‘Disclosure Day’ Is Steven Spielberg’s True Believer Manifesto. Kneel!

On today’s show, Sean and Amanda cover one of their most anticipated movies of the year: Steven Spielberg’s alien thriller ‘Disclosure Day,’ starring Josh O’Connor and Emily Blunt. Before diving in, Sean revels in the glory of an all-time New York Knicks victory that extended their NBA Finals lead over the San Antonio Spurs to 3-1 (0:43). Then, they hit myriad movie news headlines and, most importantly, react to the first trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Social Reckoning’ (12:47). Next, they have a wide-ranging conversation about ‘Disclosure Day,’ which they found to be an incredibly fascinating movie, not without flaws, and an amazing platform for Emily Blunt, who delivers the best performance of her career (38:05). Finally, they go into full spoilers and break down specific plot points, character motivations, and the final shot of the film (1:05:29). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh 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.

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessy.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Pictureate Conversation Show about Disclosure Day. On today's episode, we will dig into Steven Spielberg's return to blockbuster filmmaking, the sci-fi epic Disclosure Day, the iconic director's 35th feature film. This is among our most anticipated movies of 2026, and we will dive deep into a spoiler-filled conversation about the film's plot, its ideas about life beyond our own, and what it all means. But first, we'll talk about some movie news right after this.

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• 1:42Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:24Sean Fennessey?

  That's LinkedIn.com slash the big picture. Terms and conditions apply.

• 2:31Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, Dobbins, right at the top of the ledger in movie news.

• 2:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Incredible restraint to not just make this. This is a conversation podcast about the New York Knicks.

• 2:39Sean Fennessey?

  We did it.

• 2:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Unreal, honestly unbelievable. I was watching live with my four year old son and my husband. It was way past bedtime, but we were like, can you, you gotta, you gotta witness history. Though we didn't know that we were going to get the OG Ananobe tip. Yeah.

• 2:58Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know what to do with myself.

• 3:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, let's, let's talk a little bit about it because incredible, incredible final moments that I have watched from like every angle, 45 different times. It's, you know, Ben set to various scores and cinematic moments. That's great. It's a meme, perfect, beautiful Knicks win. The whole MSG goes completely wild. Everyone is smiling, even Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld. But the two and a half hours or three hours really leading up to that inexplicable. And, and there was, the Knicks were down by 29 points. This is the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history.

• 3:41Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 3:42Amanda Dobbins?

  What happened? Not to, you know, not to be my courtside reporter, but like, what, what happened?

• 3:47Sean Fennessey?

  I'll, I'll give you my perspective on the experience.

• 3:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:50Sean Fennessey?

  I've been watching all of these games at home.

• 3:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 3:51Sean Fennessey?

  I've been watching them in my living room with my family.

• 3:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:54Sean Fennessey?

  On Friday, I watched with CR and Phoebe.

• 3:57Amanda Dobbins?

  That's beautiful.

• 3:57Sean Fennessey?

  But otherwise I've been watching this mostly with, with Alice, with Eileen. Sometimes Alice and Eileen need to be like on the other side of the room.

• 4:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  Not leaving the room, but like, why don't you guys play a board game while we endure this? This has been a very tense, very close series, two very evenly matched teams. I'm, I've very rarely been in this position. The Nick, the Mets were in the World Series in 2015.

• 4:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember that.

• 4:22Sean Fennessey?

  They were in the World Series and there was the Subway Series in 2000. They, I had, the Knicks have not been in the finals since 1999.

• 4:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Jets lol?

• 4:33Sean Fennessey?

  The Jets have not been to the Super Bowl since 1969. So I just don't have a ton of experience with this kind of high-stakes series. But I'm also trying to be a grown-up person, a father, an adult. So watching the first two minutes of this game, I've already been a big crybaby about the officiating in this series.

• 4:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 4:53Sean Fennessey?

  And I felt like Kat got two fouls in the first two minutes and I, it just immediately went full doomer. You know, I was just like, this is horrible, the world is against us.

• 5:01Amanda Dobbins?

  You weren't alone. There is a historic Ayesha Curry tweet from, I believe, 2016 of, you know, it's rigged. I don't know what to say. I just saw it live. It's rigged. And that was being recirculated as soon as the game started.

• 5:16Sean Fennessey?

  And I've been living in that tweet for four games. It's really, you know, Victor Wembanyama, it's a long story. I'll say I'm certainly happy about his existence today because he choked. But after those first two cat fouls, and then the fact that the Knicks just got their doors blown off. The Spurs were unbelievable in the first quarter. They were shooting the lights out. I like shut down. I really was shutting down. And then halfway through the second quarter, I just shared this with Jack and our colleague Anthony DiBundo. I just moved from watching the game on the TV to watching it on my phone.

• 5:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 5:43Sean Fennessey?

  And I was sitting and playing with Alice while watching the game on my phone because they were down 25 points.

• 5:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is certainly the energy that you want to bring to you spending time with your child.

• 5:52Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't ideal.

• 5:53Amanda Dobbins?

  This is kind of like-

• 5:54Sean Fennessey?

  But it was better than just going into the basement and not doing any, like not looking at anyone.

• 5:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's true. Though, remember when you used to like play with Alice and also listen to a podcast at the same time?

• 6:04Sean Fennessey?

  When she was like six months old.

• 6:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but they can tell.

• 6:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we're good. Alice and I are good, trust me. She and I are in good shape.

• 6:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:12Sean Fennessey?

  But by the third quarter, when they cut it to 15, here's what I'll say. One, I was doing the hardcore doomer reverse jinx thing where I was just like, they're going to lose this game. They won't win another game in this series. This is classic Knicks, the Trump stink, the James Dolan interview on WFAN, Taylor Swift with her griftin' ass sitting in the front row.

• 6:30Amanda Dobbins?

  That was inexcusable. Listen, listen.

• 6:33Sean Fennessey?

  Taylor Swift was at a Knicks game a month ago rooting for the Cavs.

• 6:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, sitting like one foot above the floor. And it's very- Stupid. I don't know what's happening with Cleveland seating also, but yeah. But also just like ladies, sit down, you know, like it's fine. Congratulations. You're so rich and famous and allegedly getting married at MSG, even though I don't believe that.

• 6:55Amanda Dobbins?

  That you can have courtside seats. First of all, give them to someone else, honestly. But second of all, if you're going to be there in your Stevie Nicks shirt, like you don't need to be jumping up and down that hard. Okay. You just arrived. Have some, you know.

• 7:08Sean Fennessey?

  The counterpoint is, as Jason Concepcion put it, the person who would have been sitting there was probably like a hedge fund manager from New York. It's not like we took this away from a blue collar lifelong Knicks fan, but that was all of that was very ostentatious and silly.

• 7:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Kylie took the seat away from Josh Safdie and I was, I raised my eyebrows at that.

• 7:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Well, I saw Josh got onto the court afterwards. Anyhow, in the third quarter, I basically like, I had to leave and just go watch the game by myself. Because after all my doomerism, after on my multiple Knicks text threads saying they won't win another game, it's over, it's over, it's over. Which is some combination of reverse jinx and just feeling destroyed. Bill Simmons was the first person who said, when they were down 29, the Knicks can definitely come back from this and they have done it before. And I didn't believe that in the moment.

• 7:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 7:55Sean Fennessey?

  But that was right around when I locked into the game in a real way. And the final quarter and a half of that game is the best I've ever felt watching sports in my entire life. That was the

• 8:05Amanda Dobbins?

  It was really fun.

• 8:05Sean Fennessey?

  OG tip in there. Nothing will ever, ever, ever, ever touch that. I mean, that is, that was elation. I couldn't breathe. Tears in my eyes. I truly like felt my body shaking. Actually, literally something that happened to me because I was drinking. I won't be a surprise to people last night is my ear clogged when he hit the shot. And it had been clogged all the way up until an hour ago when I took a pseudoephedrine.

• 8:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:28Sean Fennessey?

  Like

• 8:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It was unclogged.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  No, like I, it was, no, it clogged because it was like, I had no control over my function.

• 8:34Amanda Dobbins?

  The atmospheric pressure just changed in your body. Okay. That's good. Listen.

• 8:39Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I just, and you know, and then I spent five hours listening to pods, looking at tweets, just laughing.

• 8:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:45Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it like reveling in, in, in SportsCenter in a way I haven't in 30 years. It was just the greatest. No, the job's not done.

• 8:53Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 8:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's only 3-1.

• 8:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, back to San Antonio.

• 8:55Sean Fennessey?

  Back to San Antonio. Look, the Spurs are amazing. They're too young. That's been the issue. The issue is they've made a ton of mistakes and the Knicks have capitalized on the mistakes. They're insanely talented. Wemby's terrifying. I do feel justified in everything I said. He's a bully. He's a dirty player. He's also probably the most gifted NBA player that's come around since maybe LeBron, give or take Jokic.

• 9:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Sean Fennessey?

  So we gotta try to beat him one more time, but that was the best, man. That was, that's why I've been watching sports for 43 years. That was the absolute best feeling you could have.

• 9:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I offer my reviews of some of the memes that have made it my way?

• 9:29Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 9:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Or the reactions? Sure. So I was happy that they found my Christians Dior Nixon four guy for number five.

• 9:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 9:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And I hope he's happy.

• 9:40Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 9:40Amanda Dobbins?

  That was an instant poetry. Yeah. Mom Donny's reaction on the chair in the bar. Very good.

• 9:47Sean Fennessey?

  I was just telling that story. That was great stuff.

• 9:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Really, really, really good stuff. Everything he's doing, two thumbs up. And then the group of New Yorkers on the Upper West Side who just started chanting UPS at a UPS truck are doing the work, you know? And that, to me, captures what is great about New York City. And that's fun. Like, this is, this has gone beyond. I'm not on the bandwagon. I'm not Taylor Swift.

• 10:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm watching. I'm excited. It's, you know, a phenomenon. It's a pop cultural thing. Yeah.

• 10:17Sean Fennessey?

  It is. That's what we were discussing just before. I think I'm so torn because people have asked me multiple times since the playoffs started, and especially when they started going on this massive run, like, will you go back? Will you go back? Will you go back? And I always say I will never go back. I can't watch games like this in person. Like, I'm too tense. It's too difficult.

• 10:34Amanda Dobbins?

  But Saturday night, San Antonio. You're not gonna try?

• 10:37Sean Fennessey?

  I can't. I can't. Well, now if I do it, I'm afraid of jinxing everything. I mean, we've just never had this much good fortune. They've now won 14 of 15 playoff games.

• 10:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I know.

• 10:45Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, this is gonna end up becoming, if they win, one of the most astonishing playoff runs in sports history. So I can't risk. I can't fuck with that.

• 10:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 10:53Sean Fennessey?

  But...

• 10:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Will you watch game six, game five alone?

• 10:57Sean Fennessey?

  I think I'll just do what I've done with every game, which is we'll all sit down together, we'll fire it up. If it's going poorly, we'll kind of shut it down a little bit. I'll move to another room. I gotta just stick with what's worked.

• 11:07Amanda Dobbins?

  We have to do a bedtime reset in my house because things have just really gone awry, but it's tough because... Once game five turns on, Knox is gonna be like, I want to watch the Knicks. Like, he's in. He knows about it and he knows that he understood that moment. I think Zach and I both like, you know, jumped off the couch when it happened.

• 11:26Sean Fennessey?

  And you know, this is something that like, this actually makes sports fandoms outside of your home city. I'm not one of those people who roots for a team that isn't from my home city. But if you were a young person watching the Dallas Cowboys in the 90s, you could become a Cowboys fan forever if you lived in New York or Canada or Wyoming. If you were a baseball fan, a young baseball fan in 2004, when the Red Sox beat the Yankees, you could become a Red Sox fan for life, no matter where you lived. There have been a lot of examples. I mean, Patrick Mahomes fans have come up despite not being from Kansas City over the years. Like, this is something that happens with sports. And the Knicks team is, I feel like they're pretty likeable. It's impossible for me to have any objectivity about this, but they're not braggadocious. They're real like, put your head down and work guys.

• 12:11Sean Fennessey?

  They're like, they're adults. They're all between the ages of 28 and 31. And there's a togetherness to them that I find really special. So, yeah, I'm just, I don't know what to do with myself.

• 12:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I also was watching just to try to understand what energy we would have today for the, you know, the rest of this podcast. And this is, this is a big deal. This is new Spielberg movie. You're, you know, your best friend, Steven.

• 12:33Sean Fennessey?

  One of the only things that could possibly interrupt the general momentum of a movie podcast is a historic win like that.

• 12:39Amanda Dobbins?

  So I really needed them to close so that we could do this appropriately. And I appreciate it. I understand you're still like, it was a roller coaster. You know, you're vulnerable. Your, you know, heart's on the line and it's not over yet.

• 12:53Sean Fennessey?

  Nope.

• 12:54Amanda Dobbins?

  But we're gonna do our best and I appreciate what they did.

• 12:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think if they had gotten blown out, I would have brought my A-game to the pod. I would have just been like, it happens. 2-2, we'll probably lose the series. I would have been in Doomer Town. But I wouldn't have been like, this is gonna affect how I do my thing. If they had lost a one-point game after the comeback, I might have pushed the recording to Friday.

• 13:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:13Sean Fennessey?

  Just putting that out there for you.

• 13:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm glad you didn't because the traffic getting here tomorrow for World Cup purposes is going to be very difficult.

• 13:20Sean Fennessey?

  That's an incredibly good point.

• 13:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I'm glad we're not coming to the office. I am coming to your house, though, right?

• 13:25Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna say, are you locked in for Friday?

• 13:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, my whole family, including my on-the-men husband.

• 13:30Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, what a sports week.

• 13:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 13:31Sean Fennessey?

  What a sports week.

• 13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm excited.

• 13:33Sean Fennessey?

  You know, your husband had a sports surgery?

• 13:35Amanda Dobbins?

  He did, with an incredibly handsome sports doctor, which, yeah, he did not mention until the guy walked in the room and I was like, hello.

• 13:42Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Thanks to him, it went well.

• 13:43Sean Fennessey?

  Nice.

• 13:44Amanda Dobbins?

  So he's recovering well, but yeah, it was, it was sort of like-

• 13:46Sean Fennessey?

  Was it Neil Elatros?

• 13:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, is that the train wreck character?

• 13:49Sean Fennessey?

  No, that's the guy who does, um, the Achilles surgeries that worked on Aaron Rodgers' Achilles and all the-

• 13:55Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but, I mean, it was a sports surgery in order to get his shoulder working again. And, you know, it was explained to me about moving, stabilizing the muscles and something called remplissage, which is the French term for re- filling in something that wasn't there.

• 14:13Sean Fennessey?

  Heyo.

• 14:14Amanda Dobbins?

  I didn't say it. So-

• 14:17Sean Fennessey?

  Remplissage, you say.

• 14:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Remplissage, yeah.

• 14:19Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 14:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Which the handsome surgeon pronounced very well. Yeah, but anyway, Trainwreck, good movie.

• 14:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I'm a fan. Let's, let's remplissage the movie podcast. Let's, let's fill in what we were not doing. Thank you to the listeners who endured eight minutes of discussion of the NBA. There is some movie news before we discuss Disclosure Day. I got quite a few notes on social media asking us to immediately react to the release of The Social Reckoning trailer. This is the new movie from Aaron Sorkin, written and directed. It is a, effectively a sequel to The Social Network, which was our favorite movie collectively of the 21st century when we did 25 for 25.

