And I'm like, "Oh, that must be fun for those characters." Like, you and Andy talking about The Pit, it's like my buddies have something that I'll never have access to. Like, I just can't... I did watch Adolescence. Did you watch that?

• 1:23:49Amanda Dobbins?

  I will never watch it, because they like... And I know Andy started off his recap of the first one being like, "As a parent, it was okay for me." No, it's not okay for me. Won't be doing it.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  What's your review?

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  I thought it was terrific. And-

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  TV is back.

• 1:24:04Sean Fennessey?

  Really powerful, and I thought your discussion, especially the second discussion that you guys had, was excellent.

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:24:12Sean Fennessey?

  I... It is terrifying-

• 1:24:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Sean Fennessey?

  -to consider the real-world stakes of that story.

• 1:24:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:22Sean Fennessey?

  And very well-made, and I thought impressively un-showy, given the strategy that they took to make it, and wildly good performances. So, I was very, very impressed.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  That's great to hear. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much.

• 1:24:35Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you, Dr. Television.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  The Pit is harrowing, but is... There's something about it. It's just like the most reliably satisfying thing I've watched this year.

• 1:24:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I read a headline about The Pit, which was like, how to, you know, simulate a live birth for TV, and then it was like something involving a puppet, and I was like, "Once again, I'm out. I will not be watching this." I mean, that's cool.

• 1:25:01Speaker 02

  It's an extensive, extensive birth scene.

• 1:25:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's... You know, I'm-

• 1:25:07Sean Fennessey?

  What did it feel being so close to the scene?

• 1:25:11Sean Fennessey?

  Do you feel energized? Do you feel moved? That spirit?

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I just wondered, you know? I guess that's the miracle of life. That's as close as I'm going to get. Okay. Unless anybody wants to invite me into their-

• 1:25:22Sean Fennessey?

  What do you mean? There's about to be a second Chris Ryan. They'll be birthing soon on podcasts.

• 1:25:26Speaker 02

  Well, that's going to be more like a Severance thing. You know what I mean?

• 1:25:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little bit of your inny and your outty. Okay, well, thank you for listening to this show. We'll be back later this week with 25 for 25. See you then.