‘One Battle After Another’ Is a Modern Masterpiece, With Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson!

Sean and Amanda are joined by Chris Ryan to break down their most anticipated movie of the year: Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘One Battle After Another,’ starring Leonardo DiCaprio. They dive deep into spoilers right from the jump, make the case for it being the movie of the decade, and highlight why it’s the culmination of Anderson’s career (2:25). Then, they talk through how the film has been marketed to audiences, hypothesize about its box office potential, and consider its chances at the Academy Awards (1:31:15). Finally, Anderson and DiCaprio join the show to explain why now was the right time for their first professional collaboration, how you know you’re getting what you want with a movie on this type of scale, and how aging affects your politics and self (1:47:35). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Paul Thomas Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Chris Ryan Producer: Jack Sanders This episode is sponsored by State Farm®️. A State Farm agent can help you choose the coverage you need. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.®️ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is presented by State Farm. Life's full of decisions, big and small, and sometimes you make movie ones you can really stand behind. For example, I was wise enough to stick around through the mid-credits during Ryan Coogler's Sinners. And unlike my co-host Amanda, I got to see a very special sequence with the great Buddy Guy, among other things. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create an affordable price for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

• 0:46Speaker 01

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• 1:12Sean Fennessey?

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 1:23Speaker 02

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• 2:10Speaker 02

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• 2:27Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessy.

• 2:28Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 2:28Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about one battle after another. Today's the day. Chris Ryan joins Amanda and me to discuss our most anticipated movie of 2025. It's called One Battle After Another. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by the writer, director, and star of that movie, Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Perhaps you've heard of these two men, Leo and Paul, our patron saints of this podcast. A pleasure and an honor to talk to them. We talked about the long road to making the movie. Paul started writing it almost 20 years ago, why it appealed to Leo, why it took them so long to get together, how the movie evolved when they decided to make it together, why Paul finally decided to make a movie set in the present day, something that we've talked about many times on this show. We talked about a whole lot more. I hope you will stick around

• 3:11Sean Fennessey?

  for that conversation. I suspect you will. Leonardo DiCaprio, now a podcast guest.

• 3:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Sean Fennessey?

  So we are coming right on the heels of new heights.

• 3:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Big kick in new heights.

• 3:19Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, very exciting. Programming reminder for the top of this episode. Uh, this is not the last conversation about One Battle After Another.

• 3:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I mean, we're gonna be talking about it for the next six months, but on Monday.

• 3:30Sean Fennessey?

  On Monday, we're gonna do a mailbag, a, a one battle PTA mailbag. So if you're listening right now, I assume you, you are going to see the movie or have seen the movie already. And if you want to hear more about it, more about PTA, more about Leo, more about everything related to it, the box office, I think, will be a topic of hot discussion for sure. Send us an email at [email protected].

• 3:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. [email protected]. Can, you alluded to something important, which is, if you're listening to this episode, you either have seen the movie or you're planning on seeing the movie. I think we need to set some, some boundaries and some delineations right here up top.

• 4:09Sean Fennessey?

  We will spoil the movie in full.

• 4:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Starting right now.

• 4:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 4:12Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, don't do the thing where you're like, oh, I know I'm gonna see it, but I'm gonna listen anyway. No. Treat yourself. Stop, pause, come back. And also, if you're the person who's mad about spoilers in any way, shape, or form, take responsibility for yourself and hit pause, because I don't want to hear it.

• 4:27Sean Fennessey?

  Um, also, even if you wanted to fast forward. If you wanted to fast forward to my conversation with Leo and Paul, that is also full of spoilers. And in fact, during the conversation, they were like, we're really spoiling this, but so, go see the movie. We encourage you to see the movie. The reason we encourage you to see this movie is because this is a very special movie. And it's, it is Paul Thomas Anderson's 10th feature film. It's produced by Paul, the late Adam Sumner, to whom the film is dedicated, the longtime assistant director and producer, and Sarah Murphy, stars Leo, Tiana Taylor, Sean Penn, Chase Infiniti, Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro, Wood Harris, Alana Heim, Tony Goldwyn, many other folks. Let's jump into it. Last night, we saw it together.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 5:13Sean Fennessey?

  It was my third viewing. It was Amanda's second viewing. It was Chris's first viewing.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  Popped my cherry.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  Popped your cherry. Amanda, I will start with you. What did you think of one battle after another?

• 5:22Amanda Dobbins?

  This is the movie of the year and the movie of the decade, probably. And I mean that both in the sense of it is the best movie of the year and the best movie of the decade so far, but also is a movie of this moment and of these really fucked up five years that we in America have been living in, in a, like a startling way, especially given how long PTA has been working on it in one form or another, and how long it takes movies to make. It is jarringly prescient and timely and just feels like it is speaking to the things that torment us on our phone every day

• 6:06Amanda Dobbins?

  in, in beautiful and alarming and upsetting and exciting and amazing ways. So I just, I'm really glad everyone gets to see it now. It's amazing.

• 6:15Sean Fennessey?

  So you would recommend this movie? Okay, CR, so you had a slightly more challenging experience seeing the movie for the first time. You had a vertiginous view of the film.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Those seats are there. We sat in the third row of the IMAX in CityWalk. And if they put those rows there, someone's going to sit there. And so the movie has to play to the front and to the back. I will go see it again where I can get like perhaps a different perspective, but didn't change how I felt about the movie. Interestingly, I went into this with the best movie of the decade, best movie of the year, the crowning achievement, et cetera, et cetera, of various careers. And it's a lot of hype to live up to and a lot of expectations to have. I don't think I've. Ever had that experience before? It's like, saw Oppenheimer pretty early. And I was like, that's great. You know, I saw Social Network and nobody was talking about it. And that those terms that we talk about it now, to go into a film and be like,

• 7:07Speaker 05

  this better be the best film of the last, you know, 10 years is, is pretty impressive for it to live up to it, which it did.

• 7:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 05

  Which it did. And I think I, you know, to, to the specific perspective that I had on it, like in the screening, like it took me a second to get my sea legs with it. But um, it's just a transporting movie that transports you to where you are right now, which is an incredible feeling to have. To feel like there's something magical and amazing about real life is like the best thing movies can do.

• 7:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. This is a very tactile movie made by human beings. It feels very much like a movie that could have come out in 2010 or 1985 or 1965, because there's no CGI really in this film. There's not, it's certainly very grounded in the real world, even though it has the familiar absurdist, satirical qualities that we expect from a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. And it is exactly what you're describing, which is that it is a very politically salient movie. It speaks to the sort of like how power works, right? More, more than anything. But it isn't only that, you know, so it is like incredibly entertaining and exciting.

• 8:22Sean Fennessey?

  And even though it is a two hour and 45 minute movie, which it is, it's a very long film. It's very propulsive and engaging and emotionally deep.

• 8:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Sean Fennessey?

  Which all of his films are, but very rarely in such conventional terms. And I mean that as a compliment. This is a movie movie. It's not a exploration of the human psyche. It has that, those components, but like this isn't the master. If you're going in expecting something.

• 8:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, this has a

• 8:50Sean Fennessey?

  More mysterious. This is not as mysterious.

• 8:52Amanda Dobbins?

  This has a plot. It has like a prologue and then characters and what's going to happen and dramatic reveals. And then, you know, in, in some lights could almost be, parts of it could be seen almost like soap opera adequately. But It it still has room for the psychological analysis. You do wonder about every character. There are those weird, you know, flights of surrealism and and horror that are also played for laughs. So it kind of has it all. But yeah, it's it's a it's a movie. It's a movie movie.

• 9:25Speaker 05

  It's way closer to Road Warrior than it is Nashville in a great way.

• 9:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 9:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 9:30Speaker 05

  And it has elements of both, for sure.

• 9:32Sean Fennessey?

  Those are two good signposts, I think, for the movie because it is trying to accomplish both of those things in terms of its expansiveness, but also how the movie moves. Like, this is a movie of literally moving from one physical destination to another over and over and over again.

• 9:45Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:45Sean Fennessey?

  So to me, it's very much the culmination of the Paul Thomas Anderson project. Like, this is it being number 10 is, I guess, kind of interesting and being kind of a capstone on these three waves of his career that he's had.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  Don't retire Paul Thomas Anderson.

• 9:59Sean Fennessey?

  No, no, no. I get the impression he's planning to do that anytime soon. But, you know, we can talk about those that what I think a lot of fans of his see as like the three different phases of his career. But he's never really attempted anything, not just this big, but in this style. His movies, if something is moving, it's usually the camera and not the people. You know, with the with the exception of Boogie Nights, where there's some high energy, he makes a lot of people talking in rooms films. You know, that's kind of his thing. And this is not that. This is something very, very different from that. So for him to attempt that without losing, I think, those qualities in the first nine movies is part of what is so exciting to me because one of the tenets of this show is that we like big Hollywood spectacle. You know, we like action movies and blockbusters.

• 10:41Sean Fennessey?

  And so for someone with his skill set and point of view to bring his ethic to a blockbuster movie is incredibly exciting.

• 10:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but on steroids. It's not like there's just like one really virtuosic chase sequence where we're like, oh, wow, you know, you've you've never done that before. And look, you're you can really do it. It is like two hours of that, of different set pieces, people in different places. And that, you know, that's another, they are. In in most PTA movies, they're in like a house or a townhouse or, you know, other and they're they're very nice houses and real places, but these are out in the world with like tons of extras and and tons of explosions and just, you know, real, actual, practical, giant things happening in volume, like the sheer amount of it is sort of astonishing.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  I was really blown away thinking about how he moves the camera in this movie. I think you alluded to it. There are scenes where really very little is happening. A character is in a convenience store and the camera is just speeding past all the stuff on the shelves and going over a shelf and then turning to see who's coming in the door and then turning back to the character going out of an employee only door. And

• 11:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that's a really good sequence.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  I was trying to think about like why he did what he did, because I think that there's parts of Boogie Nights that when you go back and watch it, you're like, this guy's really fucking good. But like, he's almost like, that's the point. I'm really fucking good.

• 12:07Sean Fennessey?

  I completely agree with you. One thing I feel, I don't feel that this movie is show offy. I think it does have all the moves, but, you know, those first couple of movies are real. Like, I've seen every Martin Scorsese movie and let me show you how I can do it too.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:19Sean Fennessey?

  And while this movie has incredible energy, it doesn't feel like it's riffing on other people in quite the same way. I think he's very generous and says like, I was inspired by the Battle of Algiers, or The Searchers, or Running on Empty for this movie. And that all is clear. But it's not the same as, I watched Raging Bull 10 times in a row and then I made my movie. This doesn't feel like that at all. It feels, um, I wouldn't say it's like, oh, it's singularly his style either. I think it's because it is so generally entertaining, you're so interested in where the story is moving, that you're not like, you don't have time to kind of ponder on the mechanical decisions that he's making.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  What's the relationship between moving a camera or keeping a camera still and what it does to the audience? And the only time in my first viewing of this, like, all caveats aside, that I really noticed the camera was still was when people felt safe. So it was either people in power who don't think anything can touch them, or it was people who were about to be on the run in that moment of peace before their lives change. That's the only time I remember the camera ever sitting still. And then the rest of the movie is pushing these people out of the doors, following them on rooftops, into cars, into, you know, all these different things. And it creates your emotionally identifying with characters who are doing things that you maybe could never imagine doing. And that's like what movies do that nothing else does.

• 13:38Sean Fennessey?

  So we should probably talk about what the movie is about.

• 13:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 13:42Sean Fennessey?

  The logline is that Bob Ferguson, Leo's character, is a washed up revolutionary who lives in a state of stone paranoia, surviving off grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter Willa, played by Chase Infiniti. When his evil nemesis, Stephen J. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn, resurfaces, Willa goes missing. The radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their past. Now, that description of the movie, which is sort of like the widely shared plot synopsis, it lies the first 40 minutes of the movie, which is really interesting and has become more interesting as I've watched the movie a couple of times now, because I think this is the part of the movie that people will probably like love the least because it is the most impressionistic and it is not as focused on Leonardo DiCaprio. It's very

• 14:27Sean Fennessey?

  much Tiana Taylor's story. She plays a character named Perfidia Beverly Hills, who is a radical revolutionary. I guess this is meant to be roughly 2008, 2009, 2010, when everything is happening because the movie is contemporarily set.

• 14:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and it says 15 or 16 years later.

• 14:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, when it springs ahead.

• 14:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 14:46Sean Fennessey?

  So this is...

• 14:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow, I can't believe that was 15 years ago, but anyway.

• 14:50Sean Fennessey?

  And I think that's kind of useful to think about, too, in terms of what was happening in the world at that time and why this character, who is part of this radical group called the French 75, part of a wider resistance that engage in violent acts of revolution. And so this setup for the movie, and even just the very first thing that we see, which is the very first thing we see is her and him moving towards her. We see Leo's character, who's known as Ghetto Pat in Rocket Man, who's like a new joiner of the French 75, going to be closer to the movement, going to be closer to her, going to join whatever it is that they're cooking up. And the movie is like, is very un-PTA, I would say. It is not as funny in the first 30 or 40 minutes as it becomes in the second half of the movie.

• 15:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's much more tightly focused. It is, it reminded me a little bit of Phantom Thread in terms of how much time it's giving to the psychology of a woman in a movie, which is, you know, not really a signature of his work. And it's very interested in showing the how to of revolution, the specific things that they do, blowing up banks, freeing migrants from a detention center, blowing out electric grids and dominating municipal spaces.

• 16:05Sean Fennessey?

  And also like a very sensual part of the movie too, because Perfidia and Ghetto Pat are falling in love as they're doing this revolution. And they're they're fucking a lot. And there's like a thing that happens really early in the movie. Where you know that it's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie where one Perfidia engages Lockjaw, the Sean Penn character. And she like embarrasses him slash like, you know.

• 16:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Ensorcels him.

• 16:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly. Perfect, perfect word for what she does. She turns him on and leads him out. And after they have finished raiding his detention center. She gets in the car and she kisses Ghetto Pat. And the way that they kiss, I was like, this is a, this is a PTA movie. It's like an open mouthed tongue out kiss. It's not a movie kiss. And you can see that there's something really like right on the surface with Perfidia. She's like living out loud in a way that a lot of characters don't in a lot of movies like this. They're sort of like presenting the idea of revolution, but not actually showing it. And the movie then becomes this like portrait of her kind of dominating the space. You know, her kind of running the show, him living kind of in awe of her.

• 17:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 17:10Sean Fennessey?

  While they enact all of this stuff. So I mean, give me some reflections on the first third of the movie, essentially.

• 17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, woven into all of that, and you mentioned what starts it, the, um, the initial scene between Stephen J. Lockjaw, Sean Penn and, um, Perfidia. Which, you know, and it is, it turns into like a sight gag erection. But also with some very, very messed up undertones. And so throughout this, this prologue, this kind of extended montage of Pat and Perfidia being revolutionaries, falling in love, starting a family, like interwoven through, like Lockjaw keeps showing up and Lockjaw keeps showing up and you keep seeing, uh, his obsession, uh,

• 18:01Amanda Dobbins?

  fetishization of Perfidia. And ultimately, like, they do also wind up sexually entangled in a way that is like important to the plot, very upsetting, played like a little bit for, for shock value, maybe if not for laughs. I mean, there is an incredible, um, needle drop to Soldier Boy when they are finally.

• 18:28Sean Fennessey?

  The Shirelles song.

• 18:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Doing whatever you want to call that. I don't know what you you would.

• 18:34Sean Fennessey?

  Intercourse.

• 18:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, intercourse, but I it's sort of like, but the question of power.

• 18:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Comes into play from the very beginning and.

• 18:41Speaker 05

  It's something Lockjaw thinks about a lot.

• 18:43Amanda Dobbins?

  And yeah, and also something that Tiana Taylor thinks that perfidia does. And you see it in Tiana Taylor's performance, like in that first erection scene, the way her eyes kind of light up and she realizes that something's going on. There's a bonfire scene where she has a line she's talking about, like, like this pussy is for war. It's not for like, as she's pregnant and then you cut to Pat being like, it's like she doesn't even know she's pregnant. But so how she is both using her sexuality and how it is being objectified or, you know, taken advantage of being a generous term is also like a major part of what is going on with her and the Lockjaw.

• 19:26Amanda Dobbins?

  So she is figuring, and that's a different like type of power, both from perfidia's perspective, but also then what Lockjaw has on her or against her. So I it's, I mean, it's fascinating and the way it resolves itself is not a resolution. But I and I think.

• 19:47Sean Fennessey?

  I like that about it.

• 19:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I like I like it about it, too. And I think.

• 19:51Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a, the movie doesn't present like a binary idea about perfidia.

• 19:54Speaker 05

  No.

• 19:54Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 19:55Sean Fennessey?

  There is a lot of, there are shades of gray in terms of how, trying to understand how she really feels.

• 19:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  About certain things, whether she is actually turned on in any way.

• 20:03Speaker 05

  Well, I think it's also there's, there's an element that I find fascinating, which is like, what does it take to be a revolutionary? And how far do you take your beliefs and your your principles, right? And so the reasons that she gives, like perfidia has like more in common with like Neil Macaulay than she does with anybody.

• 20:21Sean Fennessey?

  She's by code.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  She's like, and she, when it's useful to her, it starts employing revolutionary rhetoric to be like, there's a new consciousness. You can't take me at home with this baby and you can't like own my, you're like, this is.