• 14:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't have to say it like that, but, okay.

• 15:00Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, I have been having a lot of Fincher conversations.

• 15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 15:03Sean Fennessey?

  Fincher back in the news because of Cliff Booth.

• 15:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:06Sean Fennessey?

  And, and somebody was bullying me about not making it Zodiac. Just putting that out there for you.

• 15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That person is welcome to bully you all they want because they can never bully me. Like, I'm immovable. And it was a joint list. It's like, good luck, buddy.

• 15:19Sean Fennessey?

  Social Network-

• 15:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I assume it was a man, so good luck.

• 15:21Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it was a man and a woman.

• 15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay.

• 15:23Sean Fennessey?

  Um, Social Network, uh, had its rightful place at number one on that list. The Social Reckoning comes- I think with the weight of that expectation. And now, remind me, you missed this trailer?

• 15:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. It was on Monday night, so I had to stay and have dinner. Family dinner.

• 15:40Sean Fennessey?

  So Matt Bellini and I saw this trailer.

• 15:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Was this The Lentils? I think it might have been The Lentils.

• 15:45Sean Fennessey?

  I believe it was. Yeah. So Matt and I saw this trailer at CinemaCon in April. And, you know, Matt was very excited about the kind of meme potential of Jeremy Strong. I generally was like, this looks like a disaster.

• 15:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 15:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think that there was something more interesting about what was happening with Jeremy Strong playing Mark Zuckerberg in the movie. But what we saw of Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison and the Wall Street Journal reporter and the whistleblower component, I thought looked very bad. And here we are.

• 16:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 16:14Sean Fennessey?

  You've seen the trailer now.

• 16:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I watched it this morning because it hit my inbox yesterday. And I was like, I'm not emotionally ready for this. We're recovering from sports surgery. I don't have to do this yet.

• 16:25Sean Fennessey?

  What a tumultuous week.

• 16:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so I did it this morning, and my verdict is absolutely not. Like, just absolutely not, top to bottom. And I think I am historically more black licorice on Jeremy Strong than anybody else. And I think when he's good, he's very good, but he is always Jeremy Strong to me, doing something to me as well. And so I was nervous about it in any way, what I've seen, not positive. I agree with everything you said about the Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White reporter, whistleblower type situation, which, to be fair, we didn't get that much of, but it was certainly the, we got stilted expository dialogue.

• 17:07Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly.

• 17:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, what this reminded me, in addition to this being a sequel, this is very clearly a movie about Facebook and not about Mark Zuckerberg. And I think what is magical about Social Network and many other movies, and honestly, this is germane to the conversation we're going to have about Disclosure Day, is that it uses the personal in order to explore the larger, the larger system and the larger world. And, you know, what we learn about ourselves or this person is then reflected. And this is just about how big tech is bad, according to what I'm seeing. And I know, you know?

• 17:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And that just doesn't seem as interesting. Obviously, also, the filmmaking is like a joke, but we knew that that was going to be the case. Please hire a real director. Group projects are good.

• 18:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, someone on social media yesterday just posted the Social Network trailer just to cleanse the timeline. And just looking again at the trailer and conjuring that feeling, it did remind me that we're, it's a lot to live up to for a movie like this. The movie looks to me like a standard docudrama. You know, it looks like an HBO movie. I like movies like that if they're done well. And there have been a lot of them over the last 20 years that are, can be like entertaining and pass the time. But this is coming in the shadow of a movie that we both revere. And I think you're right that it does feel like it's a movie about a system and a way that we have changed our lives rather than the character study of the Social Network, which was what is so powerful about that film is trying to explore this Sphinx-like,

• 18:44Sean Fennessey?

  bratty young man who changed the world.

• 18:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 18:47Sean Fennessey?

  And this is about the way that a corporation makes decisions and how it hurts people, which is not fundamentally dramatic. We, especially because there's just a lot of reportage about what's transpired. Now, look, I'm guilty of doing the thing that you just did when we saw the Oppenheimer trailer. I was like, we know what happens. If you've read the book, you may remember that. People were so mad at me when I said that. And it was very easy for me to change my tune when I saw the movie. So if the movie is good enough.

• 19:17Amanda Dobbins?

  True.

• 19:17Sean Fennessey?

  It'll wash it away. It's just not a promising trailer at all. It looks very, it looks very, very overwritten. And that's one thing that you can say about the wonderful collaboration between Sorkin and Fincher is they made each other better. They did, they elevated what each other is interested in in such unique ways. And sometimes that friction stylistically can make something special. And this just feels like a guy holding the ball by himself.

• 19:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. You can also say that of Steve Jobs, which I also saw comparisons to. And that is a Sorkin-Danny Boyle collaboration. And that is obviously even closer. Well, it's also about a tech person and a tech person later in life and kind of the legend of someone. But it's definitely about a person. And the way that it's structured is around three discreet events. I mean, this is alarming in that it just seems to, the breadth of it, of what it's trying to communicate over time. I don't know.

• 20:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's a lot to, it's a lot to bite off. You know, the movie comes out this fall. We'll be covering it for sure. I think there's something kind of interesting about a movie like this actually being a, on its face, you think this is what we always ask for. Why can't we get back to like adult dramas? But it also feels like kind of a old fashioned IP play. And the decision to include, we told you about this, but to include Hand covers bruise, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score.

• 20:42Amanda Dobbins?

  So angry.

• 20:43Sean Fennessey?

  At the conclusion of the trailer, when in fact, those composers are not a part of the movie. I understand it as a marketing tactic, but it's, it's a bait and switch. You know, this is not from the people who brought you the social network. It's from one person who is a part of the social network. Let me ask you this, one thing. If it were Eisenberg and not Strong, would you feel better about it?

• 21:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I would. I mean, I, I said, part of my concern is Jeremy Strong, much like Aaron Sorkin, I think, is best when mediated.

• 21:15Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And well.

• 21:17Sean Fennessey?

  I know what you mean.

• 21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  When there are like.

• 21:18Sean Fennessey?

  I love Jeremy Strong, but I know what you mean.

• 21:20Amanda Dobbins?

  I think he's incredibly talented and I've liked many of his performances, but I think when it's not just the Jeremy Strong show.

• 21:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  When he is in response to other people, when there is more than like his performance holding something together is when it gets interesting.

• 21:38Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And this looks like the Jeremy Strong show. So I, I don't know. I don't think anyone is set up to succeed. How about that?

• 21:47Sean Fennessey?

  I can't say I disagree with you. We also saw the whale fall trailer, which you and I did both see at CinemaCon.

• 21:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Just rock out.

• 21:56Sean Fennessey?

  Terrifying, truly, truly good.

• 21:57Amanda Dobbins?

  It's so good.

• 21:58Sean Fennessey?

  We tried to tell you.

• 21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 22:00Sean Fennessey?

  And it's, it's pretty exciting. I'm very pumped for this movie. Now they did effectively show, they made the trailer, the clip that we saw. We saw a clip, we didn't see a proper trailer. They showed us a little bit of a tease with the Josh Brolin character being the father of the Austin Abrams character at the beginning of the trailer. But then they basically cut the sequence that we watched of a man being subsumed by a whale, in addition to a squid being subsumed by a whale.

• 22:24Sean Fennessey?

  And a lot of people were just like, this is a little too stressful for me. And it does have a little bit of a horror movie quality, but I think it's, it's obviously not showing much of the story at all. And it's obviously a survival movie.

• 22:38Amanda Dobbins?

  It doesn't answer any of my questions.

• 22:41Sean Fennessey?

  About breathing?

• 22:43Amanda Dobbins?

  No, about what happens when you're swallowed by a whale.

• 22:45Sean Fennessey?

  Right, but wasn't so much of that related to like the oxygen and what was?

• 22:49Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it was about gravity.

• 22:50Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, gravity. That's right. It was gravity. So, but we, but, but I think that we did get word from, from the filmmaker by proxy.

• 22:57Amanda Dobbins?

  That, that there is gravity.

• 23:00Sean Fennessey?

  There is gravity inside of a whale.

• 23:02Amanda Dobbins?

  The whale. Though then I heard from some whale experts that there are some issues, like being swallowed by a whale is sort of a multi-stop, multi-step and impossible process. You wouldn't really be swallowed whole.

• 23:14Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 23:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Something about a whale's esophagus being the size of a grapefruit or something.

• 23:19Sean Fennessey?

  You heard from whale experts?

• 23:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so did you.

• 23:21Sean Fennessey?

  Did I?

• 23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 23:23Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 23:24Amanda Dobbins?

  So, we'll see. We'll learn. I'm really excited. Are you aware that the author of Whalefall, the novel, recently won the Pulitzer Prize?

• 23:31Sean Fennessey?

  I certainly am. His name's Daniel Kraus.

• 23:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. But not for Whalefall, for Angel Down, which is apparently a one-sentence novel.

• 23:37Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, it's apparently a horror novel and I actually would like to read it. A lot of people, a lot of my favorite horror movie podcasters have, have aggressively recommended it. I think Gilbert Cruz also recommended it to me.

• 23:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Gilbert Cruz is the person who let me know about this Pulitzer Prize.

• 23:52Sean Fennessey?

  Friend who works at the New York Times. Yeah, I'm pumped for Whalefall.

• 23:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Me too.

• 23:56Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's in real stark contrast to The Social Reckoning, and they come out in the same month. So that's wonderful.

• 24:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 24:02Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to also mention, there's a trailer this week for Once Upon a Time in Harlem, which is David and William Greaves's documentary about a reunion of several participants of the Harlem Renaissance, which we saw at Cannes. And actually, I don't know if we ever talked about it in our, in our recap episode or any of our follow-up episodes, partially because the film originally premiered at Sundance and got raves. Neon is distributing the movie. But I wanted to just put a circle around it and wanted to let people know that I thought it was a very cool, unique, special document that apparently has been 50 years in the making since these conversations were captured. And I thought it's very well edited and really interesting. And, you know, is probably the presumptive favorite for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards right now. Anything you wanted to share about that?

• 24:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I really enjoyed seeing it and I, I thought that, as you said, it's- You know, inventive without being showy of how it presents the, uh, the information and the footage that it has.

• 24:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 24:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And, um, well edited and we're checking out, so.

• 24:58Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely worth seeing. Okay, some Academy Award news, speaking of.

• 25:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 25:03Sean Fennessey?

  The Academy announced its Governor's Awards honorees.

• 25:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 25:06Sean Fennessey?

  Now, every year, a handful of people receive honorary Oscars. Historically, you don't recognize those Oscars as competitive wins. They're not.

• 25:15Amanda Dobbins?

  They're not competitive wins.

• 25:17Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but they do still mean that these people get Oscars. Some.

• 25:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Asterisk Oscars, but okay.

• 25:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um, two of these people.

• 25:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 25:25Sean Fennessey?

  Are, are long time, like, when will they get their Oscars? Why won't the Oscars respect them?

• 25:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:30Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that, we've been waiting a really long time to see one, Glenn Close.

• 25:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:35Sean Fennessey?

  Who, some of the earliest bits on this show were oriented around her Oscar campaigns. We've all.

• 25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  For The Wife.

• 25:40Sean Fennessey?

  We've all not seen The Wife, you know?

• 25:41Amanda Dobbins?

  We saw it.

• 25:42Sean Fennessey?

  I have seen it, you've seen it.

• 25:43Amanda Dobbins?

  I read the, did I read the novel or did I just purchase it and not read it? Couldn't tell you.

• 25:48Sean Fennessey?

  The only people who've seen The Wife.

• 25:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Sean Fennessey?

  Are us, other Oscar podcasters, and 22% of the Oscar voting body.

• 25:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 25:56Sean Fennessey?

  Um, she's been nominated eight times.

• 25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:59Sean Fennessey?

  And has no wins, and it's become a bit that she hasn't won. So she will be honored here. Obviously, one of the great screen actors the last 40 years. Done a lot of great work.

• 26:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I don't know what you do about this. I guess this is great news for her. It makes it feel a little worse in a way.

• 26:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely agree. I just, I think if I were her, I still, I can see her face when I close my eyes. I can see her face not winning the Oscar for The Wife.

• 26:29Sean Fennessey?

  It was Olivia Colman, right?

• 26:30Amanda Dobbins?

  When they announced Olivia Colman, yes, one of the great, uh, speeches. And, you know, she mostly holds it together, but there's kind of like an, ah, well, there goes again moment. Uh, it's not quite as bad as Demi Moore with the dog and the french fries after losing for the substance. But it stays with me. So I Glenn Close knows, you know, in her heart of hearts, this is not what she's out for.

• 26:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It cuts two ways, right? On the one hand, you can be like, well, you'll never compete again. On the other hand, you could pull the Paul Newman or what may be the Tom Cruise this year, where after you get an honorary Oscar, you have a part coming up in a movie and you knock it out of the park. And then the Academy is like, whoops, we gave you your honorary too soon. We're ready to honor you in the way that they did Paul Newman. And I think there's a very strong chance that we have six to seven months of Tom Cruise Oscar campaign coming our way.

• 27:20Amanda Dobbins?

  We certainly have campaign. We haven't seen Digger yet, so we don't know whether we will actually.

• 27:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think regardless of if the movie is a hit or not, if it's a critical failure or not, I still think he's doing enough.

• 27:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Sean Fennessey?

  That that's going to be a part of the conversation.

• 27:33Amanda Dobbins?

  I was reminded or remembered that Glenn Close is in Level and Aggra, which will also almost certainly be a part of the Oscar conversation.

• 27:43Sean Fennessey?

  It will. She will not be, I don't think, in the running for that.

• 27:46Amanda Dobbins?

  But I think it's just, it's useful. You know, she's, she'll be around, you know? I wondered if there was a little bit of synergy in, in this event.

• 27:54Sean Fennessey?

  Probably not.

• 27:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Presented in partnership with Rolex, which is included on every single press release, which I was like, okay, okay.

• 28:02Sean Fennessey?

  I did want to tell you, I do want to go to the Governor's Awards this year if you're interested.

• 28:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I've started looking for dresses.

• 28:07Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I've never been. I would really like to go. One of the reasons I would like to go is the next person who's getting an honorary Oscar is Ridley Scott, who's one of our favorite directors. Checkered, though, his filmography may be.

• 28:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Ghost Dog? What's, what is it?

• 28:21Sean Fennessey?

  Dog stars.

• 28:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Dog stars. Okay.

• 28:23Sean Fennessey?

  With a very encouraging August 28th release date.

• 28:26Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what? I'll be back for vacation. So I appreciate it.

• 28:29Sean Fennessey?

  You will. We'll be potting about that movie. It's a Jacob Elordi film.

• 28:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. He's very tall.

• 28:32Sean Fennessey?

  He is. So he's got a new movie coming out. I don't think it's going to be contending for Best Picture this year, but he has three Best Director nominations for Thelma and Louis' Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. Fascinating to think that he was not nominated for Alien or Blade Runner or any number of the, you know, majestic classics that he has created over the years. Also had a Best Picture nomination for The Martian, but did not get nominated for Best Director for The Martian. He's historically been a very overlooked icon of film directing.

• 29:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Agreed.

• 29:01Sean Fennessey?

  And he's a huge. Massive part of the industry. He is among the most prolific filmmakers. He's also presides over a huge production company with Scott Free that he started with his brother Tony. He's like one of the dawns of commercial directing and he's gotten into television. Like, he's a huge, huge, huge, huge Hollywood figure. And I think among cinephiles is beloved.

