The Terror of ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ and Sean’s Favorite Godzilla Movies. Plus: The Joy of ‘Club Kid,’ With Jordan Firstman!

Sean and Amanda open today’s show by reacting to the stunning news that James Gunn and Peter Safran are stepping down as heads of DC Studios and hypothesizing about who could take over. Then, they cover ‘Godzilla Minus Zero,’ speculate what its significant box office performance suggests about American audiences, and celebrate its phenomenal visual effects and set pieces before Sean shares his top five Godzilla movies of all time. Next, they discuss three recent releases: a movie they loved in ‘Club Kid,’ a movie they found pretty average in ‘The Cat and the Hat,’ and a movie they found incredibly complicated in ‘Misty Green.’ Finally, Sean is joined by Jordan Firstman to emphasize the importance of telling this deeply personal queer story, explain why he wanted ‘Club Kid’ to feel like anything but a debut feature film, and discuss why it was never an option to not shoot the movie on film. (0:00) Intro (0:59) James Gunn and Peter Safran stepping down as heads of DC Studios (11:09) Weekend box office (16:43) ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ (28:16) Sean’s top five Godzilla movies (40:19) ‘Club Kid’ (59:38) ‘The Cat in the Hat’ (1:13:08) ‘Misty Green’ (1:23:59) Jordan Firstman joins the show! Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Jordan Firstman Producer: Jack Sanders Production Support: Lucas Cavanagh 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®. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:15Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Finacy.

• 0:16Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm Amanda Dobbins.

• 0:17Sean Fennessey?

  And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about gods and monsters. Today on the show, we are digging into the number one movie at the box office, Godzilla Minus Zero, the sequel to the 2023 surprise Oscar-winning hit Godzilla Minus One. We will also dig into a few other new releases, most notably Club Kid, writer-director star Jordan Firstman's filmmaking debut in one of our favorite movies of 2026. We will also talk about Chris Rock's Misty Green, which is now streaming on Netflix, as well as the weekend's other big theatrical release, The Cat in the Hat, starring Bill Hader. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Jordan Firstman to talk about his life and making his joyful debut feature. Jordan is a hilarious and vibrant guy, and we had a wonderful conversation. You should stick around for it. But first, some big movie news right after this. This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime.

• 1:01Sean Fennessey?

  What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime.

• 1:22Speaker 02

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• 1:53Sean Fennessey?

  The biggest possible Dobbins news ever hit this morning.

• 1:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Big to you, yeah.

• 1:56Sean Fennessey?

  Big to me. James Gunn and Peter Safran are out as the chiefs of the DC Film Studios.

• 2:03Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 2:04Sean Fennessey?

  You've been calling for this for months. Finally, you've gotten your wish. We flipped blue here in America.

• 2:12Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 2:13Sean Fennessey?

  Now we're flipping on Gunn.

• 2:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And I don't have to hear from James Gunn anymore. That's not true.

• 2:17Sean Fennessey?

  Unless he's promoting Man of Tomorrow.

• 2:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, and/or he's promoting whatever he does next. You know, he likes a microphone. He likes a Twitter platform. He likes whatever. So, yeah, this is David Ellison's latest rearrangement. It's not hugely surprising, given the lack of success of Supergirl, possibly one of the worst movies of the year.

• 2:37Sean Fennessey?

  True.

• 2:38Amanda Dobbins?

  And a huge financial loser. And then also Clayface.

• 2:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, which I would just say is kind of like a single to left field. It's not really, it didn't, didn't light the sky up.

• 2:47Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, listen, he gets on base. But this is part of the IP that Paramount desperately needed, or I guess I should say Skydance, excuse me, needed in the merging of Paramount and Warner Brothers. And I don't think they're exploiting it to the, what the bankers would believe to be its full capacity.

• 3:07Sean Fennessey?

  I agree. I'm sure he's got some sort of plan about the rollout and how consistently the stories of Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and all the characters should be in movie theaters and on television in the ongoing future. This felt a little early to me, based on what I was expecting. I thought at least Gunn would get to do the full rollout for Man of Tomorrow next summer, and then we would see, based on the performance of that movie, whether or not he would stick around. And, you know, you've kind of devalued Man of Tomorrow in a way because you've told the audience,

• 3:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 3:34Sean Fennessey?

  this story isn't really going forward in any meaningful way. And there's something fascinating about that, like David Cornsweat. We just had a chance to see Mr. Irrelevant a bit early, a movie coming out over Christmas, and he's terrific in that movie.

• 3:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Sean Fennessey?

  And he's a star.

• 3:45Amanda Dobbins?

  You do have to give James Gunn credit for that. I, Amanda Dobbins, have to give James Gunn credit for David Cornsweat. We were talking about a Skylar Gazando, Jimmy Olsen spinoff TV show that neither of us knew about, but Skylar Gazando, also great as Jimmy Olsen.

• 4:00Sean Fennessey?

  He is.

• 4:00Amanda Dobbins?

  So, and Rachel Brosnahan.

• 4:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Wonderful. So, the casting works. Also, you know, Nicholas Holt, very good, except now he might be Bond. Probably not, but he was testing.

• 4:12Sean Fennessey?

  We will see. You can talk about that, too. Yeah, I mean, it's, this hasn't been very much time that he's been able to work on these movies. It's been about two and a half to three years. And I was thinking this morning about how we had the Batman film starring Robert Pattinson, and we still haven't seen the Batman Part Two. And in that entire period of time between those two movies.

• 4:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 4:31Sean Fennessey?

  The Gunn-DC era has come and gone. So this is a fairly short administration. The TV side seems to be working just fine. I think Lanterns, Peacemaker, and The Penguin all have pretty good reputations. The Penguin won a lot of awards. I'm not sure how much credit Gunn is supposed to get for all of that, but seemingly kept the train on the tracks with those projects. Supergirl is really bad. I'm not sure it's so bad that someone should be fired, but maybe Ellison just wasn't into Gunn's point of view. His storytelling style, his sense of humor. It wouldn't surprise me if Skydance wanted a more straight-down-the-middle DC.

• 5:06Amanda Dobbins?

  It wouldn't surprise me if they did not see eye to eye. I don't know if they had a meeting. I can't imagine the meeting between David Ellison and James Gunn going like swimmingly. I don't think it's like two people finding each other.

• 5:18Sean Fennessey?

  Probably not. Yeah, I think based on their political point of views, based on what they think makes great stories. Just, just looking at their histories, they seem a little bit different. Still, I was surprised to see this happen so soon. So then the question becomes, who takes over?

• 5:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 5:35Sean Fennessey?

  Who becomes the shepherd? And, and should the choice be more like Kevin Feige, a kind of David O. Selznick-style super producer who oversees the entire execution? Or should it be more like Gunn, who is a filmmaker first and who brings his filmmaking sensibilities?

• 5:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Who should it be, Sean Finacy?

• 5:50Sean Fennessey?

  Or should it be someone in the middle of those two things? I don't know.

• 5:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you, Goldilocks.

• 5:55Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know who the, I don't know who the, I don't know who the contender is going to be because I don't really have a feel yet for what, how David Ellison is going to do this. There are, some people popped into my mind. The funniest thing that could have happened, which can't happen, is if Taylor Sheridan took over. Taylor Sheridan, obviously, is decamping to Universal.

• 6:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Sean Fennessey?

  But if you, if Taylor Sheridan's Superman was announced next year, I would not be surprised by that, just in terms of what the kind of social storytelling point of view of Skydance has been historically. I don't know if Taylor Sheridan cares about superheroes, but like him bringing that sensibility and bringing a kind of heartland Superman back.

• 6:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, he cares about the real superheroes, who are the, the men of the American West.

• 6:36Sean Fennessey?

  And also in special ops.

• 6:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, that's true.

• 6:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the shadow forces.

• 6:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Lioness going very hard in my house right now, on TVs not watched by me.

• 6:44Sean Fennessey?

  I was at dinner with your husband and Chris Ryan, and I watched them have a conversation, a deep conversation about Lioness for 10 minutes. I did not participate. Okay, so if not Taylor Sheridan, and assuming that like people like Greg Berlanti, who've had a bite at the apple on the TV side, are not going to be participating in something like that. From a strictly filmmaking perspective, let's look at who's under the umbrella.

• 7:05Sean Fennessey?

  John Krasinski.

• 7:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Ah.

• 7:08Sean Fennessey?

  Has A Quiet Place Part Three coming out. I think his time as Jack Ryan is ending for Amazon. I don't know if he's a free agent or not. I don't know if he has a standing deal with Paramount.

• 7:18Sean Fennessey?

  He did appear as a false Reed Richards in a Marvel film. He's not, otherwise not really been a superhero.

• 7:26Sean Fennessey?

  Seems like the kind of thing he could get interested in if he had a more authorial role in the work. You say what?

• 7:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Are you casting him as Superman as well as the director shepherd of the new Superman era?

• 7:40Sean Fennessey?

  I think what you need to do is you probably need to take two-plus years off from Superman after Man of Tomorrow to totally reset the board. Unless that person comes in and loves David Cornsweat, which I guess is possible.

• 7:49Amanda Dobbins?

  David Cornsweat is a find. He's pretty wonderful.

• 7:53Sean Fennessey?

  I know, but the thing is, is that he fits so well in the tone of the Gunn movies. And if you're shifting the tone out, I'm not sure. He might work well in that tone as well, but there's something interesting about that. So, okay, if not him, we know James Mangold has a standing deal with Paramount. James Mangold expressed interest in making a Swamp Thing movie for DC. And I feel like it got close to being greenlit, and then it went away. By the way, I'm just reminded now of the moment when Luca Guadagnino was going to make Sergeant Rock for DC Studios with Daniel Craig.

• 8:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:22Sean Fennessey?

  God damn it.

• 8:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 8:23Sean Fennessey?

  We could have had that. That would have been hilarious.

• 8:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We could have.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  An extremely.

• 8:27Amanda Dobbins?

  The question is, really, could we have, or is that just something Luca said once in an interview?

• 8:31Sean Fennessey?

  I think James Gunn probably had a convo.

• 8:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well.

• 8:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Michael Bay?

• 8:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 8:39Sean Fennessey?

  Made a lot of, a lot of Paramount movies, a lot of Transformers movies over the years.

• 8:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Would that make you happy?

• 8:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'd like to see him get a crack at a superhero story.

• 8:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 8:48Sean Fennessey?

  I think he may be past his prime. He probably almost certainly is past his prime, though ambulance rips.

• 8:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Optimus prime?

• 8:56Sean Fennessey?

  Perhaps. I think that he was in talks to come back for a Transformers movie. So maybe there's part of this. I don't know if that would really excite anybody creatively. If sixty year old Michael Bay came in to take over DC. But here's one.

• 9:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 9:09Sean Fennessey?

  That I think.

• 9:10Amanda Dobbins?

  That.

• 9:10Sean Fennessey?

  Feels likely. And, and you thought of it.

• 9:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. Yeah.

• 9:15Sean Fennessey?

  Even though you've never seen this, this television show.

• 9:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I watched two episodes.

• 9:19Sean Fennessey?

  Of Stranger Things.

• 9:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes, and I have seen the children in the paparazzi photos and the Dumas coverage and the Just Jared coverage for years and years and years. And I haven't learned all of their names, but I know them.

• 9:31Sean Fennessey?

  The Duffer Brothers created Stranger Things and they left Netflix earlier this year to sign a deal to make theatrical feature films for Paramount. This was pre-merger. And the Duffer Brothers, I do not believe have announced any projects yet.

• 9:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Aha.

• 9:46Sean Fennessey?

  And there is a conspiratorial part of me that thinks, was this always the plan? Would these guys get a chance to take over in the event that they didn't like the direction that James Gunn was going in, assuming the merger was going to happen? I don't know. Food for thought.

• 10:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. You think there was a conversation?

• 10:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and I'm no Duffer Brothers expert. I watched the first two and a half seasons of Stranger Things and liked it just fine and didn't really feel too bad about letting it go. But you can't deny that it was a massive sensation. I mean, it is one of the most popular original things of this century. So be interesting to put these stories in their hands. DC is tough, though, because it's like, there's an active Superman movie and there's an active Batman movie. We just had a bunch of Superman and Batman movies ten years ago. We already also have the Batman movies from Chris Nolan. And so unlike Spider-Man, which has kind of been elegantly been able to restart and relaunch, and even with the Spider-verse movies have that character coexist in two separate movie storytelling franchises. It's kind of tough because like, I don't know, can you open with Wonder Woman?

• 10:48Sean Fennessey?

  Can you open, you've already got a Green Lantern's TV show going on right now? Like, what are the big guns? What are the moves?

• 10:54Amanda Dobbins?

  It's not my impression that the Duffer Brothers struggle with just nostalgia and recreating things that people of our age remember and really like and just making a good version of it again.