• 20:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. What she says right after. She's talking about how I carried her for nine months and now he has this person to coo over and it's like I'm not even the number one girl anymore.

• 20:45Sean Fennessey?

  She feels jealous over her child.

• 20:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is, you know, like insightful and, you know, but like another complication in terms of the power dynamic and she she got power from being like the the number one woman in charge. And then there's someone else on the scene.

• 21:01Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 21:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, who's very small and demanding.

• 21:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I think I don't think the movie judges her, you know.

• 21:07Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 21:07Sean Fennessey?

  And I think the decisions that she makes because of the position that she's put in and, you know, as the movie goes on, we see her trying to kind of break free of the expectations of any woman, especially a woman who's had a child, where the the expectation is that she stay home and take care of her family. And Pat is very comfortable, even at, let's say he's in his early 30s, entering into like a more domesticated phase of his life and she's not, she doesn't want that. And so she continues to go out into the world and she goes to rob a bank and something terrible happens and she shoots and kills someone during this bank robbery that leads to breathtaking chase sequence.

• 21:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 21:40Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think one of the most like accomplished things PTA has ever done. He's talked about the French Connection, huge waves of that in this movie, very exciting moment, very scary moment for the characters. And it ultimately leads to her being captured and when she's captured, she has to make a decision about what she's going to do and and she chooses to, um, she's sort of, she's forced to, to save her own life essentially rat out the French 75 and we see a lot of her cohort either get killed or arrested in a really bracing sequence. And Lockjaw thinks that he has commandeered control of her.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  I guess it's worth mentioning that Lockjaw represents this like shadowy government agent agency called MKU, which is like a highly militarized police force that seems to concentrate a lot on immigration, but now seems to be rolling rogue through the country and doing whatever it wants.

• 22:28Sean Fennessey?

  Uses narco-terrorism and a lot of other concerns to exert his power and.

• 22:35Sean Fennessey?

  When she makes this choice to go into witness protection, that's the moment when the movie starts to shift gears. The first 30 to 40 minutes, with the exception of the funny stuff that Sean Penn is doing.

• 22:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 22:46Sean Fennessey?

  Is quite serious and is like, kind of an example. It's like, it's a portrait of a revolutionary, basically. And it feels a lot like a lot of 60s and 70s movies that were about these kinds of figures and these kinds of ideas. Part of what is interesting to me about this, and I just haven't thought about this as much, but seeing it a couple of times has continued to push to the front of my mind. This is an invention. You know, we don't have a lot of examples in our culture in the last 25 years of violent revolutionary acts. There have been some, there have been some attacks, like we saw how to blow up a pipeline a couple of years ago.

• 23:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:18Sean Fennessey?

  That was inspired by, you know, some real acts of.

• 23:22Amanda Dobbins?

  We don't necessarily have a Weather Underground that we're aware of these people rampaging, not rampaging, but you know, like doing their thing.

• 23:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And I bring that up for a couple of reasons. One, obviously, the movie has been inspired by Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, which is a movie set in the 1980s, very much about Reagan's America, about 1960s revolutionaries kind of contending with their former lives.

• 23:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 23:42Sean Fennessey?

  What they've done, what that represents to them. To transport the movie to the present time is really interesting because all of the ideas of power, the way that Lockjaw's character works and the way that the shadowy secret group that we will soon meet in the movie operate, all feels very now. It just, it just feels exactly like how we imagine decisions are made behind the scenes. But what Perfidia and her group do doesn't feel as now. It almost, I'm not sure if you could say it feels like a wish. That might be casting too strong a notion, but it feels like, um, it's a very, it's an oddly hopeful movie about this kind of action, even though a lot of terrible and sad and tragic things happen to the characters throughout it.

• 24:25Sean Fennessey?

  And I'm fascinated by the choice to make a movie that is about standing up to power.

• 24:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Well, it's still, it does put it in the past, even though it, the Perfidia section is a prologue, right? And so then the, the majority of the movie and the characters are dealing with the after effects and also many of them that they're, they're not in the game anymore, that they have failed in one way or another, or they've lost the fight, as the, you know, the sister of the brave beaver says. So I think.

• 24:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I didn't bump on it as much. I mean, you're completely right that we don't. Like, I'm, I'm not aware of the Weather Underground of the current day, you know?

• 25:09Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 25:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not on the

• 25:10Sean Fennessey?

  I'm sure there are people who imagine themselves as such.

• 25:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I'm not on the, I'm not on that particular dark web, but

• 25:15Sean Fennessey?

  You don't wake up every day and hear news about a bank getting blown up by revolutionaries. That's not the common political news right now.

• 25:21Amanda Dobbins?

  But it is, the, the movie still does set it in, even though we can remember that past, that it's, it's kind of trying more to deal with the aftermath and the people, the younger generations and the people trying to make sense of something that has failed, which I would argue we are very much living in.

• 25:40Speaker 05

  And also then the movie's not particularly explicit about ideology. Or the ideology it's explicit about is like ideology that is like transcends like politics. It's like racism or counter like revolutionary behavior.

• 25:52Amanda Dobbins?

  She calls about an abortion clinic.

• 25:54Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 25:54Amanda Dobbins?

  At some point, like in that montage, there are kind of

• 25:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure.

• 25:57Sean Fennessey?

  There's some ideas.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  And she makes little things and like, I, I totally understand. But I just mean like, once you move into the second half of the movie, it's, it's much more almost mythical than it is political, I think, you know?

• 26:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Speaker 05

  In some, to me, in some ways.

• 26:11Sean Fennessey?

  And also much more comic and because of that, it feels more absurdist. I, the, the, again, with the exception of some of the lockjaw stuff, the first 40 minutes of the movie

• 26:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Sean Fennessey?

  is pretty grounded.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  Mm hmm.

• 26:22Sean Fennessey?

  In terms of the tone.

• 26:23Amanda Dobbins?

  The opening scene is Tiana Taylor on a bridge overlooking a detention camp at the, um, at the US Mexico border.

• 26:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's like, we have seen those images, you know, very recently. And, and there is a lot of it in the first 40 minutes of like, um, the, you know, militarized police in major cities. I was trying to figure out like, which, which city is this that is being overrun right now? That I have also seen on the news being overrun? So it, yeah, it's, it is very much, if not pulled literally from headlines, then reflective of the, the news.

• 26:59Sean Fennessey?

  The Second and third acts of the movie are fascinating, very crowd pleasing. The movie jumps, as you said, 15 years into the future where Willa and Bob, which are the new identities of Ghetto Pat and his daughter Charlene, they move to Bacton Cross, California. Supposed to be like Eureka, like Northern California. Yes. I think, you know, some of this movie takes place in Sacramento, some of it takes place in kind of like the middle of this state. Again, it's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, it's a California movie. In many ways, the movie is all about the topography of California.

• 27:39Sean Fennessey?

  And they're hiding out, and they've been hiding out for 16 years and trying to avoid becoming discovered. And then, of course, they become discovered. Because this is a movie. This is my opportunity to say this is very much a dad-daughter movie. And that is not surprising. Paul Thomas Anderson has three daughters. I think all three of his daughters are teenagers. You can feel a lot of the inspiration of this movie being about the conversations that fathers have with their daughters. You see that upfront at the beginning of the second act, because one of the, to me, one

• 28:18Sean Fennessey?

  of the most entertaining and affecting scenes in the movie is Bob and Willa, Willa coming down hard on her father after a long night. Right. In which he's been going out drinking with the boys. Trying to achieve Steely Dan sound with some... Yeah, he's trying to get those tubes.

• 28:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And she's also, she has a school dance to get to. So her dad is, you know, trying to, they're trying to parent each other.

• 28:42Sean Fennessey?

  Let's do the math on that. So do we think he just slept till 6:00 PM? Like, what happened?

• 28:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I did notice the second time that the school dance is happening during daylight hours. Like, even when...

• 28:54Sean Fennessey?

  But could it have been like 5:00 PM? Like, it seemed like he slept pretty late that day.

• 28:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  Ghetto Pat has some odd hours.

• 29:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He got home around 3:00 or 4:00, he said, so, you know. But, like, the bathroom is a lifestyle, not just a time-of-day thing for him, so...

• 29:09Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good point. In that scene, you know, Chase Infinity, we saw her in Presumed Innocent, the TV show, and this is her first movie. And...

• 29:20Sean Fennessey?

  Her job in this movie is to go toe to toe with Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, and Sean Penn.

• 29:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:26Sean Fennessey?

  So that's a, that's a tough job.

• 29:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 05

  She's also has to be an action star.

• 29:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  For some of it.

• 29:31Sean Fennessey?

  Has to credibly hold the gun.

• 29:32Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:33Sean Fennessey?

  Has to credibly run away, has to credibly fight grown men.

• 29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Got to figure out how to get.

• 29:37Speaker 05

  Zip tied hands.

• 29:38Amanda Dobbins?

  On like the zip tie thing, which I was really ingenious. I was like, wow, that's, this is.

• 29:42Sean Fennessey?

  She knew right what to do as well.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  We're gonna do the Amanda Dobbins drives a Dodge Charger with zip tied hands challenge.

• 29:47Amanda Dobbins?

  She was really, really turning the wheel a lot there at one point, but yeah, no, just the, the leg reversal thing. I was like, this is practical knowledge. I'm glad I have this now.

• 29:57Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things that we don't get explicitly clarified, but that you can assume is that Bob has shared his ideology with his daughter. Not just the information about how to keep her safe and keep her anonymous, but like how they see the world, or at least how the French say it.

• 30:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's the running on empty influence or whatever, but this idea of we're off the grid. There's like a really, I think lovely bit of this movie that's about how just because you're not on the internet, doesn't mean you're not connected to a community. And like Bob, obviously, even though he's something of a hermit, like goes to bars, knows the Benicio del Toro character, like is part of this community. And, and his daughter wants to be maybe part of a bigger world, you know? And both in terms of what Bob used to do and also just having friends and going to dances and, and, you know, wanting to be out in, in the world through her phone.

• 30:51Sean Fennessey?

  One of the things I like about it too, is just the way that like, most daughters are like smarter than their dads and they know it. And that that's a huge part of this, like Bob is such a burnout. He's a real, one of the running jokes of the movie is how he's completely fried his brain. So he can't remember anything, especially when he really needs to remember something. And he also wants to, he wants to be progressive. He wants to be like, he wants to have an empowered daughter. That's important to him.

• 31:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Sean Fennessey?

  And so when she starts scolding him. He wants to say like, stand up for yourself. That's right.

• 31:22Amanda Dobbins?

  You should tell me what you think.

• 31:23Sean Fennessey?

  I am an idiot, you know, like I did fuck up. I'm sorry. Um, which is very amusing and obviously like she reacts to it, but she's like any 16 year old girl. She's like, I hate my parents. They're so annoying. Why won't they get out of my shit?

• 31:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 31:35Sean Fennessey?

  Um, but that, that.

• 31:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Also, she has some points because he came home at 4pm, but you know.

• 31:41Sean Fennessey?

  And he's admitting to drinking and driving, you know, and he's like, I know how to drink and drive, you know? Um, and then the, to me, the absolute funniest part of the movie is when, uh, her friends arrive to pick her up for the dance.

• 31:53Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a classic, you know?

• 31:54Sean Fennessey?

  And, and Leo greets them and, uh, I don't, it's, I can't do justice to what's up homie, but the, the entire what's up homie experience where he talks to Bluto is so, so good. And it does, to, to me, the movie kind of like goes into a second gear once that scene happens.

• 32:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 32:11Sean Fennessey?

  Because you, it feels like it finds its comic sensibility in a real way. And if Leo gets activated in the movie in a way that he has really, for the most part, not been up until that point.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's where, um, that's where like, that's the best acting I've ever seen. Rick Dalton shows up.

• 32:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 32:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:27Speaker 05

  You know, it's like, he kind of, he's kind of like running that whole, the whole space.

• 32:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, and it's, it is also when like the heart and the emotion of the movie shows up, the first 40 minutes are incredibly like upsetting and involving. And I was like technically accomplished and you know, there's like amazing action set pieces. And, but then you get to this moment and you know, you're like, oh, he's a girl dad, you know, and but there is, I, to your point about there's a hope in this movie. There is some, there's real emotion and it becomes evident once Leo is in a bathroom screaming at people.

• 33:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And their connection is, is the engine, you know, the idea of him being so protective of her. There's this great little plot device in the movie of these kind of transmitters, these, these responders that they're given, that Leo is given right before he goes off on the road to go to Bacton Cross eventually. I love that actor who gives him the transponders.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 33:26Sean Fennessey?

  Who the Howard Somerville character.

• 33:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:29Sean Fennessey?

  Who like is never in movies. He's in this great movie Frownland that Ronald Bronstein made some years ago, and he's a composer. And that character who creates these transponders and eventually shows up.

• 33:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 33:40Sean Fennessey?

  A little later in the film in the present day is a classic Paul Thomas Anderson thing where I'm like, did he just remember that that guy is alive?

• 33:47Speaker 05

  He did. There's a guy in this movie who plays like basically like Sean Penn's character's interrogator.

• 33:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 33:56Speaker 05

  Who has a single IMDb credit and it's one battle after another. And he is one of the scariest parts of this movie. And I just don't know how he does this. He's just.

• 34:05Sean Fennessey?

  Over and over again.

• 34:07Speaker 05

  The guys in The Christmas Adventures who we'll talk about, but like, you're just like, where did you fucking, how did you come up with the roulette wheel that gave you these three dudes?

• 34:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there's a lot of examples in this movie.

• 34:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:18Sean Fennessey?

  You can go through everyone, honestly. It's a podcast. We have time. But, you know, he hands his daughter this transponder and we, you know, we realize that her life is kind of hard because he is obsessive about protecting her.

• 34:33Speaker 05

  He's paranoid also, as she says in the car they're driving away.

• 34:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And he is like, really, it's wearing her down as she's entering her teenage years. And I think actually Paul might've said this when we spoke, but just the idea of like, maybe for the first 12 or 13 years of her life, she didn't realize how weird this was.

• 34:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:50Sean Fennessey?

  But she's starting to realize now.

• 34:51Speaker 05

  For all of us though.

• 34:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it is. Very much so. I love that idea in the story of her trying to find a way to break free, figure out how to be her own person, but she's kind of bound by the actions of her parents, you know, and that she can't actually be as free as she wants to be in the world, which is really interesting, you know.

• 35:06Speaker 05

  You know.

• 35:07Sean Fennessey?

  Common condition.

• 35:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, here we are. Here we are all are.

• 35:11Sean Fennessey?

  And I think it's, it's funny that Leo.

• 35:18Sean Fennessey?

  Has is doing this part to me. He's never been a parent to an older kid in a movie before. He turned 50 years old last year and he's in.

• 35:27Amanda Dobbins?

  He was born sometime in the eighties, according to this movie. And I was like, I clocked that.

• 35:30Sean Fennessey?

  He's playing down a little. Well, he says that to a police officer. We don't actually know if he's even telling the truth there. But um, this is a new step for him, I think, to be playing. He's played parents before, but not like this. And there's a certain kind of desperation and goofballness, like loser-ness.

• 35:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  Many of the dads I know like instantaneously become losers when they become dads. Like you kind of like seed something.

• 35:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Not you, though. You just leveled up.

• 36:00Sean Fennessey?

  I was a loser well before I was a dad. But I just think this performance is really special. It's been it's been part of a lineage of movies that he's now done. For roughly the last six or seven years, we talked about The Wolf of Wall Street on the show this week. And then if you go from there to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which Chris just mentioned, then the Rick Dalton energy. Don't Look Up, Killers of the Flower Moon. These movies are all like really nervy comic, kind of like goofball, but also deeply dramatic stories.

• 36:30Speaker 05

  It's also an interesting. It's interesting to think about like him thinking of thinking of himself in this way.

• 36:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 05

  Because it's, you know, sometimes you see a picture of him and respectfully, like he does have a little bit of a of a Bob energy. You know what I mean? When he's got like a v-neck white t-shirt on and he's like vaping with a hat pulled down.

• 36:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And then he's on a jet ski.

• 36:51Speaker 05

  And then there are times where he puts on a tux and you're like, well, you win.

• 36:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's Cary Grant.

• 36:56Speaker 05

  Yeah. And what he wants to be, I mean, he hasn't done Cary Grant in a while. You know, he's basically been like, I want to hide it. I want to have a paunch. I want to be stupid. I want to be insecure. I want to be in a bathrobe the entire movie. It's interesting that that's what he is interested in.

• 37:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, you know, vaping on a jet ski or like playing tennis with his younger girlfriend, which I think was this summer's activity. Leo loves the summer, much like myself.

• 37:23Amanda Dobbins?

  That's still like very far from the dad energy that he is bringing to this. And there is something so like, I mean, he's just a really good actor. It's like deeply felt, like emotionally, you're just like, oh, like, no, you have the dad stuff. Like, you really do, you care. And that scene in the car when he's talking about how he doesn't know how to do her hair. And the scene at the, you know, the very end with the hot, like, it is, it's so moving. And there's a softness to it that I didn't really know Leo had.

• 37:53Sean Fennessey?

  There is.

• 37:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, that is so essential to making this movie work. And, um, and then, and that I've never seen before.