• 29:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:25Sean Fennessey?

  But he's never quite cracked this realm in any meaningful way, so.

• 29:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, Gladiator won Best Picture.

• 29:33Sean Fennessey?

  It did.

• 29:33Amanda Dobbins?

  But he didn't, but still.

• 29:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and that was, was that Ang Lee won for Best Director that year? No, who won, who won for Best Director in 2000?

• 29:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, 2000 Best Director Oscar, Google, Google, oh, no.

• 29:48Sean Fennessey?

  It would be the 2001 Academy Awards.

• 29:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, we've, we've got to figure this out as a society.

• 29:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know why my brain is blinking. Soderbergh for traffic.

• 29:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, because he had the, he had the double noms.

• 29:59Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, that's right.

• 30:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 30:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, so I mean, I wouldn't take that one away from him. To me, it's Alien and Blade Runner are the movies that where he should have, he should have won. There's an interesting case for Thelma and Louise as well, as one of his, you know, one of his great directorial achievements.

• 30:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Used, an image from Thelma and Louise was used as the poster for Cannes this year.

• 30:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's right, that's right.

• 30:17Amanda Dobbins?

  This reminded me that Harrison Ford also doesn't have an Oscar and doesn't have an honorary Oscar. And I wonder whether the SAG Awards kind of clipped him out of an honorary Oscar for at least two to three years. So what if he dies with no Oscar?

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  Well, let's allow and hope death upon Harrison Ford. He seems hale and hearty to me.

• 30:34Amanda Dobbins?

  He's doing great, but listen, we gotta, you know, accept mortality.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Would you go back in time and give him one for Red Hulk?

• 30:43Sean Fennessey?

  I have.

• 30:44Amanda Dobbins?

  That movie was really bad.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  That was really bad.

• 30:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Those cherry blossoms, that scene where he's just, that was tough.

• 30:50Sean Fennessey?

  That was, that was the nadir of the, of the entire MCU's experience. Couple of other honorary nominee, honorary Oscar receivers. One is Floyd Norman, who.

• 31:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Sean Fennessey?

  A hallowed animator who worked on Disney films in the 60s and 70s and whose credits are on Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood, a lot of movies that-

• 31:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Hot Fox!

• 31:13Sean Fennessey?

  He was a part of the Hot Fox. So, I actually went to go see The Jungle Book with my daughter at Vidiot's last year, and Floyd was there. And he spoke, he was interviewed by Amanda, the programmer, at Vidiot's, and they had an amazing conversation, a fascinating conversation. Floyd talked a lot about working directly with Walt and getting involved at a higher level. He sort of was like bumped up on The Jungle Book to more of a kind of supervising role as an animator. And you know Floyd is one of the very few African-American animators from that period in time in history. And those movies, we were just joking about The Hot Fox and Robin Hood, and that Sword in the Stone, Jungle Book, Robin Hood, that stretch of films-

• 31:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Sean Fennessey?

  I think To Millennials is a very big, I don't know, I don't quite know why, but a lot of those movies really imprinted on us, and maybe they were shown on television more when we were growing up or something, but they're not the most iconic Disney animated classics from the 40s and 50s. They're in that second tier, but I love them. Those are the ones I've seen among the most-

• 32:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I wonder whether it was just that the VHS releases coincided with when, because we rented Jungle Book, we went on vacation with my cousins, and I think we just kept re-renting it from the local video store and just did Jungle Book for a month straight. So, I, you know, maybe just timeline and what was available to us.

• 32:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think that's a good theory. That sounds right. His first, the first film he worked on was Sleeping Beauty, which many people think is the most gorgeously animated of all the Disney classics. So, that's very cool that he's being honored. And then the Irving Thalberg Award is going to Christine Vashon and Pamela Koffler, who are longtime producers and have worked with a huge number of people over the years with a real focus on LGBTQ filmmakers. Killer Films is their production company. They're still very active. They're still making, I will not be surprised if they rack up a Best Picture nomination in the next 10 years, given like they were all- Over Sundance this year, but they've worked on Hedwig and the Angry Inch, One Hour Photo. The company Notorious Betty Page, they produced May-December.

• 33:20Sean Fennessey?

  Materialists, they produced. They're, they're great producers and really well-known. But this actually felt, I don't actually don't know how old they are, but I was like, this actually feels a little premature, just because they're still in their heyday.

• 33:34Amanda Dobbins?

  It's fine. Give people awards that don't totally count, but are also very nice. The Thawberg is slightly different.

• 33:40Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 33:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I, I think it's cool and recognize people while they're still making stuff.

• 33:43Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. And they don't give the Thawberg every year too. So that was an interesting choice. So four great people. Hopefully we can see them be honored this fall by the Academy. And what are your thoughts on putting that part of the ceremony back on the show, on the TV show? Because now it's something that happens in the fall and they don't air any of that.

• 34:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 34:01Sean Fennessey?

  They used to give away those awards on the telecast.

• 34:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I think you could probably do like a shorter, more produced version on the show. You know, in the way they do for in memoriam's and other sorts of, like, it could be a segment. No problem.

• 34:18Sean Fennessey?

  I would have liked it. I mean, you know, there's a very memorable Altman one where he received one and gave a great speech. And, you know, Poitier got one like this. I think Lumet got one like this. Like a lot of, to me, the one thing I like about putting it on the telecast is that component of film history where young people watching it, even if it's a little bit boring, they hear a name and the name sticks to their brain. And then they think like, well, what did that person do? And what should I go back and look at? And we're entering a period where like people like Christine Vichon are receiving honorary Oscars where like, their film history is fairly recent. You know, she was producing Todd Haynes movies, you know, from 25 years ago that people will want to check out. And that like, isn't century old film history. It's relatively recent and it can be a portal.

• 35:00Sean Fennessey?

  So I do like the idea of potentially spotlighting it more on the main telecast.

• 35:04Amanda Dobbins?

  But I do think also, you know, we're entering a territory in a few years where we'll all be on YouTube. And so. I think it's honestly better to do, if not to do a separate ceremony, or at least to have the speech in full, you know, on YouTube.

• 35:20Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 35:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And you kind of get people to, to check it out and you pique their interest. But that requires holding their interest for the entirety of a ceremony that's now just being livestreamed. So I don't know how I feel about the Oscars becoming like a, just a bunch of clips that everyone checks out. You know, in two years.

• 35:38Sean Fennessey?

  It does seem like that's where we'll go.

• 35:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, you know, we're still available to program the Oscars channel.

• 35:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  Um, on YouTube TV.

• 35:44Amanda Dobbins?

  But this would be a great programming on the Oscars channel. It's just how do you get people to turn it on in the first place?

• 35:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's challenging because it's more expensive to try to make this a TV show, but it also could mean more revenue.

• 35:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:58Sean Fennessey?

  So we'll, actually what happens for our purposes in terms of how the Oscars communicates? And if it becomes a little bit more of like, not just a six month campaign, but a six month, uh, external programming venture, you know, where there's just like a lot of stuff coming out about this. And whether or not that hurts the telecast itself is probably worth exploring.

• 36:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, six months is too long because that's like half the year. And then it doesn't feel special anymore and it's not an event. But, you know, if you kick it off with the Governor's Awards and then, you know, movies, events, and you do early February, is that what we've decided is the right time?

• 36:33Sean Fennessey?

  The second week, the site, the February 15th.

• 36:35Amanda Dobbins?

  After the Super Bowl.

• 36:36Sean Fennessey?

  After the Super Bowl. That's what I think is the best time. I hope they go to that.

• 36:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Um.

• 36:39Sean Fennessey?

  I would settle for the third, but I think the third is historically the NBA All-Star game.

• 36:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. I don't, I mean, no one really cares about that except for the dunk contest, which they make fun of, right?

• 36:49Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't say I'm enjoying the NBA All-Star game. It's more like, it's just a center of gravity thing with programming.

• 36:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Well, that's fine.

• 36:56Sean Fennessey?

  But you know what? On YouTube, that won't matter. We won't have to worry about whether ABC is airing anything.

• 37:00Amanda Dobbins?

  What we're saying here is three months, two and a half to three months.

• 37:03Sean Fennessey?

  I want Oscar stuff every day.

• 37:05Amanda Dobbins?

  But during that time, or you want it all, you want 365?

• 37:09Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not well. I'm not well. I want it all the time. I love it.

• 37:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I just don't think that's, that's realistic in terms of holding people's attention.

• 37:16Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you.

• 37:16Amanda Dobbins?

  And it won't feel special. And you want the Oscars to feel special.

• 37:19Sean Fennessey?

  You do, but when you go into this kind of curated environment of you have to go out and find it, or it's algorithmically served to you rather than eventized, it kind of changes things a little bit. And there is obviously consumptive patterns that are more about like reaching the sickos rather than trying to reach everyone, which is what something you've said over the years too.

• 37:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, that's true, but you know, last night, as we learned, there are people who have watched every single Knicks game. And then that when there is a live event and everyone is together focused on the moment, you kind of, live events were the only thing we have left to actually grab people, which is a good segue.

• 37:54Sean Fennessey?

  PTA won Best Picture.

• 37:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Sean Fennessey?

  Two Spielberg podcasts.

• 37:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 38:01Sean Fennessey?

  Knicks up 3-1 in the NBA Finals.

• 38:05Sean Fennessey?

  My back no longer hurts.

• 38:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Can I tell you something actually that I forgot to tell you? But so you and I are both Leos.

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  We are.

• 38:11Amanda Dobbins?

  About a week apart, I think, is when we were born.

• 38:13Sean Fennessey?

  A week apart.

• 38:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, two years apart. So the, this planets were aligned slightly differently, but for our purposes.

• 38:20Sean Fennessey?

  What's your moon?

• 38:21Amanda Dobbins?

  I forgot. Um, this is a Leo podcast.

• 38:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I have another good friend who's a Leo, who was telling me at the beginning of the year that 2026 is just going to be our year, that like the planets start, like everything is just aligning where it is. It's like, it is Leo energy. I don't, I didn't do any further reading. What I know is what my friend Lauren screenshotted and just like texted to me for about a week from various unverified Instagram accounts. But you've just reminded me. Maybe it's Leo season. Got to be honest. I'm waiting for my Leo, my Leo year to kick off, but I did go to Cannes.

• 38:59Sean Fennessey?

  You're having a great year.

• 39:00Amanda Dobbins?

  That is true. That's true.

• 39:01Sean Fennessey?

  You're in the midst of one of the great glow ups.

• 39:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you so much. Cannes, PTA, uh, PTA movie, my favorite of the year, winning. That was good from an Oscar sense. What else? Kiki getting cast in Minecraft 2.

• 39:13Sean Fennessey?

  Huge.

• 39:14Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, her dreams coming true are my dreams coming true. Is Kirsten also a Leo? Let's look at this really quickly. Kirsten Dunst's birthday. I should know this. Kirsten, no, April 30th, 1982. I'm sorry that I didn't know your birthday, Kirsten.

• 39:26Sean Fennessey?

  What's up?

• 39:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'll look, it's positive, you know? I might go to the Chanel boutique when I'm in Venice, so.

• 39:36Sean Fennessey?

  You're having a great year.

• 39:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I think, because they might have some of the stuff in stock. Do you know there's a shortage?

• 39:40Sean Fennessey?

  Sports surgery notwithstanding.

• 39:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Sean Fennessey?

  Your family is healthy, right? Everyone's doing well.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  This is when I start to get a little bit nervous.

• 39:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, totally.

• 39:50Sean Fennessey?

  A little bit too much going well right now, but let's, let's talk about Disclosure Day. I ruined your elegant segue.

• 39:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Sean Fennessey?

  This is, of course, the new film from Steven Spielberg. It's, it's written by David Koep, notably, the story is by Steven Spielberg. Steven Spielberg has talked about writing the entirety of this 50-page treatment on his iPad and sharing it with his producer and eventually sharing it with David Koep. This is his.

• 40:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Did he say whether he has an attached keyboard?

• 40:19Sean Fennessey?

  He did not, well, not as far as I know.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 40:22Sean Fennessey?

  We're not in contact like that, so I can't confirm.

• 40:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I know, but you know, I'm just, I'm just trying to, when I'm visualizing it. These are the questions that no one else thinks to ask.

• 40:29Sean Fennessey?

  I know. I'm, when I'm writing, I need a keyboard.

• 40:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Same.

• 40:32Sean Fennessey?

  I cannot type on a screen.

• 40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  1,000%. And I know there are people with their Notes app, but iPad seems a little doot, doot, doot.

• 40:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I can work on a Notes app for sure, but anything longer than one paragraph? Give me a keyboard.

• 40:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  Koep uses a keyboard. This is his fifth script for Spielberg. Their previous collaborations are an interesting collection of movies. Jurassic Park, The Lost World, Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This movie stars Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. The score is by John Williams. This is their 30th collaboration. We will speak about the score in this conversation. Director of photography, a familiar name, Janusz Kaminski. They've been working together since Schindler's List. Production designer, Adam Stockhausen, Oscar winner. Costume designer, Paul Taswell, Oscar winner. Steven Spielberg has the elite department heads on this film. The story is as follows. As a massive government conspiracy unravels, a targeted whistleblower races against time

• 41:28Sean Fennessey?

  to bring about the extraordinary event that will change human history forever. The day of ultimate alien disclosure. Now, before we talk about the movie, I wanted to foreground this conversation.

• 41:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 41:40Sean Fennessey?

  In what you think, and what I think, but I'm interested in what you think.

• 41:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 41:45Sean Fennessey?

  About UAPs.

• 41:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 41:49Sean Fennessey?

  And the possibility of your own belief. Do you think that there is a life, not just beyond our planet, but that it may have even come to this planet?

• 41:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, yeah, but

• 42:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, into both questions.

• 42:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, for sure. But I also Googled what UAP stands for yesterday. So I'm not paying attention to this because frankly, and you know, I feel this way about fantasy novels and other stuff too. Like I'm just, we've got too much going on here. You know, we've got too many other problems and things that that I'm concerned about. I just like, I can't take it on.

• 42:23Sean Fennessey?

  That's such a tension of a film.

• 42:24Amanda Dobbins?

  It is. It is a huge. And I think the film successfully makes an argument for why I should care about it in a way that really did connect with me. But for the most part, I'm just not thinking about it. Like I, again, like you've got my family stuff. We just had surgery, but also the world's, this world is really broken. Right? And so that is where my energy is going. So I didn't know that we had upgraded UFOs to UAP, which is unidentified. UAP stands for, I don't remember. Uh, aerial phenomenon.

• 42:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 42:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So that said, this is just a simple mathematical problem for me. Like, of course, that Earth is not the only living thing in the world. And I then watched a documentary yesterday. I also read the news from time to time, but I did watch a documentary yesterday, The Age of Disclosure.

• 43:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I watched it as well.

• 43:18Amanda Dobbins?

  On the, on the recommendation of my friend, Ashley.

• 43:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I've seen this.

• 43:22Amanda Dobbins?

  And

• 43:22Sean Fennessey?

  Did you find that documentary credible?

• 43:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought it was military propaganda.

• 43:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 43:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But, well, military or like ex-military propaganda. And so much of it is about the threat that these UAP posed to American national security, which I was a little bit like relaxed. Okay? A lot like, and it's ex-military individuals and government officials.