• 11:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:04Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, maybe they won't feel that anxiety.

• 11:07Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe they won't. I'm very curious to see how this shakes out. One other person that popped to mind, a little bit of a wild card, Chris McCary.

• 11:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, okay. Yeah.

• 11:16Sean Fennessey?

  Knows how to make movies at scale.

• 11:17Amanda Dobbins?

  He does.

• 11:18Sean Fennessey?

  Really into movies and sort of mythological orthodoxy and breaking it. Something, if you've ever read his Letterboxd reviews, which I know you have.

• 11:28Sean Fennessey?

  That would be fun. It'd be fun to have somebody who is a real filmmaker behind it. It might also just turn out to be effectively an accountant takeover and then hiring director project to project. But I think Feige has shown like you do need somebody with some vision to make this shit work. Because it's hard to make, most of these movies are bad. Like, when we look back on the forty year history of superhero movies, more than half of them are outright bad. So I wait with bated breath.

• 11:53Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. This was an exciting Monday morning development for you?

• 11:57Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it's something to talk about.

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  There you go.

• 11:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 11:59Sean Fennessey?

  So news hits the, as I've said, all I have is the news. So let me have it. Speaking of the news box office.

• 12:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Were you surprised that Godzilla minus zero was number one?

• 12:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Not totally, because it had a lot of IMAX theaters, which, you know, we know that just, it's a numbers game. And then I had some idle conversations with friends, like, you know, nerdy film industry people rather than civilians who are excited, who are going to see the movie. So there was some awareness.

• 12:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there definitely was awareness. I just, this is the highest grossing non-English language movie to go to number one in the history of US domestic box office. And I feel like that's a bit of an understated component of this.

• 12:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 12:37Sean Fennessey?

  There are a couple of American characters in the movie, but this is entirely Japanese cast. And it's a sequel to a Japanese film. And it's a film about Japanese history. And it is a Godzilla movie.

• 12:47Amanda Dobbins?

  It's a Godzilla movie.

• 12:48Sean Fennessey?

  Totally, I acknowledge that. But like, a huge part of this movie, more than seventy percent of this movie is reckoning with the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so.

• 12:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right, but that's.

• 13:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of fascinating.

• 13:00Amanda Dobbins?

  And that's not why the people are buying the ticket.

• 13:03Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 13:03Amanda Dobbins?

  They're buying the ticket because the first word of the title is Godzilla.

• 13:06Sean Fennessey?

  I know, it does tell me a little something about what American and North American audiences will, will accept, I guess, in their mainstream movie making.

• 13:17Amanda Dobbins?

  It's an example, it's best case IP. And like, and best case, what you can do with an established audience and an established world. And not just in terms of the quality of the filmmaking and both in terms of ideas and just like actual monsters like fighting each other.

• 13:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Amanda Dobbins?

  But then also then finding like a larger audience and finding an American audience for a non-American situation. It's, you know, I feel like we get really bummed out when we talk about, I don't know, what are they going to do with Superman or Super Mario or all of these things? But this is.

• 13:58Sean Fennessey?

  Or the Cat in the Hat.

• 13:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, God. But this is innovative and exciting and kind of like, oh, the powers can be used for good.

• 14:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think it's encouraging. I think there's like a couple of things that have happened that have led to this. Like, we have obviously had this moment, probably post Parasite, where there's just a wider acceptance culturally among cinephiles of non-English language films at the box office, which is great. And then you've also got the legendary monster movies that have been happening for the last ten years or so. And so also Godzilla has really been back in the mainstream American culture. So there's that.

• 14:31Amanda Dobbins?

  And there's also the reverse of the, you know, there was about ten years when Hollywood was like, okay, well, we'll just make big spectacular budget movies that don't rely so much on dialogue and language and market them internationally. And this also, you know, there is a lot of dialogue. We'll talk about how much all of it works.

• 14:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Amanda Dobbins?

  But some of this is you're going to see a spectacle and that does, you know, transcend language.

• 14:55Sean Fennessey?

  That can be enough, for sure. Pretty interesting time, just in general, at the box office. You know, you mentioned, we were talking about Wicker before we started recording here. And a bunch of movies made, I think this is maybe the third time since COVID where you had eight movies over six million dollars at the box office.

• 15:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Great.

• 15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Which means there's just a ton of variety and movie, lots of different kinds of movies. Wild Horse Sign, Clayface, Wildwood, Holding Really Strong, Ramayana, the Indian film. You can see everything with only a twenty-two percent drop, which is crazy. Angel Studios Drummer Boy, which I know you were the co-producer of that film?

• 15:29Amanda Dobbins?

  I did walk out of the Cat in the Hat yesterday and I saw, ooh, Drummer Boy is showing.

• 15:36Sean Fennessey?

  I kind of want to see it.

• 15:36Amanda Dobbins?

  I do need to find out what happens.

• 15:38Sean Fennessey?

  I haven't seen a single Angel Studios film this year, but I probably will have an Angel Studios marathon before the year's over. So that includes The Brink of War. That's the, is it?

• 15:46Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, The Brink of War is like a save it for Christmas Eve while you're assembling toys, you know?

• 15:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's honestly incredible idea. That was exactly how I watched, what was it called?

• 15:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Nuremberg.

• 15:55Sean Fennessey?

  Nuremberg, thank you. What will I be constructing this year for Christmas?

• 15:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 16:00Sean Fennessey?

  Got to figure that out.

• 16:01Amanda Dobbins?

  We went over to a friend's house and they had a full grocery checkout, like with a scanner. I don't know if the scanner worked.

• 16:08Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 16:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And then.

• 16:09Sean Fennessey?

  Pro labor.

• 16:10Amanda Dobbins?

  It was really cool.

• 16:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's interesting.

• 16:11Amanda Dobbins?

  I was really, and it had like the keypad.

• 16:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 16:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I was interested.

• 16:15Sean Fennessey?

  What's, what message is that sending to your child?

• 16:19Sean Fennessey?

  Get ready to start bagging?

• 16:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 16:21Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 16:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, all, you know, get ready, everyone has a job to contribute.

• 16:25Sean Fennessey?

  That's true. That's, that's a very good point. That's something the Drummer Boy would say. What other Angel Studios movies are there that I'm forgetting? Hershey, of course, I'll be seeing that on Thanksgiving Day, abandoning my family.

• 16:35Amanda Dobbins?

  The.

• 16:36Sean Fennessey?

  Young Washington, I haven't seen that yet.

• 16:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Is it a Jimmy Stewart movie or Frank Capra movie?

• 16:40Sean Fennessey?

  That's not Angel.

• 16:41Amanda Dobbins?

  That's not Angel?

• 16:41Sean Fennessey?

  But I do want to see the Jimmy.

• 16:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure, yeah.

• 16:44Sean Fennessey?

  The film Jimmy, I'd like to see those. I should just watch all them in one day. We should do a pod about that.

• 16:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Great, okay.

• 16:50Sean Fennessey?

  Angel Studios is making bank.

• 16:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 16:53Sean Fennessey?

  It's working.

• 16:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Drummer Boy is the funniest trailer I've seen all year. And like, and I would watch it.

• 16:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Amanda Dobbins?

  But probably I'd take a nap in the middle.

• 17:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, super high. Where are you at on getting, getting really stoned? We're in the, this is the Club Kid episode.

• 17:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, yeah. Stoned? Eh, not so much. You know me, I don't like to lose control. So I like all of the things that give the illusion of control as you, as it spins away from you.

• 17:18Sean Fennessey?

  And where are you at on ketamine?

• 17:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Where am I at on understanding all of the drug references on my shirt?

• 17:25Sean Fennessey?

  We'll get there in a minute. Yeah, interesting time with movies at the box office.

• 17:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like they're doing pretty well. Despite the Cat in the Hat's underperformance of 20 million. We'll talk about that maybe when we get into the movie. Let's start with Godzilla Minus Zero.

• 17:40Sean Fennessey?

  As I said, a straight up sequel effectively picks up exactly where Godzilla Minus One left off. This is the 39th Godzilla film. It's the sixth installment in the Re:W era. It is written, directed, and features the visual effects work of Takashi Yamakazi.

• 17:56Sean Fennessey?

  The story, pretty straightforward. In 1949, post-war Japan struggles to rebuild when it faces a new threat, King Gidora. Godzilla reappears and is drawn into conflict with the three-headed monster guided through human intervention. Gidora, do you have any experience?

• 18:12Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 18:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 18:14Amanda Dobbins?

  None.

• 18:14Sean Fennessey?

  So Gidora, you may have picked up on this, having watched the film.

• 18:17Amanda Dobbins?

  I have seen the movie, yeah. Locked and cold.

• 18:21Sean Fennessey?

  The number one bad guy in the Godzilla universe. Really like the big bad. And Godzilla started out in the movies as the villain and he, over time, becomes more of a heroic figure.

• 18:31Amanda Dobbins?

  Does he?

• 18:31Sean Fennessey?

  Which is a component of this film as well. But Gidora is a motherfucker. He's bad news.

• 18:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Sean Fennessey?

  And he's cranky and violent. And I don't even know what he's interested in. He just wants to mess shit up. So adding him into this world in an absolutely devastated post-war Japan.

• 18:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 18:49Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting choice. There's a lot of damage already been done. What'd you make of this movie?

• 18:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen, as I said, it's kind of best case for these things. And I do think that the visual effects and the fight sequences and also what you're looking at, the human sequences, that just look so much better than so much of what we see in blockbuster movies. And it is really exciting when the monsters fight each other. It's beautifully choreographed. Like, I know that I'm watching something good. I did feel the divide between the monster stuff and the human stuff.

• 19:25Sean Fennessey?

  No doubt.

• 19:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Way more. It's way less cohesive than the original movie. And I couldn't tell how much of that was just like, we are now clearly in movie two of this series of Godzilla films. And it's like in any other series when, you know, the bad person has become the hero and now we have to introduce a secondary villain and there's a lot of lore and there's a lot of history and some Easter eggs and all these sorts of things. And you just, you know, the tree starts to topple over for me. And so you can feel the weight, you can feel the machine kind of clinking. On the other hand, some of it reminded me of the film Pressure. And, you know.

• 20:03Sean Fennessey?

  A lot of meteorology in this movie.

• 20:05Amanda Dobbins?

  A lot of meteorology and planning around meteorology. And I enjoyed Pressure and I enjoyed this. So I did also, I should say, cry at the end of this movie. So I'm a human being, you know? I have feelings. But I just think it's cool that it did as well as it did.

• 20:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think so too. I think this is a step down from Minus One. And I'm trying to figure out how much of that is just the surprise of Minus One. You may recall, like, we did not plan to cover Minus One. And then it had this, like, pretty solid opening weekend.

• 20:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 20:34Sean Fennessey?

  It was, it kind of took people by surprise how good it was.

• 20:38Sean Fennessey?

  And so that surprise, I think, also fed into a lot of our appreciation of the way that the story was told. This one is like a heavily marketed movie that we know and has been coming for a while. And I did talk about it, I think, right after I saw it, when it premiered at the New York Film Festival, which is to say, I think the effects work in this movie is as good, if not better, than any Kaiju movie ever made. I think there's a sequence in the middle of the movie with Gidora, like an aerial sequence that is breathtaking stuff. Like, you know, I know how they did it. It's not that I can't figure out what they did, but the way that the action is staged, the way that what you're shown and not shown in time, Yamakazi just has an incredible feel for this stuff. And I've watched a couple of interviews with him talking about his relationship to the franchise and thinking about what makes these movies cool and useful.

• 21:23Sean Fennessey?

  And, you know, for roughly 50 years, Godzilla movies were guy in suit movies, you know? And we're now in a digital era. And as you said, a lot of digitally CGI-created movies don't, just don't look that good. And he's just got this incredible knack for blending real-world, practical sets, the real high stakes of this story, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. And we can talk a little bit more in detail about what doesn't, does not work.

• 21:49Sean Fennessey?

  And on a budget, his work with digitally created images is pretty incredible. I mean, Gidora looks amazing in this movie to me. And Godzilla is more or less the same. I don't know if the staging and the use of Godzilla in this movie is as effective in the first film. You know that sort of Jaws-esque boat chase in the first film? Which is like, one of the most wonderful Godzilla sequences ever. But in this one in particular, that sequence that I'm talking about with the harpoons and then the lightning strike that leads to the transformation, and then the gravity beam thing where they're lifting all the houses, like, there's just stuff in the movie that, if you're seeing it in IMAX, total worth the price of admission. Absolutely.

• 22:31Sean Fennessey?

  High, like, high, high, high Oscar-winning level of VFX work being done. And then the movie is also a continuation of the human stories, which include this sort of former suicide bomber and this woman that he's fallen in love with and this child that they've adopted and how they intersect with the sort of the Japanese bureaucracy that is attempting to navigate the threat from Gidora and then whether or not Godzilla should participate.