• 37:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I also think that the, one of the most powerful things the movie does is just say like, it doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't really matter, like, the, the title is incidental to the behavior. Uh, in terms of like people's family familial relationships or how they treat each other. And it's like, if Bob treats her like a daughter, then he is her dad. You know what I mean? And we'll get into why that is. But like, this movie essentially moves from this moment where, you know, Willow goes to her dance. This is where the movie leaves fucking earth. And you will like, don't leave, don't blink.

• 38:34Sean Fennessey?

  You can't go to the bathroom after that part.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Don't fucking do anything, just stare at it. Because this is one of the best sustained pieces of filmmaking I've literally ever seen in my life. And it just turns into the fucking inverted version of The Searchers. Told from the Comanches. And it's like this maniac chasing down this family. And it's unreal.

• 38:54Sean Fennessey?

  One thing, one last dad thing I want to note that I think is important is like pretty relevant to this whole movie is, Paul Thomas Anderson is the daughter of biracial children. Or excuse me, he's the father of biracial children. And like, this whole movie is very much a movie about black women and black women existing in the world. And his experience, I assume. As a white dad, trying to understand how to help his kids get through the world.

• 39:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I do also think that there's a little bit of, of his wife is Maya Rudolph. And there's a Katie Weaver profile of Maya Rudolph, like 2018, 19, I think, that I always remember because Maya Rudolph's mother, Minnie Riperton, died pretty early in her life and has the detail of Maya Rudolph's father not knowing how to do her hair. And that being like a thing to, like, in, in one detail, explaining like what that loss means at that age to a young black woman. And so then that is showed up literally line for line.

• 39:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And you know what, that there's also absent mother in that. So it's just, he's, he's, he is pulling from not his experience, but people very close to him.

• 40:04Sean Fennessey?

  There's no doubt this is an incredibly personal movie for him. And I, it's, it's risky to kind of draw conclusions based on people's biographical details. But there's some of the things are just so overt that you can't help but ignore them. The other thing too, is that, one thing that we joke about a lot on the show is the generation gap and the way that ideas are a little bit different for people who are 10, 15, 20, 25 years younger than you are. And this is a version of it in, in politics and in, in, you know, particular ideologies and the way that parents, as they get older, even if they fancy themselves revolutionary types, just turn a little more inward, you know? Get a little bit more focused on their own shit. Sometimes they turn conservative, but even if they don't turn conservative politically,

• 40:49Sean Fennessey?

  they turn conservative personally, or they just become more nostalgic. They don't think about progress in the same way. And that having kids or even just encountering young people can really be like a confrontation of your values. It's hard to make a movie about that. And this movie is very much about that. Because of how strong Chase Infiniti's character is, even though she's not like banging a gavel, explaining how the world works to her father for two hours.

• 41:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 41:13Sean Fennessey?

  You sense that there is a real tension. Insofar as she gets herself a cellphone, even though he's told her not to. Like, she is seeking a certain kind of independence.

• 41:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think that there's like a very funny exchange about they/them pronouns that like, he's just like, I'm just trying to be polite. You know, it's just like, and she's just like.

• 41:28Amanda Dobbins?

  It's they/them. It's not that hard.

• 41:31Speaker 05

  I think that it's basically what this movie illustrates really well is that when you're old enough to have any wisdom, you lack the willpower to change anything. And when you're young enough to have the willpower, you don't really have any wisdom and people get hurt. And I, I think that that's depicted very well in this film.

• 41:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I think also just beyond like the difference in ideology between generations, there's this movie's inflected with a real sense of like, we are not, we didn't do anything. Like, we didn't fix it. And so now this generation, and you know, I think we all feel this way about our boomer parents, but now we're also having kids and it's like, okay, well, what we're handing down to you, like, we've completely failed to change it in any way, shape or form. And like, you know, Jack's generation or our children's generation, like, know it. And so like Chase's Infinity's character, Willa's little, like, yeah, you did, like, you fucked up. And I, like, I don't want to deal with this. And all this is for nothing. And now, now I have to figure out how to do things my way.

• 42:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's really insightful. It's definitely a huge part of the movie. And it's, I was driving into work today and I usually listen to podcasts because I have to listen to a lot of podcasts. And I was like, I'm just gonna listen to music. I want to have like a clear head. I want to have just a nice emotional upbeat drive. I didn't want to have to even have to make a decision. So I went to Made For You on Spotify.

• 42:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, boy.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  And I clicked hip hop mix.

• 42:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 42:53Sean Fennessey?

  And the first song that played was Bombs Over Baghdad.

• 42:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 42:55Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Cass, Bombs Over Baghdad. And it hit me that there's not a lot of popular art that is about radical politics and rebellion.

• 43:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:05Sean Fennessey?

  There is a lot of art about that.

• 43:08Sean Fennessey?

  Not a lot of stuff that gets popular. And this is an attempt to make a popular work of art about these ideas. You know, Bombs Over Baghdad is not the anarchist cookbook or anything. It's not like a guide to how to feel about the world, but it is very much a song about the chaos of that era.

• 43:25Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 43:26Sean Fennessey?

  When OutKast was making music. This movie is the same thing. This movie, this is a movie about the chaos of being alive at this time and thinking generationally about the decisions you've made and how they affect the people in your life as you get older, which is really deep. But also, what you just said is true, which is that once Willow leaves the house and she goes to the dance, the movie grows wings and starts flying. And you can think about all the ideas if you want to, but you really don't have to.

• 43:52Speaker 05

  No.

• 43:53Sean Fennessey?

  To enjoy yourself, because then it just becomes an abduction chase and retrieval movie.

• 43:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:58Sean Fennessey?

  Which is super duper exciting. And the way, the mechanics of how he does it, like we can talk through each step. But um, I was, I was impressed, you know? It's stupid to say that, but I was, I was impressed by how he pulled it off. Even though this is my favorite director, even still, I was like, I didn't know he had.

• 44:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, it's new. We haven't seen him do all these things. It doesn't mean that he can't do them, but you are just like, huh? And there is also, it's not just one chase sequence. I mean, we, we've described like the first hour of the movie now, right? So it's another hour and 40 minutes of people and cameras like on the move.

• 44:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 44:32Speaker 05

  And there's an element to the second half of this movie. And I, I wish I had a more like maybe unique comparison point, but it made me think a lot of Nolan, Christopher Nolan movies, because what he does is he takes the real world. And so the, there's a huge sequence in a town and then there's a huge sequence on the road. And what he does is he takes these like pretty like recognizable things. And then you're like, did you spend a billion dollars building out a tunnel system in, in this area? Or how did you orchestrate? Like a rooftop chase like this while there's also of like a riot going on in the streets and

• 45:13Speaker 05

  that that ability to see what we see every day and then imagine like what's five layers deeper than that?

• 45:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 45:20Speaker 05

  Imagine like what if you went through that window and then out that door and then through into this other room that's over here? Is that feeling like you are actually inside of a world rather than watching someone paint something or something or construct something?

• 45:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there there are two. There's two things about that. One, you're right that there is like a level of world building that is really big. So like that allows for in the storytelling, this really great experience of intercutting and simultaneous action because you've got these key characters who are separated from each other.

• 45:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:50Sean Fennessey?

  And what's happening to both? There's not like one guy sitting in a room waiting for something and another and things are happening to another person.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  Right.

• 45:56Sean Fennessey?

  They're both on a kind of, you know, separate track journey, three, three different because of Sean Penn's character is also.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  Sure, yeah.

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's trying to lay siege. Bob is trying to find his daughter and Willa is being exported out. And that allows for the movie to not just be like rolling down a hill the whole time, but for all of these things to be happening in the periphery and all matter to the story too. Which you're right, Chris, that's really, really hard to do and it's like a huge feat of editing too.

• 46:23Speaker 05

  Think about like how when you watch Dunkirk, you're like, God, you go inside of the boat and then you go inside of like the cafeteria, like the mess hall of the boat. And then you know where the mess hall is when the boat gets sunk and how like hard it is for them to get out. And that same thing happens in the Back to Cross battle essentially. Right. Where you're like, oh, I understand how like this store turns into a dormitory, which also turns into like an Underground Railroad for immigrants and like it just all unveils itself to you as you run through these doors.

• 46:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, let's, let's, let's talk about that because at the big switch over to 16 years later, we very quickly meet Sergio, Sensei Sergio, who was Benicio del Toro's character. He was a karate instructor. And we very quickly come back to him. Because Bob needs his help. Bob needs his help because Lockjaw is, has laid siege on his home. That leads to Bob escaping through a tunnel, one of many tunnels in this movie. And he realizes that his daughter is, if she has not been abducted, she is in big trouble because he's received a call from the wider resistance.

• 47:39Sean Fennessey?

  I guess that's what we're meant to believe is that there is a larger apparatus. Of French 75 that have turned into whatever it's turned into.

• 47:45Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a point of contention and it's not really clear who comrade Josh is answering the phone on behalf of.

• 47:53Sean Fennessey?

  Better name Josh. Better name Josh.

• 47:57Sean Fennessey?

  That whole sequence where Lockjaw is trying to find him and smoke him out with a tear gas and then he needs to escape through that tunnel that presumably he has built into his home some years ago. And then race through the convenience store and then get on the payphone, which is the moment that is seen in the first trailer. With Rise and Shine and that whole exchange of Leo doing phone acting. Yeah.

• 48:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Can we just skip?

• 48:22Sean Fennessey?

  Is, is, is amazing. Amazing. And his performance, his performance in this movie, talking into phones is remarkable. Like some of the best stuff is just him on a phone. Some of the best stuff is him needing to charge his phone.

• 48:35Amanda Dobbins?

  The number of different places that he plugs in that one team. It's really, really funny.

• 48:41Sean Fennessey?

  He does eventually find his way to Sergio who helps him to transport him and Sergio also needs to jump into action because Lockjaw's team has, has invaded the high school and invading the high school has triggered this sense of panic in the community. All of these places are being raided. This seems like it's a very progressive community.

• 49:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a sanctuary city.

• 49:00Sean Fennessey?

  Sanctuary city. And that, you know, World War III is starting to happen in the streets. There is a direct confrontation with police forces. And while that's happening, everyone is scurrying around trying to like, clear out all their illegal activity. This is happening simultaneous to Bob who's trying to, you know, get to a safe harbor to charge his phone to get in touch with his daughter as soon as he, or at least to get in touch with the French 75 so he can figure out where his daughter is headed. Yeah. So.

• 49:26Sean Fennessey?

  I talked to our friend Wesley Morris about this and he pointed something out to me after the first time I'd seen it, which is that that sequence when Sergio takes him up to that building where all of the migrants are being transported, protected, you know, given safe harbor. Yes. The patience that the movie has during that scene is amazing because it makes a real effort to humanize as many people as possible because Sergio keeps introducing Bob to all these people. Yeah. Telling them their name, making him look at them, making him like respect that they are alive. Benicio del Toro is amazing in this movie, we can talk about why, but that decision in the, in the face of, of Bob's chaos, right?

• 50:09Sean Fennessey?

  Bob is freaking the fuck out and all he wants to do is yell at comrade Josh and get the rendezvous point so that he can go find Willa. But he has to look at all of these people, these, this older family, this young mother. The toddler. Yes, the little kid, he's like, I noticed this time Leo like touches the little kid the way that you do when you meet a little baby, you just like touch their finger. And all of that patience and the super zen quality that Sergio has in that scene while Bob is losing. Ocean waves. Breathe ocean waves, like him trying to calm him down is such a good choice, such a, such a human choice in the movie, um, which then leads to another.

• 50:48Speaker 05

  He also keeps giving him modelos.

• 50:49Sean Fennessey?

  True, yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 05

  Which is just a great, like, it's still kind of a buddy comedy, it's still, there's elements of that where it's just like, we can stop to have a beer though.

• 50:57Sean Fennessey?

  Totally. One of the movies that PCA has been citing is Midnight Run and they have a little bit of Midnight Run energy between them, you know, the, the still waters and the, the chaos beside him. Um, and then the, the conversation with, with comrade Josh. Sure. In, in Sergio's apartment. I'm calling it a Greyhawk? I'm calling it a Greyhawk 10. Oh, Greyhawk 10.

• 51:18Speaker 05

  That's right. He's like, you're doing this? He's like, yeah, I'm doing this.

• 51:22Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, and he gets his supervisor on the phone and his supervisor is played by the R and B singer Dijon and Dijon, who's got like dyed gray hair, I think he's like 28 years old.

• 51:35Sean Fennessey?

  Gives him the clue with my, this is the most Paul Thomas Anderson thing in the whole movie.

• 51:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Sean Fennessey?

  Where he's like, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob.

• 51:41Amanda Dobbins?

  You're gonna know it.

• 51:42Sean Fennessey?

  You're gonna know this question. You're gonna know this question. This isn't what time is it? You're gonna know it. You're gonna know it. What's my favorite type of pussy? And Bob, in less than five seconds, is like, Mexican hairless. It's the only time he's cogent in the whole movie as he instantaneously remembers this inside joke slash true story.

• 51:59Speaker 05

  It kind of sounds like a cat, too.

• 52:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's perfect, right? So that allows him to learn that, in fact, he's headed to the

• 52:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And then-

• 52:08Sean Fennessey?

  Sisterhood of the brave beaver.

• 52:09Amanda Dobbins?

  The supervisor is like, apologize, mean it to comrade Josh. It's just really, really, really funny.

• 52:14Sean Fennessey?

  This is a war hero, is what he says to comrade Josh. I love that sequence so much. I love Leo in that whole sequence. And then that leads to like another amazing chase. You mentioned the rooftop foot chase.

• 52:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:27Speaker 05

  It honestly has my, my favorite shot, I think, of the movie.

• 52:32Sean Fennessey?

  Which is what?

• 52:33Speaker 05

  Which is the, all the smoke and light coming off of the street and the kid with the skateboard like leaping over.

• 52:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  Like a roof and Leo has to climb the ladder to get up.

• 52:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 52:43Speaker 05

  And just following those skaters. And it's, it's just like, you know, I watch a lot of TV where there's a lot of critiquing and nitpicking of like the mechanics of doing something. And it's like, why did, why did this character do this or do that? I love that he puts real people in action sequences and that Leo falls off the roof.

• 53:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 05

  It's the fucking funniest psychag you'll see. Like, for a second, I was just like, this didn't just really happen.

• 53:07Sean Fennessey?

  It's so unexpected.

• 53:09Speaker 05

  Because he's making his getaway and you're like, you're a revolutionary soldier and these awesome skateboarders are leading you to freedom. And then he fucking falls off a 40 foot roof.

• 53:19Amanda Dobbins?

  It's just like a beautiful shot down the tree.

• 53:21Speaker 05

  And I don't even know how they did it.

• 53:22Sean Fennessey?

  I have no idea. I've seen it three times and he's in the shot. There's no cut.

• 53:26Speaker 05

  And it's down through this tree as he like falls off of these branches, lands on the ground, stands up, walks five feet and gets tasered. And it's so awesome, which also then actually, if I don't mean to run ahead, but like that leads to honestly, one of the most beautiful sequences in the movie, which is the hospital.

• 53:44Amanda Dobbins?

  It's, oh, it's wonderful. Yeah.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  Is when like then the like kind of

• 53:48Sean Fennessey?

  The community, yes.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  The underground of the community kind of kicks in. And they say, oh, he's diabetic even though he's not. And so he needs medical attention. And then immediately the nurses like.

• 53:57Amanda Dobbins?

  And that nurse who runs in and you're gonna, you know, go through this. And he just says, right now? And she just like very like calmly like, yes, right now. And then leaves. It's wonderful.

• 54:05Sean Fennessey?

  Those two actresses, the woman who receives him and then the nurse who sends him out are so good in such small moments. There's, there's 10 performances like that in this movie. People you see for a minute and then they're gone. Before we get too far, we should probably talk about The Christmas Adventures.

• 54:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, that's right. Cause we've totally skipped over them. Just a tough, tough break for Christmas.

• 54:23Speaker 05

  I guess we should also talk a little bit about Lockjaw, like just in general.

• 54:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And Sean Penn, because they're such an important part of this movie. The reason that Lockjaw has, is, is attempting to apprehend Willa and, and kill Bob is because he has been asked to join a secret society. He's been invited to a hotel room by characters played by Tony Goldwyn and James Downey. James Downey, the famed SNL writer, who of course, once appeared in There Will Be Blood, showing up 20 years later in a PTA movie. And these two men want to invite him to join this secret club called The Christmas Adventures Club.

• 55:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Introduced with the, what are you doing New Year's Eve needle drop?

• 55:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 55:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is really, yeah. As soon as it hit, I was like, okay, this is what's, what's, what's happening here?

• 55:10Speaker 05

  And their greeting is hail Saint Nick.

• 55:12Sean Fennessey?

  Hail Saint Nick.

• 55:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  Tony Goldwyn, marshaling the wonderfully malevolent force that only he can marshal.

• 55:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Great sport.

• 55:20Speaker 05

  From A Time To Kill, or not Time To Kill, The Pelican Brief to Scandal. Yeah, just always a great asshole on the scene.

• 55:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And they, they explained to Lockjaw that they want him to, to apply to start the initiation process for this very secret club, which is clearly a white supremacist organization that is attempting to eliminate the maniacs, haters and punk trash, as Sandy, Jim Downey's character identifies, which is what we're also trying to eliminate here on this podcast.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  And he's like, that's all we're trying to do.

• 55:51Speaker 05

  No more lunatics.

• 55:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 55:52Speaker 05

  And they're all lunatics.

• 55:54Sean Fennessey?