• 43:45Sean Fennessey?

  Marco Rubio is in the film.

• 43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  But you know, it's Marco Rubio. So there's, you know, there's a hawkish element to all of it that I was kind of rolling my eyes at. But it does also bring together the basic reported information in such a way where I'm like, yeah, okay. So there, they have seen things that we, we do not know about.

• 44:05Sean Fennessey?

  I definitely, I have a two tracked mind about this. I think I align with you that as a mathematical equation, to me, it's kind of undeniable that if you think about galaxies beyond galaxies, there is life outside of what we understand.

• 44:21Sean Fennessey?

  I'm fascinated by the potentiality of something having come to this planet and even interacted with human beings. I'm a little bit more inherently skeptical of that truth. And that, I think, how you feel about that may actually impact your relationship and experience with this movie.

• 44:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Well, I think that I'm not that dissimilar from you because, you know, I watched this and then it is using testimonials from people who have really bought into this stuff. And it's, and is really framed around two advocates or

• 44:57Amanda Dobbins?

  other noun that you want to use to describe them. But you know, uses reporting from the New York Times and CNN and many scientists. And I just, there is enough evidence out there that I was like, okay, well, I can, I can at least believe some of this. I don't think it really matters yet in any way.

• 45:18Sean Fennessey?

  To us, like to our lives?

• 45:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah, because, because, and some of it, some of it is a reaction to the, the age of disclosures, very aggressive military industrial complex bent and Marco Rubio being like, this is a national security threat, which if it's, nothing's happened. If it's been 80 years, as you're saying, like, we're doing fine. It's sort of like my house and earthquake insurance, which is just like, well, it's been there for a while. But.

• 45:48Sean Fennessey?

  Just, you gotta be careful what you put out in the world. We're having a good month.

• 45:53Amanda Dobbins?

  No, it's true. Also, I do, I, we do have earthquake insurance, but, um, but this.

• 45:59Sean Fennessey?

  For the, for the listeners in the other 49 states, that's very important in California to have earthquake insurance.

• 46:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So I don't really believe that it's some sort of international or a national conspiracy theory or threat. And thus I'm kind of like.

• 46:19Amanda Dobbins?

  That seems cool, but I don't know if I feel like the secrets of the universe are being kept from me.

• 46:25Sean Fennessey?

  Sure. One of the ideas that I believe is proffered in the film is it's possible that the visitations that have been experienced are actually from future humanity that has created technology to travel back in time to observe maybe the problems that have been

• 46:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 46:43Sean Fennessey?

  set, be set upon this planet, which is just an idea I hadn't considered, but that, an idea like that enters firmly into the realm of science fiction speculation.

• 46:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm a person who's raised on science fiction speculation. I love stories like this. I've always loved books like this. I've read a lot of novels that cover this territory. A lot of my film fascination is around films like this. I am raised on Spielberg. A lot of this, you know, Spielberg experience I've been having over the last couple of months is oriented in seeing Close Encounters, seeing E.T., you know, being obsessed with Minority Report and War of the Worlds in the 2000s, like just loving his approach to that storytelling. And then also working backwards a lot and looking at 70s conspiracy science fiction, which there's lots and lots of it, and then educating yourself on 50s and 40s stuff that dovetails with H.G. Wells and a lot of other writers. And so all of this stuff is mostly unhopeful.

• 47:36Sean Fennessey?

  It's mostly about the panic that would be induced in our society if in fact there was like an incursion of Martian life or some other planet that we don't know about.

• 47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:47Sean Fennessey?

  And our inability to really get our arms around the fact that not only are we not alone, but we're not in control. And Spielberg differentiated himself as a voice in filmmaking by being not just unafraid of the unknown, but by embracing it and by telling stories that were about how it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It wasn't necessarily a dangerous thing.

• 48:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 48:08Sean Fennessey?

  That there could be hope in life beyond our own. And I think that that has, I think that that has actually dramatically impacted like a generation, maybe multiple generations of film fans who see these kinds of stories differently. Now, he has shifted in the 2000s to a much darker perspective on these things.

• 48:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know, in addition to War of the Worlds and Minority Report, Ready Player One, like there's a lot of movies that are about like, things are probably not going to turn out so well as he's gotten older, he's become a little bit more embittered by what the world has turned into. But this movie. I bring all that up to say, this movie is a massive philosophical reckoning for him. It's like him trying to, as accurately as possible, express what he thinks the potential reality of this happening could mean for us as a people. People are gonna like or dislike the movie.

• 48:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 48:57Sean Fennessey?

  The movie is not without flaw. We can talk through some of the struggles I think the film has from a script perspective. But if you are interested in what the Steven Spielberg project about these kinds of stories has been, this is a fascinating, wildly absorbing confrontation with what he's been trying to put on screen for 45 years.

• 49:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 49:18Sean Fennessey?

  You agree with that?

• 49:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. Listen, I think this is like a thrilling, completely absorbing Steven Spielberg movie about aliens and whether they're real or not with movie stars and set pieces. And it's, I sat there making the Spielberg face up at the screen because what he can do in terms of making a sci-fi blockbuster is unparalleled. And he's, he's the greatest to do it. And it's really fun. This movie's kooky. This movie is kooky, and that's not bad. And I don't say that to be dismissive, but it is, it is way more literal than I expected.

• 50:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And really, really, really invested in the actuality of this in a way I wasn't prepared for. And there's something about all, most other Spielberg movies, the trademark Spielberg movies, even the alien movies, but not, like the alien movies, but not just the alien movies, like Jurassic Park and Jaws and everything, where you, the way they're structured, you're brought along on the belief. And you like become part of the hero's journey. And this one, I stayed at a slight remove at. And I couldn't figure out why. And I think there's some, there's some structural reasons. And even like, who is the protagonist?

• 50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And what answer this movie is trying to actually get at are part of the reason of that. But I think I say that it's a little out there because I don't, it didn't bring me fully enough along, or I didn't connect enough to.

• 51:01Amanda Dobbins?

  That very involved topic, like, subject matter that it's like really going after.

• 51:07Sean Fennessey?

  No, you make a really good point about being so literal. One of the things that's really interesting about all of his other science fiction films is that you can read them very comfortably metaphorically.

• 51:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:19Sean Fennessey?

  You know, that Close Encounters is about a man without purpose, looking for something, and that that maps neatly onto Spielberg at a certain stage of his life and maybe not having a full understanding of the family unit, not having had children, being the child of divorce. You can look at E.T. as about a kind of loneliness as a young person and like looking for connection and not feeling a part of something until something comes into your life that changes everything. You can look at War of the Worlds very comfortably as a post 9/11 film. He talked about this on the 2001 pod, about the idea of this foreign invader destroying what we hold sacred. Can look at Minority Report about the way the technology can sometimes invade our privacy and invade our ability to have free will. The big themes and big metaphors

• 52:00Sean Fennessey?

  of those movies make them feel grander in a way. And this is actually an older person who's been thinking about something specific, the possibility of aliens being real, and then saying, let's tell a story about if they were. And that's not a metaphor.

• 52:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 52:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's literally like, if this were to happen, and it happened this way, what would it mean for humanity? What would it mean for the whole world watching it? That's kind of fascinating to actually, at an older period of your life, be like, let's just do brass tacks. You know, like, let's just, let's just get right down to what I've been circling for 50 years.

• 52:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, exactly. And it does have that end of life, or not even at like, last, last third of life, last third of career quality to it of like, okay, I've tried this all this different ways. I've accumulated all this information, but like, now here's what I really think, and here's what it really is. And what are we gonna do about it?

• 52:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think one of the ways in which the movie works really well is that it's like a pure conspiracy thriller. It's not an exploratory science fiction movie. It's a basically a chase movie. It's a movie about two characters who are separated from one another, who don't know one another, who are on a kind of collision course to come together to reckon with the future of the world, really. I mean-

• 53:18Amanda Dobbins?

  And to save each other before the third, before the evil person.

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 53:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Who is a combination of every single-

• 53:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Evil like tech slash like law enforcement villain in every Spielberg movie.

• 53:34Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote down, this is like Alex Karp from Palantir meets Jeff Bezos. You know, that there's like some sort of military industrial complex quality, but also this kind of privatized control quality.

• 53:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, but there, but like there is some Minority Report, the Max von Sydow character, there is like all of his minions are straight out of ET.

• 53:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 53:55Amanda Dobbins?

  So you kind of, you see all of the.

• 53:58Sean Fennessey?

  Jack booted.

• 53:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 53:58Sean Fennessey?

  Gun holding.

• 53:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Authority figure and the people who are not paying attention, they, they come up a lot.

• 54:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he's riffing on some of the tropes that he has explored many times. But to me, the movies that it reminded me of were not the science fiction movies. It was Duel and Sugarland Express and Jaws, movies that are about like being on the go, where you're in a fast moving vehicle, you're kind of racing into the unknown, but you're also trying to get away from something at the same time. It's very seventies in terms of its construction, you know, it's a very Three Days of the Condor, where you're like, there's a man alone, he has a piece of information, people are after him, but he knows if he gets to the right place and he delivers that information, then all will be revealed. And that isn't kind of an inherently exciting brand of movie watching. But then for him, I'd seen people say this, and I'm fairly well convinced,

• 54:48Sean Fennessey?

  The Post and The Fableman's feel like two movies that are a huge part of what he is continuing to explore, where it's very much a movie about the media, very much a movie about what broadcasting information can do. I would say a very old fashioned movie in that respect and maybe a bit of an antiquated approach to how that works and like maybe what our relationship is to network news.

• 55:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  Which takes up a huge part of the final third of the movie. The movie is in part about a broadcaster, about a weather woman.

• 55:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, well, I mean, it is literally in this very literal movie broadcast news, but it's about what we see on screens and like what, you know, what we see on a small screen versus what we see on Steven Spielberg's large screen or, you know, outside of a screen in the actual real world.

• 55:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, in a lot of ways Spielberg is an establishmentarian, you know, like he, like he believes in The Washington Post and its ability to do good.

• 55:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:43Sean Fennessey?

  He believes in the possibility of the individual working outside of a system at the same time, and those two ideas are kind of in conflict with this movie, but.

• 55:53Sean Fennessey?

  You know, it's fascinating that something like this would come along when CBS News and 60 Minutes is

• 55:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:59Sean Fennessey?

  is collapsing from within itself, you know, and the idea of like those, those systems and those bodies maybe not mattering as much to, like, I don't watch CBS News. I think it's terrible what's happening there, but I don't feel that I'm losing something that matters to me.

• 56:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Same, even and the 60 Minutes of it at all, I know most of those names. And completely disagree with what is going on in a basic journalism and intellectual standards sort of way, but haven't watched it in some time.

• 56:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 56:29Amanda Dobbins?

  No, this, the movies totems are a little older, right? There, there is a generational quality to what's going on here. I mean, there is a 2006 Gwen Stefani needle drop in this movie that's I have been thinking about nonstop and having multiple conversations about.

• 56:48Sean Fennessey?

  How did that happen, you think?

• 56:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I have no idea, and I put it on this morning, driving here as fast as I possibly could in order to try to get to the bottom of it.

• 56:58Sean Fennessey?

  You think it was John Williams who picked it?

• 57:02Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be great. I would love it. If John Williams can do that entire verse.

• 57:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 57:06Amanda Dobbins?

  At speed, I salute him. So, yeah, there is a little bit of a, this is, this is not a Gen Z movie.

• 57:17Sean Fennessey?

  I'm quite curious how younger people will react to it. I think, I think if you're a cinephile, like Spielberg allegiance, the movie is very rich. If you're just looking for a plain old blockbuster, it's not going to get, it's not going to be satisfying in the way that A War of the Worlds is, where it's like a big explosive, massive, world threatening kind of film. It's a much more philosophical kind of movie, even though it is a chase movie. And before we go into spoiler territory.

• 57:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:43Sean Fennessey?

  And talk to the plot and some of those set pieces.

• 57:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Sorry for spoiling Gwen Stefani to all of those people.

• 57:47Sean Fennessey?

  Huge spoiler.

• 57:50Sean Fennessey?

  Like I said, I see the movie as a question of how Spielberg sees humanity. That like his particular empathic point of view is if this happened, if we were all made to see collectively that this is true. And at this point, the commercials of the movie are giving it. They're showing you aliens in the commercials of the movie. So it's very clear what the movie is trying to do in a way that is so literal that at times I think it can feel like, so that is actually what this is.

• 58:18Sean Fennessey?

  Do you agree with him? Do you feel connected to the idea that this could slow down everything in the world and bring us all together in a moment of understanding and awe? That could wash away what exists beyond that singular moment in time?

• 58:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And there, there is a little bit of symbolism, of course, because there is a stand in for what movies do and what Spielberg does in particular on a screen. But you know, but can something, can anything draw everyone enough together to stop what they're doing and look and be amazed? And also not just be amazed, but feel empathy and feel.

• 59:03Sean Fennessey?

  And believe.

• 59:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  There's like, there's something about the collectivist truth that now feels impossible.

• 59:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:09Sean Fennessey?

  Where like no, everybody has their own point of view about things and the way that we consume information where we're just like, well, they're trying to tell you this is wrong. And we're in a, we're in a constant battle.

• 59:19Amanda Dobbins?

  The way that it is portrayed in the movie itself feels unrealistic or unachievable and feels like a, like a relic of even 2006 or of a lost time.

• 59:32Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I totally agree with you.

• 59:34Amanda Dobbins?

  At the same time, I was thinking as I drove in, like we all spent last night watching one live event and you spent the last 10 minutes just like being out of your mind. And it's not something that we had a connection to. Now that wasn't global. It might've been national at this point. I think there were more people that know about this specific moment of what was really like wonder and joy, unless you're a Spurs fan.

• 59:55Sean Fennessey?

  We're 24 hours away from the World Cup.

• 59:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Sean Fennessey?

  The World Cup can do that. There are some things that can still do that.

• 59:59Amanda Dobbins?

  So this, this idea of being gathered together and getting at least a large number of people to look at something and be amazed by something, be amazed by something on a screen is, I still think, possible. Now, what it is. Matters and how big it, how, how much of the world you can get matters. And I, I don't know that there is anything that works on the scale that the end of this movie wants.

• 1:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  Demands, yeah, yeah. No, I, I agree with you. I think there is like a little, it's not naivety. It's like, it's a hopefulness almost. It's like, I believe as a, that we as a people can come, can evolve if we see this all together in a way that like, I really wish I could get there, but I'm just too inherently dark a person.

• 1:00:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  To believe that we can do that now.

• 1:00:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I also, the, without getting too much of the ending, I think some of the most powerful part of the ending to me is that it evokes some things that we have seen and have done absolutely nothing about. So.

• 1:00:59Sean Fennessey?

  What do you, what do you mean by that?

• 1:01:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I, like, I don't, are we getting into spoilers?

• 1:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, well, well, let's wait. One last thing I want to note before we start going through the, the details is, um, this is the most religiously coded Spielberg movie in some ti, I mean, maybe since The Color Purple.

• 1:01:22Sean Fennessey?

  Just the, the invocation of Christianity, the fact that one of the characters is a, was a novitiate who left the church, a nun is a key character in the film. They're all of these attempts to replicate the feeling of like God or living in a godless world and what are we looking for that can fill the gap of that. And that's not a common Spielberg theme, obviously, like the kind of like secular religion of Munich that is a component of his filmography or of Jewish identity in Schindler's List, but specifically faith.