• 22:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 22:59Sean Fennessey?

  In trying to battle him in that threat. And there's just a lot of it. And the movie is 85% bureaucratic and strategic discussion over what to do about this issue. Now, that is consistent with most Godzilla movies. So that in and of itself is not a problem to me. The problem to me is this movie is two hours and 15 minutes. And most Godzilla movies are not two hours and 15 minutes. And so what it becomes is like a very weighty, I think, pretty heavy-handed.

• 23:31Sean Fennessey?

  It's not even an allegory, it's just a direct, it's mapping on the nuclear tragedies and the radiation anxieties of post-war Japan onto these people and then manifesting them in the monsters.

• 23:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right. Which is also what we did in the last film.

• 23:48Sean Fennessey?

  Correct.

• 23:49Amanda Dobbins?

  So it does also feel a little bit, less so in the sequences, but when they're talking and talking and talking, it just feels like a reheating. We've been here before.

• 24:00Sean Fennessey?

  I agree with you. There's another component too, and you hinted at this with your comments, which is that,

• 24:07Sean Fennessey?

  you know, the original Godzilla, which these two movies pretty closely resemble to me in a lot of ways. The one thing that's missing is, you know, that movie is in part a reaction to Bikini Atoll and the H-bomb testing in the 50s. And that obviously hasn't happened in the timeline in Japan here in this story. We're only in 49. So this movie does kind of feel like a bridge and it feels like the next film will be a movie where like, maybe that H-bomb testing starts happening.

• 24:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 24:31Sean Fennessey?

  And then it's reacting to that. And then if you want to bring in Mothra or Gigan or any of the other, there's so many Godzilla monsters that you could bring in over time. But it did feel a little bit like we're kind of paving the road for part three and we'll repay you with two awesome action sequences. And otherwise, you'll be on the road with these human characters who, like, you might be coming a little bit sick of at this point.

• 24:55Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I mean, it just has the classic part two of a series problem, which is, okay, part one worked really well, so now we need to make a sequel and we're just going to do the same thing again.

• 25:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Amanda Dobbins?

  And then if there are more, it's always, it's usually part three where people, like, figure out the vision for the next 25 or something.

• 25:15Sean Fennessey?

  There is a callback to one of my favorite Godzilla movies, which I'll mention briefly when I share them. Which is the Noriko character, the young woman, has been exposed to Godzilla's cells, his G cells. And so she starts developing some of his physical manifestation.

• 25:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Sean Fennessey?

  How'd you feel about that?

• 25:37Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought her eye looked cool and she doesn't need to be hiding it from the world. I mean, I guess she's hiding it because she doesn't want to be taken and tested. I understand, it's for her own safety. But it was beautiful.

• 25:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I like that too.

• 25:50Amanda Dobbins?

  The scales, I don't know.

• 25:52Sean Fennessey?

  What would you do? Would you have them surgically removed?

• 25:54Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I mean, that's just, I would at least take some maximum medicine, you know?

• 25:58Sean Fennessey?

  Wouldn't they just grow back? Isn't that the point?

• 25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Point they regenerate.

• 26:01Sean Fennessey?

  You gotta, is, do they have, um,

• 26:05Sean Fennessey?

  uh, some sort of medication you could take that would remember?

• 26:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's but, well, I mean, they're, they're coming from inside, so.

• 26:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 26:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not ready for Accutane.

• 26:15Sean Fennessey?

  Accutane.

• 26:15Amanda Dobbins?

  You know about Accutane?

• 26:16Sean Fennessey?

  I do, yeah, yeah, I don't need that.

• 26:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Good.

• 26:19Sean Fennessey?

  I'm doing well. You know why? Never in the sun. Uh, yeah, it's weird because another one of my favorite movies also addresses this like question of bureaucracy. Another one of my favorite Godzilla movies also addresses this question of bureaucracy. So it's like, it feels also a little bit redundant too about like the decision making around whether or not a movie like this can work. How did you feel about the way that the US was characterized in this movie?

• 26:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, so the imagination sequence, but that you don't know as you're watching it. That it's an imagination of Godzilla taking New York. Was quite powerful and I was like, oh, we're really, um, this is going somewhere visually, but also ideologically.

• 27:01Sean Fennessey?

  The scientist Murakami has this, wants vengeance.

• 27:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:04Sean Fennessey?

  And we see a lot of back, uh, flashbacks for him and like the family that he's lost in the aftermath of the war and in the aftermath of Godzilla's attacks. And he imagines that he will be able to shift Godzilla.

• 27:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:18Sean Fennessey?

  To go attack New York.

• 27:19Amanda Dobbins?

  So, you know, as you and I discussed after last week's, um, elections, I believe in vengeance. So I was, I was fine with it.

• 27:26Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting.

• 27:27Amanda Dobbins?

  But then it is, of course, just revealed to be an imagination. It doesn't go quite that far.

• 27:31Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 27:31Amanda Dobbins?

  But I liked the provocation.

• 27:33Sean Fennessey?

  But it does, and it, and it also does reveal a, a kind of evilness on the part of the Americans.

• 27:37Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:37Sean Fennessey?

  You know, who are looking to get into Rico to utilize her powers, who, you know, don't care about the future of the, the Japanese leadership. But they do let Godzilla return to the sea.

• 27:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Sean Fennessey?

  Which is where he hangs out. You know, and what's he doing down there? Doing poppers. He's in a K-hole.

• 27:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, this is, I thought it was pretty good.

• 28:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 28:02Sean Fennessey?

  I, I think it was a little baggy and I would love for these movies to be under two hours. This is something I generally feel, especially since I've been revisiting a lot of Godzilla movies. It's true of just a lot of drive-in movies is like, drive-in movies would be 95 minutes so that you could play two of them. And that would be a night. And now this movie has to be a full meal, but I'm not sure if narratively, Yama Kazi is not Spielberg. Like he just doesn't get you as involved, but you did get involved emotionally involved with the child storyline.

• 28:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, we're doing a lot of like mom and dad come back right now at home, you know, because we just started, the younger child just started preschool and so who comes back? Mama comes back, dad comes back. So have a safe trip. The, the idea of like.

• 28:41Sean Fennessey?

  A kid is literally dropped off at preschool in this film.

• 28:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, well, by preschool, you mean an orphanage, which, you know, is, that's, it's.

• 28:47Sean Fennessey?

  That's where you learn shit.

• 28:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Insensitive to the other children. So, yeah, that affected me, but that was more about personal stuff. Wouldn't she just yells, have a safe trip over and over again? Come on.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, pretty sad. I don't, I don't know. I don't think the director did that young actor any favors. Kind of, kind of an annoying little kid. It's a tough one.

• 29:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I thought she was cute.

• 29:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 29:06Amanda Dobbins?

  She had principles.

• 29:08Sean Fennessey?

  She did, she did. You know what's principles? Godzilla.

• 29:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 29:12Sean Fennessey?

  He stands for something. Stands very tall.

• 29:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Sean Fennessey?

  So you're, you're just, Godzilla was not a thing for you, ever.

• 29:19Amanda Dobbins?

  No, who is sitting me down and saying Godzilla? I mean, you sat Alice down. Yeah.

• 29:25Sean Fennessey?

  I did, I did. Yeah, well, I've been had on this nice journey the last two and a half or three years with Alice. Where we've been rewatching a lot of these movies. Unfortunately, the minus one and minus zero movies.

• 29:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Too violent.

• 29:37Sean Fennessey?

  You can't, they're not, they're not for kids. And it reminded me a little bit of Wildwood and how it's a movie that ostensibly seems like it's for kids and it has a kind of childlike quality. But then I did re-watch the original Godzilla from 54. The Ishiro Honda movie. That's not for kids either. It's basically a post-war drama with, with some man in suit stuff. And so I, the whole series is very strange and it's been through all these multiple eras.

• 30:10Sean Fennessey?

  He has, I think he is the longest running character in movie storytelling continuously. Outpaces James Bond. Outpaces Superman at the movies. I think he outpaces every major character. So he's now had 70 plus years.

• 30:30Sean Fennessey?

  There's the big gap between King Kong movies, so I think they don't count that.

• 30:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 30:33Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's like nine, you know, 1934 is the last one and then it's 1976. Whereas like with this movie, every seven or eight years, there's another Godzilla movie.

• 30:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 30:42Sean Fennessey?

  But you're right, King Kong does precede him.

• 30:45Sean Fennessey?

  I learned re-watching the new Godzilla that originally the plan was for it to be like more of a King Kong, Ray Harryhausen style, like stop motion animation thing. And they couldn't quite get it to work with the budget and so became a man in a suit. And then that became what Godzilla was for years. I'll go through my list quickly.

• 31:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you.

• 31:04Sean Fennessey?

  Mothra versus Godzilla from 1964.

• 31:06Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  Ishiro Honda comes back for this. I chose this because Mothra is my daughter's favorite character. Mothra, of course, is a female moth.

• 31:15Amanda Dobbins?

  I do know that, yeah.

• 31:17Sean Fennessey?

  Who is, be, starts out.

• 31:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Are there moths in heaven?

• 31:21Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Mothra, where Mothra lives is a bit confusing and how Mothra appears in the Godzilla stories. She just kind of shows up. It's like, is it from space? Is she living on another planet? Is she living in kind of the atmosphere? Sometimes she transforms into two fairies who communicate with people. That happens in some of the later Millennium movies.

• 31:39Sean Fennessey?

  But yeah, she loves Mothra. Mothra sings a beautiful song. She has a theme song. Most of the monsters have theme songs in this movie. They start out as rivals, Mothra and Godzilla, but they become friends.

• 31:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 31:49Sean Fennessey?

  And they work together.

• 31:50Amanda Dobbins?

  Listen.

• 31:51Sean Fennessey?

  Mothra not as present in 1968 to destroy all monsters. This is sort of the Avengers end game of Godzilla movies. Where all the monsters come in. Movie itself, not the best movie I've ever seen, not super narratively coherent. Where there's like an island and humans are trying to control the island and control how all the monsters interact on the island and trap them there. And then this leads to a big showdown. Great. Like nine guys in suits beating the shit out of each other for the final 20 minutes of the movie. Would recommend watching on YouTube. It's good fun. Uh, number three is Shin Godzilla.

• 32:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Sean Fennessey?

  Which many people love and I think actually like kick-started this wave of re-appreciation for Godzilla. Cause 2014's US Godzilla movie.

• 32:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Not, yeah.

• 32:34Sean Fennessey?

  A little wonky. There's not enough Godzilla in that one either. Um, but Shin is basically like,

• 32:41Sean Fennessey?

  it's kind of like if Armando Iannucci made a Godzilla movie.

• 32:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh.

• 32:44Sean Fennessey?

  Like it's all about how stupid all of the functionaries and the bureaucracy are and their inability to make decisions. And it's like a very fast cutting movie, very comic. But Godzilla is very, very, very, very scary and like evil and destructive and there's no empathy. There's no funny stuff, like there's no goofiness. All the goofiness is with the humans, but Godzilla is just wrecking shit. Number two is Godzilla versus Biolante.

• 33:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Of course.

• 33:11Sean Fennessey?

  You know about Biolante?

• 33:12Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't.

• 33:13Sean Fennessey?

  Biolante is a giant morphing evolutionary evil plant.

• 33:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:20Sean Fennessey?

  Created by a mad scientist who attempts to revive his daughter by implanting cells into this new, uh, organic figure. Which then leads to horrible outcomes and Godzilla has to go to war with this giant plant.

• 33:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure. Yeah, with the earth.

• 33:37Sean Fennessey?

  My, my entire career has been leading up to this moment of sharing this information with you.

• 33:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I kept, is Biolante Italian?

• 33:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 33:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, great. Now I'm interested.

• 33:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's from Sicily.

• 33:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 33:49Sean Fennessey?

  No, I don't, I mean, I don't know where the titles come from. Godzilla is, is Gojira, which is a whale and a gorilla together in Japanese.

• 33:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 34:00Sean Fennessey?

  Where Biolante comes from, I don't know.

• 34:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 34:02Sean Fennessey?

  But, uh, this movie is incredibly gross. And Godzilla came back in Japan in 1984 in a movie called The Return of Godzilla. That was like, okay. This is the movie after that, five years later, and it's amazing and I wish that there are more movies like it. And then the first one is, of course, is the, the original recipe.

• 34:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Sean Fennessey?

  Which is, I would recommend anyone, yourself included, if you haven't seen this movie, to re-watch it because it is not what you think it is. It's basically an Akira Kurosawa contemporary drama with Godzilla in it. Where there's just many of his, um, his actors in his troupe, including Takashi Shimura is one of the stars of the movie. It's a very seriously played movie. It got horrible reviews in the United States when it came out. I think it was Bosley Crowther was like, maybe it was Vincent Candy was like, this is dreck, um, which is just ridiculous. And the effects work is really like hugely transformative for its time, though now it looks pretty silly to modern audiences. But the actual drama and the acting style and the way that the story is staged is really, really great.