  Right. And Lockjaw, who we don't know anything about, except for the fact that he loves black women, because he has told this explicitly to Bob's face.

• 56:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:02Sean Fennessey?

  And has had an affair, a coerced affair, with Perfidia and works for this government organization. These are the only things we know about him.

• 56:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we know a lot from his physical demeanor. We know a lot from his haircut, uh, which is, I mean.

• 56:17Sean Fennessey?

  Shaved on the sides.

• 56:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Sean Fennessey?

  Grown long down in front.

• 56:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 56:21Sean Fennessey?

  And combed down.

• 56:22Amanda Dobbins?

  With spit.

• 56:22Sean Fennessey?

  With spit.

• 56:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And there, he has a very specific walk.

• 56:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 56:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And.

• 56:27Sean Fennessey?

  His posture is stick up the ass.

• 56:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 56:29Speaker 05

  And also injured at some point.

• 56:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And veins visible just about everywhere in a, in a pretty alarming way.

• 56:38Sean Fennessey?

  I have not heard Sean Penn say this, but I would be stunned if he was not inspired by Vincent McMahon. This is Vince McMahon.

• 56:45Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 56:46Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 56:46Sean Fennessey?

  This is how Vince McMahon walks.

• 56:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 56:48Sean Fennessey?

  This is how his arms look. This is how his hair looks and his cut at times. This is Vince McMahon.

• 56:53Speaker 05

  He also reminded me of Michael Flynn.

• 56:55Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 56:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 56:55Sean Fennessey?

  There's huge parts of that for sure.

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  Sean Penn, something I keep hearing about his performance in this movie is that this is the movie that will remind people why Sean Penn is Sean Penn. Cause it's been a very long time since he's given a performance.

• 57:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 57:10Sean Fennessey?

  One, that a lot of people have seen. Two, that has been acclaimed. And three, that is outside of the context of the kind of chaos of his life.

• 57:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 57:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 57:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Like interviewing Al Chapo and stuff.

• 57:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, exactly.

• 57:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 05

  Thank you for your service.

• 57:24Amanda Dobbins?

  You know?

• 57:25Sean Fennessey?

  He was in Licorice Pizza in a small park. And PTA's always said Fast Times is one of his favorite movies of all time. And when he saw Sean Penn, he was like, I'll follow that guy anywhere. I love that actor. And he's an actor who like, I would say roughly until about 2015, other actors venerated so deeply. Like you would, young actors would be interviewed and they would say, I just want to do what Sean Penn does. You don't hear that as much as you used to.

• 57:49Speaker 05

  We kind of moved into like making either Taken ripoffs or not ill-advised, but just unsuccessful independent acting showcases.

• 57:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. He directed a couple, he directed like an action movie. He's, he's, he's had a kind of a curious decade or so.

• 58:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:07Sean Fennessey?

  I, there's a case this is his best performance since Carlito's Way. Like, this is the most, the scariest, the most immersive. Like, he disappears into the park.

• 58:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Sean Fennessey?

  That's the thing that people used to say that he did. He disappeared into parts and you couldn't see him.

• 58:20Amanda Dobbins?

  All of the, the little tics and the, the, the actual physicality of it.

• 58:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he's so gestural, his voice.

• 58:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:28Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he looks like a piece of burnt beef jerky.

• 58:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, really, really, very gross, yeah.

• 58:33Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 58:34Amanda Dobbins?

  And he just gets grosser looking as the movie goes on, intentionally. But, um, he is, they, they, they do a lot. Shout out to the hair and makeup department of this film. But he is really committed to using his whole body for it.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  He gets disfigured in the, in the cause of washing, whitewashing his past.

• 58:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 58:52Speaker 05

  Basically.

• 58:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, which is, I think, a big theme about the people who are in power, who are trying to control other people is their own.

• 59:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Sean Fennessey?

  You know, their hidden shames. Yes, their hidden shames about the things, the way they really feel about things, but are afraid to tell anybody or let anybody know. And it's tried and true, but very effective. And the Christmas Adventurers Club stuff is so good because it's the most Pinchonian part of the movie, in my opinion.

• 59:16Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's not. You, have you read Vineland?

• 59:18Speaker 05

  It's not.

• 59:19Sean Fennessey?

  It's not in the book.

• 59:20Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not, because the first time I saw it, I was like, is this Pinchon?

• 59:24Speaker 05

  It's spiritually Pinchon.

• 59:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but it is very, um, it's, it's a nice marriage of the two.

• 59:28Sean Fennessey?

  The only thing in the book that is really the same is this triangle, like, love triangle slash, like, familial triangle that evolves over the movie, as far as I can tell. Like, obviously, the sentiment of the characters and the idea of revolution.

• 59:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 59:43Sean Fennessey?

  But, and you could tell the movie would not exist without Vineland, but a lot of people were like, should I read it beforehand?

• 59:48Speaker 05

  Thomas Pinchon named all these people.

• 59:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 59:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yes. This episode is supported by FX's The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke. Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist slash rare bookstore owner slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tail of his latest conspiracy. This time, his most recent expose puts him head to head with a powerful family that rules Tulsa, meaning only one thing: he must be on to something big. FX's The Lowdown, all new Tuesdays on FX. Stream on Hulu. Lockjaw, because he is being asked to join this initiation and knows that he's going to have to go through a fairly thorough vetting process, needs to clean out his past. He needs to get rid of, he needs to find out if he is the father of Willa. He needs to get rid of Bob. He needs to close open business.

• 1:00:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:00:35Sean Fennessey?

  So that he can join this club.

• 1:00:36Speaker 05

  And I think one of the more bracing commentaries on like contemporary politics and the militarization that we see going on in this country is how much of his own personal animus is animating like national policy. So he's able to just be like, yep, this is a big narco-terrorism and sexual human trafficking hub. And it's not, you know, and he's just like, so we're just gonna have to go in.

• 1:01:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:04Speaker 05

  Fucking Delta Force and wipe it out.

• 1:01:06Sean Fennessey?

  He literally says to his lieutenant, make me a reason to have to go to back to cross.

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, I think, how many people feel like national politics and the military state operate sometimes, you know, that there are there are conveniences. I think especially in the aftermath of W's Iraq War, the like incredible cynicism.

• 1:01:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:24Sean Fennessey?

  About the way that these decisions are made that has been coursing through the country for the last 20 years.

• 1:01:28Amanda Dobbins?

  And lack of oversight and lack of, and just the amount of power and tactical force available to just.

• 1:01:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Amanda Dobbins?

  People who you've never heard of, who can just do whatever they want.

• 1:01:41Sean Fennessey?

  They take over a small city.

• 1:01:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  In fact, during that protest sequence, there's a funny chilling moment where they say, activate Eddie Van Halen. And a guy jumps out of a military vehicle and he's got a Molotov cocktail, but he's dressed like a protester.

• 1:01:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:01:57Sean Fennessey?

  And he throws the Molotov cocktail at the police.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  To start the violence.

• 1:02:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:02Sean Fennessey?

  And then that leads to tear gas and rubber bullets and the, you know, the police moving forward with their shields. And it's terrifying stuff, but it's terrifying and it's happening alongside of Bob being funny.

• 1:02:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:15Sean Fennessey?

  You know, and the movie is able to walk this tightrope of this huge Sean Penn performance, of this really comic nervy Leo performance, of Chase Infiniti's performance, which is very steely, you know, non-comic at all. Very, she's very, pretty much under threat the entire movie.

• 1:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  And it's all like, he spins the plates effectively. Again, I can't overstate how hard this is to do in a movie. Like, most movies like this have to be one thing or the other. You know, they have to be incredibly, like, hard-bitten and straight, or they have to be really over the top and Mel Brooks-y. And he's synthesized these two genres types, like, so amazingly well. Where should we go from here?

• 1:02:53Amanda Dobbins?

  All right, so we did Christmas Adventures. And we did-

• 1:02:58Sean Fennessey?

  We do see them again.

• 1:02:59Speaker 05

  Can we talk a little bit about Regina Hall?

• 1:03:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Speaker 05

  First of all, watch her on Good Hang. She's incredible on it.

• 1:03:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Fantastic.

• 1:03:07Speaker 05

  She's one of the best working actresses. This is like a supporting role where she kind of fills in as a, you know, surrogate mother figure midway through the movie. And also a, you know, suspicious interrogator of Willa as she ex-fills her from Backton, takes her to a convent, a revolutionary convent in the California mountains. And I find that she just does so much remarkable shit emotionally and just reactively with very little. Sometimes, like, she's in a mirror. Sometimes she's watching two people look at each other.

• 1:03:47Speaker 05

  And she does amazing work in this movie. So, I mean, she obviously becomes like a major part of this sort of second act here.

• 1:03:53Amanda Dobbins?

  She's incredible. She also, this is a very, very funny movie at times, but she, who is an incredible comedic actress, does not get one laugh line. She's just wearing an awesome sweater and watching people.

• 1:04:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's what it is.

• 1:04:07Amanda Dobbins?

  And so much of what she is communicating is through just the way that her face look.

• 1:04:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I had the exact same thought. It's fascinating to not, when I heard that he wanted to work with her-

• 1:04:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:04:18Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, he's gonna write her the funniest part imaginable.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:04:20Sean Fennessey?

  Like, PTA was born to write funny shit for Regina Hall. And- The choice to not have her do that is actually more powerful.

• 1:04:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Sean Fennessey?

  To make her just watchful through the entire film. And sort of like a guardian angel and sort of like a person who is still fighting a good fight, but has also been left behind in some ways.

• 1:04:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:04:38Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like she doesn't have the wherewithal to look for Willa's phone. Like she asks her.

• 1:04:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:43Sean Fennessey?

  But she doesn't have the force to root it out and find it.

• 1:04:46Speaker 05

  And I think there's also like that this is the difference is like, you know, if you live in a revolutionary cell for most of your adult life, like being honest with one another is probably a condition of survival.

• 1:04:58Sean Fennessey?

  That's right.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  And it's like, you don't come across a lot of teenagers who are like.

• 1:05:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but then she also, she has the scene with the, you know, mother superior of the Brave Beavers. And it's like, I didn't have the heart to tell her that her mother was, you know, was a rat. And, and it's her revolutionary duty, kind of going up against the surrogate, you know, mother figure. And you can tell she has a lot of, so the personal versus the political, just in that, in that moment. And she doesn't really know what to do.

• 1:05:26Sean Fennessey?

  Very, very nuanced and very powerful.

• 1:05:27Speaker 05

  So because she holds on to this phone surreptitiously locked, I was able to track her essentially to this content.

• 1:05:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:33Sean Fennessey?

  So did you guys happen to clock who the mother superior is, who that actress is?

• 1:05:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:05:39Sean Fennessey?

  This is another lost figure in the PTA filmography. That's April Grace. She played the journalist who interviewed Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia.

• 1:05:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:05:49Sean Fennessey?

  So that's.

• 1:05:49Amanda Dobbins?

  You're right.

• 1:05:50Sean Fennessey?

  Twenty six years ago.

• 1:05:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Wow.

• 1:05:53Sean Fennessey?

  And she is also a very striking actor.

• 1:05:55Speaker 05

  It's also interesting in that exchange that, uh, mother superior has with, uh, Deandre? Deandre, right?

• 1:06:04Sean Fennessey?

  Deandre, yeah.

• 1:06:06Speaker 05

  Where they're like, we might need to get rid of this girl.

• 1:06:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:06:09Speaker 05

  Cause we can't have another loose end running out there.

• 1:06:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's what you described.

• 1:06:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Beverly Hills is back.

• 1:06:14Sean Fennessey?

  When you are a part of a revolution, that tacit trust is essential.

• 1:06:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Sean Fennessey?

  And this idea that there is something genetic about perfidia's ratdom is, you know, that explains how, um, how tight.

• 1:06:27Amanda Dobbins?

  By the way, we didn't talk about that. Her name is literally perfidia, uh, which, you know, is really, is, is right there. And like all things in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, you know, the obvious is actually not obvious and you're supposed to, um, but that is pretty funny.

• 1:06:42Sean Fennessey?

  All of the names are.

• 1:06:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Sean Fennessey?

  Are insightful in one way or another. Jungle Pussy, the, the rapper and actress, Shayna McHale is in this movie as like her cohort. You know, Jungle Pussy says it all, right? Uh, she also gets that incredible speech moment where she is taking over the bank for a couple of minutes.

• 1:06:58Speaker 05

  May West.

• 1:06:59Sean Fennessey?

  May West, yeah, really good. That wig. Harris's Laredo.

• 1:07:03Amanda Dobbins?

  The wig shot is just really, really.

• 1:07:06Sean Fennessey?

  Her in this convenience store.

• 1:07:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Sean Fennessey?

  There's so many moments like that. Also, the Sisterhood of the Brave Beaver is also just an incredible PTA joke, straight out of her advice, or a pension joke, for that matter.

• 1:07:16Amanda Dobbins?

  At the, um, DGA screening, we went to, um, Paul told Steven Spielberg and the rest of us the story of Chase Infinity not understanding the name, the Sisters of the Brave Beaver, and him having to explain why he had chosen that.

• 1:07:31Speaker 05

  Beaver being a.

• 1:07:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but that was not something that Chase Infinity's generation was up on yet, so that is special.

• 1:07:37Speaker 05

  Like the DVD Beaver.

• 1:07:38Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna say, she's clearly not a visitor to DVDBeaver.com, Chase Infinity.

• 1:07:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Tough stuff.

• 1:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and then the movie starts to culminate because the second encounter with the Christmas Adventures Club, someone has been brought in to eliminate Lockjaw.

• 1:07:55Speaker 05

  It's clear that Lockjaw is trying to cover something up. He has now gone basically rogue, even within the MKU military unit that he controls.

• 1:08:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he overreached.

• 1:08:05Speaker 05

  And is taking guys with him to go specifically just find Charlene slash Willa. And they have a stunning confrontation in this, uh, in this convent where he runs a DNA test on her. And they have their first ever conversation, which goes about as well as you can imagine.

• 1:08:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and that, to make a, the act of a paternity test visually interesting.

• 1:08:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:08:31Sean Fennessey?

  Sounds hard.

• 1:08:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, a lot of little test tubes.

• 1:08:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's all the little tubes and droplets and the spinning wheel and the, the lines coming down. But he, he makes all of that stuff work and there's a real tension because.

• 1:08:43Amanda Dobbins?

  But is there?

• 1:08:44Sean Fennessey?

  Well, we don't, we don't want her to be his daughter.

• 1:08:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but we know because the, I mean, just the visual language. It cuts from them having sex to her, you know, nine months pregnant, shooting the machine gun, which is in the trailer.

• 1:08:56Speaker 05

  And it's probably also a huge reason of why she leaves.

• 1:08:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and you're like, right, yeah, there we go.

• 1:09:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:09:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, so we know.

• 1:09:02Sean Fennessey?

  We know, and it is revealed, in fact, that Lockjaw is, is Will's dad, and that that sets him off, and he knows that she also needs to be eliminated. She needs to be wiped.

• 1:09:12Speaker 05

  Crucially, he cannot do it himself. He cannot bring himself to do it himself. So he hires, well, we'll go forward step by step before.

• 1:09:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I just, he, he, we are reintroduced to this character of Avanti Q, who is a bounty hunter and tracker.

• 1:09:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:09:26Sean Fennessey?

  Who is played by the eight, the great Eric Schweig, um, which PTA mentioned he first saw in Last of the Mohicans. I haven't seen him in a movie in 10 years.

• 1:09:34Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 1:09:35Sean Fennessey?

  And Avanti won't kill a kid, so, uh, he's told to take him to, take her to 1776.

• 1:09:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Great.

• 1:09:43Sean Fennessey?

  Which is apparently the compound of a white nationalist group.

• 1:09:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:09:47Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, to have her killed. And that sequence is incredibly tense, maybe the most tense thing in the movie, because she's been handcuffed to a bench and the world is operating around her. All these military men are coming in and out, and she knows what her fate is going to be. And Avanti has gotten back into his car, but he hasn't left. And he has a change of heart. And he decides that he's going to save her and that he's going to take these guys out, in part because they, they show us that the 1776 guys are racist. They make note of his Native American heritage, they mock him.

• 1:10:18Sean Fennessey?

  And his.

• 1:10:19Speaker 05

  Those guys prefer the original version of The Searchers.

• 1:10:21Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yes, like, he's literally called wagon burner in the movie, um, which is a clearly a callback.

• 1:10:26Speaker 05

  And firewater, yeah.

• 1:10:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Sean Fennessey?

  And that is happening in this series of intercutting moments where Bob, who has been freed from prison.

• 1:10:40Sean Fennessey?

  Escaped.

• 1:10:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:10:42Sean Fennessey?

  Transported by Sergio.

• 1:10:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:10:44Sean Fennessey?

  While they're driving drunk, drinking Modellos and talking about revolution. And I think at a certain point Sergio says, saved a French 75 or twice in one day.

• 1:10:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Sean Fennessey?

  Really like remarking upon the wildness of their experience together.

• 1:10:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Then there's a stop, drop and roll and a.

• 1:11:01Speaker 05

  Very funny Tom Cruise joke.

• 1:11:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:11:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And a great and Sergio sacrifices himself for the cause.

• 1:11:11Sean Fennessey?

  Bob jumps out of the moving car, hotwires a car, he goes on the chase.

• 1:11:14Speaker 05

  A Celica.

• 1:11:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:16Sean Fennessey?

  Was it a Celica?