• 1:01:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:01:54Sean Fennessey?

  And then what you need to do to affirm faith is a huge component of the movie that also feels a bit like a last third of your life suggestion. And to me, the movie is not like, well, Spielberg is a, is a Christian or something. It's more like, this is my religion. My religion is the, I'll, I'll tell you what I wrote down, that it's.

• 1:02:18Sean Fennessey?

  His religion is spectacle and wonder and that he's guided into a spiritual realm by the images he's consumed, which he attempts to replicate images he saw in his head when he was 10 years old in this movie. The images he conjures in his mind and then the images he projects on the screen. And that it's a real like the moviegoer as receiver of the body and blood. It's like getting communion. That's how he sees this experience. And frankly, as people know who've been listening to me talk about movies forever, like this is how I experience movies. I experience movies as the communication of faith and excitement. And that, for me, has replaced a proper faith. It has filled a gap in my life around feeling excited about something, about feeling faithful

• 1:02:58Sean Fennessey?

  and hopeful about things, about getting, feeling the possibility of transcendence, which is this is all very highfalutin, but I do think that it is kind of what is on his mind.

• 1:03:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And I think, so some of the religious stuff has, does have like a very specific Christianity, Messianic tint to it, which I think is just because they want to borrow some of that story structure. And that works to varying degrees. But I do also, you know, this movie is in some ways about what it is like to be chosen, what it is to be the gifted one, what it is to see things that other people do not, which, and then what do you do with that responsibility, which I definitely see, you know, a Spielberg reading in as well. And it's not that dissimilar of your, you know, what is it to be the director and what

• 1:03:53Amanda Dobbins?

  is it to understand whether it's about aliens or whether it's about how people experience joy.

• 1:03:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, only I have this information and only I can put it into the world.

• 1:04:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And so, and then, but I feel compelled to share it with you and say it in this very specific way and a hopeful way, too.

• 1:04:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Honestly.

• 1:04:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's interesting that he makes it a dyad, right? That he makes it these two people who have to come together for that thing to unlock.

• 1:04:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's a little bit of Close Encounters, which, you know, a lot of people have, the shorthand on this movie has been, you think it's Close Encounters, but it's not. And it's not really Close Encounters, but I do think that there is a little bit of like... Close Encounters to what happened to Barry, you know, and what happens after you've had this moment and you have been chosen, but then you come back and you got to live in the world.

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:04:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And so, and then, you know, the, the dyad of it where I think in this one, the Richard Dreyfuss and the mom character are flipped here.

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Amanda Dobbins?

  But gender, gender flipped at least, Roy and Gillian are. But, um, so there is, there's a lot of close encounters in this too.

• 1:04:59Sean Fennessey?

  There is, I'm, I'm frankly relieved that it's not,

• 1:05:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Sean Fennessey?

  spoiler alert, a proper sequel to Close Encounters. There would have been something fun about that and maybe even more satisfying for your mainstream audience to just be like, this is Roy's son, you know, and that's, they, they were touched and that this family is part of a blessed lineage of part alien, part human with this extraordinary wealth of information that has been granted to them.

• 1:05:25Sean Fennessey?

  And, and there is some similarity.

• 1:05:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But they-

• 1:05:27Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of how we see the other life, the alien life form.

• 1:05:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 1:05:31Sean Fennessey?

  You know, which has this kind of classical creation formulation, you know? It looks like an old school Spielberg alien. It doesn't look like, it's not a reinvention of those ideas. It's the same way that in the movie, the movie uses the tropes of the potential of alien life coming to earth. Crop circles, Area 51, military experimentation, a president having information about this and then not revealing it, recovered memories of alien encounters, all of these things, which have been in the stew of alien conspiracy and in sci-fi storytelling over the last 75 years. He puts it all in the movie very purposefully to be like, well, yeah, because it's real, which is an amazing choice.

• 1:06:15Sean Fennessey?

  And it's kind of, it's a very Poe-faced choice.

• 1:06:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's, there's not a grain of cynicism in this movie. And I, I find that to be a fascinating choice. I'm not sure how people can feel about that, but he's doing it to kind of affirm our anxieties and to affirm in some ways those, those 2017 New York Times reports that you're referring to, the age of disclosure discussion.

• 1:06:36Amanda Dobbins?

  That, that is the thing is that you and I have been reaching for like larger symbolism and what does this all mean and what do these images, you know, make us think of and feel? And, and, and it is all there. And, you know, I don't think that the faith stuff is unintentional. I don't think the, the examination of wonder and all of that is unintentional, but- I come again to this point of being, I realized towards the end of this movie, that this was just about, like, yo, aliens are real, you know? Like, that's it. That's what he, what is, what is he trying to say to me? Yo, aliens are real. And I was like, okay.

• 1:07:09Sean Fennessey?

  And what would we do with that?

• 1:07:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Sean Fennessey?

  You know, well, and what does that mean for us?

• 1:07:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. And what should we do about it, I guess?

• 1:07:17Sean Fennessey?

  Well, then, so then let's talk about the plot, because that raises, I think, one of the critical questions as to whether the dramatic tension will work or not for you. So, the movie is about these two people. Margaret Fairchild, who is a television weather reporter for a Kansas City station, and who is a woman who is kind of a bit adrift. It's, it's, she's very motivated to be successful. She has a calling of some kind, it's clear. And she's got this layabout musician boyfriend, played by Wyatt Russell. And he's kind of like, you're killing it, babe, like, it's all good. And she, something's off. And we see her very early on in the film, not quite feeling settled. And then there's the other character, the Josh O'Connor character, whose name is Dr. Daniel Kellner.

• 1:08:00Sean Fennessey?

  And he's a cybersecurity expert for a large security corporation called Wardex. And this is like a big agency that is within the military industrial complex that safeguards evidence about what we learn in the first act of the movie, about the existence of aliens and the fact that they have been coming to this planet. This is communicated as soon as Josh O'Connor speaks to his girlfriend Jane about what it is that he's doing. And just for the record, I didn't know this, watching the film, Wardex stands for waived reporting, comma, development and extraction.

• 1:08:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:08:32Sean Fennessey?

  Waived reporting is a term for government affiliated agents or groups that are not required to submit data, documents, or any kind of accountability reporting to a regulatory agency.

• 1:08:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, the name of my new substack.

• 1:08:43Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure if you would name your organization, Wardex, with this level of detail about what it is that they do there, right?

• 1:08:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, I-

• 1:08:51Sean Fennessey?

  Can we get a metaphor for this group?

• 1:08:53Amanda Dobbins?

  In general, I have found that I do not understand the naming and jargon conventions of any sort of tech company-

• 1:09:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:09:03Amanda Dobbins?

  benign or techno fascist, you know?

• 1:09:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I want to talk a little bit more about them, because Margaret and Daniel, they have this special connection. They have this secret history.

• 1:09:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's unclear. They remember something. Something starts happening to them.

• 1:09:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, something's happening and they know certain things and have instincts. And there are also things that they don't remember.

• 1:09:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:09:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And their childhood is sort of a black box. If you thought you were going to get through a Spielberg movie without complicated childhood, wrong. And so they don't know what's going on there. But they do know, like, they know patterns or numbers or where people are. Or in Margaret, Emily Blunt's cases, languages and secrets about people. They can, she can essentially read minds.

• 1:09:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. She has a kind of linguistic connection to all communication.

• 1:10:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Sean Fennessey?

  And he has a kind of computational skill that hits him at a stage of his life and then allows him to become a hacker who is then arrested. And then after he's arrested, he is kind of drawn into Ward X to use his great skills and kind of held against his will to some extent in an effort to better effectively protect the information about aliens, which he then uses to kind of break free.

• 1:10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. But neither of them know that until the very end of the movie. What they know is that Daniel knows that he's really good at math and that.

• 1:10:39Sean Fennessey?

  And coding.

• 1:10:39Amanda Dobbins?

  And coding and that he can't remember his childhood. And that, you know, certain things just come very easily to him all of a sudden and are increasingly becoming very easy. And Margaret knows that she wakes up one day and just has a lot of instincts about how to talk people in and out of things.

• 1:10:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And she doesn't even realize when she is communing with those other languages and those other communication styles. There's the very famous moment from the trailer where we see her during a live broadcast, speak in this clicking alien language.

• 1:11:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:11:11Sean Fennessey?

  And it turns out that the only person on earth who can understand that language and hear it understood as English is Daniel. Daniel is in possession of these files and he is the one in pursuit of disclosure day. He's the one who wants to show the world what Ward X has been protecting, what he has been working for them to do. And he believes that by revealing the truth about alien life on this planet.

• 1:11:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:11:34Sean Fennessey?

  That everything will change. Now, he doesn't really enunciate beyond that.

• 1:11:40Sean Fennessey?

  What that means. And so the thing that I want to ask you before we get into some of the filmmaking and set piece and exciting stuff in the movie is, do you kind of believe, or even, like, can you give yourself over to the central premise that revelation is everything, that the idea of just saying, this is real, could change the way we see our lives in this world?

• 1:12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm far too cynical for that. And I was, I was really reminded of talking with my father-in-law about Watergate and then about the Trump administration. And there was that phase from 2018, I want to say until last year, where there was so much reporting and every year you'd hear from, every day you'd hear from my father-in-law, we got him. Like, this is the piece of evidence, like, this is the piece of news, this is the piece of something that is going to make the difference. And obviously, that has not been the case. And I remember asking him in, in the 70s, you know, as all of the Watergate information was coming out and the Pentagon Papers, speaking of the Post,

• 1:12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  like, did you, did you have a sense that this was going to matter and something was going to happen? And he said, yes, absolutely. You know, it was going to take time, but you knew it was going to build to something. And it ultimately did in Nixon's resignation.

• 1:13:00Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:13:01Amanda Dobbins?

  We have not seen any accountability of it. And so to me, this is a little bit of a, like, a boomerish belief, you know, that if, if you can just get the one truth out there, that everyone has to give into it. And I think the most demoralizing part of our last 10, 15 years of life is that, that's not the case.

• 1:13:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I mean, my own very specific politically coded version of that is Bush Gore and feeling like, you know,

• 1:13:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, you know, 25 years ago.

• 1:13:29Sean Fennessey?

  That's the first election I voted in, you know, and feeling like, oh, wow, no, we won't be having our Watergate or whatever. This isn't going to turn in the direction that you think is adequate. But I think that's really, really well put. And that generationally, we have not lived through a flip like that, where it was like, justice be done.

• 1:13:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Sean Fennessey?

  Actually, the conspiracy can, can become clarified to us all. And we can, the truth can be revealed. And we can kind of sleep comfortably knowing that there is the ability to kind of make right and for us all to understand what has transpired here. And if you are not your father-in-law's age, but Steven Spielberg is.

• 1:14:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:04Sean Fennessey?

  And so there is this kind of hopeful Point of view of this movie that, God, I want to believe in. I really want to believe in. And I know if, listen, if aliens are real and they've come to this planet and they're shown to us.

• 1:14:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Sean Fennessey?

  I won't be making a movie podcast anymore. I'll be making an alien podcast like that. I will get obsessed with that and what it means. That it's going to be a pretty dramatic thing if that happens. I just don't know if it's going to do the thing that this movie is hurtling towards for two and a half hours. You don't, you're, you're, you're concerned about the big picture?

• 1:14:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, I'm just stuck on, I'm, again, this is like to Steven Spielberg use a keyboard on his iPad. Okay, so news breaks that aliens are real.

• 1:14:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:14:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And we've been talking about them.

• 1:14:47Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  And you see this probably on your phone, right? News alert, did you still get news alerts? Like notifications?

• 1:14:53Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, I don't.

• 1:14:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Good, I'm glad, that's, everyone should turn them off for their mental health.

• 1:14:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But you get a text message and you watch.

• 1:14:59Sean Fennessey?

  Who's the first person to text me?

• 1:15:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Chris, obviously.

• 1:15:01Sean Fennessey?

  Obviously.

• 1:15:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So, Chris, and like, you know, I understand, just like, making a podcast with, with Chris, you two, you two just like run off into the, you know, sunset together and make your beautiful alien podcast, which is.

• 1:15:13Sean Fennessey?

  Why, why aren't you a part of this?

• 1:15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  That's a beautiful.

• 1:15:15Sean Fennessey?

  You don't want to, you don't want in?

• 1:15:16Amanda Dobbins?

  That's really nice that I'm included. Thank you for inviting me.

• 1:15:18Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we don't have to change the name or anything. It's still the big picture. This is, there's life.

• 1:15:22Amanda Dobbins?

  So, oh, so it's the bigger picture.

• 1:15:23Sean Fennessey?

  Beyond our own.

• 1:15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  But, but no, but seriously, you're like, okay, now, now I gotta read up on aliens? You didn't even know that there were shark attacks?

• 1:15:30Sean Fennessey?

  No. First of all, that's not true. Um, you, there was one shark attack that happened and I wasn't reading the news at that time. And so you were like, you didn't know.

• 1:15:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you know about the Kit Kat heist?

• 1:15:38Sean Fennessey?

  Historically, do I know? I don't know what that is.

• 1:15:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Do you know about the Louvre? Like, see, this is what I'm saying. You don't know about stuff.

• 1:15:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but this one would be different. This is not the Louvre heist. This is fucking aliens are on Earth.

• 1:15:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So then you throw out all the Blu-rays and you're like, okay, this is what I do now?

• 1:15:53Sean Fennessey?

  No, what's past is prologue.

• 1:15:55Amanda Dobbins?

  So why are you, but, but like, how much time are you spending a day, like every day, learning about aliens, once you know that they're real?

• 1:16:05Sean Fennessey?

  What if I just turned it all over to that?

• 1:16:08Amanda Dobbins?

  You wouldn't actually do it. Would you really do that?

• 1:16:10Sean Fennessey?

  Are you really nervous right now about the future of the show?

• 1:16:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I'm just, I'm, no, I'm like genuinely trying to understand. This is a little bit like at some point, I just don't understand why you and Tracy need to own so many Blu-rays. And I just like, I don't really understand.

• 1:16:22Sean Fennessey?

  Why do you need to own so many blazers? What are we talking about here?

• 1:16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Because we do this show every single, twice a week, and you need to wear different ones. Um.

• 1:16:29Sean Fennessey?

  I need to watch different movies whenever I want.

• 1:16:32Amanda Dobbins?

  But I'm like genuinely trying to, so this revelation would be so earth shattering, literally, pun intended to you, that um, you, you would rededicate your life to just amateur study of aliens.

• 1:16:45Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't be amateur. I'd become an expert.

• 1:16:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Because here's, here's what I think would happen to me, honestly.

• 1:16:50Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:16:51Amanda Dobbins?

  I'd be like, wow, that's cool and also messed up. And I would like read some articles.

• 1:16:59Sean Fennessey?

  That would be your reaction? That's cool, but also, no, wouldn't you have your fucking mind blown? I know you. You would not be like, oh, interesting.

• 1:17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  But like, so, so what is, what is the disclosure that's being given? Okay, so.

• 1:17:10Sean Fennessey?

  Let's go back to the movie because it's related, right?

• 1:17:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:17:13Sean Fennessey?

  The, the, the, this is a consequence that the two characters don't realize when they're being kind of pushed towards not only escaping Wardex, but getting the truth out. And Margaret is really more on a quest to kind of figure out what is calling to her and what this thing is. But Daniel's goal is very clear. He's like, I have to get on television and I have to show these files to the world.