• 35:04Sean Fennessey?

  And so there's really nothing better than that. Couple of honorable mentions for you. Godzilla versus Destroya. You seen that one? 1995?

• 35:11Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 35:12Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 35:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Who's Destroya?

• 35:15Sean Fennessey?

  An even more evil giant creature.

• 35:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Rank the most evil of the.

• 35:21Sean Fennessey?

  Iberia.

• 35:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 35:23Sean Fennessey?

  Iberia, the monster of the deep is pretty bad. Um, Destroya is pretty bad. Space Godzilla is pretty bad.

• 35:29Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, you'd have to be.

• 35:31Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, Mechagodzilla. How could I forget Mechagodzilla? You know about Mechagodzilla?

• 35:35Amanda Dobbins?

  No, is that like the Galactus of Godzillas?

• 35:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a robot Godzilla.

• 35:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, Mechagodzilla, yeah, of course.

• 35:42Sean Fennessey?

  Get that?

• 35:42Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 35:43Sean Fennessey?

  In fact, Terror of Mechagodzilla from 1975, also on my honorable mentions list. And I just want to say Godzilla from 2014, not a successful Godzilla movie. However, the first 45 minutes of the movie is the only modern Godzilla movie until minus one. That got right the feeling of like, how fucking scary would this be if this actually happened? If a gigantic dinosaur-esque creature emerged from the sea and started crushing our cities.

• 36:11Sean Fennessey?

  It would be fucking terrifying. There would be nothing that we could do. Cause in every one of these Godzilla movies, the Americans try to like shoot missiles at it and it never works.

• 36:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Sean Fennessey?

  I just, I like to think of it that way sometimes, you know? What if this actually, what if there was a man of tomorrow?

• 36:25Amanda Dobbins?

  We were talking before we recorded about aging and how much we think about death and how much Jack, producer Jack, who has a birthday soon, happy birthday, Jack, thinks about death. And you and I were just, you know, with the hubris and the, the delusional confidence of two people who are in front of cameras all the time. We're like, we don't think about death. Like I fear it, but I don't think about it at all.

• 36:49Sean Fennessey?

  I think about aging all the time, though.

• 36:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, no, I mean, sure, because we're experiencing it and we are experiencing the consequences of it, but also the joys. But, so I don't think about death enough to like then get my rocks off by watching the scariest possible thing that could happen.

• 37:08Sean Fennessey?

  Well, that's the thing is I don't think about death either, but if a movie can make me think about

• 37:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 37:14Sean Fennessey?

  those stakes, that's effective storytelling.

• 37:16Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 37:17Sean Fennessey?

  Like that's kind of, it's the same thing with horror movies. Like I'm actually not a person who's kind of feels trapped by the, the limitations of existence. I'm just kind of moving along. I'm like, oh, to watch another movie, hang out with my daughter, you know, eat a sandwich. Like I have a very kind of simple approach to life.

• 37:33Amanda Dobbins?

  So number one scariest thing for you is a dinosaur coming up out of the water and smashing the legs?

• 37:39Sean Fennessey?

  I wouldn't, it's not hierarchical, but it is scary.

• 37:43Amanda Dobbins?

  You know what it's related to? What's actually scary for me is not though, the monster.

• 37:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:48Amanda Dobbins?

  I think a tsunami is probably the scariest possible thing.

• 37:51Sean Fennessey?

  What about a blue wave?

• 37:55Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm pro that.

• 37:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, some tsunamis are scary.

• 38:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, just like something coming out of the ocean, like where do you go? This is, it's sort of tied to the whole, I don't like.

• 38:05Sean Fennessey?

  There's movies about that too.

• 38:06Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't like the planes, you know, like, cause where do you hide? Where do you go?

• 38:09Sean Fennessey?

  You don't like, oh, the, the Great Plains.

• 38:10Amanda Dobbins?

  The Great Plains.

• 38:11Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Not flying in a plane.

• 38:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. No, no, no, the Great Plains. Sorry. Yeah. Like Montana.

• 38:15Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 38:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Where I'm just like.

• 38:16Sean Fennessey?

  Cause where do you go in the event of?

• 38:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Where do you go?

• 38:18Sean Fennessey?

  But if you're afraid of a tsunami, the best place to go is the Great Plains. Cause that tsunami is not making its way to Nebraska.

• 38:22Amanda Dobbins?

  But it's, it's, what is scary to me is knowing that something is coming.

• 38:27Sean Fennessey?

  Have you been to the Great Plains?

• 38:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we went to Montana and I came back and I was like, eh, you know?

• 38:31Sean Fennessey?

  Montana's not the Great Plains. There's mountains there. What are you talking about?

• 38:34Amanda Dobbins?

  I meant, well, I meant the open parts, the open.

• 38:37Sean Fennessey?

  You mean just in the middle of the country?

• 38:39Amanda Dobbins?

  No, I don't. Don't try to put words in my mouth. Okay? I can live out with the best of them.

• 38:44Sean Fennessey?

  Like Iowa, like Iowa.

• 38:46Amanda Dobbins?

  No, what, like an, an expanse, an open expanse.

• 38:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 38:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Because I'm trying, I'm trying to explain my fear to you and you just keep like, you know, bringing in JMojo. So what I'm afraid of is it's the sense of you are somewhere and you see like the deep, real, like the terror coming for you. And you know, it's coming and there's nothing that you can do and there's nowhere you can hide.

• 39:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Where there's someone's running at you from far away.

• 39:13Amanda Dobbins?

  And it's just like, I can't, there's nowhere to go. There's no, and there's something about.

• 39:17Sean Fennessey?

  Would it be better or worse if someone was running down a mountain at you?

• 39:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, in the mount situation, like they can trip and fall, you know? I would mostly be watching this and be like, I don't know.

• 39:30Sean Fennessey?

  Have you considered running away?

• 39:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, but in an open space where you're just, you're gonna run and there's nowhere to run to. And the person can see you and it's just kind of all there. Like it's like a big scary wide shot. That is actually the scariest thing to me of all.

• 39:47Sean Fennessey?

  Have you considered studying archery?

• 39:50Amanda Dobbins?

  I took archery at camp. Part of the reason I hated camp.

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  How are you with a crossbow?

• 39:53Amanda Dobbins?

  I hated camp.

• 39:54Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. You hated camp?

• 39:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Don't tell me what to do.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  I feel like that's on the record.

• 39:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I set my own schedule.

• 40:01Sean Fennessey?

  You're so weird. Um, okay. Well.

• 40:05Amanda Dobbins?

  A sleepaway camp. I loved a day camp.

• 40:07Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay. Sleepaway camp.

• 40:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Sean Fennessey?

  I didn't really go to sleepaway camp as a kid, just a basketball camp. That was the only sleepaway camp I went to.

• 40:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay. So now I'm not wearing it anymore?

• 40:15Sean Fennessey?

  I just don't know. I didn't, I never really did sleepaway camp. So I don't, you know, I don't have a strong opinion on you hating it. Day camp is wonderful.

• 40:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Sean Fennessey?

  Day camp was a lot of fun. What else are you gonna do in the summer?

• 40:25Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 40:25Sean Fennessey?

  How else are you gonna kill time?

• 40:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 40:27Sean Fennessey?

  Getting in trouble, getting arrested, you know?

• 40:31Sean Fennessey?

  Any other thoughts on Godzilla?

• 40:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Glad it exists. Glad it did well. Yeah. I mean, we've previously established in the Godzilla versus Kong episodes that I'm more of a Godzilla and you're more of a Kong.

• 40:43Sean Fennessey?

  But do you see in this new dynamic, maybe you have more Gidora in you?

• 40:47Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because that was just sort of, that was elaborate, you know? I couldn't, I couldn't be bothered with that level of evil.

• 40:56Sean Fennessey?

  I'm now imagining a world in which you are felled by one of my strong takes, but then you become even more strong and grow a two, second and third head.

• 41:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 41:05Sean Fennessey?

  That would be a lot. It'd be hard to podcast. Can somebody, do you think somebody can make that meme of you with three heads?

• 41:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Not AI though.

• 41:10Sean Fennessey?

  No, don't, don't use AI. Please don't. Um, let's make an elegant transition to Club Kid.

• 41:18Sean Fennessey?

  Club Kid is, as I said, written, directed and starring Jordan Firstman. It is about the life of a washed up underground party promoter named Peter, who takes an unexpected turn when he is forced to care for Arlo, a 10 year old son he never knew he had. This movie stars Firstman, Cara Delevingne, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Colleen Camp, Saturn Rising, Miss Benny, Diego Calva and Reggie Absalom as Arlo. We saw this movie at the Cannes Film Festival.

• 41:42Amanda Dobbins?

  We sure did.

• 41:42Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think?

• 41:44Amanda Dobbins?

  This is quite simply one of my favorite movies of the year. I loved it. And it is, is a classical movie, right? This is a coming of age story of someone who does not have their shit together and needs to get their shit together. Or wants to get to their shit together, actually, and has, has an event where, that makes him realize, okay, so things are not going the way that I would like them to go. And I'm gonna figure some things out. So it's like a very universal story. It is also so specific of its place and of its culture and of New York and, and of Firstman. I think you can tell that it's a really, really personal story.

• 42:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And I saw it again this weekend and I was struck by how open hearted this movie is, which I think certainly connected with me. It is a very sentimental movie and we don't always respond well to that. I certainly don't. But there's something so genuine and, and clearly just so personal about this movie that, and, and the way that it's shot. And Firstman's performance and his understanding of the world that he's creating, that it just, it works beautifully. I love it.

• 42:55Sean Fennessey?

  You hit something interesting there, cause I, I think I would call it sincere and not sentimental. And it has come under fire, I think, for being a little bit sentimental. And if you think about the movies that are clear, like mile markers for him.

• 43:07Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 43:07Sean Fennessey?

  Like Kramer versus Kramer, um, or an unmarried woman he cited when we talked. Those are really sincere movies, you know? They're, they're, they're constructed. They're imagined stories, but they're really sincere, sentimental. I think indicates maybe like a gloopiness that is unearned. And I don't, I don't, I didn't feel that as I watched this movie. I don't want to slip too far down the discourse rabbit hole before we talk about what's so great about it. But, um, I think everything is situational. And for this movie, to see it at a film festival and not know very much about it. And I only knew Jordan from really his acting work. I didn't really know anything else about him. I think I'd seen him on, uh, The English Teacher. I'd seen him in Rotting in the Sun, the 2021 movie.

• 43:51Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if, I don't even know if I Love LA had premiered at this point. And I thought he was funny. Like that was pretty much all I thought about him. I didn't really know very much about him.

• 44:00Sean Fennessey?

  And I, I too was blown away. I was swept up in this movie completely. I thought it was, uh, really beautiful and, and funny and very, very specific about a scene. And that's something that I love is being taken into a world that I don't know very well. And that includes worlds of outlandish crime stories and assassins. And it also includes, um, guys partying in New York and trying to figure out who they are. And you, you pointed out that like, you know, the movie opens very smartly where it shows him in kind of the absolute throes of his partying days. And then we fast forward and he already knows that he needs to make a change in his life when something comes into his life to make him change. And so to me, this movie is, is about getting older.

• 44:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's about a situation, like everybody comes to this moment in your life, no matter where, what you were doing in your twenties, presumably unless you were a complete teetotaler, you were having a lot of fun. You don't have as much responsibility. You don't have as much money. You're not really worried as much about the future. And you're letting it rip a little bit. And then whether it's 26, like our, our boy Jack is turning this week, or 31, or 35, or 40. Eventually like rent comes due.

• 45:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Sean Fennessey?

  And you gotta turn it over and, and make some changes. And the thing that is introduced in the movie, which is this 10 year old, kind of forces a speed run of those changes.

• 45:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 45:22Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like it probably wouldn't happen this dramatically for most people, but he's forced to wake up and shake off, you know, the, the particles of drugs that are covering his, his body and soul.

• 45:35Amanda Dobbins?

  He's forced to learn about health insurance and school transcripts and find clothes and where to eat breakfast and.

• 45:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. We've had a lot of time to figure all these things out.

• 45:46Amanda Dobbins?

  That's true.

• 45:46Sean Fennessey?

  And he has to do it right away.

• 45:49Amanda Dobbins?

  And also before that, to have a sort of like after hours night, trying to find someone else to take responsibility back for it. So he goes through all the phases of big like, no, no, no, I'm not ready for this. Okay. Now I have to figure out how to solve all these problems. And there is sort of, um, there are stops and starts and makes mistakes and figures out maybe some of the emotional stuff, but some of that, not some of the logistical stuff. And, you know, the, the kid thing.