• 1:11:16Speaker 05

  Looked like that.

• 1:11:17Sean Fennessey?

  That look familiar to you?

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  I just, it was just a great car.

• 1:11:20Sean Fennessey?

  It had that hum clicking sound.

• 1:11:21Speaker 05

  And a spoiler.

• 1:11:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And then he goes on a hot chase and that hot chase is happening simultaneous to what we learn is Tim from the Christmas Adventurers Club who's been assigned to eliminate Lockjaw. So Lockjaw has left Avanti Q and he's off to go to the next stage of his life, hopefully joining the Christmas Adventurers.

• 1:11:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Lockjaw and also the implication is also Willa, right? They need to clean everything up. So there's.

• 1:11:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, it's a, it's a pretty grim.

• 1:11:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And Deandra will be killed, Howard Somerville will be killed, all the French 75 will be eliminated so that this can be all clean for him to join his club. And out of nowhere, Tim shows up speeding down the road. Is he in a Dodge Mustang?

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  A Dodge Charger.

• 1:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  A Dodge Charger.

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  I believe that Avanti and Tim are both driving Chargers. Or I was like, I would love to see what a Dodge Charger does on a drive to Las Vegas.

• 1:12:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Willa takes Avanti's car.

• 1:12:15Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:12:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And then he's also driving like a bright blue.

• 1:12:19Sean Fennessey?

  No, Avanti's is white, Tim's is blue.

• 1:12:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Tim's is blue. Yeah.

• 1:12:24Sean Fennessey?

  We're talking so much about these cars because this movie is leading to a huge car chase.

• 1:12:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Sean Fennessey?

  Eventually, Tim shoots Lockjaw in the most bracing moment of the movie. Shoots him in the face while they're driving. The car crashes off the side of the road. We think Lockjaw is gone for good. Tim circles back. Bob arrives, since he's on the chase, to discover Lockjaw. Lockjaw's dead, he thinks.

• 1:12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Sean Fennessey?

  He turns around, moment of panic. He's got, he's uttering the Green Acres line from the Gil Scott-Heron song and trying to get somebody to-

• 1:12:56Speaker 05

  To counter, yeah.

• 1:12:56Sean Fennessey?

  To show up, to show him that there, that somebody's on his side, that someone's gonna help him and he's all alone. He doesn't know what to do. And then the final act of the movie is this chase scene, which takes place in Borrego Springs, a highway, which is an incredibly loopy, up and down highway in California. And what'd you-

• 1:13:18Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's like a roller coaster.

• 1:13:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Speaker 05

  I just want all our Lords of Letterboxd out there, if you're thinking about making a road trip, just be careful.

• 1:13:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Sean Fennessey?

  This is not, not a safe roadway.

• 1:13:32Speaker 05

  There's a lot of highway driving in California where you will just be like, holy shit. Like you come over a hill and then the sun is eight feet from your face. This really captured it, but also made it feel like Inception. And also made it feel like the, is it the California Adventure Ride? What's the ride at Disney where you're hanging over California as you're being kind of like flown through the air?

• 1:14:00Sean Fennessey?

  I think, are you thinking of American Screen Machine?

• 1:14:03Speaker 05

  No, it's not. It's like you're, you're looking at a screen.

• 1:14:06Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, Soaring.

• 1:14:07Speaker 05

  Soaring. It reminded me of Soaring.

• 1:14:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Soaring, no G.

• 1:14:12Speaker 05

  Okay, Soaring.

• 1:14:14Sean Fennessey?

  You been on Soaring?

• 1:14:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:14:15Sean Fennessey?

  You been to Disneyland?

• 1:14:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, no, I've been to Disney World when I was seven. Anyway.

• 1:14:19Speaker 05

  She skipped right past that, cause she does not wanna get into-

• 1:14:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I have absolutely no interest.

• 1:14:23Speaker 05

  Two sons who wanna get their picture taken with Iron Man. Which is coming.

• 1:14:27Amanda Dobbins?

  And you. It's you in an Iron Man costume.

• 1:14:29Speaker 05

  I might be busy, okay? Cause it might be good content if you have to go.

• 1:14:35Amanda Dobbins?

  No, but this, watching this in IMAX definitely had an amusement park feel. Like you actually did become, as the, the camera like goes up and down.

• 1:14:42Sean Fennessey?

  Makes you queasy.

• 1:14:42Amanda Dobbins?

  You start feeling like the emotion. And again, at the DGA Q and A, Paul Thomas Anderson said that they did not have this ending until they went location scouting and that they were just around in a van from, they found this road and he was like, and then it all came together.

• 1:14:59Speaker 05

  I wonder how much of this movie is a result of like finding a place to put it.

• 1:15:04Sean Fennessey?

  He, he talked a lot about that in the interview. You'll hear that.

• 1:15:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:15:08Sean Fennessey?

  It wasn't as much on the page as you might think.

• 1:15:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I've never seen a chase sequence like it.

• 1:15:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's one road moving straight.

• 1:15:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Sean Fennessey?

  Three cars.

• 1:15:17Speaker 05

  But you, they lose sight of each other.

• 1:15:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, but they disappear. Um, it's not, nothing like this has been done before.

• 1:15:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, with them.

• 1:15:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know, um, the closest comparison is probably Steven Spielberg's Duel. That's, which is a straight chase movie of a truck and a car and that's it. And it not, and moving at a consistent high speed together, you know, not necessarily whipping around turns and flying across things, you know, it's not. And then the conclusion, which is incredibly exciting and incredibly scary and sad.

• 1:15:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:44Sean Fennessey?

  And incredibly savvy, it shows Willa is also a freedom fighter.

• 1:15:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Again, incredible practical knowledge. Yeah, she has been schooled well despite everything that she would say about her dad.

• 1:15:52Speaker 05

  As for as much as it's a great car chase movie, it's an amazing car crash movie. The crashes in this make me really want to buckle up.

• 1:15:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, there's a crash that the car that Perfidia is in, escaping from the bank robbery is a wild car crash. It feels, it feels like you're sitting in the seat when it happens. Anyway, um, Willa decides when she's gotten to the top of a very tall part of the Borrego Springs highway, that she's going to park the car quickly, come to a, a hard stop. So Tim cannot see that she has stopped her car and then he crashes into her.

• 1:16:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:24Sean Fennessey?

  And as he stumbles and gets out of his car, he's survived, but she attempts to find out whether or not he is friendly.

• 1:16:31Speaker 05

  On the team.

• 1:16:32Sean Fennessey?

  And he's not friendly and she shoots and kills him with the gun that she has found in Avanti's car. And I said this to you last night, I heard the scream that she lets out when she shoots him for good, it's very emotional, very upsetting and raw. And you see that, you know, this is the real toll of the things that have happened that her parents have done. Like this is really, she's now taken someone's life and has been under this incredible terrifying threat. And also has this terrible knowledge that her father, her birth father is a monster. Eventually, Bob does show up in the Selica, he arrives and she doesn't know what to think and she's confused and she almost shoots him.

• 1:17:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  Until she finally, he finally convinces her that it's me, it's your dad.

• 1:17:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's saying, I'm your dad, it's your dad.

• 1:17:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And then he does also quote part of the, the girl's got hair and talk back.

• 1:17:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, will no longer be relevant.

• 1:17:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Can I ask you guys, when you first saw it, so the next sequence, you're kind of like, great. So we've gotten to the end of the movie and he's gotten her away from this. And then like a Terminator, Lockjaw has, has returned and he's storming through the desert, blood all over him, holding a machine gun and he's got more shit to do. So when you first saw that, were you like, oh, are we gonna have another like confrontation action sequence between Bob has to kill Lockjaw and take?

• 1:17:54Sean Fennessey?

  I'll tell you why I didn't. Because of the music that is used in that scene, when we see the roadway and you see the sun haze and then you see his head come up over the hill, it's a laugh moment.

• 1:18:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And do you know what that song is called?

• 1:18:08Sean Fennessey?

  Tell us.

• 1:18:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Perfidia.

• 1:18:10Sean Fennessey?

  There you go.

• 1:18:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Um, yeah.

• 1:18:13Sean Fennessey?

  He is surviving for her as well. And because it's funny, I didn't think that we were headed toward a Robert Patrick moment.

• 1:18:21Speaker 05

  Neither.

• 1:18:21Sean Fennessey?

  It could have happened, but in fact, like, that's an unexplained part of the plotting that you can ask that question. What happened between that moment and Lockjaw learning, determining that he is going to join the Christmas Adventures Club? Because he's actually not been successful. He thinks he's been successful at what he's doing, but he hasn't confirmed it.

• 1:18:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  We don't actually know. Tim has also been killed. And has that feedback gotten to the Christmas Adventure Club?

• 1:18:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:50Sean Fennessey?

  This is all unexplored. There's like, there's a, there's a gap here in information.

• 1:18:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It does seem like a pretty expansive organization when you get right down to it, because that's just the southwest office.

• 1:19:00Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:19:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And like, they introduced like, the fifth like, fleet commander just of the southwest.

• 1:19:04Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:19:05Amanda Dobbins?

  So, there are a lot of levels here.

• 1:19:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yep. I don't think that's actually the southwest office, for the record. That's where he's murdered.

• 1:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Lockjaw does eventually get into the club, and by get into the club, we mean...

• 1:19:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:19Speaker 05

  Gets gassed.

• 1:19:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's gassed to death in a very funny moment.

• 1:19:22Speaker 05

  While he meets his last, his moment of finally arriving at like...

• 1:19:25Sean Fennessey?

  He's been accepted.

• 1:19:26Speaker 05

  In corporate America, gets the corner office.

• 1:19:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he gets the corner office. And you know, that's what you learn about that character, is that that's somebody who's been fighting wars to feel accepted.

• 1:19:35Amanda Dobbins?

  You don't think that the Christmas Adventure Club has like, a gas chamber as part of its office?

• 1:19:40Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if that would be an office you would want others to occupy on a regular basis.

• 1:19:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's an empty... I thought Lockjaw could have been like, "Where is everybody?"

• 1:19:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right.

• 1:19:49Sean Fennessey?

  There's something very eerie about that entire sequence, and you're meant to feel like, "Oh no, something terrible is about to happen."

• 1:19:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:54Sean Fennessey?

  And, and something does. Maybe on another floor?

• 1:19:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:19:58Sean Fennessey?

  That might just be the gassing floor.

• 1:19:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:20:00Sean Fennessey?

  For the Christmas Adventure Club, we don't know.

• 1:20:03Sean Fennessey?

  And then, the movie's denouement is one last conversation at the kitchen table between Bob and Willa, where Bob gives Willa a, a card, a letter that is written to her by her mother, and Tiana Taylor, in voiceover, reads this letter to her daughter. It's incredibly moving and powerful, and I think it's a big part of what this movie is about, which is, "Don't give up. Maybe you can change the world in the way that we were not able to." And this moment of like, exciting inspiration comes where we see Willa, a little bit later on, getting a CB radio call about a protest that is happening in Oakland, and she jumps out of her chair and grabs the car keys and goes and drives up and leaves her dad.

• 1:20:46Speaker 05

  He drives American Girl.

• 1:20:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, American Girl starts playing.

• 1:20:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:20:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And my heart grew 10 sizes.

• 1:20:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:52Sean Fennessey?

  A very simple, straightforward, and conventional needle drop. Not a, "Wow, look what I found in the crates," you know, but...

• 1:20:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I meant, I meant, is it like, is there any...

• 1:21:05Amanda Dobbins?

  What does it mean? You know, like, what does the whole ending mean is something we can talk about. But yeah, no, it's, it, it, it plays to them.

• 1:21:11Sean Fennessey?

  It's a crowd-pleasing moment.

• 1:21:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, I think that it, that will seal some Oscars. Just that one song.

• 1:21:15Sean Fennessey?

  You walk out of the movie feeling

• 1:21:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Sean Fennessey?

  A sense of relief and happiness and maybe even inspiration for some people.

• 1:21:22Speaker 05

  A little bit of melancholy as Bob tries to figure out how to take a picture with his new iPhone.

• 1:21:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, but how nice for him that he finally got an iPhone.

• 1:21:29Speaker 05

  Oh, I kind of, I mean, it's fantastic and I'm glad that they've figured out that they can be, you know, on 5G and

• 1:21:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 1:21:36Sean Fennessey?

  And just But he's moving into his dotage.

• 1:21:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. Like, I was like, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and he can't make the flash work.

• 1:21:41Speaker 05

  Nope.

• 1:21:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you know, comes for us all. Like, it's very much a movie about passing the baton. That's the whole

• 1:21:47Amanda Dobbins?

  What's equally great about that scene is the instructions that she's giving are like useless. You know, I was like, she's like, you scroll up and then you hear the thing and I'm just like, oh my god.

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  But they don't know this natively.

• 1:21:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  You cannot explain technology.

• 1:22:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's just like 25 years ago, how do I get the flashing midnight off the VCR? You know, how do I fix the tracking on my, on my tape player? All these things, this is what kids and their parents and you have to do for them. So the movie is very, very insightful about all those things. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn Ads. You can target by company, industry, job title and more.

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• 1:23:48Sean Fennessey?

  Bear with me as I read through why this, I think this is the culmination. Because there's

• 1:23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Wait, we can't talk about the ending?

• 1:23:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, no, no, no, I just like, you know, this, it does feel like, like, how happy is it of a happy ending? Do you know what I mean? Like, what are, because there is so much in it that is, there is hope and I do find this movie to be very open-hearted. But especially on my second watch, I, you know, I told you, I found it very, like, I was taken by the comedy and the spectacle the first time. And the second time was more emotional, it's more upsetting. There was a lot of dark stuff here. There was a lot of mess stuff going on. There was a lot of regret. There is, you know, to Chris's point, like, at the end, Leo is just like sitting on a couch, trying to figure out, like, he's out of the, um, and in Perfidia's letter, there is a lot of regret.

• 1:24:38Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, and the, and the last line, he yells like, be safe. And she's like, I won't. And it's very cheerful. So, you know, I don't know, maybe, is it supposed to be just purely like, hey, it's Tom Petty? Are we supposed to give over to that? Is like, that the question? Just, you know, are we supposed to?

• 1:24:55Sean Fennessey?

  I think you, I think you can read it very clearly.

• 1:24:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:58Sean Fennessey?

  Paul Thomas Anderson thinks that a young girl that looks like Willa is the American girl in 2025.

• 1:25:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:05Sean Fennessey?

  So that part of it, I think, is very sweet.

• 1:25:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:09Sean Fennessey?

  In that I'm sure she looks somewhat like his kids.

• 1:25:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:25:12Speaker 05

  And that maybe it requires having your whole life in front of you to imagine a better world, you know, and to imagine Anything is possible if we push back hard enough. Whereas like, once you get older, I think you have all these reasons why I can't push back that hard. Cause I have this, right? You know, we have to do that.

• 1:25:29Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:25:29Amanda Dobbins?

  And also, the first line of that song is she is an American girl raised on promises. Which, you know, has its own bittersweet, um, perfect writing, by the way.

• 1:25:36Sean Fennessey?

  I do think, I do think it is hopeful, but I think it's also very wide eyed and, or I should say, eyes open about the fact that Willa now knows the cost.

• 1:25:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Sean Fennessey?

  That she has fired a gun, that she has seen what the monsters really look like and that she has made an active choice to try to make that change. Maybe inspired by her mom's letter, maybe inspired by her experiences, maybe inspired by what she knows now about her dad and what her dad did to go save her.

• 1:26:04Sean Fennessey?

  And she probably knows that it's not, it's gonna get worse before it gets better. I think that's a big part of this too, that you have to, if you wanna make the change, you're gonna have to get into some shit. I don't know if the movie actually thinks that that change is possible or plausible.

• 1:26:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:26:22Sean Fennessey?

  But I think it does wanna believe that it could be, yeah.

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  Well, I think, why did it get called one, why did he arrive at one battle after another? And I think that that title gets brought up like in little ways explicitly. And then also, it's basically one fucking thing after another. And what is the, is it ultimately the conflict that forges us and not the result?

• 1:26:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:26:46Speaker 05

  And what side are you on? You know?

• 1:26:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. And I'm, I'm, I'm guess I'm kinda curious about how the, when the movie goes out into the world, how much of that is, is, is tangled with, you know? Like whether or not that's a takeaway. I think having seen it multiple times, it's very clearly, um,

• 1:27:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:27:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's an older guy looking at what he did or did not do in his life and what impact that did or did not have and what it means for his family and younger people. Yes, exactly. What's now, what is their responsibility?

• 1:27:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a scary thing to think about, but also happens to anybody who cares deeply about the world and people. And also is like, maybe a little bit, feels a little guilty about what they didn't do or couldn't accomplish.

• 1:27:30Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I mean, I think that's a big part of it.

• 1:27:32Sean Fennessey?

  So.

• 1:27:34Sean Fennessey?

  This is an amazing movie. I mean, we haven't talked about a lot of like the mechanics of it. It is shot on Vista Vision with IMAX cameras, which must have been extremely challenging. Those cameras are huge and loud.

• 1:27:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. And they're also moving up and down those hills.

• 1:27:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, we also heard that the, there's a special thanks to Giovanni Ribisi in this movie. And that is because Giovanni Ribisi has a hobby of restoring old movie cameras. And he is a lover of film and celluloid, which JT Molner talked about on this show when he helped.

• 1:28:02Amanda Dobbins?

  He shot.