• 1:17:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Sean Fennessey?

  And that's really the movie's engine. And the movie spends more time with Daniel than it does with Margaret in the first half.

• 1:17:42Amanda Dobbins?

  It also gives his motivation, which is pretty clear, which is like the files and what he has seen that has changed his mind after I think almost 10 years working at Wardex and keeping this information private, is that he finds videos of interrogation, interrogations of these alien-like forms, which is, he sees torture.

• 1:18:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And they're very upsetting and they are recreated. He shows one of the videos to the Jane character in the first third of the movie.

• 1:18:08Sean Fennessey?

  His girlfriend played by Eve Hueson.

• 1:18:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. So you get like a certain amount of disclosure pretty quickly. And he says very plainly, like, I saw this and I couldn't keep silent anymore. And then the way it is filmed is deeply upsetting. And it is like any, you know, real reported torture videos.

• 1:18:25Sean Fennessey?

  It's meant to be Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib.

• 1:18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But it is very affecting. And so. And so what he is doing is he is not, it's not just about we've been lied to and we deserve the truth, but we need to right a wrong.

• 1:18:37Sean Fennessey?

  Right.

• 1:18:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And that resonated with me more than like, hey, did you know that they are aliens?

• 1:18:42Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And that is a theme throughout the rest of the film.

• 1:18:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's the flip side of the film's dramatic tension is, do you believe that the actions of a Wardex-style agency are even logical? That actually what's most important is to like preserve the veil, that there is no life beyond our own, that it's too dangerous.

• 1:19:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:19:08Sean Fennessey?

  To say two things, one, that aliens exist, and two, that there has been an 80-year-long cover-up. That, you know, in 47, I think, is when Area 51 is rumored to have transpired, that for this entire period, this entire history, we've known, this very small group of people have known, and they've been protecting the world from this truth, which could shatter the way that government operates, it could shatter the way that faith operates around the world, it would just shift the, shift, raise the temperature of humanity in a way that is unsafe. Like, do you believe in that idea?

• 1:19:39Amanda Dobbins?

  [sighs]

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  Because that is the core tension of, that's the good versus evil of the movie. That's the, these are the two heroes, and this is the villainous figure, and the villainous figure represents that point of view.

• 1:19:50Amanda Dobbins?

  That to let everyone know would drive them crazy?

• 1:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. Would shake up the world order.

• 1:19:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know if I think so.

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not sure if I do either.

• 1:20:01Amanda Dobbins?

  And that was sort of when we were watching Age of Disclosure, the closer it got to, you know, our skies are unsafe, and they turned around like nuclear missiles, and I was like, okay, everybody, relax a little bit.

• 1:20:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Amanda Dobbins?

  That's why I'm so surprised to hear you say like, well, as soon as we find out there are aliens, I'm rededicating my life to the research.

• 1:20:20Sean Fennessey?

  So then let's go back to where I was going with this, which is that as the story goes on, and these two characters eventually come together.

• 1:20:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Sean Fennessey?

  It's revealed not just that, you know, alien life is still on Earth, but we have their tools.

• 1:20:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:35Sean Fennessey?

  The magic wands, the devices.

• 1:20:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:20:39Sean Fennessey?

  And that if something like that were introduced into our lives, that is something that would really draw my attention. That is something that is much talked about in science fiction is the idea of alien technology coming, and maybe alien technology has been coming, much as 2001 suggests, thousands of years ago.

• 1:20:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:20:55Sean Fennessey?

  And constantly giving us the ability to update and evolve what humanity can accomplish. There's something undeniably fascinating about that, that like, what could this want? In the film, the wand is capable of a great many things.

• 1:21:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:21:09Sean Fennessey?

  Creating psychic links between people and allowing someone to appear where they are not. It also allows people to become invisible completely.

• 1:21:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Sean Fennessey?

  There are things that can happen that absolutely break the expectations of modern life.

• 1:21:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, but only certain people are able to use them.

• 1:21:26Sean Fennessey?

  All the more interesting. Who are those people?

• 1:21:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Well, they're the chosen people, which is when it becomes less sci-fi and more religious to me, which is.

• 1:21:36Sean Fennessey?

  A bit of both. A lot of sci-fi has characters like that.

• 1:21:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is why I'm not like jumping up out of my seat being like, well, I just gotta, you know, if you let me know, I'm putting the big picture and getting my, you know, my magic wand.

• 1:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  The reason why it would replace movies for me is it's Cambellian hero myth. Like to identify people who are the, it's Luke Skywalker.

• 1:21:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:21:54Sean Fennessey?

  You're the only person that can save the galaxy. That, I love stories, man. That's what I always say. I love stories. Like, that's a great story.

• 1:22:01Amanda Dobbins?

  So you would be rededicating yourself as just like a story watcher? You would be?

• 1:22:06Sean Fennessey?

  To a greater understanding of my relationship to it and why I think it matters. That's what I do. That's what I'm trying to do. And the movie is drawing these feelings out of me, and it's one of the reasons why the movie transcends for me. The movie has enough for me to get my arms around where I'm like, this really has me thinking about what this would mean, which is what the movie's trying to do. Now, I think 98% of the people who watch this movie will not think about it in the way that we are. I think what they will think is. There are some amazing set pieces in this movie.

• 1:22:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Is that I transcended in just the actual movie making. That's Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt hanging off a train. Not really, but it sure looks like they are. And I can't believe they're doing that. And I'm very stressed out and I'm very excited and I'm very moved. I think there are a lot of like very moving images. And the extent to which it plays up that emotional protective vein of of the alien life that Josh O'Connor's character is concerned about like really worked on me. So there is a lot that works on it.

• 1:23:14Amanda Dobbins?

  It works in it for me, but it's not about like, I gotta go find the wand. Or I'm sorry, there's one reveal at the end, which we'll talk about that I just, I was like, dog, what?

• 1:23:28Sean Fennessey?

  We'll get there. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

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• 1:24:50Sean Fennessey?

  There's a really funny idea at the very, very, very beginning of this movie, which opens with a professional wrestling match. And I will say, when the movie started, I was like, is this the wrong movie?

• 1:24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I did too.

• 1:25:01Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I thought they ran the wrong reel. I didn't know Steven Spielberg was even aware of professional wrestling. A handful of, I think their AEW performers are wrestling. I don't watch AEW, so I can't locate who the wrestlers are. But, you know, pretty, fairly credibly staged wrestling match. Now, you know, wrestling is all about kayfabe. Wrestling is all about the, the story that we're telling that is fake. And we all kind of know it's fake. And there's something kind of funny about, we all really know aliens are real. But we're gonna pretend like they're not.

• 1:25:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Was it wrestling? Was it UFC?

• 1:25:29Sean Fennessey?

  It was wrestling.

• 1:25:30Amanda Dobbins?

  It was wrestling.

• 1:25:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it was pro wrestling.

• 1:25:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:32Sean Fennessey?

  And that is the site of a handoff.

• 1:25:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:25:37Sean Fennessey?

  Where information is acquired by the Josh O'Connor, or Josh O'Connor character. Is it, is he acquiring something or that he's giving something? He's acquiring something, right?

• 1:25:45Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I think it's a handoff. He's wearing the backpack and they're like, sit back down and take the backpack off.

• 1:25:52Sean Fennessey?

  And that leads to a big confrontation because the Wardex security crew is there.

• 1:25:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But they're really dumb.

• 1:25:57Sean Fennessey?

  They're very dumb and they're outwitted by Josh O'Connor and he and Eve Hewson escape. And then that sets the movie off on this course of just constant chase. He, they're on the road to a safe house. They're constantly looking for places to go. They're working in conjunction with this character played by Coleman Domingo, who is also a former Wardex employee, who had been a true believer in their mission for a long period of time and now operates in the film as, I would say, a kind of underwritten character.

• 1:26:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  Who's sort of like the guide, the expository guide of the story.

• 1:26:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He's the, like, he's the omniscient, like, he's the benevolent person on the shoulder. And then the Colin Firth character, who is, who runs Wardex, his name is Scanlon, is the evil character on the shoulder.

• 1:26:43Sean Fennessey?

  No one's ever been named Scanlon, been a good guy.

• 1:26:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And there are, there are twinge moments throughout this movie, both in terms of the people who know everything and who are guiding our characters and the characters themselves.

• 1:26:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. In the filmmaking on, well, I'll say two things. One, We love Josh O'Connor on the show.

• 1:27:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:02Sean Fennessey?

  I think his character is also a bit underwritten. And I think his character carries a heavy burden in the movie because he's not only constantly explaining things, but we don't get to really understand him as a person as much. He's just a vessel.

• 1:27:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:14Sean Fennessey?

  For carrying the story. The counterpoint to it is a Margaret character, who is a character who is not delivering information and does not know what is going on. And that allows two things. One, you get more invested in her emotionally because you want to know where she's going and why. And two, it's an amazing platform for Emily Blunt, who is fantastic in this movie. I think this is her best performance.

• 1:27:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Completely agree. I was sitting there midway through just being like, oh, she's finally going to get nominated for an Oscar and like, and I'm with it.

• 1:27:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:27:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, and I love Emily Blunt, and I think that she's just been in roles and with material that doesn't serve her. And she's amazing. And watching it, you, I wondered how much of it is that the, that the movie is structured to be her movie versus how much is she just running away with it?

• 1:27:58Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. I don't really know. It's hard to say.

• 1:28:00Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, this movie's funnier than a lot of Steven Spielberg movies. Like there are more actual in-jokes, including the Gwen Stefani needle drop. And I think some of that is just because Emily Blunt is like a very skilled comedic actress.

• 1:28:14Sean Fennessey?

  Totally agree.

• 1:28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  And so I do think that the movie's meant to go with her. Also, you know, jumping ahead a little bit, it's ultimately revealed that she's been given the, like, the language and the, like, the communication skills. And he's been giving the math skills. So it's not surprising that the movie then goes with the language and feelings character.

• 1:28:37Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. And it's at its best when it's with her.

• 1:28:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Sean Fennessey?

  And if this was Rooney Mara or Natalie Portman, I'm not sure if the movie works.

• 1:28:44Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:28:45Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and it's because of, she has that ability to play the light comedy of confusion that is so essential to her character. But also. You know, she's a beautiful movie star who is someone who would be incredibly a broadcaster.

• 1:28:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:28:59Sean Fennessey?

  And you're really with her in this movie. And every time she was on screen, I was like, this is fucking cooking. Like, this is very entertaining and I really want to know what's going on with her. And that's an essential part of a sci fi mystery. You really have to have somebody. They did it. That's a really interesting choice that Spielberg and Cap made to make O'Connor, for him to just be wholly credulous and communicative about what he's doing the whole way through. Now, he gets a moment near the end where he starts becoming confused about their connection.

• 1:29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:29:28Sean Fennessey?

  And what happened to him in the past, but he's not really exploring that too much. Even when he's explaining to Jane, the Houston character, like, I can understand what's being said here.

• 1:29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:29:37Sean Fennessey?

  When he sees the clip of Emily Blunt's character. He's not like shocked. He's just like, this just makes sense to me.

• 1:29:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:29:46Sean Fennessey?

  And so I actually felt a bit of a remove from him because he almost has like an alien quality to him.

• 1:29:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, 100%. And also, I mean, just structurally in this story, you do ultimately learn more about Margaret. They're trying to get to the, to the bottom of what's going on with her.

• 1:30:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And her childhood and you learn nothing about him. So like there is just, there's an actual imbalance in what is written. And to your point about him being slightly underdeveloped, you don't get any of the emotional reveal that you get with her character.

• 1:30:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and just based on the marketing going into the movie, you think it's going to be Joshua Connor's movie with a supporting performance by Emily Blunt. And at times it just becomes a full blown Emily Blunt movie. Now.

• 1:30:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Which I'm fine with.

• 1:30:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, no, me too. Like I said, I think, it must've been three or four years ago, we had a conversation after a movie that she had made, where we both said the same thing. We were like, this is one of the great actresses, Divorce Prada, Edge of Tomorrow. Like, she's a great star and she's picked so many lousy movies and kind of been stuck in all this stuff. And it's cool that Spielberg was able to unlock, I think, what's so special about her.

• 1:30:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:50Sean Fennessey?

  And part of it is just that the movie just feels a little bit brighter and lighter when she's on screen. But as they race towards each other.

• 1:31:00Sean Fennessey?

  It never really slips into like, this is a romance, or this is a movie about like a brother and sister, like they're connected, but they're, they have their own arcs in a very specific way. The most exciting stuff is usually happening with Josh O'Connor's character, though. The most like thrilling chases, the most exclamatory filmmaking. When Spielberg is like, yo, I still have my 102 mile an hour fastball. And there's two or three sequences in the movie. One where O'Connor's character is in a safe house, and he is attempting to leave before the Warden's security arrives.

• 1:31:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:31:41Sean Fennessey?

  And the camera starts following him out of the house. The long extended tracking shot where he's running along a fence post, and the camera moves through the fence post and around, and he goes all the way out and around and jumps into a car and drives off, which then leads to an epic chase. And as, as that scene was happening, I was like-

• 1:32:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you turned to me and you were just like-

• 1:32:03Sean Fennessey?

  What the fuck?

• 1:32:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Hey!

• 1:32:06Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, Spielberg is the guy, the one. He's the one. Like, I've just not seen that move before. I've not, I've not felt like inside of a person's experience in a movie in quite that way. No, it's not a, it's a very showy move, but it is a move that you kind of need to get excited about O'Connor's character escaping. There's a similar move that is not as action packed, but is as critical with Blunt's character.

• 1:32:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. She is, she needs to get to work and is late to work. And so, after speeding, and there's a funny bit developed over close to the movie where they are both just absolutely maniacal drivers, like unexplained for no reason. So, she's speeding, she gets pulled over, reads the trooper's mind.

• 1:32:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Gets out of her ticket and then it's it's a tracking shot from the street into the studio and onto the set of her weather, um, her weather station where she has to interact with like six or seven different people. Uh, she speaks in in Korean. She inserts herself into a guest who's dealing with World War Three. Oh yeah. So World War Three is about to break out, uh, in in North Korea.

• 1:33:16Sean Fennessey?

  Concurrent to this plot, there is a massive world conflict.

• 1:33:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:33:21Sean Fennessey?

  Where it looks like North Korea is going to bomb the United States and start World War Three.

• 1:33:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Um, but so she's translating and like translating the nuances of the language, um, that the actual translator can't communicate. She stops to help a friend, like a colleague with a, you know, personal work situation that is just mind reading. She's like producing three other segments and and it's like all in one. It's really, really, and which then leads to that climactic moment that you've seen in the trailer with her doing the clicking. Amazing stuff.

• 1:33:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's it's amazing because it's a fusion of that huge physical production and his style and sense of blocking and where to put the camera, plus her performance, which is so great. And she is literally speaking Korean and Russian in this movie. I don't speak those languages.

• 1:34:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  Seemed very credible. Um, she clearly learned to some extent how to do that.

• 1:34:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:34:13Sean Fennessey?