• 46:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Is real, and I do think the, so Reggie Absalom is the actor who plays Arlo. And is wonderful and has a real connection with Firstman. And so

• 46:31Sean Fennessey?

  They have chemistry.

• 46:32Amanda Dobbins?

  They have real chemistry. And so it makes all the emotional openness a lot more apparent. And then thus undergirds the rest of the decisions that the Jordan Firstman character makes in order to become a grown up. You know, like, he really is, he is a plot device, but he is also in the performance such a little person and highlights, again, more, but it's more emotional, right? It's like ultimately, this person does get some of their life together, but not all of it.

• 47:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's instructive that he's been describing it as a fairy tale.

• 47:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 47:13Sean Fennessey?

  Because fairy tales don't end happily most of the time. Historically, fairy tales are lesson bound and they, they create magical circumstances. Like, what if a 10 year old boy was dropped into your life?

• 47:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 47:25Sean Fennessey?

  And you had to figure it out. But that doesn't necessarily mean you're headed towards a happy ending.

• 47:30Sean Fennessey?

  I, I thought Firstman was just, his performance is really good. It's obviously very sympathetic towards him, which it should be, since he wrote and directed the damn movie.

• 47:39Amanda Dobbins?

  Sure.

• 47:41Sean Fennessey?

  But I thought he was very, very believable, and especially in the more sincere sequences, you know? Like, as the party boy, you get that stuff. Like, it seems like that's ripped completely from his life. The harder work is, as you say, to like, to do the scenes with Arlo or with Kirby Halbaptiste, when he's sort of freaking out at the beginning and realizing like what the stakes are, what's happening to him in, in real time. Or with Diego Calva, when he was introduced as a, you know, figure in his life, as somebody who was working with his new adopted son, or whatever we are, we think Arlo is. And then the way that he becomes a part of Firstman's character's life.

• 48:14Amanda Dobbins?

  An incredible Diego Calva performance. And I, and I credit Firstman for that. I was like, oh, this is what this person can do now in this setting. And again.

• 48:21Sean Fennessey?

  It did feel like it unlocked him in a way that other movies have not totally been able to unlock.

• 48:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. I will say, the film is sympathetic to his character, but it's sympathetic to pretty much every single character. This is not a mean movie.

• 48:34Sean Fennessey?

  Totally agree.

• 48:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I think the only

• 48:36Sean Fennessey?

  Even Cara Delevingne, who takes a lot of, takes a lot of hits.

• 48:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and nobody likes her. Yeah. And I think she's the presumably straight, like, you know, white lady in the, who everyone doesn't want around. Like, sorry, I guess it's me. I'm the Sophie. But, but even that, her character gets some sort of resolution. The only person that it's really mean to is like an unseen UK straight guy who like is, they keep saying is a child abuser, you know? Like, but that's it. Everything else is understanding and at least empathetic of what people are trying to do.

• 49:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. The movie is warm. I think that's really what it comes down to, is like, it is trying, it is trying and I, for me, completely succeeding in making you feel good, even if it has a sadness in the story.

• 49:20Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally.

• 49:21Sean Fennessey?

  It's an interesting contrast with Josephine. Have you seen Josephine yet?

• 49:23Amanda Dobbins?

  No. And they showed the trailer before.

• 49:25Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, really?

• 49:26Amanda Dobbins?

  And I'm just absolutely dreading it. I'm like, I'm, I know everyone liked it. That's, it's not a critical judgment on it. It just looks like the opposite of the Club Kid experience.

• 49:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's such a tough movie, but they're an interesting match in terms of like, what happens when you start caring for a kid? Or when you do care for a kid, or you have a child, or what, you know, whatever, however the story is set up. There are two kind of studies in that in really interesting ways. But in general, I think like the whole world of friendship that is created there and like, who, who comes along for the ride? And who Peter kind of like outgrows or moves beyond and the way that he stays close with Saturn Rising. But, you know, like some of the other people kind of fall away. You know, I've seen the movie come under some criticism for that, but to me, that just feels like such a natural component of aging is like, when you're in a scene, you're with people who are in the scene all the time.

• 50:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Sean Fennessey?

  And as you outgrow a scene, or you move on, or you get interested in something else in your life, you don't see those people as much. That struck me as such a natural, and very, and very New York. I have, I had those exact experiences of like, oh, when I was at bars, four nights a week, I was with these people all the time.

• 50:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Sean Fennessey?

  And then I get older and, you know, if these people that you get older with, if they have kids or their lifestyle evolves, that struck me as very normal.

• 50:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, I mean, this is a movie that is born of a subculture. And if you're in the subculture and you feel like it's selling out, or it's representing someone, you know, moving on, using, but like, who am I? Who is the, you know, white lady in the T-shirt to say anything? But it is, I really felt like a movie about community and found, and, and found family in these beautiful relationships that are specific to this queer community. And like, Arlo comes in as his son and sort of like a surprise family. But then the film also reveals the family that he's created around him and all of the people who become a part of his life.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  And the way that they care for Arlo.

• 51:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly. Yeah. So I, I think it is, some things get left behind. And I guess if like sobriety is conservative, then sure. But I do also

• 51:26Sean Fennessey?

  Is it? I actually don't know.

• 51:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, I don't know. And, you know, and maybe it is. And again, like, we don't know what all the drug references in this movie means. So who are you and I to totally

• 51:34Sean Fennessey?

  I'm such a square. Yeah.

• 51:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Like, talk about it. Like, truly, like, what is G? You know? Like, could someone let me know? Don't you guys also think it's a good sign that the movie is eliciting such a strong reaction? That's how you know you're doing it right. Yes.

• 51:48Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I, I, I think it's, it was, it was a very weird movie discourse weekend. And I, I had been like out on this for a long time. And for whatever reason, I was just on social media a lot this weekend. And I just kept getting fed like Wild takes about a lot of movies.

• 52:05Amanda Dobbins?

  Well, I don't know what you guys are doing on Wild Horse 9, but like, we're not on the train with you.

• 52:10Sean Fennessey?

  It was like Wild Horse 9, La Bola Negra, Club Kid. You think these movies were like the worst tripe in the universe? And I'm like, what movies are people watching out there that, that necessitate this level of vitriol and bad faith reads?

• 52:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 52:23Sean Fennessey?

  So I'm inevitably bringing a little bit of that to the conversation, which I try to resist historically. But I just had such a lovely, like, I had a great experience watching this movie the first time. I cried, I laughed, I thought it was just like, I'm like, this is exactly what I'm begging people for. I'm like, new voice, a world I don't live inside of, but is demonstrated beautifully, great performances, original story, but with steeped, steeped, steeped in Hollywood style.

• 52:49Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, it is new and fresh and an announcement, and it is also just so very, very classical. It's like, we have seen this before in many different ways. Did you clock that some of the characters are watching Lady Bird in the world of this movie at some point? Which is wonderful. And, you know, another of my favorite movies, and they are in a lineage. I don't think we're talking enough about Baby Boom in terms of a kid shows up in your life, and then you reject the culture that you're in and move to the country and start dating a doctor. In that case, a veterinarian. I am sorry that I called him a pediatrician when he was a veterinarian.

• 53:23Sean Fennessey?

  Right. But still a doctor.

• 53:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, still.

• 53:25Sean Fennessey?

  You call a veterinarian doctor, right? You do. Yeah, you do. Of course you do.

• 53:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Do you think that Baby Boom, when Big Daddy came out, that people acknowledged Baby Boom's influence on that film?

• 53:38Amanda Dobbins?

  No, because there's a gendered thing here in terms of men versus women. And like, for me, the reference here was Kramer versus Kramer, because it does have all of the good, charming, like, solo dad learning what to do with this kid stuff. Yeah, 10 year old boy. And, and some of those are the best scenes, like when they first go to the, the pizzeria. And he's allergic to dairy. And then screaming at each other in the bathroom. It's so, it's really, really funny.

• 54:04Sean Fennessey?

  And the I love those early sequences when they first get together, because it's, it shows you kind of the, the myth of ease in parenting so well. Where it's like, you imagine when you don't have children, that you're like, yeah, you just like taking them out to pizza. You just hang out. I won't be like my parents. I'll be, I'll be cool. And we'll just hang out. We'll go to the record store and I'll spend $300 on an Elliott Smith album for you. And it'll just be so easy. And of course,

• 54:26Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 54:26Sean Fennessey?

  That's one nice day in a 31 day month, you know? Like, you just, that's impossible to replicate all the time. And you don't know what's around the corner at any given moment. The movie's very wise about that. You know, Firstman's not a parent, and he, he knows some of those things that are the trap doors of taking care of a kid that I thought was very insightful and very fun. The other thing too is, the movie's shot on 35 millimeter. It looks beautiful.

• 54:46Amanda Dobbins?

  So good.

• 54:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's in New York I love. It's a New York that you don't see in the movies very often, shot in Chinatown in the Lower East Side, which still kind of looks like what Chinatown in the Lower East Side looked like 40 years ago, 20 years ago.

• 54:55Amanda Dobbins?

  And Balthazar.

• 54:56Sean Fennessey?

  And, and Balthazar, of course.

• 54:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is just a, just a chef's kiss moment for me. And, and that is, that is on location in Balthazar.

• 55:03Sean Fennessey?

  100%.

• 55:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Once again, film on location.

• 55:05Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. And, and, and just really strong performances all around. I think.

• 55:14Sean Fennessey?

  I'm curious to see like what Jordan does.

• 55:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 55:19Sean Fennessey?

  Um, cause you, this is one of those things like this is something that, you know, Warren Beatty did, this is something that like Clint Eastwood did, like a lot of people would kind of grab control of their persona and they would be like, you, you don't get to tell me who I am. Like I'm going to make who I am and I'm going to redefine who I am as a star. And, or he could now get, I don't know about movie star parts, but he could, he's a, he's going to be a higher level actor now than the third or fourth lead on I Love LA.

• 55:47Amanda Dobbins?

  And he clearly has the chops. And as you said, you know, directs himself in it. And my husband pointed out, like every fit is immaculate, you know, he, and he does, he looks so handsome in every single image, even when he's hungover and wearing giant shorts. So, but he's also designed that, right? So can he, he has a presence. He's definitely a star. Does he want to do that in someone else's film? Does he only want to craft it for himself?

• 56:16Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Amanda Dobbins?

  At the same time, what this movie is, is so specific and so personal, you don't have like 45 of these sitting on a shelf, you know, like how many of these types of stories where you, where you have a, a big moment of change in your life. So, I don't know. I would love to, I would be excited to see him in other movies. He is also funny. Like this movie is very, very funny and funny in, I guess, a not quite cynical, but a deadpan sort of way that is very much my humor, but still is never mean spirited. Uh, not to spoil any other movies that we're about to talk about. And so, but he can be funny in other people's movies, you know?

• 56:59Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Eldar Esgandarov, who plays his, uh, his roommate, is fucking hysterical in this movie. Um, and he's, he's also in the debut. I don't know. You haven't seen the debut yet, right?

• 57:09Amanda Dobbins?

  No, no, no.

• 57:10Sean Fennessey?

  But he just, he just jumps off the screen and gets 100 laugh lines in the movie.

• 57:13Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm, I'm really happy to have this T-shirt, but the T-shirt that I wanted is like, do you know what it's like to be an upcoming queer philosopher?

• 57:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 57:23Amanda Dobbins?

  And then, but also then the cut to Jordan Firstman, who just holds, where he's like, no, no, I don't. It's really funny, funny stuff.

• 57:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. This is a great movie. People should go see this movie. It has an eerie, eerie similarity to Fjord. I don't know if you noticed that?

• 57:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, sure.

• 57:37Sean Fennessey?

  About Child Protective Services?

• 57:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. But in this case, I mean, this is even like a fairly empathetic and sunny version of Child Protective Services and the involvement of not one, but two governments in this child's life. And their resolution is maybe not the resolution that the characters want, but is the one in the heart of hearts that does make sense for, I guess, I don't really know. I think he would have a great time. Uh, Arlo would be, would be fine, uh, with Peter and Diego Calva, uh, on the Lower East Side. But, you know, the child services and the government's involvement in family life is far more complicated and not as sunny as this.

• 58:20Sean Fennessey?

  I hope to never learn more about it.

• 58:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Exactly.

• 58:22Sean Fennessey?

  By the way, programming announcement, next Tuesday's episode, we will go deep on Fjord.

• 58:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Which, and you know, maybe we'll talk more about that. But they, so they have a different, uh, view of the world, I would say.

• 58:34Sean Fennessey?

  I, I wouldn't, I don't want to, um, fail to mention, I, I've recently gotten into fisting, low key spiritual, which I thought was a great line from this movie as well. I've heard that. Yeah.

• 58:48Amanda Dobbins?

  But what then, what does it say? But I got one hole.

• 58:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. G, by the way, I believe is GHB.

• 58:54Amanda Dobbins?

  So that's what Zach said.