• 1:28:03Sean Fennessey?

  Shot Strange Darling. And he rebuilt and gave PTA a Vista Vision camera to shoot this movie on. And I have yet to see the movie in Vista Vision. I'm seeing it in Vista Vision tomorrow.

• 1:28:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm excited about that. At the Vista, it's only playing in that format and maybe fewer than 10 theaters in this country. But we've, I've seen it in IMAX twice now, once at the Chinese and last night at CityWalk. At CityWalk, it's overwhelming because that screen is so tall. And the movie, like you said, in the chase scenes.

• 1:28:32Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:28:32Sean Fennessey?

  And in the whipping action, but also in the closeups, you know? One of the key influences on PTA is Jonathan Demme in the into camera closeup. There are several of them, you know, Tiana Taylor's face, her, the detail that you can see in her eyelashes. Is wow on an IMAX screen. The same for Leo's face, holding the screen Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  And then to be making a movie that is in constant motion with those kinds of cameras too.

• 1:28:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:28:59Sean Fennessey?

  It's not a chamber piece.

• 1:29:00Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:29:01Sean Fennessey?

  It's out in the world. It's pretty impressive. Also, kind of an unusual color palette for PTA. Very dusty, very brown, Bob's robe. It's kind of the like, it's the Dust Bowl of California. Looks like California to me. I mean, this is the, kind of the real California.

• 1:29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  The inland, yeah.

• 1:29:22Sean Fennessey?

  And we haven't mentioned Johnny Greenwood's score.

• 1:29:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you want to do the score?

• 1:29:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's really interesting. I mean, it's, I think it tells you a lot about how he views, how, how PTA views the movie, because it's very David Shire, Michael Small. Like, it sounds like clout, it sounds like the conversation, these like, single, plinking piano notes that are played like very rapidly and kind of getting your, your heartbeat up because you know something is happening, like we're headed somewhere, is kind of the energy that it gives you. There are a couple of orchestral moments. It opens with this kind of like, big orchestral dirge when we meet the French 75.

• 1:29:52Amanda Dobbins?

  And that comes in a few times. Like, usually in those close-up shots, like when there's one with Willa, there's one with Lockjaw when he comes up, and it's like, is a recurring one to you.

• 1:30:04Speaker 05

  There is also one needle drop that producer Jack was particularly excited about, which is when Mo Bamba drops at the school dance.

• 1:30:12Sean Fennessey?

  I laughed so hard.

• 1:30:13Amanda Dobbins?

  It's really funny.

• 1:30:14Sean Fennessey?

  I think, you know, the inclusion of someone like Dejean in the movie and the Mo Bamba drop, there's a lot of like, my daughters told me about this stuff going on in the movie too, which I really like, you know, like, I don't think, PTA is really banging Mo Bamba at home, but I bet his kids were at a certain point in the last 10 years.

• 1:30:33Sean Fennessey?

  And it's still a movie that is like about all of his same stuff. You know, I wanted to mention this to you guys. So he gave, PTA gave an interview with Dazed this week, and he acknowledged that he participated in some way in the scripts for Napoleon and Killers of the Far Moon.

• 1:30:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Which is something that has been, had been rumored for a long time.

• 1:30:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:30:52Sean Fennessey?

  I've told you, I've gotten separate, like, private phone calls of people being like, it's true, it's true. PTA worked on these movies. And when we talked about those movies, we talked about the fact that it's very plausible that PTA, if not contributed, like, wrote them wholesale, because they're about dumb guys.

• 1:31:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Sean Fennessey?

  Who love to fuck and can't get out of their own way with the women that they're in love with. And they also do terrible things and have to kind of cope with their decisions around those terrible things. And they're all, it's like one of the hallmarks of all of his movies. Bob is yet another PTA guy. Like, there's all, just every movie has a guy like this. Like, what I wrote down is like unsure, creative, horny, sincere man-boy. Who subjugates himself to a woman, and then has to reckon with what it means to have subjugated himself to her, right? Phantom Thread, that's like, that's what Phantom Thread is, you know? A lot of these Punch, Drunk Love, that's what Punch, Drunk Love is. Like, all of these movies are about a guy turning himself over to the idea of love and passion, and then shit going wild.

• 1:31:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:53Sean Fennessey?

  There's a million things like this in the movie, though. Like, all of his movies are about families breaking up. And mom and dad can't be together anymore. And then what does that mean for the man-boy at the center of the movie? Or the tangible connection between radical politics and satire? And how things that seem like they could change the world also seem ridiculous. Like, he always talks about Robert Downey Senior. All the Robert Downey Senior movies are about that very idea.

• 1:32:21Speaker 05

  I think he also, I mean, I'm thinking of The Master, and There Will Be Blood in Magnolia specifically. But like, sexual trauma and unclear parentage comes up a lot in his movies. And that's obviously something that's in this film, but then is, on the other side, comes out. It's just like, we can get through it. If you love each other, like, you can conquer that.

• 1:32:45Sean Fennessey?

  That's it. The movies are so humanist. You know, they're all about flawed people trying to figure it out. I go back to Prophydia and how she kind of like haunts the movie. Certainly for me. And the fact that her voice is one of the very last voices that we hear. And the fact that, you know, her identity in the world as a rat, despite the things that she did and the way that she talked and the way that she acted. And the fact that other people kind of define her agency in the aftermath of everything that has happened is a really interesting concept. And like, maybe the way that we think about people who try to make change in the world and then get villainized, and the things that they have to do to survive, which is very complicated.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, once you find out her secret, you can go back and chart different interactions with Lockjaw after they've had sex, obviously. And, you know, there's a really amazing scene in a hospital after Prophydia's been captured. And Lockjaw comes to her and is basically like, it's this, you know, or life in prison. You know, it's like, you have one chance here. And the decision that she makes to save, you could say like, she makes a selfish decision. She rats these guys out. She goes to witness protection. She eventually escapes, is also probably to keep Charlene away from Lockjaw. You know, and to do whatever she can to kind of keep him away from her daughter. Yeah.

• 1:34:07Sean Fennessey?

  What else?

• 1:34:09Speaker 05

  Do you want to talk about Oscars at all?

• 1:34:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:11Speaker 05

  I also want to talk about, like, how this has been presented and how it will be received to the extent that it's possible to.

• 1:34:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's do marketing in box office and then we'll close with the Oscars.

• 1:34:23Sean Fennessey?

  The second trailer, which is the predominant trailer for the movie, does not feel like a trailer that Paul Thomas Anderson cut. The first one does. The first one with the Johnny Greenwood score and the phone call, that feels like a PTA trailer to me. The second one does not. People don't seem to like the second one. That's the one they're running before movies. That's the one that I think has failed to ignite a ton of interest. I think it is not a bad trailer, but not very representative of the movie. And so the movie is now tracking for somewhere between 20 and 30 million dollars in opening weekend. It's a very expensive movie. Costs anywhere from 115 million dollars to 180 million dollars, depending on who you, what you read and who you believe. I don't, I definitely don't need to have a long conversation about whether or not this movie needs to make money or not. For me personally, I don't care.

• 1:35:10Sean Fennessey?

  But I am quite curious about what the world thinks this is and what they're going to get.

• 1:35:16Sean Fennessey?

  I don't even know how to talk about that, but it is a movie with the biggest movie star in the world.

• 1:35:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:35:22Sean Fennessey?

  And it is an action movie.

• 1:35:24Amanda Dobbins?

  And he is, and he is selling it in a way that I have not seen him do. Or really a movie, a major movie star do since like late 2000s, you know, he is on every podcast. He is doing junkets. He is doing magazines, sort of. And like, he's just on my Instagram way more than Leonardo DiCaprio has ever wanted to be.

• 1:35:50Speaker 05

  There's like a Chase Infinity has been putting him in.

• 1:35:53Sean Fennessey?

  Her TikToks.

• 1:35:54Speaker 05

  Her TikToks.

• 1:35:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. They are like, we need to sell this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:35:58Sean Fennessey?

  The way that other movies are meant to be marketed and, and Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't do a lot of press these days.

• 1:36:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:04Sean Fennessey?

  Leo, of course, he hasn't been on a talk show in almost 20 years. He went on Jimmy Fallon this, or excuse, yeah, Jimmy Fallon this week.

• 1:36:11Speaker 05

  Hasn't done it in 20 years.

• 1:36:12Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And they're working hard.

• 1:36:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:16Sean Fennessey?

  This movie comes from the same studio that is on one of the most legendary runs of the 21st century at the movies, where Warner Brothers has six consecutive movies that have opened at 40 million dollars or more.

• 1:36:27Sean Fennessey?

  There's not much else going on at the movies this weekend.

• 1:36:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:30Sean Fennessey?

  We're in weekend three of Demon Slayer. Chris will be running it back for a fifth time and.

• 1:36:36Amanda Dobbins?

  It is three hours.

• 1:36:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's three hours.

• 1:36:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And I but so you ask like, what do people think they're getting? And they are selling it and, you know, the trailer and then the very Leo forward strategy may make a lot of people who aren't really in the habit of going to the movies being like, oh, Leo is like in an action movie. Like, I guess I would go see this. But then they are going to get something slightly different than what that would. But I actually wonder whether whether that kind of marketing, you know, whether their random person is like, oh, Leo's in an action movie. Like, sure, I'll go out to the theaters, you know, versus the more specific PTA heads or the, you know, premium format people or all of the, you know, that the IMAX.

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  Or people who are susceptible to the critical response being to this film being almost uniformly in a way that I have not seen, certainly since Oppenheimer, but even Oppenheimer had it's like, well, you know.

• 1:37:36Sean Fennessey?

  There will be a well about this movie. I just want to put that out there.

• 1:37:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, totally, of course.

• 1:37:40Sean Fennessey?

  There's gonna be, we are going to get a lot of feedback that is you oversold this and that everybody oversold this. That's going to happen. That's okay. It's just because we've not had this level of unanimous acclaim from critics. Ah, I'm trying to think of when's the last, probably Parasite. Parasite's probably the last time everybody was like, we're all on board. This is, let's make this a movement.

• 1:38:00Speaker 05

  But there's a big difference between Parasite bubbling up as a foreign film that then just becomes a phenomenon to the biggest movie star we've got is in the movie with one of the best living filmmakers and we're going for it and we're advertising it on Sunday Night Football.

• 1:38:14Sean Fennessey?

  There have been examples of this that have become tremendously successful based on that power. The movie I think of is Gravity. Gravity is a little bit like lost to time now because it's such an in theater experience and the script is only okay. But that was a movie with platinum reviews. It was a hu- two huge stars and a huge, super celebrated director. And. You know, I don't remember word for word every review that came out, but people were gaga over Gravity. And it worked. Like that machine. Now that movie had space spectacle on its side.

• 1:38:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And it was also 90 minutes long.

• 1:38:51Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:38:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Which.

• 1:38:52Sean Fennessey?

  That is a factor, for sure. And also, it's a different time in movie going, of course.

• 1:38:55Amanda Dobbins?

  This movie should be shorter. I'm not saying that like that actually does.

• 1:38:57Sean Fennessey?

  But now we do have this, I asked Paul and Leo about this too, this, this large format in theater, like cult thing that is happening. You know, like Kugler really pushed a lot of that along with explaining the formats and the film stocks. To see Benny Safdie doing this now with Smashing Machine.

• 1:39:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Last night, people, I mean, we were like at Nerd HQ, but people, by the way, thank you to Corey Everett for my ticket.

• 1:39:20Sean Fennessey?

  Shout out to Corey. He's the other real one who's now seen it three times. He's going a fourth time.

• 1:39:25Amanda Dobbins?

  But we, people applauded at the IMAX teaser, you know, just it's like the IMAX brand thing and like all the, all the men. And it was about 80% men were applauding. And I was like, okay.

• 1:39:36Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 1:39:36Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I thought there were some.

• 1:39:38Speaker 05

  There were some ladies there. I get a little nervous about this. I don't want it to become too stratified.

• 1:39:42Sean Fennessey?

  I get it. I get it.

• 1:39:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:43Speaker 05

  There's just not IMAX theaters everywhere. They're not good or whatever, you know?

• 1:39:46Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, they do need to build more. That's a whole, that's a separate episode. The only other thing is,

• 1:39:54Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I think that there's one, I had a long conversation with Van Lathan about this yesterday. He hasn't seen the movie. He's been on a jag about how it needs to make money. I don't agree with him. He and I have had that debate many, many years.

• 1:40:06Sean Fennessey?

  This movie probably needed to do a better job of marketing to black audiences because it's a movie about black women. And like, Leo is definitely the star of the movie, but it is about Prophidia and Willa and to a lesser extent, Deandra. And activating black audiences is something that really works at the box office. And they just didn't, I don't think they've really done it. I don't think they've really, the fact that Van is like, I'll go see it, you know, but isn't like, I can't wait to see it. Is, that's not good. And I don't know who that's on specifically, but maybe there will be a word of mouth thing that helps with it over time. And the other thing is, we can use this as a trailway into Oscars.

• 1:40:46Sean Fennessey?

  But it's going to be around for a long time. There is, there's a case for 10 Oscar nominations. And there, there, I can certainly see the headlines on March 18th, 2026 that are.

• 1:40:59Sean Fennessey?

  One battle after another wins best picture and best director. Paul Thomas Anderson crowned king of Hollywood.

• 1:41:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:41:04Sean Fennessey?

  This year. That's, that is plausible.

• 1:41:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not saying it's going to happen.

• 1:41:09Amanda Dobbins?

  There's a road where this is, this is like an Oppenheimer thing. And, you know, the minute it comes out, it's like, okay, a celebrated director, finally.

• 1:41:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:41:17Amanda Dobbins?

  And it just is kind of a steamroll through.

• 1:41:21Speaker 05

  It would also be interesting if this gets sucked up into the culture wars at all.

• 1:41:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, which it could also happen.

• 1:41:25Sean Fennessey?

  I think it will. I think it will. I mean, it is about radical politics.

• 1:41:30Speaker 05

  Sure, but that, lots, lots of people watched Jimmy Kimmel this week.

• 1:41:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:34Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:41:34Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, there's, there's more than enough people to, that could just support the movie that believe, that agree with its politics and it could be a success.

• 1:41:40Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 1:41:40Sean Fennessey?

  No question. But, and honestly, from a box office perspective, that would probably help.

• 1:41:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It would probably help. It almost would be helpful if somebody was like, this movie, are you fucking kidding me? Like, yeah.

• 1:41:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, where they're like exploding the power grid in a major American city, you know? And they're like, this is the hero of the movie.

• 1:41:58Speaker 05

  But that will probably, I think, become a bigger issue or a bigger talking point when it's award season. And movies are under a little bit more scrutiny and then there's, you know, the usual dirty tricks.

• 1:42:08Amanda Dobbins?

  I would like to start the Benicio del Toro Oscar campaign here and now.

• 1:42:12Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:42:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Please vote Benicio del Toro for best supporting actor.

• 1:42:16Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:42:16Amanda Dobbins?

  For one battle after another.

• 1:42:17Speaker 05

  Not Sean Penn.

• 1:42:18Amanda Dobbins?

  You can nominate him as well.

• 1:42:19Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:42:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, and I know, and that is like the showy performance and obviously he is one of the three, but, um, I mean, sensei is incredible in this, in this movie. And it's, that's also like a quintessential supporting.

• 1:42:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, it sure is.

• 1:42:34Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, he, he shows up, the movie does not work without him. Memorable. He's on his own kind of wavelength.

• 1:42:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:41Amanda Dobbins?

  And then he goes away. So, um, thank you.

• 1:42:44Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think that will happen because supporting actor is a knife fight this year.

• 1:42:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, that's fine, but I, you know, I have a platform.

• 1:42:51Sean Fennessey?

  You do have a platform.

• 1:42:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So, and I don't have a vote.

• 1:42:53Sean Fennessey?

  I support you.

• 1:42:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 1:42:54Sean Fennessey?

  Stellan Skarsgård in sentimental value, Sean Penn.

• 1:42:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 1:42:57Sean Fennessey?

  Adam Sandler and Jay Kelly, Paul Mescal and Hamnett, Jeremy Strong and Springsteen.

• 1:43:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:02Sean Fennessey?

  And Lordy and Frankenstein.

• 1:43:03Amanda Dobbins?

  So Hamnett you brought up. That which is the other.

• 1:43:07Sean Fennessey?

  That's the collision course right now.

• 1:43:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And so, so we either have like an Oppenheimer year, or we have a Saving Private Ryan versus Shakespeare in Love year. And, you know, and which is, but which is which is interesting because in a lot of ways, Hamlet is Shakespeare in Love, but as Sean pointed out, like Chloé Jau has already won.

• 1:43:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25Amanda Dobbins?

  An Oscar and.

• 1:43:26Sean Fennessey?

  She's kind of Spielberg in this race.

• 1:43:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. So what are you gonna do there?

• 1:43:30Speaker 05

  Like, nobody sees Hamlet. Still, like, we're, it'll still be like.

• 1:43:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it's.

• 1:43:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's a specialty release that speaks deeply to artists.

• 1:43:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:43:38Amanda Dobbins?

  You know, The Telly Ride at One Toronto, it's like, it'll be in the mix.

• 1:43:43Sean Fennessey?

  It will definitely be in the mix. I think it's also.

• 1:43:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I know how I feel, but, you know, I just, we're talking about like Oscar, the, the models for Oscar season.

• 1:43:54Sean Fennessey?

  PTA is 0 for 11.