  In addition to this alien language, which was created for the film, which apparently is actually her clicking. And I guess it was her idea that she was like, I have an affinity for a kind of a being able to do a clicking sound. Um, all of that stuff works really, really well. Um, there are a few other extraordinary set pieces. You mentioned the train, which is an idea that Spielberg has been wanting to do since he was a kid. Um, it's dramatized in The Fabelmans and it's shot, he shot it on eight millimeter as a kid and he's, he wanted to do it in dual. He wanted to do a moment where, um, a truck pushed a train or pushed a car onto the train tracks. And that whole sequence is like, hold your breath, tight, exciting.

• 1:34:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So stressful. Yeah.

• 1:34:53Sean Fennessey?

  Old school movie making.

• 1:34:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Sean Fennessey?

  And then the one other one that I've never seen before that I really enjoyed that was really much more old school sci fi was The Invisible House, which is the set that is created in the third act of the film for Emily Blunt's character so that she can go back in her memory to what happened to her as a young girl and be reminded of the connection that was made when aliens in the form of these animals, which we've been seeing in the trailers and been like, why does this look like a Hallmark commercial, where there's a stag and a cardinal and what is the other animal that I'm forgetting? Who is it? A fox? These CGI animals that represent some memory in her mind and that memory is the aliens

• 1:35:37Sean Fennessey?

  have made themselves appear to be these animals so that they may visit her and gift her with these powers.

• 1:35:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:35:44Sean Fennessey?

  The power to mind read, the power to understand all languages, all these things that we're seeing throughout the film. They're in this house, they're doing this work, the dyad is complete, the two memories are fused. We see that there is only like one thing that can be done now, which is to show the world the truth. And then Wardex shows up in this constructed home. And Emily Blunt's character uses the device, the magic wand, she holds it in a very pronounced Thanos-esque way. It lights up.

• 1:36:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I was thinking of Violet from The Incredibles, but you know.

• 1:36:15Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's good too. Yeah, I like that. And everybody disappears and Wardex arrives to an empty garage.

• 1:36:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:36:23Sean Fennessey?

  And it's just old school Spielberg, like brilliant, how is this happening? Kind of visual trickery and escape strategies that is like a little bit of Raiders of the Lost Ark, a little bit of AI, a little bit of like, you've not quite seen a visual execution like this, that then leads to another chase and the race to get to a new studio.

• 1:36:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:36:46Sean Fennessey?

  And then I wanted to talk with you just a little bit about the execution of the final act of the movie.

• 1:36:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:36:51Sean Fennessey?

  Specifically like the final, the visit to the Kansas City station.

• 1:36:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:57Sean Fennessey?

  And then once.

• 1:37:00Sean Fennessey?

  The mission to broadcast is accomplished.

• 1:37:02Amanda Dobbins?

  So, once everything has gone live, so they it's they have hours and hours of footage that they've copied to a local hard drive. I appreciated the the technical mechanics of it and knowing that at some point, network would cut and you need to have your own server and XYZ, you know, they thought through it.

• 1:37:21Sean Fennessey?

  Seemed brought through, yeah.

• 1:37:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:22Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:37:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And like credible without seem too complicated. And so it's live and then it's live on one station and then it goes national and then it goes to all the other stations. They're carrying it without the bug and then you see it going international and that everyone all is all at once and they're cutting from World War III to watching this this live footage that is airing unedited and they have they've recreated or created, I should say, I guess I don't know.

• 1:37:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, a lot of of footage of what seemed to be or what are alien life forms interacting with humans and mostly military complexes and more interrogations.

• 1:38:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And they have a newscaster narrate what she's seeing live and kind of recreate the moment of being a human being watching this, you know, it's sort of like Cronkite with the JFK assassination or with the moon landing, but in real time, which I thought was really effective. That act that actress, whose name I hope you just googled.

• 1:38:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'm trying to find her name and I can't find it.

• 1:38:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Is is wonderful and and it puts you in the position of watching this stuff for the first time and what it would feel like. I thought it was a really, really smart script decision and a great performance where just watching the footage.

• 1:38:50Sean Fennessey?

  You know what it reminded me of?

• 1:38:53Sean Fennessey?

  When there's a presidential election and you're watching a channel

• 1:38:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Sean Fennessey?

  And you spend your night with one voice

• 1:38:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:38:58Sean Fennessey?

  That is anchoring this experience that feels like it is historical. And I totally agree with how you're describing it, that sticking with this woman, who I'm very sorry that her name escapes me, she might actually be a real newscaster. I think she is, but I'm not familiar with her. But she gives this amazing performance as we are, you have to believe her to believe that this is how it would play out. Now, I will say, when I was watching the movie, I was like, this is too quick. They've skipped a step here in terms of not just verifying the information, but in our world of deep fakes, I think most people who saw that, even though there are reams and reams of footage of aliens and all of this stuff that O'Connor's character has brought to the fore, we live in a time where people are so skeptical about this stuff, that everything just seems fake.

• 1:39:43Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that it would have been interesting to show a not complicit perspective on this. Now, it would have changed the sort of faithful, religious moment of communion

• 1:39:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:39:59Sean Fennessey?

  That we all feel that is clearly the point of the movie. But they jump so credibly in the broadcast booth in New York, from this Kansas City affiliate to national news, to then taking this national NBC exclusive and very quickly allowing it to be a national and then worldwide, non-exclusive with no vetting, with no even suggestion that this could be fake in the world, this sort of like, this just takes over.

• 1:40:30Amanda Dobbins?

  No, they do. They say that we ran it, they're like, we ran some AI program.

• 1:40:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And it checks out or something. It was like one, one ADR tennis.

• 1:40:38Sean Fennessey?

  It was like a ground check?

• 1:40:40Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 1:40:41Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe that exists. I don't know. But it was, it's a yada yada to get through that particular concern. That was, I did bump on this. I was just like, I don't know if this would happen this quickly. This seems like a lot. That being said, considering that I'm going to be an alien podcaster soon, I would have been super excited by like, in minute three, we were like, there's a lot of footage here.

• 1:40:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so then you're, then you're watching the footage and I thought the footage that they created was like, very upsetting and affecting. And, you know, I think using the same alien bodies that we have seen and it's similar to Close Encounters and

• 1:41:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Just sort of like a standard emoji alien face and head and then but but they're smaller, so they have a childlike quality.

• 1:41:20Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:20Amanda Dobbins?

  And they are being tortured and put in camps and tormented and it and they look sad and scared and confused and it reminded me of, you know, recent footage in the United States and certainly in Guantanamo and all sorts of things, very upsetting to watch. So I did think that that worked. Or at least affected me and I thought the newscaster then narrating it, though I agree with you, was fast forwarded, was emotionally affecting. Then it starts cutting to the rest of the world just watching and people are looking down at their screens, but you know, you go to airports, you go to public spaces, you

• 1:42:01Amanda Dobbins?

  see people less so watching on large screens, though it does happen somewhat because the implication is that the entire world has just clicked over to this one feed.

• 1:42:12Sean Fennessey?

  It has been an NBA Finals quality where it's like people in Times Square are watching on a giant screen, but also people are in their homes. There's the shot of Elizabeth Marvel in the nunnery, they're all like crowded around a television. I'm like, what were they watching before this? Were there 40 people in the room? I guess they're watching the World War III news together.

• 1:42:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, I guess so.

• 1:42:29Sean Fennessey?

  That's the thing is that there needed to be maybe this other cataclysmic event that everyone would be crowded around to allow for this moment to happen.

• 1:42:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and it invokes, you know, we didn't have smartphones for 9/11, but in the sense that at some point during 9/11, if you were not in New York, then you were watching. So it has that cata- that catastrophic like scale to it, but the fact that you do have phones kind of makes a difference, makes a difference. And the fact that the the idea that everyone would just be sitting there next to each other staring on their phones, looking at the same thing, I don't know. I don't know if I buy that.

• 1:43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  It's the problem we face every single day.

• 1:43:10Sean Fennessey?

  As someone who would be excited by the existence of aliens, I mean, the other thing, too, that you have to note is that in all of the footage that is shown, that is created of the alien interactions, they're never in a position of aggression. There's never a time where they are presenting a threat in any of the footage. We don't actually know they have the technology to come to this planet. They have the technology to create a magic wand that can allow you to disappear or to create a psychic link with a person in another city or in another, you know, another world. But they're not violent. And that this is, goes back to a, an old Spielberg idea, that Roy getting on the ship is safe. That it's actually salvation to go be with these other, this other species, this other,

• 1:43:52Sean Fennessey?

  you know, this other band of existence that we don't totally understand because it's not going to attack you. It's not going to hurt you. There's nothing to fear. And then the final moments of the movie.

• 1:44:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:44:02Sean Fennessey?

  In which the alien is rolled out for the world to see, as you noted on a segue.

• 1:44:08Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a really large, all the animals, oh, and sorry, not all the animals, all the aliens who are featured in the disclosure footage are small. And you kind of get a sense of scale. And then this is the largest alien that you've ever seen.

• 1:44:22Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like a quite old alien.

• 1:44:23Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really old. They've aged the alien.

• 1:44:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:44:25Amanda Dobbins?

  They've put the alien on, it's almost as if like the older you get, you just like keep growing bigger and bigger, that aliens don't stop growing.

• 1:44:32Sean Fennessey?

  It's like one part the Hannibal Lecter gurney, like the standing gurney.

• 1:44:35Amanda Dobbins?

  It's basically a segue. And Coleman Domingo has somehow made it to the news station along with Colin first. They have some unspoken resolution. Again, these are not the most well fleshed out characters.

• 1:44:46Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 1:44:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And they say, and, and like, and Colin first character Scanlan remembers his wife or something. And so then he, so he has a moment of emotional resonance and it's like, fine, release the alien. And Coleman says like, okay, bring her out. And it's like, it's honestly like they're rolling out a prize on the prices, right? You know, but instead they roll out this giant, giant.

• 1:45:11Sean Fennessey?

  A Jeep Grand Cherokee.

• 1:45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Real alien. And I was just like, okay, that's a really large. Real alien um and like clear like a sculpture anthem you know it's like it's real it's practical it's not

• 1:45:23Sean Fennessey?

  No, I think it's CGI. Or maybe it's a combination of both. I think it's I think there's CGI going.

• 1:45:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, because then Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt, Margaret and Daniel like go over to the greet the alien and they're just like, I know you. And so there's some sort of like Holy Trinity thing going on here.

• 1:45:41Sean Fennessey?

  Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

• 1:45:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And they or Father, Son, Holy Alien and they have him um a moment of emotion and love and recognition. And then and then Emily Blunt finally puts on a blazer, thank God, before she does her transmission.

• 1:45:56Sean Fennessey?

  I liked her sweater.

• 1:45:57Amanda Dobbins?

  I liked it, but I not what I would choose for an international.

• 1:46:00Sean Fennessey?

  Sweater guy, blazer girl.

• 1:46:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, listen, it's just and there's also a funny moment where the makeup person says, would you like some makeup? And she's like, yes.

• 1:46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and then and then they turn on a spotlight.

• 1:46:10Sean Fennessey?

  She's so great in this movie.

• 1:46:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Spotlight just for her. But I I thought the blazer was the right choice for the international disclosure transmission.

• 1:46:17Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:46:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, and as the really old alien chief chair Grand Cherokee looks on,

• 1:46:24Amanda Dobbins?

  she just turns to the camera and says, listen, the end. I really like that last I like her to the camera and the last shot. I thought that was really cool. I was still bumping a little bit on the giant alien because that was when I was like, oh, you just really are putting a real alien in this.

• 1:46:47Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I think it's very purposeful, I believe, which is that it's the movie saying, you've seen all this footage. Maybe you still don't believe. This is the last step.

• 1:46:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:57Sean Fennessey?

  Toward belief. Here he is, or she is.

• 1:47:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:00Sean Fennessey?

  We don't know. Could be a she.

• 1:47:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Maybe that's not how they think of it. We don't know.

• 1:47:04Sean Fennessey?

  Could be a gender free race. Um, I, I also really like the ending. The ending does the thing that is just like, okay, we're done. You know, you gotta be like, wait, what? And then now where where do I go with this? And like, how do I feel? And you know, at the screen that we went to, it felt like there were a lot of people who we know in the media that were at this first screening that we saw. And I would say half of them were like, wow. And half of them were like, I don't know about this.

• 1:47:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:33Sean Fennessey?

  And that's interesting. And I do think that that will be roughly the reaction to this movie.

• 1:47:37Amanda Dobbins?

  And I was like, that was a real alien.

• 1:47:40Sean Fennessey?

  And that's what, that's what they wanted the world to think as well.

• 1:47:42Amanda Dobbins?

  I, okay, listen, if you rolled in that alien right now.

• 1:47:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, no, that would be a pod.

• 1:47:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Then I quit and I will start investigating.

• 1:47:49Sean Fennessey?

  No need to quit.

• 1:47:50Amanda Dobbins?

  No, that was.

• 1:47:50Sean Fennessey?

  We'll just pivot the show.

• 1:47:51Amanda Dobbins?

  The alien will be my co-host. It seems like a nice alien.

• 1:47:54Sean Fennessey?

  New third chair race. Seriously. Well, Tracy and Chris, watch your backs.

• 1:48:01Amanda Dobbins?

  It was so big, the alien.

• 1:48:02Sean Fennessey?

  It was very big. It was tall. It was tall. It was aged. It was, it was Wemby-esque. It was Wemby-esque.

• 1:48:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, you still got it, Steven Spielberg.

• 1:48:11Sean Fennessey?

  Um, yeah, I, I really enjoyed this movie. I think it's a, you nailed it at the top of the conversation. There's not, there's no metaphor here.

• 1:48:21Sean Fennessey?

  It is literally, what if this happened? And it's fascinating because the movie, when it was first rolling out in the marketing, there was a lot of criticism like, what is this about? Why aren't they telling us anything? Is this a sequel to something? And then we saw the final trailer in April and, and I was like, okay. So this is like, is what we think it is. And then they started sharing that widely. And I don't know if that was because they were nervous about how the movie might perform, or if it was like, well, the plan was always to kind of slowly reveal that this was in fact an alien film from Steven Spielberg. But it gives away quite a bit. And you kind of go in and you have to.

• 1:48:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Having seen, now having seen the full film, I was sort of galled by how much of footage from the final. The only thing they do not show you is the really big alien.

• 1:49:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that's true. It's true. It doesn't really, the movie, the trailer doesn't explain the plot. Yeah, it doesn't really explain what's happening.

• 1:49:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:14Sean Fennessey?

  But, um, and it doesn't give away, I think, just some of the more general thrilling stuff you get from a Spielberg chase movie. But a lot of it is already out there, which is interesting.

• 1:49:25Sean Fennessey?

  I really liked it. I mean, no surprise. There's a very low likelihood that I wasn't going to like it.

• 1:49:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I had a fantastic time. I really liked it. And I also, I, I've only seen it the once. I would like to see it again.

• 1:49:33Sean Fennessey?

  I would too. I wish we had for a second time. Although we did a good job here, I think, of recreating a lot of this.

• 1:49:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's because there, there's a lot to work with and there is a lot that stays in your mind. I think it is.

• 1:49:42Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's it.

• 1:49:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Kuki isn't bad. Kuki means it's interesting.

• 1:49:45Sean Fennessey?

  And I am different.

• 1:49:46Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and yes, and it's different, but still in conversation with all of his other work. And I'm very interested to watch it a few more times with the understanding of like, okay, this is like, you know, you're a late career thing and you're making a, you're dealing with your other work, you're trying to say some things, you're trying to get some things off of your chest. Um, I think it's a rich text.

• 1:50:08Sean Fennessey?