• 58:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Amanda Dobbins?

  And listen, I mean, that's what the internet said, but when you Google these things, you know, it's, you get weird results. So.

• 59:02Sean Fennessey?

  Can you, do you know what GHB stands for?

• 59:05Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 59:05Sean Fennessey?

  Gamma hydroxybutyrate?

• 59:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 59:09Sean Fennessey?

  You know, gamma rays, that's what, that's.

• 59:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• 59:12Sean Fennessey?

  That's the Hulk. So the Hulk was exposed to gamma radiation and that led to him becoming a giant green monster. Does GHB work in the same way?

• 59:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, I, I don't know.

• 59:22Sean Fennessey?

  Like, would you Hulk out if you, if you were on G?

• 59:24Amanda Dobbins?

  I think, I think geeing out is very bad, according to this movie. That's when the drug monitors show up at the club and they got to get Arlo out. You know, I know what a little Charlie and a little Kirk is, so we'll leave it at that.

• 59:37Amanda Dobbins?

  My favorite Letterboxd list now is, um, movies that reference Charlie Kirk and also someone has a cocaine problem and it's just, you can see everything and Club Kid are the only two movies from this year.

• 59:47Sean Fennessey?

  Did someone make that list?

• 59:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, it's a very good list. Yeah.

• 59:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's a very you list. All right. We're going to take a quick break and get into the cat in the hat right after this.

• 59:57Sean Fennessey?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is all about choices, like whether it's a night for a Hollywood blockbuster that's got everyone talking, or an indie flick by a one to watch director. At State Farm, their goal is to help you make decisions that you feel good about. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage for your needs and budget. So you can get back to Friday movie nights, 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.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of, major depressive disorder. I carry sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 1:00:57Speaker 04

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

• 1:01:01Speaker 05

  This little light of mine, in the dark, found a hopeful sign.

• 1:01:08Speaker 06

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• 1:02:32Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. The cat in the hat. Did you go solo or did you take a child?

• 1:02:35Amanda Dobbins?

  I took Knox, which made me feel worse about it.

• 1:02:38Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Alice liked it. She thought it was pretty funny.

• 1:02:41Amanda Dobbins?

  I think he did laugh a couple of times. Uh, his review was that the cat got fired. So.

• 1:02:47Sean Fennessey?

  Not accurate.

• 1:02:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Not accurate, but I didn't really want to get into all of the bureaucratic issues with him. But just to your point that he seemed to take the professional, cutesy bureaucratic aspects of this movie more to heart than you or I did.

• 1:03:02Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Okay. Well, let me give the listener some context. So the movie is written and directed by Alessandro Carlone and Erica Riva Noah. Um, it stars Bill Hader, Matt Berry, Quinta Brunson. Um, the cat, an agent for the Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration LLC, attempts to help siblings Gabby and Sebastian adjust to a new town. Utilizing a time rewinding go backer device and his trademark chaotic style, he aims to restore their imagination before losing his magical hat.

• 1:03:33Sean Fennessey?

  Dr. Seuss, you were raised with Dr. Seuss?

• 1:03:35Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. And then, I don't know if you know this, but Dr. Seuss was a Dartmouth graduate. And so they were, they're very big on that. They were really that.

• 1:03:44Sean Fennessey?

  Was he one of your professors? Theodore Geisel?

• 1:03:46Amanda Dobbins?

  No, he wasn't. But he, but they would tie in Dr. Seuss at every opportunity.

• 1:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  Is that so?

• 1:03:52Amanda Dobbins?

  So, yeah, I don't know.

• 1:03:54Sean Fennessey?

  Nothing screams college like Dr. Seuss.

• 1:03:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I think it was like an early, oh, the places you'll go era before that was like every single graduation, whatever. I don't know. Like I, I don't raise money for the college. I don't give money to the college. No, I don't.

• 1:04:07Sean Fennessey?

  But you did go to Dartmouth and you graduated.

• 1:04:10Amanda Dobbins?

  I did. I have a degree.

• 1:04:12Sean Fennessey?

  Track her down. She wants, she wants to give you some of her money. Uh, I, I certainly was raised with Dr. Seuss, but I wouldn't say it was a religion. Like I don't think we had every book.

• 1:04:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:23Sean Fennessey?

  And I, you know, when you have kids, you kind of, you think about what should be in the library or people are giving you books all the time. And I think we got multiple sets of like the, kind of the core original, you know, the green eggs and ham. And, um, you know, I think his writing style is very fun, obviously, but there is something really interesting about its lack of narrative shape, which differs from some other books in that it's more an exploration of language and.

• 1:04:51Amanda Dobbins?

  And rhythm?

• 1:04:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Yeah. And style. Um, it's kind of an, those books are kind of an exercise. And they're, when they're going and you're like reading them at a fast pace and you're like stacking phrase onto phrase, onto phrase, onto phrase. It can be kind of fun as a parent, but I never come away from one of those books feeling like, well, my child is learning about like narrative structure here.

• 1:05:10Amanda Dobbins?

  No.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  They're just not really like that.

• 1:05:12Amanda Dobbins?

  They're children's books for the, they're building locks for language and, and like probably poetry, if you want to get to like a grown up, uh, literary style. And I appreciate them for that. There's nothing that drives me crazier than reading a kid's book that is in some sort of verse, but they can't get the meter right. And then they just, you know, alternate it and suddenly they're like 18 syllables. And I'm like, what are you talking about? But, you know, Dr. Seuss would never, Maurice Sendak would never.

• 1:05:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Amanda Dobbins?

  So I appreciate that.

• 1:05:40Sean Fennessey?

  Similar issues in terms of the ability to adapt their works, because I, I say that not as a criticism of the writing of Dr. Seuss. It's more like they serve a wonderful function in terms of introducing children to language, but they're not really stories. And so there have been a great number of adaptations of their stories over the years on the big screen. And most of them don't really work because they can't withstand 90 to 110 minutes of story. I found this to be very similar. Um,

• 1:06:07Sean Fennessey?

  I thought this was fine, like not horrible. I think it could be worse. I think it's interesting in the aftermath of, um, some of the conversations we've had about movies like Hoppers and Forgotten Island this year and, and Super Mario Brothers Galaxy movie, and this sense that there is like a little bit of a chaos happening inside of children's storytelling right now that worries me a little bit.

• 1:06:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:06:30Sean Fennessey?

  And then this movie stacks on top of that.

• 1:06:35Sean Fennessey?

  This story that is not dissimilar from some of the Godzilla story as well, which is like that bureaucracy and corporate strategy is the tent under which a lot of children's storytelling needs to operate. And this is the aftermath of like, of movies like Monsters, Inc., where we learn that scaring has like a value to a society. And so, everybody goes to their job every day to scare little children. And like Inside Out, where like the human mind is this sort of very delicately calibrated balance and everyone has their role to play. And there are these kind of like social deconstructions. They're very like, uh, they're very semiotic.

• 1:07:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:16Sean Fennessey?

  And the way that, and that just seems like an odd thing to keep doing for kids movies. And The Cat in the Hat, which otherwise doesn't really have a world, builds out this world where sad kids who are bored on rainy days or without anything to do, need to be introduced to fun by this outside force in, from the Institute for the Institution of Imagination and Inspiration, LLC. And so, that's the role that the cat plays in the movie. And this is again, this is kind of similar to Zootopia.

• 1:07:44Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of similar to Coyote versus Acme, where you're like, you're in a world of, of legal order and we need to, the way that we get the narrative going is by having a lawsuit. It just makes these movies seem less fun to me. Maybe the kids don't realize what, what they're being introduced to. And it's the only way you can kind of create a shell around which to build a movie. But there's a lot of kids movies are like this nowadays.

• 1:08:09Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that my son responded to it because he's been into Monsters, Inc. Not because of the movie, but because of the Yoto card that you gave to us.

• 1:08:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Thank you. And so, he knows that structure and it's just very clearly borrowing, in this specific case, The Cat in the Hat, the film is borrowing from Monsters, Inc., which you could argue is borrowing from the original concept of The Cat in the Hat, the book, which is just that, you know, a monster comes in to, to spice up your life or something, a fairy tale character comes into, yeah, comes in to spice up your life. So, I think that, but otherwise, to me, it seemed like all of these jokes were very like surface level, like let's make a joke about HR for the parent stuff.

• 1:08:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And so, it seemed like the structure that was trying to keep the parents entertained while the kids watched the things one through things 700, like slapped each other in the face. So, some of it, it was just like imbalance to me. And again, trying a lot of different things. Then they have to go through an entire world to find a clock that's gonna end time as we know it

• 1:09:22Sean Fennessey?

  The go backer.

• 1:09:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, so once again, there becomes some sort of like existential issue in a movie that is about a cat in the hat and also some kids that are sad that they moved. And it's just, the, the amount of the stakes that they, amount of stuff that they try to jam in and it just becomes overwhelming and does not make any real sense.

• 1:09:46Sean Fennessey?

  Did you get the Looney Tunes cartoon before this movie?

• 1:09:49Amanda Dobbins?

  Hmm, we were late, so, because there was a, some sort of convention at the Pasadena Convention Center, across the street from the Regal Paseo.

• 1:09:58Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 1:09:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Like not CinemaCon, not Comic Con, but something in the vicinity.

• 1:10:03Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:10:03Amanda Dobbins?

  So, we had to spend some time looking at the characters and parking.

• 1:10:08Sean Fennessey?

  I see.

• 1:10:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Sean Fennessey?

  They, they ran a, what I thought was a new Looney Tunes cartoon, centered around Daffy Duck. And it was a little bit postmodern, because rather than hunting for ducks, Elmer Fudd was watching soccer at home. And Bugs was there and Bugs would like set up Elmer Fudd to get really into soccer. But it was like, it was a proper Looney Tunes cartoon. It was five minutes long. It was very entertaining. And it was not, there was some kind of modern societal idea grafted on top of it, but it wasn't so much so that it didn't feel like it was for kids. And

• 1:10:48Amanda Dobbins?

  The, the modern societal ideas grafted onto this, besides like, everybody has a part to play in capitalism, is that, um,

• 1:10:56Sean Fennessey?

  That is a message of the movie.

• 1:10:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Is that moms are, they're at their best when they're caring for other people. I was so pissed at all of the mom stuff in this movie. And the big reveal is that she used to be cool and creative, but then she decided that the most important thing to her was taking care of other people. Which then now, you know, and including her children. So, she's moved and given up her whole life so they can be in the marching band. And then the other woman in, character in the movie is an evil landlord, fine, who only shops at Home Goods and

• 1:11:32Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, you felt attacked.

• 1:11:34Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh, yes, as you know, my, I, my house is covered in live, laugh, love.

• 1:11:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Amanda Dobbins?

  I do actually want to make Jam Session t-shirts that say Jam Session, Live, Laugh, Love. I think that would be funny.

• 1:11:43Sean Fennessey?

  Great, you should call Jordan Firstman, he's really good at t-shirts.

• 1:11:48Amanda Dobbins?

  So, I was underwhelmed by that. It, it felt like a very you got this, Mama, the movie.

• 1:11:54Sean Fennessey?

  It did, but she's not in the movie. That's the thing is, she's out working, you know? Single mom.

• 1:11:58Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:11:58Sean Fennessey?

  What happened to dad? Where's he at?

• 1:12:00Amanda Dobbins?

  I don't know.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  Nowhere to be seen.

• 1:12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. He wasn't visited by The Cat in the Hat. He wasn't rocking out at the nursing home.

• 1:12:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think there's something, I, it, it is the Pixar hangover. We're, we're in the major Pixar hangover. 25 years of Pixar's utter dominance, not just in style, but in storytelling approach, where you have to blend a kind of antic, knowing sensibility that will appeal to parents with wider structures, so that there's a more elaborate world on top of a sense of real emotionality that can sometimes tip into saccharin. I'm still kind of a mark for the Pixar when it's doing it well. Like Toy Story 5, as you know, like that really worked for me.

• 1:12:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:49Sean Fennessey?

  But when it's in like lesser hands, as this movie seems to be in, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of tough.

• 1:12:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Just remember that I saw like an Andrew Stanton interview. That was like, Andrew Stanton believes that there can be a balance in kids and devices. And I was like, I bet he does. Uh, anyway. Yeah, I, I mean, I just, this isn't, you know, executed at the level of even Toy Story 5. And it is trying to do all of the things that those stories do, but with like not a good script. It's not very funny.

• 1:13:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:22Amanda Dobbins?

  I think that Bill Hader is perfectly good as Cat in the Hat. And otherwise, the voice performances are not very good.

• 1:13:27Sean Fennessey?

  I liked Waffles.

• 1:13:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Eh, but like Waffles doesn't have any good lines.

• 1:13:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I thought he was pretty funny.

• 1:13:32Amanda Dobbins?

  I was kind of charmed by the things, except then I was like, my children do not need examples of people hitting each other, so.