• 1:43:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's very easy to tell that story. There's definitely a world where it's like Hamlet wins Best Picture and he wins Best Director. I could see that. I could see that very clearly.

• 1:44:06Speaker 05

  Sinners is not going to be in the mixer?

• 1:44:07Sean Fennessey?

  It will be, definitely. It'll definitely be nominated for Best Picture.

• 1:44:12Sean Fennessey?

  Everything after that, I don't know. I, I, I thought it would fall away a little bit when a bunch of movies started coming out, but some stuff that I thought would be big was not as well received.

• 1:44:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:22Sean Fennessey?

  Whether or not Kooler gets in, I don't know, but adapted screenplay seems likely, editing seems likely.

• 1:44:30Sean Fennessey?

  Whether or not they decide to run Chase Infiniti or Tiana Taylor for supporting actress, I don't know.

• 1:44:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:44:37Sean Fennessey?

  They're gonna have to probably make a decision there, which is tough.

• 1:44:42Sean Fennessey?

  You know, you've got production design, you've got, uh, best casting.

• 1:44:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Score. That's right. We have the new.

• 1:44:48Sean Fennessey?

  Johnny Greenwood's score.

• 1:44:49Speaker 05

  Colleen Atwood for costumes.

• 1:44:51Sean Fennessey?

  Costume design. That bathrobe is legendary. There's, there's, there's definitely a 10 or 11 or 12 Oscar nominations potential.

• 1:45:01Sean Fennessey?

  Warner Brothers has a lot on their plate.

• 1:45:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and they're running campaigns for, they announced, Sinners, Weapons, and One Battle After Another.

• 1:45:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, so what's gonna get the most time and energy?

• 1:45:14Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Warner Brothers did campaign Dune Part Two, but not very well.

• 1:45:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:45:18Sean Fennessey?

  So, they haven't really run the race, this, this era of the organization hasn't run the race in quite this way, we'll see. Leo will be nominated.

• 1:45:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, they won, no, that was Universal for Oppenheimer, they lost Barbie, you're right, because that was the switch.

• 1:45:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, hmm.

• 1:45:36Speaker 05

  I take solace in the fact that we will be talking about this movie in 20 years.

• 1:45:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty exciting. It's pretty.

• 1:45:43Speaker 05

  So I hope it makes money and I hope it wins awards, just for everybody's benefit, but.

• 1:45:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Where are you in the, the PTA rankings right now, with this? You want to do this, you want to save it?

• 1:45:52Sean Fennessey?

  I would like to save it for Monday.

• 1:45:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. Is it minute to minute?

• 1:45:57Sean Fennessey?

  It always is.

• 1:45:57Amanda Dobbins?

  We'll also be having that conversation, again, throughout this year.

• 1:46:01Sean Fennessey?

  This is the first movie that it really impacts 25 for 25. Where we have to look at it and say, do we, do we have to do, is this the right choi-, we, I think we're gonna, we'll probably talk about it for the next couple of months.

• 1:46:12Speaker 05

  So you guys are allowed, did you have a caveat that you can, you can break in case of emergency?

• 1:46:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Um, it's until the episode is done, like, you, once the episode is recorded.

• 1:46:24Speaker 05

  It's the basement tapes.

• 1:46:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We can't go back and change it, but we have changed things.

• 1:46:28Speaker 05

  Interesting.

• 1:46:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:29Sean Fennessey?

  So, if we wanted to choose this film, there's still time, there's 10 more movies to go.

• 1:46:36Speaker 05

  I have one last one.

• 1:46:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:38Speaker 05

  You know, I think, I don't know if you're gonna do a solis for this?

• 1:46:42Sean Fennessey?

  I made one, I, I don't, I didn't want to put one out, because I don't want to spoil the movie for people, but I have a long list right now that I can talk through.

• 1:46:49Speaker 05

  PTA talked about Searchers, Running on Empty, Midnight Run, and Battle of Algiers being inspirations for this movie, or being movies that you could watch along with this. I can't get over how much this movie made me think of The Searchers, like, I think I will watch The Searchers this weekend, and then I would like to go back and see One Battle After Another.

• 1:47:04Sean Fennessey?

  4K from Warner Archive, yeah.

• 1:47:07Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:47:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Did you get a copy of Witness?

• 1:47:10Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:47:11Amanda Dobbins?

  You can, you can just bring that right over.

• 1:47:13Speaker 05

  As like a loaning situation?

• 1:47:15Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no, no, I just like, do you need it?

• 1:47:17Sean Fennessey?

  Do you need it, is the question?

• 1:47:21Speaker 05

  Any movies that this movie made you think of that you?

• 1:47:24Sean Fennessey?

  A lot. The, the Christmas Adventurers Club and Lockjaw, it just could not be more Doctor Strangelove. Like the, the, the Rip, Colonel Ripper, the Sterling Hayden character, and especially the speech that Penn gives at the end where he talks about being raped in reverse and her wanting his power is like, is just pure Ripper. So that was a, that's a big one. There's a really great Jules Dassin movie called Uptight from 1968 that I would highly encourage people to check out. It is about, it's essentially a remake of John Ford's The Informer. And it's about a black revolutionary group and someone who turns and informs on the group.

• 1:48:06Sean Fennessey?

  That is an imperfect movie, but is an incredible time capsule. Because it's made, you know, simultaneous to the movement, to the rise of the Black Panther movement. And is really powerful. There's like a bunch of other movies from that time, like Medium Cool and Zabriski Point, I think are both in this movie to some extent. And then there's all the comic stuff too, like you mentioned Midnight Run, but like Something Wild.

• 1:48:32Speaker 05

  It has Cheech and Chong in it.

• 1:48:33Sean Fennessey?

  Totally, Cheech and Chong, totally Lebowski is all over it.

• 1:48:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:37Sean Fennessey?

  I think, I tried to think about some other movies that are about this because there's just not a lot of movies set in these worlds.

• 1:48:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, well, there's not, it's, it's not about this specific thing at all, but there's a lot of Casablanca in this movie, including both like Perfidia, the song is also played in Casablanca. He orders a French, like there's the Easter egg stuff, but like.

• 1:48:56Sean Fennessey?

  Cocktail.

• 1:48:56Amanda Dobbins?

  A love triangle, like three people, you know, during revolution. Yeah. And what are your responsibilities to love?

• 1:49:04Speaker 05

  And Baktin has some of the like hidden, hidden passage ways.

• 1:49:07Sean Fennessey?

  Morocco. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's completely true. I mean, that's the other thing too is.

• 1:49:13Sean Fennessey?

  Making a movie with a light motif, you know, like having an idea of like, the characters are always moving across bridges or moving through tunnels. There's that moment when Tim goes through Alice's house and goes downstairs into the basement. Oh, my God, yeah. And into the tunnel. And it's this large circular tunnel so that he can get into the meeting room for the eldest member of the Christmas adventurers club.

• 1:49:37Speaker 05

  Played by Kevin Tigre, right?

• 1:49:38Sean Fennessey?

  Kevin Tigre, who's so good. Where he's like, I want to be able to eat it off the floor. That's how clean I want it.

• 1:49:45Sean Fennessey?

  That is like pure movie making stuff that you can, you can make, you can have 10 examples of this feeling, racing across the rooftops, skateboarding into World War III. Just the idea of like being dragged on a line for, you know, 90 consecutive minutes on the movie is so great and hard to pull off. I mean, also just like obvious stuff, like All the President's Men, Sorcerer.

• 1:50:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:50:07Sean Fennessey?

  Movies that give you that feeling of paranoia. Yeah. And anxiety as you're trying to get to where you need to go to unsolve, to solve this, this mystery. Any other thoughts before we go to the guests of this episode?

• 1:50:20Speaker 05

  I wish I could make a fool of myself before you introduce them, but I can't think of anything.

• 1:50:25Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Thank you both for your thoughts on this film. We'll talk more about it very soon. Let's now go to my conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson.

• 1:50:38Sean Fennessey?

  It is an honor and a delight to be joined by Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Guys, thanks for being here. Paul, I know you've been working on this movie for 20 plus years. Why was now the right time to actually make it?

• 1:50:55Speaker 07

  There's a few answers to that. I think one of the first answers is that after,

• 1:51:03Speaker 07

  We finished Phantom Thread. Adam Sumner, producer and assistant director, legendary assistant director and producer, said, "It's time for us to go make that one." And I went over to see Leo after coming back from England. I said, "I don't think we're getting any younger." And I think... And... But then I didn't... I started to look for Willa, and I just... I got distracted, and I didn't seem... I just didn't... I couldn't quite feel like I had it right yet. And got distracted, and made licorice pizza. Got to work with his dad, but not him. And then it just sort of seemed like I felt comfortable with where the script had landed.

• 1:51:47Speaker 07

  And Adam was really forceful in saying, "Enough. You've searched enough, and I think it's really time. We have to do this film now." And so I got him. I said, "All right. I think we've got to get started," you know? And that was... But that was also years before, really. I mean, honestly, it was probably a couple of years before. So the search began to find Willa. And then we got slowed down a little bit by the strike, but we kept working. So we were ready when that was over. And here we are. But there's also a shorter answer would just be, "I don't know. It just felt right." And then, "Thank God. Everything seems to have happened the way it was meant to happen."

• 1:52:30Speaker 07

  And I'm just so grateful for the way it's all turned out.

• 1:52:33Sean Fennessey?

  So Leo, in 2018, I talked to Paul. And he said, "I love Leo, and I loved him then," which is around the Boogie Nights time, "because I was obsessed with Gilbert Grape. And he said, 'This boy's life was a fucking amazing film.'" And he said, "Leo and I will work together one day, and it will be the right thing. It will happen." So...

• 1:52:53Speaker 07

  When was that?

• 1:52:54Sean Fennessey?

  Eighteen.

• 1:52:55Speaker 07

  Okay. The Phantom Thread time.

• 1:52:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So you were thinking about it?

• 1:52:59Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:53:00Sean Fennessey?

  What was it that you connected with, with Paul's work? And why did you want to ultimately work together?

• 1:53:05Speaker 07

  His body of work?

• 1:53:07Speaker 08

  You know, his unique storytelling, you're transported into worlds. I remember watching the master and I, it's very rare where you get that moment of, how do you put it? Detachment from feeling like you're in a theater where you feel immersed. And I don't know what it was, but I felt like I was in that time period and I felt that these people were real. And, you know, even with a film like this, you know, the fact that Paul's been working on this for 20 years, you say, right? 20 years. There is so much intricate thought put in and layering to what is essentially, you know, a sort of action film about a father

• 1:53:50Speaker 08

  trying to get back to his daughter. But there's, I compared it to Star Wars in a lot of ways. You have the bounty hunters, you have Princess Leia, you have Yoda, you have, you know, Darth Vader, but it's saturated in real world, you know, the world that we live in right now, it's holding a mirror up to society and it's, the fact that he wrote this, started thinking about this 20 years ago, the fact that it's so incredibly topical to the world and the struggles that we're dealing with now in society, the fact that no one seems to be listening to one another, that, you know, there's extremism on both sides and the conviction that all these characters believe in their ideology, that they feel that they're right.

• 1:54:33Speaker 08

  And I know I'm just really, if, to me, you can see films that have a lot of thought put into them, you know, that have had ideas put in that, you know, maybe he's taken out and replaced with something else. And the, what was great about working with him on this one was the malleability that he had for new ideas too. I think, you know, Regina talks about a moment where your, you know, action sequence TBD, to be determined or something like that. There were kind of little moments in the movie with Sensei and I where... We kind of didn't know what direction to go in. Then you get the actor in, you know, we we waited three months to get Benicio because we knew he was our sensei Carlos. He was our man. And then he came in.

• 1:55:16Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:55:16Speaker 08

  Fully cooked with his idea of who sensei was that he would have connections in the corrections facility and at the hospital. And that he's got a sort of Harriet Tubman immigration system going down in his basement. And we go, OK.

• 1:55:29Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:55:30Speaker 08

  Let's follow that.

• 1:55:31Speaker 07

  It's highly ironic that 20 years of writing and we basically, Benicio came in and wrote that in a day with us. It was like, huh, OK, so a day and a dinner, we just wrote the best sequence in the movie. Let that be a lesson to you. Don't write for 20 years. Thinking about something for 20 years is OK. I guess that's what gets you there. But it's true. You, Benicio, that sequence was was was was so sort of stagnant before he kind of came in and and and brought all of this energy. It was much more isolated to that apartment. I can't even remember what it was exactly at this point. It's it grew so quickly and beautifully.

• 1:56:07Speaker 08

  A whole world sort of just sprouted out of nowhere. And then.

• 1:56:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:56:10Speaker 08

  The fact that we're in these communities, working with real people, real shop owners is like, OK, this is, we have a relationship here. We was like.

• 1:56:17Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:56:18Speaker 08

  Made on the spot. It was improvisational and it was fantastic. And that flexibility was just so much fun.

• 1:56:26Sean Fennessey?

  Part of it feels so real despite the tone. And, you know, even though you started writing it 20 years ago, you haven't made a contemporary movie.

• 1:56:34Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:56:34Sean Fennessey?

  In over 20 years.

• 1:56:35Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:56:36Sean Fennessey?

  The novel is set in the 80s, it's about the 60s.

• 1:56:39Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:56:40Sean Fennessey?

  Why the decision to set it right now?

• 1:56:42Speaker 07

  Well, I mean, I I think in a practical way, in a very, very practical way, not even an artistic concern is, Jesus, wouldn't it be nice to just walk into the street and shoot a movie and not have to think about all of the things that you have to think about when you're making a period film? That is a kind of relief and I think enabled us to do the kind of things we're talking about, to be fast on our feet, to kind of, you know, make up things. You can look over here, you can look over, you can do anything. But more to the point, beyond a practical thing is. I suppose as I started to get much more serious about writing this film about

• 1:57:23Speaker 07

  seven or eight years ago, I had kids that were becoming teenagers. I could understand in a deeper way the relationships to teenagers, the gap that's between generations. So it sort of became impossible to ignore that. And the fun of making a film, I think, right now was when we first started talking years ago, I was still tiptoeing around, really embracing that it was a contemporary film. I had a kind of, I had a kind of safety nets and I didn't want to talk about phones and I was too nervous of all these things. And between him and Chase, especially him, it was, it was pushing it and leaning in more

• 1:58:06Speaker 07

  and more to, to, to grounding it as a contemporary film. I mean, really just having to shake hands with it and look it in the face and say, we can't get away from this. There's nowhere to hide. And if we hide, we're, we're doing ourselves in the story a disservice. So.

• 1:58:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a lot of people talking on phones, but not looking at their phones.

• 1:58:26Speaker 07

  Yes, that's right.

• 1:58:27Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a very smart choice.

• 1:58:29Speaker 07

  A big difference, yeah.

• 1:58:30Sean Fennessey?

  Leo, you haven't played a dad in very many movies and not, certainly not an older, having an older child. And I have a young daughter. This is an amazing father-daughter movie, and I think will hit a lot of father-daughters very heavy. But I'm curious, like, what conversations you guys had about the father-daughter relationship and kind of getting into the mind state of somebody trying to take care of a kid at that age?

• 1:58:52Speaker 07

  I have, I have played dad, dads before Revenant. I think I played a father, Revolutionary Road, Inception, movies like that. But yeah, this, this centrifuge of this entire story is this sort of makeshift father that is, you know, trying to relate to his, you know, trying to relate to his daughter. And, and, and that's the driving force of this entire movie.

• 1:59:19Speaker 08

  When I was thinking about this character in movies to watch, we we watched a lot of different movies, not based around a father's father-daughter dynamic, but I I remember watching, what did we watch? Running on Empty?

• 1:59:32Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Speaker 08

  Which was, you know, sort of revolutionary parents running with with their children. We watched Battle of Algiers. I think I remember watching a lot of Dog Day. I watched Dog Day Afternoon a lot because that urgency of the great Al Pacino in that movie with those phone calls, the franticness of trying to get your loved one back at at all odds was a big influence.

• 1:59:59Speaker 07

  But did you watch Lion in the Winter?

• 2:00:01Speaker 08

  I watched Lion in the Winter, too.

• 2:00:02Speaker 07

  That has nothing to do with it, but it has it's great because it has it has the best acting ever in a movie with Peter O'Toole and Catherine Hepburn, and they can be so gigantic and so fun and so hammy, but like that switch to an intimate thing that's like that's razor's edge. And I'd like that as an idea. The movie is very different, but in similar ways that we could go from really big and broad and all over the place to, you know, keep it real and make it really, you know.

• 2:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  Is that something you would literalize when you were preparing to make the movie or even on set?

• 2:00:38Speaker 07

  No, I don't think so. I think those things just sort of come because you're feeling your way through it and you kind of, you know, just try to play loose and see where it goes. And, you know, most of the times you kind of you kind of you you feel you feel good and you go this this feels right. I will not say in six months when we're looking back at it's right, but we but we have to keep moving forward. And so this instinctually feels pretty good. Or from time to time, you do do something and at least within 24 hours, you go, maybe we should revisit that. And that can happen too from time to time.

• 2:01:13Sean Fennessey?

  I was curious about something related to that. This is a really big movie for you in terms of scale. You've worked on a ton of movies, Leo, with huge scale. When you're working on something that is this big, that this has this many moving parts. Do you know when you're getting it? Do you know when you're getting what you want? Because you have to have so many various moving pieces going as opposed to just two people sitting in a room talking to each other?