  I fully agree.

• 1:50:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And also really fun. And also, large alien on the segue.

• 1:50:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a little goofy. It's a little goofy. There's no doubt about it. Um, I mean, there's something a little goofy about being above believing in aliens. I think it was more like a, just a keeping him warm.

• 1:50:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like the tinfoil that they give you after you run a marathon.

• 1:50:27Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. That's what I think it was. That is what I think it was. They, they don't have clothes, I guess. They don't wear clothes, these aliens. Why don't aliens wear clothes?

• 1:50:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Because they are not as uncomfortable with their bodies as we are. Yeah.

• 1:50:39Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 1:50:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And also maybe their atmosphere, uh, doesn't like grate on the skin as much. I mean, you know, you, they probably don't have to wear SPF either, you know, you weren't built for this life, but maybe aliens were built for their life.

• 1:50:50Sean Fennessey?

  I'll do a naked podcast. Are you daring me to do a naked podcast?

• 1:50:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm really asking you to never do that.

• 1:50:54Sean Fennessey?

  I will do it. I will do it. I'll do it. I'll raise funds. I'll, I will absolutely do it for charity.

• 1:51:00Speaker 03

  Don't look at me so intensely when you say that.

• 1:51:03Amanda Dobbins?

  There is no one who wants that.

• 1:51:04Sean Fennessey?

  You're, you'd be surprised.

• 1:51:05Amanda Dobbins?

  I, actually I'm not, but I, I mean, we should just really, we should make a movie about the people who want that. That would be fascinating.

• 1:51:12Sean Fennessey?

  Legends, all of them.

• 1:51:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Wheel them out on segways.

• 1:51:14Sean Fennessey?

  I want, I'd like to say the name John Williams again.

• 1:51:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:51:17Sean Fennessey?

  I think this is some of his best work in a long time. I think part of the reason why the movie feels so propulsive and exciting is because you can feel him getting locked in. Uh, you know, he doesn't really have any bad scores where you're like, oh, he missed on that one. Um, but you know, I was, I was talking to a filmmaker, uh, last week and they were, they described him as the last, uh, melodist composer.

• 1:51:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Sean Fennessey?

  And I thought that was a great way of framing him. You know, a lot of the contemporary composers, a lot of whom I really like, are very percussive figures. They're really about, and that's a response to kind of what contemporary popular music has been in roughly the last 40 years, where it is very beat driven. It is very, but it is meant to thrust you into this kind of heartbeat feeling. Now he has, he does that with melody. That's what the Jaws score is.

• 1:52:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:52:02Sean Fennessey?

  He's, he's using a piano to capture that feeling and he does the same thing in this movie and he's 94 years old. And that's just amazing. It's amazing that he still can, can, can conjure this and that he and Spielberg have this now 50 year relationship.

• 1:52:20Amanda Dobbins?

  The great living musician, one of the most important musicians of our, like of our lifetime and shaping not just film scores, but and classical music, pop music, pop culture. I mean, my, my two-year-old or almost two-year-old can like sing Star Wars, the theme, and then I just start crying. Like it's, but it is amazing when you think about what he has made has probably traveled further than almost any other cultural artifact of the last 15 years.

• 1:52:49Sean Fennessey?

  That's a really great way of putting it. I think there's something to that. I mean, obviously, the two of them in conjunction.

• 1:52:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:52:55Sean Fennessey?

  You see their impact in sound and vision that like, it's major stuff. And, you know, he's won five Academy Awards for his scores. He's among the most celebrated composers, certainly of our lifetime. I think he could win again. We haven't even seen most of the movies that are going to be competing for Oscars, but, and I'm curious what you think in terms of like box office and Oscar stuff for this movie, because.

• 1:53:15Amanda Dobbins?

  So I just Googled box office. I just Googled disclosure, day tracking, because those guys always get it right.

• 1:53:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:53:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, 65 million worldwide?

• 1:53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Worldwide?

• 1:53:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:53:28Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I'll go over that.

• 1:53:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, and.

• 1:53:29Sean Fennessey?

  In America, I won't go over that.

• 1:53:31Amanda Dobbins?

  35 million and it's North American.

• 1:53:32Sean Fennessey?

  I'll go over that. I would guess it's 41, 42.

• 1:53:36Amanda Dobbins?

  That would be nice.

• 1:53:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good, that would be a good outcome.

• 1:53:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:38Sean Fennessey?

  For the movie. Some people think it can go to 50.

• 1:53:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I would love that.

• 1:53:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I think, I think the reviews are going to be mixed. I think a B cinema score is in play because I think some people will feel that some of the stuff is goofy. Some of the people will feel like it's maybe not satisfying, that we're not getting like some sort of alien confrontation.

• 1:53:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:53:54Sean Fennessey?

  Which is the sort of thing you expect.

• 1:53:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And to our explanation, you know, there is, there's a lot of what's going on with the Margaret and Daniel characters that just is never, never explained at all. And that may be frustrating.

• 1:54:06Sean Fennessey?

  I think more specifically, the way to think about the movie is this is a movie about us. It's not a movie about them. It's not a movie about aliens.

• 1:54:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's a movie about humanity. And again, that is a very kind of aged.

• 1:54:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:54:19Sean Fennessey?

  Perspective, you know, looking internally in the, in the latter stages of your life.

• 1:54:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, all, you know, Close Encounters, E.T., all the other movies, you know, end on a looking outward, what's the, you know, hope and wonder and what is possibility? And this is Emily Blunt looking down a barrel at you. And it is very much about what's here. So.

• 1:54:39Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely right. Awards.

• 1:54:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's been well reviewed, not ecstatically reviewed, but very well reviewed. And I think if you're like one of those Spielberg allegiance,

• 1:54:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna give this movie a good review because you've been spending a lot of time thinking about the source texts and what it is he's responding to. And we love this one, an older filmmaker is like, I'm re-engaging with all the stuff that made me a legend in the first place.

• 1:55:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I think back to at the DGAs where every single person who was on stage somehow managed to reference and like say hello to Steven Spielberg and what Spielberg meant to them. And many of them just saying like, I can't believe I'm on stage in front of Steven Spielberg. So it's not news to anyone who listens to this podcast, but he is god tier. So and loved in the industry, so that helps. Like, we're not the only people starting the Emily Blunt campaign, but I will start it right now here today.

• 1:55:32Sean Fennessey?

  She will be nominated.

• 1:55:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And I would love to see her win. You know, it's early and performances like this that are funny and genre don't normally win, at least in actress. And I think she's actress, she's not supporting, no matter what the marketing will try to. If they can, if they can finagle supporting, then shout out to them.

• 1:55:52Sean Fennessey?

  Where that's a category where she can win, they might do that.

• 1:55:54Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, and I salute it because I don't believe in honorary Oscars and I don't believe in category fraud, okay? Just like, go get the competitive win. But she deserves it. She's amazing.

• 1:56:04Sean Fennessey?

  She is really terrific. I think there's, it really depends on how the second half of the year shakes out. It's always hard to make predictions like this, but you know, I said it with Sinners last year, after the first week, I was like, this movie's gonna get 10 Oscar nominations, no question. Feels like five is in the offing for this movie for sure, because you do have these legendary below the line people.

• 1:56:21Amanda Dobbins?

  That's right.

• 1:56:22Sean Fennessey?

  Who've done great work. You know, for like Paul Tazwell, this is not the showiest costuming performance.

• 1:56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  But he came through with that blazer when he needed to.

• 1:56:28Sean Fennessey?

  He sure did.

• 1:56:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Appreciate that.

• 1:56:31Sean Fennessey?

  O'Connor. This is not his Tom Hanks moment, you know? It's not a bad performance by any means, but I think some of it is a function of the character and some of it is a function of, I think, the way that his engagements with Eve Hewson's character are written, where that's some of the weakest stuff in the movie to me. And I wasn't as with the movie when they're having fights about like, you didn't tell me you were a novitiate? And she's like, you didn't tell me that you were, you know, you did this for Ward X. Like, there's a little bit of like raggedy David Koep screenwriting stuff going on.

• 1:56:59Amanda Dobbins?

  And then she also gets a pretty amazing one-off scene with Colin Firth that we didn't mention.

• 1:57:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the psychic link.

• 1:57:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which was very cool, but he is, his character is being used to set up everybody else and everything else.

• 1:57:13Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of Firth? Because you're, you're obviously, you know, longtime fan.

• 1:57:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Remember when Tim Simons described, said on this podcast, possibly in this very chair, I saw the man from King's Beach at the Claremont Lounge?

• 1:57:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:57:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, I thought he was good. Sure, good use of him.

• 1:57:30Sean Fennessey?

  He's playing, he's playing an old school Spielberg villain, like you said.

• 1:57:33Amanda Dobbins?

  And, you know, I thought Coleman Domingo was well cast and as the like, the warmth and the like, we need you to come to this safe place.

• 1:57:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, as close as you can get to a narrator, too.

• 1:57:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, neither of those characters make any real sense, but.

• 1:57:47Sean Fennessey?

  I agree.

• 1:57:47Amanda Dobbins?

  But I like those actors.

• 1:57:49Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. In the same way that Close Encounters and E.T. are kind of Fantasia's, you kind of have to get on board with the kind of Fantasia quality of this movie. If you want to read it literally, even though at times it's asking you to read it literally.

• 1:57:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:00Sean Fennessey?

  But if you, if you, if you read it literally, I think you will come away more frustrated than amazed or awed by what is possible with it. Fascinated to see how it works out. Fascinated to see what people make of it. And I agree with you, I look forward to seeing it again. I would have liked to have seen it a second time before this, but you're right that its idiosyncrasies are what allowed me to very comfortably sit down two weeks after seeing it and be like, this, this, this, this, this, this, this.

• 1:58:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, and also I've just been thinking about it, right? And I've been thinking about specific parts of it. I've been trying to parcel out what I think it thinks it's mean, it means, what does it mean to me? What does it mean to Spielberg? Like, I'm, I have been wrestling with it in a good way, not because I didn't have a great, like, I had a just a thrill ride of a time and then I keep thinking about it, which to me is only Spielberg can do.

• 1:58:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's usually what you want. That's it. I think next week we'll talk more about Spielberg. I'll probably try to see this a second time.

• 1:58:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I gotta figure that out.

• 1:58:56Sean Fennessey?

  I looked at my, um, The Spielberg films I've watched since I joined Letterboxd.

• 1:59:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:03Sean Fennessey?

  There's only nine I haven't seen a second time, or a third time, or an eighth time, or 12th time,

• 1:59:10Sean Fennessey?

  since 2020. And most of them are at the bottom of my list.

• 1:59:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:14Sean Fennessey?

  The BFG.

• 1:59:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:16Sean Fennessey?

  War Horse, Tin Tin, movies that I'm not a huge fan of. But I want to try to knock out as many of them this weekend as I can.

• 1:59:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:59:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, here's, me, you and Joanna.

• 1:59:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:28Sean Fennessey?

  We did our full ranking some years ago.

• 1:59:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:59:31Sean Fennessey?

  We also did top fives.

• 1:59:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I don't remember anything.

• 1:59:35Sean Fennessey?

  I don't remember, and these things change, right? They're living documents.

• 1:59:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:38Sean Fennessey?

  Should we be individually doing top 10s? Should we be, should we be creating some sort of new system to examine his career?

• 1:59:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't want to do Matt Rushmore because then we have to fight about Teddy Roosevelt.

• 1:59:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:50Amanda Dobbins?

  And I just, I don't know. I know a lot more about Ike Eisenhower after seeing Pressure, so maybe we could bring that into the discussion.

• 1:59:59Amanda Dobbins?

  He had a temper.

• 2:00:00Sean Fennessey?

  So I've heard.

• 2:00:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 2:00:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I'll think about it.

• 2:00:05Sean Fennessey?

  We got to figure out a way.

• 2:00:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I know that things would change dramatically. I, so for this podcast, after seeing Disclosure Day, I rewatched Close Encounters, didn't need to watch ET because I have it memorized,

• 2:00:20Amanda Dobbins?

  AI, Minority Report, and The Post.

• 2:00:24Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting. I haven't revisited The Post.

• 2:00:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And I, I found that my experiences on some of those changed dramatically. Or I, you know, had a, had a response to them that I didn't remember. And some were exactly the same. So it would be fun to revisit to see kind of how things have changed.

• 2:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  Last thought on this.

• 2:00:46Sean Fennessey?

  West Side Story, Fableman's Disclosure Day. Would like to see how many filmmakers in their 70s have a trio that good.

• 2:00:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's gonna be a shortlist. It's gonna be a shortlist.

• 2:00:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  Because those, each three, all three of those films feel monumental to what he's trying to communicate as a filmmaker.

• 2:01:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:04Sean Fennessey?

  And.

• 2:01:05Amanda Dobbins?

  They were getting like more of those. I just, you know, impulsively.

• 2:01:08Sean Fennessey?

  They're just so infrequent, you know, it's like Coppola's made one movie. Scorsese is obviously there.

• 2:01:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I just Googled Scorsese because what, you've got Silence Irishman and then?

• 2:01:17Sean Fennessey?

  Killers of the Flower Moon.

• 2:01:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:18Sean Fennessey?

  Now, I don't know if I actually said this to you, but this is kind of his Killers of the Flower Moon.

• 2:01:23Amanda Dobbins?

  I completely, I totally agree.

• 2:01:24Sean Fennessey?

  Where it's like, what am I, what am I really about?

• 2:01:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, it's the end, like it's the end of, and listen, Steven Spielberg seems very healthy and kept up with you and put up with your bullshit. So I like mad respect to him. I'm not trying to do anything. But it's just, he's made a lot of movies. It's, it's the back nine.

• 2:01:44Sean Fennessey?

  Let's also not forget that.

• 2:01:45Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm also on my back nine, so it's fine.

• 2:01:47Speaker 03

  That's simply just not true.

• 2:01:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think you'll get, I think you've got, I'll make it to 90 energy.

• 2:01:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and just absolutely torment my sons.

• 2:01:56Sean Fennessey?

  Well, hopefully they'll be there for you and support you.

• 2:01:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope so, but it's just like, I mean.

• 2:01:59Sean Fennessey?

  And love you.

• 2:02:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Imagine, imagine me at 85.

• 2:02:02Sean Fennessey?

  I won't have to. I'll be dead. Uh, I, um, it's not a mistake that in the year that Steven Spielberg officially moved to New York City, as he told us on January 1st, 2026, the New York Knicks were up 3-1 in the NBA Finals. So hopefully by the time we come back.

• 2:02:18Amanda Dobbins?

  I hope this isn't a time capsule.

• 2:02:22Sean Fennessey?

  We'll see.

• 2:02:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 2:02:23Sean Fennessey?

  We got a big game on Saturday.

• 2:02:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Sean Fennessey?

  Um, hey, thank you to Jack Sanders back from Europe, here to produce our episode, the producer of this show. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for his production support. Thanks to Sarah and Jamie for holding us down over those episodes while, while, while Jack was gone. Uh, next week, we're gonna do something with our, with our Spielberg favorites. I don't know what it is yet, but we'll do something interesting and we'll, we'll look back on what's transpired with the Disclosure Day in the world over the weekend.

• 2:02:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:47Sean Fennessey?

  And, um.

• 2:02:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And possibly a next update.

• 2:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  Well, and yeah, I'll, I'll protect my heart, but remain positive. We'll see you next week.

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