• 1:13:40Sean Fennessey?

  They're pretty minions coded, the things.

• 1:13:42Amanda Dobbins?

  They are, and that's what we like about it. The other day, uh, my, one of my sons just set off walking in the neighborhood and he said, going to see the minions, Mama, because there were some Halloween decoration minions. So, that was beautiful to me.

• 1:13:55Sean Fennessey?

  Great, you've passed it down.

• 1:13:56Amanda Dobbins?

  But, I mean, this, the script's not very funny. And again, there's this disconnect between they like, they have this IP, but it has nothing besides the recognizable name of The Cat in the Hat. And they can't translate anything about what was good about the original. So, they have to borrow thirdhand versions of other stuff.

• 1:14:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:14Amanda Dobbins?

  To make a movie that is like, it's not bad. I didn't think it looked as bad as some other movies that I've seen.

• 1:14:20Sean Fennessey?

  I agree, I think the animation is pretty good.

• 1:14:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, and, and the colors are really beautiful. It doesn't, it doesn't look sloppy, so I appreciated that, but.

• 1:14:27Sean Fennessey?

  When they go into the boxes is kind of interesting. It's very Inside Out coded.

• 1:14:30Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:30Sean Fennessey?

  But the style of, of animation is good, you're right. It's just so strange that there are zero good Doctors, the Lorax, Horton, Here's a Who. There's a handful of these in the last 20 years. The Grinch movie, like those movies are not good. The original Grinch TV special obviously is amazing. And there have been some good TV specials over the years, but they haven't really cracked this egg yet.

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Do you guys have any relationship to the 2003 film, The Cat in the Hat?

• 1:14:56Sean Fennessey?

  I watched it for the first time with my daughter, who loved it. And I thought, I thought it was pretty evil.

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I watched that when I was six, probably 500 times.

• 1:15:04Sean Fennessey?

  Did you?

• 1:15:04Speaker 04

  So, it's, it is awful, but it's kind of just like forever comfort in my brain.

• 1:15:09Sean Fennessey?

  Interesting, I mean.

• 1:15:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's bad.

• 1:15:10Sean Fennessey?

  Mike Myers is unnerving. It's also has a very mature sense of humor for a movie, essentially, for kids.

• 1:15:15Speaker 04

  It does.

• 1:15:15Sean Fennessey?

  Have you seen it before? You haven't seen it?

• 1:15:17Amanda Dobbins?

  No, or, I mean, it rings a bell, but it then is also kind of exists in my head with the Jim Carrey Grinch and that, you know, those were of an era and a, and a performance style.

• 1:15:30Sean Fennessey?

  Wasn't a fan of that one either, though I've been told to shut the fuck up about that opinion.

• 1:15:33Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay, well, I mean, he suffered a lot in that makeup chair, so.

• 1:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  Jim Carrey did.

• 1:15:36Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, but it was worth it. You know, director of that film? Ron Howard.

• 1:15:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Uh huh.

• 1:15:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. I think weird thing with Paramount where they have three animation houses under their stead now, and we'll see what happens. This is Warner Brothers Animation. By the way, another, another L for Warner Brothers that a movie like this only opened to 20 million.

• 1:15:57Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:57Sean Fennessey?

  Epic cold streak right now. What are you gonna do to fix it?

• 1:16:00Amanda Dobbins?

  [laughing]

• 1:16:02Sean Fennessey?

  Have you seen Misty Green?

• 1:16:04Amanda Dobbins?

  I have.

• 1:16:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let's talk about this. This is sticky wicked.

• 1:16:08Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:08Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, written and directed by Chris Rock. This movie was released in October and came and went. It, I don't think it played on more than 200 screens. It did not do well financially at all. And then this funny thing happened where the producer of the film, Peter Rice, was hired by Netflix.

• 1:16:25Amanda Dobbins?

  Look at that.

• 1:16:26Sean Fennessey?

  Low and behold, the film, I think skipped VOD entirely. And on this Monday, it goes straight to Netflix. So people will get a chance to see this movie, which stars Rosalind Elizar, Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace, and Chris Rock. You look at that cast, you'd think, why was this movie?

• 1:16:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Lights out.

• 1:16:44Sean Fennessey?

  Not marketed, straight up, straight up the wazoo. Uh, we'll talk about that in a minute. Award-winning actress Misty Green stuck in the throes of a fading career, revises her past, and addresses her personal demons as she tries for a comeback after reconnecting with her former talent agent. What'd you think about this movie?

• 1:16:59Amanda Dobbins?

  One of Chris Rock's better movies and left a very bad taste in my mouth.

• 1:17:04Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Amanda Dobbins?

  And I've been trying to figure out, you know, there has been, speaking of discourse, some questions about the representation of the women characters in this film. And I, I don't know if I think this movie is misogynistic. I think it's just mean. And I think it's mean to pretty much everyone, but the character played by Chris Rock.

• 1:17:24Sean Fennessey?

  Hundred percent true.

• 1:17:26Amanda Dobbins?

  Which is like, which is like very notable. Um, but I did find myself kinda itchy at some of the scenes and, and some of the choices with respect both to the women characters and the, and the movie at large. It just kinda feels odd. That said, I think there were a lot of really great performances in it.

• 1:17:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's a very strange movie. It's, this is like a classic mixed for me where there's things about it I really liked. I mean, it's a movie with, Daniel Kaluuya and Adam Driver doing great work, really great work. Rosalind Elizar, I'd not seen her before.

• 1:17:58Amanda Dobbins?

  Oh, because you're not a Slow Horses person.

• 1:18:00Sean Fennessey?

  I don't watch Slow Horses.

• 1:18:00Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and she's magnificent. She has an incredible power on screen. She really is captivating. Um, I think that there are times when I think her character is given a fair shake and there's a real effort to give her a dimensionality that you don't see. And then there are other times where you don't really understand her motivations. You don't understand her relationships. There's stuff between her and the Anna Kendrick character where I'm just like, this is just what like, a, a mean divorced guy thinks about how two women talk.

• 1:18:27Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:28Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and you know, Chris Rock, who for me, absolute generational figure. Um, going back to seeing him in, in stuff like, uh, uh, New Jack City, and then seeing him on SNL, and then Bring the Pain, just like changing my life and being one of my favorite things in the world. Like, I absolutely admire and really love his comedy. But his comedy is very mean. It is very sharp and hard, and it always has been. And it's interesting because like in his movies, he never quite could get to that. He, that didn't really translate. He was always making these kind of high concept movies that were kind of frothy and fun and didn't really, and this actually is his sensibility, but he chose to make a movie about a, like a, an aging woman?

• 1:19:13Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  And it's like not quite a fit with that tone. You know what I mean?

• 1:19:19Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes. I keep wondering if he didn't play the character that he plays in the film, what I feel differently about the tone of the film?

• 1:19:30Sean Fennessey?

  He plays a filmmaker who, um, is a real nice guy. Uh,

• 1:19:36Amanda Dobbins?

  And is just doing his best to give someone a second chance.

• 1:19:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yes. And

• 1:19:40Amanda Dobbins?

  And hear someone out.

• 1:19:41Sean Fennessey?

  And he also lacks, his character lacks a dimensionality. He gets a lot of funny lines and the movie kinda shifts gears pretty dramatically when he is like having dinner with her and just kinda doing Chris Rock's stand-up for 10 minutes. And it's very entertaining, but it feels out of place in the movie. And then there are these more sinister elements where you've got, Adam Driver plays this conniving, almost satanic, uh, film producer, and the way that he operates with women is very suspect. Daniel Kaluuya plays Misty's brother, who has some serious mental health struggles, and then finds himself ensnared in this kind of, um, strange story about the LAPD that intersects with this film. Um, Topher Grace is also kind of in another movie where he's playing like a dopey agent character

• 1:20:22Sean Fennessey?

  who has some unethical practices, but is really trying to get Misty the part that she deserves.

• 1:20:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:20:30Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really, really like embittered movie about Hollywood and how hard Hollywood is. And you can feel Rock bringing some of his struggles with making movies and acting in movies to, to the table. And it does feel a little bit like The Bad and the Beautiful or Two Weeks in Another Town or The Player, where it's like some stuff's so specific that it feels pulled directly from personal experience. But then some stuff is so weird and vague where it's like, why is Dreamgirls the movie that's being remade when there was a Dreamgirls movie in this century? But it's like they needed a shorthand for the audience to understand like what Misty Green, like what kind of actor Misty Green is.

• 1:21:04Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:21:05Sean Fennessey?

  It's really, it's kind of all over the place. I kinda liked it, but I kinda was frustrated by it.

• 1:21:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I mean, it is a movie about LA and Hollywood and, and we love those.

• 1:21:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:14Amanda Dobbins?

  And we like all of the actors, including Chris Rock. So I, there is, every moment that I was kinda like, I don't know what's going on here. Then there was something that made me laugh or something I recognized. Because again, it does have that, like memoiristic sort of pulled from actual, um, experiences feel to it. I don't know. I, I guess it's in common with The Player, but The Player has some distance and this movie feels like it has no distance from what is happening.

• 1:21:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's not really satire. It's just melodrama. It's just showing you things that you'll recognize in the world of Hollywood. And then the, the part that is more satirical is the story of the homeless and how that works in Los Angeles. The movie just like, is trying to do nine things at the same time.

• 1:21:59Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, that did not land.

• 1:22:00Sean Fennessey?

  And again, like I kinda admire him for doing it. There's a version of this in another movie that's coming out later this year that handles this much more visually elegantly, I would say. And look, there is a massive homeless problem in Los Angeles. And it is, it's, there is an absurd, um, contrast of lifestyle experience in this city where everyone is trying to pretend it's not happening. The way that people complain about it in this city makes them seem like the most evil people in the world, where it's just an inconvenience to them and not to the individual people who are struggling. We've had multiple election cycles in this city where people are promising to fix this issue, which is not fixable with a one size fits all kind of thing. And I, I give him credit for trying to get at that feeling of like, social distortion that we're living through.

• 1:22:45Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:22:45Sean Fennessey?

  But it's, this isn't the right movie for that.

• 1:22:47Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. And, and then it's also muddled in with so much ugliness towards other things that it's portraying that you can't, like, he is trying to make a point about the Los Angeles that you see on the screen and that is performed versus the Los Angeles that many people are living. And even the Misty Green character like starts overlooking the Pacific, like in, uh, the Palisades.

• 1:23:07Sean Fennessey?

  And she's threatened with homelessness. That's the thing.

• 1:23:09Amanda Dobbins?

  And then she is living in her car at some point. So I, I do sort of understand why it's there, but there's just tonally, because it's in so many different places. And also again, because it doesn't have any distance. It's still working through, it's like, this is a very angry movie, you know, which is like, that's, which I think there's plenty of reason to, to be, but it's, I, I don't know. There's, there's a lot.

• 1:23:30Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. It's kind of the, it is kind of the dark evil cousin of Club Kid, where it's like, it's the opposite coast.

• 1:23:38Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Sean Fennessey?

  Everyone who's on, everyone's on drugs, everyone's a vampire.

• 1:23:41Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Sean Fennessey?

  Everyone, no one keeps their promise. Everything is gonna come back to bite you. If you don't work hard, you're gonna get, you know, drummed out of this industry.

• 1:23:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Right.

• 1:23:52Sean Fennessey?

  Um, it

• 1:23:54Amanda Dobbins?

  And if you do work hard, you still might, because they're like on, you know, it's, it's not a fair place and

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I, I kinda like having movies like this in the culture where like, it's really trying to do something. It, it maybe, it itself doesn't have its, have enough distance from its own interests.

• 1:24:11Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:11Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and I completely agree with you about the female characters. It's kinda jarring at times. Where like the Amy Landikar character is the same thing, the

• 1:24:18Amanda Dobbins?

  Just shows up and is yelling and, yeah. And then, and then they're just fighting over, like, all women fight about is, you know, access to real estate funded by men. It's like not ideal.

• 1:24:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. What a strange movie. Um, this, this is also like, it's that time of year where all the hopefuls are starting to fall away, you know, like this, six months ago, I was like, oh, maybe, maybe Chris, eight 24, Chris Rock's Oscar moment. And then resigned to the dustbin.

• 1:24:48Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:48Sean Fennessey?

  Um, you feeling good?

• 1:24:52Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah. Two good movies, including one of my favorites of the year.

• 1:24:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Amanda Dobbins?

  Two mixed, two negative, in the case of Cat in the Hat.

• 1:25:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Amanda Dobbins?

  It's like, those are good numbers, right? That's a decent batting average.

• 1:25:05Sean Fennessey?

  There's, there's so much stuff coming out. I mean, I, this month, I had, like, I had a headache.

• 1:25:10Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Sean Fennessey?

  You know, because I play Rocky.

• 1:25:14Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:15Sean Fennessey?

  Being Human.