• 2:01:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, I do. As big as it is, it was still the same fifteen, twenty dopes around the camera that it always is. It was all just us making the movie, you know? I mean, like, things would grow, we would have bigger days, but we started the film in that little cabin in the woods, shooting three days. There was only room for four of us and Chase and Leo. So, you know, and we would watch dailies every night and sit and, you know, have our dinner and, and look back and, and say, okay, this is feeling good and, and keep progressing. So, yeah, you, you, you do, you do. The scale kind of becomes inconsequential, you know? You kind of, if we were prepared, we knew, we knew what the, the goal was.

• 2:02:18Speaker 07

  So, you're just really focused on, on, on getting, getting what you need, looking for inspiration and keeping your shit together, really.

• 2:02:26Sean Fennessey?

  Leo, it feels like Killers of the Flower Moon, this film, Don't Look Up, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There's a strain of comedic drama that you seem really interested in, in the last few movies and this like, kind of nervy, very funny, but kind of anxiety-riddled figures. Like, does anything account for that? What is drawing you to these, these kinds of guys?

• 2:02:49Speaker 08

  Uh, what's drawing me to them? To be honest, it's, it's not a, it's not a conscious choice. It's, it's, it's reading the material, working with the director and trying to do this, this story justice and bring a, uh, my hope, my, my hope is the comedy comes from real-life circumstances and real-life, you know, uh, scenarios that, that, that, that make it funny. Otherwise, it's never funny to me.

• 2:03:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:17Speaker 08

  Once a set-up gag or a set-up joke. I mean, just, just the, the opening of Bob's character, it's kind of like... I love the fact that, you know, it's like you're 15 years, 16 years later, his past comes back to haunt him. What would Bob be doing? He'd be smoking pot, you know, on his couch, watching Battle of Algiers for the 50th time. And that would be, and he would have an argument with his daughter about the fact that he got drunk last night. You're, you're right, and you know, there's the setup for that is, and then, of course, you know, the gag of my character not knowing the password is a brilliant choice, you know? You think you're gonna be with this sort of traditional hero who's gonna use all his revolutionary techniques

• 2:04:02Speaker 08

  from his past to save his daughter in a profound way. And he can't get, he can't get past over the first hurdle

• 2:04:09Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:04:09Speaker 08

  of the race, you know, he tripped on the first hurdle. And then he continues to trip on every single hurdle all the way around the track. And then we kept on doing that too, where there are moments in the original screenplay where like, okay, maybe he does this, and Paul's like, nah. No, I think that the mirror, for our protagonist, our flawed protagonist, I think the mere act of just propelling himself forward against all odds is his heroism.

• 2:04:37Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:04:37Speaker 08

  And through that is a lot of hilarious moments, you know? A lot of comedy comes naturally from that, from those, from that situation.

• 2:04:45Speaker 07

  I think to that, or I'd say, you know, we had an idea, it didn't exactly kind of emerge like this, but it was good for us to go into it thinking about it this, this way. Is it, what if like, the sixth most important member of the French 75, you know, like, ended up being now suddenly the last man standing and the guy with the baby, you know? Like, of all these people who you'd really rather see, you know, in an, in an action position, guy number six, choice number six, who was really kind of just involved in shooting stuff off, and maybe that was his job, is the last man standing and also has the child. It's like, what happens then, you know?

• 2:05:26Speaker 07

  That, and that was good for us to just have in our body and our mind approaching the story.

• 2:05:31Sean Fennessey?

  He's not like a full-blown buffoon though. I love the Mexican hairless moment where it's like, this man's a hero, you know?

• 2:05:38Speaker 07

  No, no, it's not, that's exactly right. If you go full buffoon, then that's preposterous, you know? I mean, he's sharp enough, but, but. He's also stuck in what he's done to himself in 16 years to disengage has definitely slowed his game down.

• 2:05:55Sean Fennessey?

  I want to ask you guys about that because I do think one thing that I really connected with that I think a lot of people who are maybe 40 plus will is you're very young, you're hopeful, you're idealistic, you're maybe even radical. Get older, you turn a little inward, maybe you don't turn conservative, but you become just a little bit more into your own stuff.

• 2:06:12Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:06:13Sean Fennessey?

  And Bob is not conservative at all, but he's kind of stuck where he was in some ways. And I'm curious about like that dynamic and developing that dynamic. And even talking to someone like Chase, who has, you know, a much more limited life experience and I would assume is maybe a little bit more idealistic and kind of making sense together out of that in the movie.

• 2:06:33Speaker 07

  Mm hmm. You're touching on one of the main things that we always talked about, that and the fatherhood aspect.

• 2:06:41Speaker 07

  We just mentioned it, but you know, there was, there was a, up north, they have a type of character that is Bob and they refer to them as hipnecks, which is half a hippie and half a redneck. And, and generally, probably when they were younger, they were miles apart in terms of what their ideology is. But they become closer and closer and end up being the same exact person in middle age. And they share the common theme of just leave me alone. I do not care, you know? And so, um, yeah, I mean, it's a natural, it's, it, I don't know. You put miles on you and you slow down and it's a funny one.

• 2:07:22Speaker 08

  And probably his inability to relate to his, his daughter's generation whatsoever. You know, the fact that she's off into the stratosphere with, you know, her, her own ideology and he's trying to pull her into his. But at the same time, just the setup that we have of this guy in a log cabin that can't make a phone call. He's, I almost thought it would have been interesting if he put in a LaserDisc of Battle of the Years. You know, he's not online, there's probably no connection to the internet, you know? And here he is trying to exist in today's society. It's it was it's just a brilliant setup in that in that regard.

• 2:08:01Speaker 07

  I think we're finding them too at a time. I bet I bet and it does. You can kind of see in the backyard, the remnants of all like little toy slides and things like that that are now overgrown and everything else. I would imagine that their life from like zero to 10 was absolutely idyllic. She knew nothing else except this, this, this, this, this doting dad and he's going to take her and maybe we go to the market and we come right back and he's taught me all this stuff about how to survive. But as you start to emerge in young adulthood, you start to, you are forming your own path. And, you know, a friend of mine recently took his daughter off to college and his heart was broken and he said, you know, if I had known she was going to break my heart, I wouldn't gotten this close to her.

• 2:08:48Speaker 07

  This is sort of premise that the best thing that he can do is, is let go, you know, is let her go out that door, no matter what danger she might end up facing. That's his job.

• 2:09:02Sean Fennessey?

  One other thing I really loved about the movie is it's set up to be a showdown movie. You, you, you and Kurt Darth Vader, you know, this idea of good versus evil, but you actually only get, I think, just the one scene with Sean.

• 2:09:14Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:09:15Sean Fennessey?

  And I was wondering if you guys could talk about the decision to kind of keep them apart ultimately to make this not High Noon and something a little bit different.

• 2:09:23Speaker 08

  Well, I think that was, that was Paul. I mean, I remember us talking about the, the, the, the varied possibilities, not only for the ending, but the midsection of, of, of my character. And I, I remember him just saying, look, I just don't know how to do that. I don't know if I want to do that with this character. And it, I think to him, and I'm not, not speaking for him, but it would have robbed that moment, and not to give away the ending, but of the sheer relentlessness that Bob has for just being there and being present and being that father figure. That is, that becomes his heroism at the end of the day. I mean, There was a lot of traditional tropes that we could have done a little, but it took

• 2:10:06Speaker 08

  a lot of discussion and I think I had to let go of a lot of those ideas as well into the process. And it kind of naturally occurred and there we, I don't think we even decided until we're right there on that road in Borrego Springs with her, with the three cars sort of following each other. And he said, no, no, this is, this needs to be passed on to the next generation. I remember him saying at the trauma of what, you know, Bob is now, she's now paying the price for Bob's ideology right here, boom. And it's the next generation dealing with all of this right here. And what happened, and then, not to give away the ending again, but

• 2:10:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's hard to do that, yeah, but

• 2:10:48Speaker 08

  The, the idea of her being in complete shock, you know, the, who is, who is this man? She's, she's been put through such extreme traumatic events and that was a brilliant choice at the end of the day.

• 2:11:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, it was, and it was, it was sort of discovered, you know, you're standing, you're standing there and you're just faced with logic. You just ask yourself, he's like, let's get back to common sense, forget the moviness of this, what is common sense? What is she, what is she asking herself? We know what he's after. He's after just protecting her. That's quite simple, you know, but now it was her time, you know? After all this time of being thrown around in the movie and handcuffed, she's got to blossom and she's got a few fucking questions of her own to ask around here, you know? And that's, to his point before, I think I, what took so long over 20 years is, is trying all of these versions, maybe more traditional things, that you felt like you were supposed

• 2:11:46Speaker 07

  to do. Wait a minute, you got a bad guy and you got a hero. And I wrote all these things and all these things. And there's a certain point, you can really, you can really try to do things that you think you're supposed to do and they're terrific exercises because inevitably they will let you know, like, hey, it worked, or their characters aren't going that way. That's not what they want to do, you know? And you just have to keep listening to the story or the people in the story. And the more you listen to them, the more they'll speak back to you and, and help guide the story. Hopefully they're guiding it in an energetic and, and kind of action oriented way that has momentum and is interesting to an audience. Hopefully they don't want to like

• 2:12:26Speaker 08

  Be boring.

• 2:12:27Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's so it's just interesting to hear you talk about finding it so so much creatively in the making of it, especially because shooting in on this division and I know that those cameras are a little bit complicated to use and it's a little different from just grabbing a digital camera.

• 2:12:43Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 2:12:44Sean Fennessey?

  And but on the other hand, like, something is clearly happening in Los Angeles, I think, in other cities where there is a film fandom that really wants on film, large format, I want to be with 500 people in a room, community thing that is going on. And it's like Nolan's movies and Quentin's movies and the reparatory scene here is like very crazy now and exciting. And I'm wondering, like, you guys have participated in that. You always shoot on film. Most of your movies are on film, too.

• 2:13:13Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 2:13:14Sean Fennessey?

  Like, what do you think that is about? Why are people, especially young people, into it?

• 2:13:19Speaker 08

  I think even young people are oversaturated with with the sheer amount of imagery and and fast-paced content. I mean, I mean, look at the amount of production that's out there on Netflix alone and no discredit to any of it. There's some brilliant stuff out there, but that I don't want to say lo-fi experience, but that theatrical communal experience of seeing something on that's got to be equally as vital. And I hope, to me, it's exciting because, you know, otherwise, there's a huge gap in the art form, you know, that all these things have to sort of coexist together. And this movie was, it's a truly original idea.

• 2:14:03Speaker 08

  You know, it's, it's a big budget film and it's meant to have that communal theatrical experience. This movie is specifically made for that. You know, more than anything else I can imagine, it is made for the theatrical experience. And Benicio and I were talking about it the other day, you know, I love uncomfortable moments in movies. That's what I love the most when I'm sitting there with the character, feeling an embarrassment for them or not knowing whether to laugh or cry or or and that communal experience almost allows you to connect with the character. Oh, that guy feels that way about this moment? Oh, that's, oh, that's actually funny. It. It's something that can only happen when, you know,

• 2:14:48Speaker 08

  a bunch of homo sapiens are together in a room, you know, feeling the energy of one another. And I think everything that Paul did to make this movie was for that singular experience. It is one of those movies that's not meant to be seen on a tablet or a small screen. It's meant to be in the theaters, to be felt and witnessed and experienced in the theater.

• 2:15:11Speaker 07

  He said it best. I'm just gonna fuck it up. That is exactly right. I mean, no, that's why you go through the pain in the ass of working with these cameras and doing all of these kinds of things because it's absolutely worth it. Back to your point about, you know, finding things with a Vista Vision camera. Yeah, they're kind of counterintuitive. You know, you would think you should be... But, because I don't want it to seem that we were out there just kind of making it up as we went along, you know? This is the product of a schedule. That, you know, if you have four days to do something, you can do it as it's written the first day, look at it back, you come back the next day, you refine it.

• 2:15:55Speaker 07

  You better get it right by the third day and you've got that fourth one to really bring it home, you know? Especially for key and important valuable scenes that you know are essential and that there might be something more to. That's what a great producer and assistant director brings you. That's what we had.

• 2:16:13Sean Fennessey?

  We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? What have you guys seen recently that you've really dug?

• 2:16:22Speaker 08

  It's a film that I've seen before.

• 2:16:24Sean Fennessey?

  Is that okay? That's okay.

• 2:16:26Speaker 08

  Vertigo.

• 2:16:27Sean Fennessey?

  Why did you watch it?

• 2:16:29Speaker 08

  I'm working on a film where that's a reference point. Marty, I had a conversation with Marty about it and, you know... Anytime you get to sit and talk with him about movies is a religious experience. But when he talks about a movie that he's still trying to figure out, it's even, it's an even more, he's like, you know, each decade, that movie means something different to me.

• 2:16:53Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 2:16:54Speaker 08

  Is she a ghost? Is she not a ghost? Is she there? Is he a ghost? What is it?

• 2:16:57Speaker 07

  Right.

• 2:16:57Speaker 08

  And, you know, listening and to talk to him, so I rewatched it and I knew the moments, the exact moments in the redwoods that he was talking about. I was like, that's the moment that Marty felt that.

• 2:17:07Speaker 07

  Right.

• 2:17:08Speaker 08

  So, yeah, there's something that we're working on that has been a reference for that.

• 2:17:14Speaker 07

  That's a Vista Vision movie too.

• 2:17:15Speaker 08

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:17:16Speaker 07

  You know, and we actually, funny enough, it was

• 2:17:18Speaker 08

  Did we have one of our cameras from Vertigo? Or was it North by Northwest? Or was it?

• 2:17:24Speaker 07

  Probably not. I don't know.

• 2:17:26Speaker 08

  From that whole other

• 2:17:27Speaker 07

  There, there was, but, but, but we shot a whole sequence that we cut out of the movie, in the beginning of the movie, and we were in San Juan Bautista, where they shot a lot of Vertigo, very famous where they shot Vertigo there. There's not the churches there, there's the kind of, there's the carriage that she goes and walks by that's there. And there's an upper landing that they used for the courtroom scene. So we took our little Vista Vision camera there and we put her up there and we stood there and we went, hmm, there was a camera here 60 something years ago, shooting Vertigo, or standing in the same room. We ended up cutting the whole sequence out, but nevertheless, we really felt like, fucking hell, this is exciting.

• 2:18:09Speaker 07

  I saw for the first time a movie called Tom Horn, which is with Steve McQueen. I'd seen, I'd saw, I got, there was a book about him later in his life. I think it was his second to last movie. And I said, God, I never even heard of this. I never even seen it.

• 2:18:24Speaker 08

  I hadn't seen it.

• 2:18:25Speaker 07

  It's terrific, terrific film about Tom Horn, who was a real Pinkerton detective, but kind of protected cattle rust. He kind of employed by, by rich cattle barons in Wyoming. So it kind of touches near where Heaven's Gate goes and stuff. It's a really interesting film, beautifully shot by John Alonso.

• 2:18:49Speaker 07

  And recent enough that there was a gaffer named Jim Plannett, who I worked with many years ago. I got to text him and say, I just saw Tom Horn. He was like, we had a great time making that movie. It was exciting to see Steve McQueen in the movie. It was his second to last movie, so I think he was already ill, but he gives a great performance and Richard Fonsworth is in it. It's terrific film.

• 2:19:09Sean Fennessey?

  Great recommendations. Leo, Paul, thank you so much for chatting.

• 2:19:12Speaker 07

  Thank you.

• 2:19:18Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson.

• 2:19:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, thank you, Leo and Paul.

• 2:19:22Sean Fennessey?

  A normal, a normal thank you.

• 2:19:23Speaker 07

  Thanks guys, I'll see you later.

• 2:19:24Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks guys, yeah, we'll catch up with you at your house. Thanks to you both for your contributions. This is a very special movie. We hope the listeners of this show go to see it. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Don't forget [email protected] if you'd like to send us some questions about the film, though we did talk about a lot of it here. And...

• 2:19:44Speaker 07

  See you in New York.

• 2:19:45Sean Fennessey?

  And yeah, next week we head to New York for a live show at the 92nd Street Y. Where, what are we doing? No, don't spoil what we're doing.

• 2:19:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, we're not allowed to announce it.

• 2:19:54Speaker 07

  You like to show up and be like, tonight we are drafting wizards?

• 2:19:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, tonight we're drafting wizards. Former members of the Washington Wizards. Gilbert Arenas movie draft.

• 2:20:03Speaker 07

  I'm actually quite prepared for that.

• 2:20:05Sean Fennessey?

  You'll be there.

• 2:20:06Speaker 07

  I will be there.

• 2:20:07Sean Fennessey?

  Thank goodness.

• 2:20:07Speaker 07

  Yeah, on stage, not just in the audience.

• 2:20:09Sean Fennessey?

  Of course, yeah. And there will be other special guests. I'm willing to say that. So that'll be on October 4th. In between then, we have nine episodes to record, so we'll do our best.

• 2:20:19Speaker 07

  Are you serious?

• 2:20:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Do we really?

• 2:20:20Sean Fennessey?

  No, we have three.

• 2:20:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, I was like, I mean, that would be possible. So I was like, oh shit, I gotta check the spreadsheet.

• 2:20:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And hopefully everyone listens to all of them. We'll see you then.

• 2:20:48Speaker 09

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• 2:21:18Speaker 10

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• 2:21:33Speaker 10

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