• 1:25:15Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:25:16Sean Fennessey?

  Fjord.

• 1:25:17Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:18Sean Fennessey?

  Ebenezer, your boy.

• 1:25:19Amanda Dobbins?

  I can't, I can't believe you're doing this to me.

• 1:25:20Sean Fennessey?

  Ebenezer for sure. We're doing it. We're covering it.

• 1:25:22Amanda Dobbins?

  Tell the people what else we're doing on the Ebenezer episode.

• 1:25:25Sean Fennessey?

  Christmas Carol movie rankings?

• 1:25:27Amanda Dobbins?

  I sent you some what I thought was really fun gossip, uh, via text. Didn't get a response and then woke up the next morning to just, you were like, cool. And then sent me

• 1:25:39Sean Fennessey?

  What was the gossip?

• 1:25:39Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm not gonna share that on the podcast.

• 1:25:41Sean Fennessey?

  Why not?

• 1:25:42Amanda Dobbins?

  And then you were like, cool. And then sent me a link to a private Letterboxd list of all the Christmas Carol movies so I could be prepared to rank them. It's not, uh, that's not the kind of, uh,

• 1:25:54Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly what people think is happening.

• 1:25:56Amanda Dobbins?

  I know. I know.

• 1:25:58Sean Fennessey?

  And it's important to be true to yourself.

• 1:25:59Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:26:01Sean Fennessey?

  That I

• 1:26:01Amanda Dobbins?

  Zach came in last night as I was watching one of them and he was like, what are you watching? And I was like, I honestly can't talk to you about it right now.

• 1:26:06Sean Fennessey?

  There are 13 of them.

• 1:26:09Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 1:26:11Sean Fennessey?

  13.

• 1:26:12Amanda Dobbins?

  Mm-hmm. You a big dickheads guy?

• 1:26:16Sean Fennessey?

  An interesting question. I hated reading the books in school, hated reading them.

• 1:26:21Amanda Dobbins?

  Yes.

• 1:26:21Sean Fennessey?

  But I'm glad I read them.

• 1:26:23Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:23Sean Fennessey?

  And I read a bunch of them.

• 1:26:24Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:25Sean Fennessey?

  And now I, but now I feel like I have some cultural grounding because they're so important.

• 1:26:28Amanda Dobbins?

  Totally. Yes, they are. Absolutely.

• 1:26:29Sean Fennessey?

  In all stories.

• 1:26:30Amanda Dobbins?

  And, and also in, and in storytelling and really episodic storytelling.

• 1:26:35Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, his influence is fucking crazy. Uh, I, I don't think I liked a single one of the books that I read.

• 1:26:40Amanda Dobbins?

  Me either. That's okay.

• 1:26:41Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe Tale of Two Cities. Tale of Two Cities is pretty cool.

• 1:26:43Amanda Dobbins?

  Okay.

• 1:26:44Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, okay. Well, you know what? Let's go to my conversation now with Jordan Firstman.

• 1:26:53Sean Fennessey?

  Jordan Firstman is here. I've been so excited to talk to you. Here's what I want to start with. Um, I'm from Huntington.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  No fucking way.

• 1:27:00Sean Fennessey?

  And I didn't know you were from Long Island until three days ago.

• 1:27:04Speaker 04

  Not even Long Island, Northport.

• 1:27:06Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I know. This is what I wrote down.

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  Little Vincent's Pizza?

• 1:27:09Sean Fennessey?

  I've been there millions of times. My cousins are from, uh, Northport, so I've spent a ton of time in Northport.

• 1:27:14Speaker 04

  That is cra- that now I see, I'm like, understanding.

• 1:27:17Sean Fennessey?

  Same. This is exactly how I felt. I was like, oh, of course.

• 1:27:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz I do, you have a familiar, I think to many people, you have a familiarity type of vibe. But now even more. Like, yeah, you definitely remind me of kids I went to high school with.

• 1:27:34Sean Fennessey?

  You too. So, tell me about your experience there.

• 1:27:37Speaker 04

  But wait, I wanna give you a present to start.

• 1:27:40Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, right now?

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  Right now. Can we do it now?

• 1:27:42Sean Fennessey?

  Of course.

• 1:27:43Speaker 04

  Okay, you know, I, I love my merch.

• 1:27:45Sean Fennessey?

  I know, I do too as well.

• 1:27:47Speaker 04

  My merch. So I merch, I thought Amanda was gonna be here, but I wanna see which, which shirt you pick, cuz we have,

• 1:27:53Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:27:53Speaker 04

  These are relics. Like, these are iconic ones that 824 will not let me make anymore.

• 1:27:57Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, no.

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  So, I think you should take, I Boofed at Cannes and all I got was this lousy shirt.

• 1:28:05Sean Fennessey?

  People were rocking that at Cannes.

• 1:28:06Speaker 04

  But we also have, I Need a Doll Line and a Sickening Dose stat, which I can explain more later. Or you can be a basic bitch and get like a regular.

• 1:28:17Sean Fennessey?

  No, I don't want that. I don't want that. I'll do, I'll do the Boof.

• 1:28:20Speaker 04

  I knew you were gonna do Boof.

• 1:28:21Sean Fennessey?

  That's, that's important, yeah.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  Can we give Amanda Doll Line and Sickening Dose?

• 1:28:24Sean Fennessey?

  We 100% can, but where's my Bjork and Bareback t-shirt?

• 1:28:27Speaker 04

  It's coming. Well, it's, it's really funny. I was like on, I was like on a, a marketing call yesterday with 824 and I like, I came with like a document of 40 t-shirts and I was like, I think we should just do all of them. They were like, we can't do.

• 1:28:41Sean Fennessey?

  Who's paying for that?

• 1:28:42Speaker 04

  We can't, yeah. I was, I even was like, I'll pay for it. Like, if, if it's about money, guys, like, I got you. Um, but then I, I said in the call, I'm like, I just think this is like a t-shirt kind of movie.

• 1:28:53Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 1:28:53Speaker 04

  And then Saraw at 824 called me after. He's like, everyone was dying when the call arrived. Like, it's a t-shirt kind of movie. Like, what the fuck does that even mean?

• 1:29:01Sean Fennessey?

  I do know what you mean, though.

• 1:29:02Speaker 04

  It is a t-shirt movie. There's so many like lines that could be on t-shirts and I, and inappropriate funny t-shirts are in the movie. They play a role in the movie.

• 1:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  No question.

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  So I think it does make sense.

• 1:29:13Sean Fennessey?

  Well, thank you for the, the merch. I do love merch. I can't promise you I'll wear it. I'm kind of a sweaters only on-camera kinda guy.

• 1:29:18Speaker 04

  But even if you, if you have I Boofed under a sweater, like, it gives you a confidence to go through your day.

• 1:29:24Sean Fennessey?

  There's a spiritual power to that.

• 1:29:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Sean Fennessey?

  Can you tell me about growing up in New York and, cuz you know, as I revisited the film yesterday, you talk about like, you're gonna love Long Island and the, the idea of like sneaking into the city, which I totally recommend.

• 1:29:38Speaker 04

  Little jab to Long Island.

• 1:29:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, truly. Um, what kinda kid were you? What, what were you into when you were growing up? Cuz Long Island, there's some positives, but there are many negatives about living there.

• 1:29:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, I wanted, I wanted out. Like, I really felt, I like, like affluence was such like a, a big aspiration to me. And I, yeah, I grew up watching Woody Allen movies and like just seeing these affluent New Yorkers that lived on the Upper West Side or Upper East Side and like, like, yeah, watching Hannah and her sisters. I was like, I want to be that. Like, I wanna be a like struggling actress in New York. It was always actress. But like, I did always, I don't know. And then I got really into Company by Stephen Sondheim. And like, I just saw myself as, I was like, I wanna be a sad 35-year-old bachelor in New York that like has some money. Like, I don't know, I just, I saw.

• 1:30:29Sean Fennessey?

  Did all your dreams come true?

• 1:30:31Speaker 04

  I mean, I have, I have a boyfriend now.

• 1:30:34Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. So minus one, one signifier.

• 1:30:36Speaker 04

  I'm Bobby's age. I'm Bobby's age right now. Um, but I don't know. Yeah, I, I think, I think they did come true. But I was always like, I convinced my parents I didn't have school on Fridays for two years. And somehow, they were going through their own divorce, so they were just like not paying attention to me. And, uh,

• 1:30:53Sean Fennessey?

  We had so many similar experiences.

• 1:30:55Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:30:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, exact same.

• 1:30:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, and so I would go into the city on Thursday after school, kind of do my thing with my like summer camp friends who live there and sleep on their couches and then come back for school Monday morning.

• 1:31:09Sean Fennessey?

  The school that was not bothered by you doing the four-day work week?

• 1:31:11Speaker 04

  They're like, you have to come to school on Fridays. I was like, I think I do. I think you should, need to double check the attendance.

• 1:31:16Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:31:17Speaker 04

  No, I got, I, they, I had problems in that school. That, you know how you know I've had problems at that school? They've never posted me. Like, I should be there, like.

• 1:31:27Sean Fennessey?

  You're not beloved alumni.

• 1:31:28Speaker 04

  I'm not a success story. They're like, they're like, Jay Rodriguez from Queer Eye can get the post.

• 1:31:35Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:31:36Speaker 04

  He should deserve it.

• 1:31:36Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, that's nice. Um, did you always know you were gonna be a filmmaker? Like, you talked about seeing Hannah and her sisters and, and aspiring to these lifestyles, but did you have a consciousness of filmmaking, cinema? Like, was that something you were into as a kid?

• 1:31:50Speaker 04

  I, I think it came a little bit later, like in, when I was like 18 or 19, that I got really into like Indies and I was, got really into the Mumblecore movement. And yeah, like seeing the Duplass movies and, and like Lynn Shelton. Like, I got really into that in my early twenties and, and just like, the more I watched movies. Cuz I, I was thinking I was gonna be, I guess, an actor when I was a kid. Then that shifted to maybe comedy, but I really didn't like the scene. Like, I hated hanging out with comedians.

• 1:32:27Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  Just so negative and cutthroat and, uh, just not my vibe. Like, I'm, I, I like, like a positive environment. I like fun. I think film people are like actually pretty positive.

• 1:32:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:40Speaker 04

  And like, just like good energy and like there is this, there's a community aspect and like whether you're in, in the independent film world, not as a creative or creative, but there is this like, we're gonna push the boulder up the hill together. And I really like the, the camaraderie and the community aspect of it. So, yeah, I made my first short when I was 21 and that, I got into festivals. So I did like a little mini circuit and that's when I was like, okay, these are my people, like. And then I spent like years, every year going to New Orleans Film Festival and Maryland Film Festival, like all these kind of regional like incubators with like, you know, I was, I was at Maryland with Jane Schoenbrun. Like, we were like just trying to, trying to do cool stuff and

• 1:33:24Speaker 04

  a lot of the people that are, you know, Josephine Decker, like, the, these were the people that were kind of around in my early twenties that it just like, it felt like we were, wanted to make like, like Nathan Silver. Yeah, like, we wanted to like make like cool stuff.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's funny. I think about,

• 1:33:43Sean Fennessey?

  it's the day after Election Day and there's, you know, big, big reckoning and I.

• 1:33:47Speaker 04

  I say, we're, we're blundled.

• 1:33:49Sean Fennessey?

  Truly.

• 1:33:50Speaker 04

  We're blundled.

• 1:33:51Sean Fennessey?

  And how there's, to me, this big millennial wave of people that are being elected and that have a strong voice. And I feel like it's very similar in film culture right now, where there is this huge crop of people, some of whom are in their early to mid 40s, now people like you who are in their mid 30s. People like Jane who are like really kind of coming forward and redefining. And I, I was pretty skeptical that that was gonna happen. For almost 10 years, it didn't feel like it was gonna happen.

• 1:34:17Speaker 04

  It felt like they were gonna skip us.

• 1:34:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, it did.

• 1:34:19Speaker 04

  It was like, oh, we're gonna skip that and then like we'll have like Tate McCray.

• 1:34:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:34:24Speaker 04

  And you know what? It felt like that. And I do feel like this year, something that, yeah, it's like we're coming into our power and like, Mom Donnie has just been like so inspirational to see that happen and like,

• 1:34:37Sean Fennessey?

  We were just talking about that.

• 1:34:37Speaker 04

  I think it's like also like, I think the pandemic made a lot of millennials like really passive and depressed and like, and I think we're over it. And we wanna be in power and we wanna, we have so much to say and we have so, we, our morals are so like strong. And we've always had that. And you know, I, I, I came of age when Girls was coming out and you know, that even the resurgence of Girls is like, it was like an indicator. And now I feel like, yeah, we are in this moment where we're like, no, we are, like, we're not cringe. Like, we're, we're a little cringe, but we're also.

• 1:35:11Sean Fennessey?

  Likably so.

• 1:35:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, and it's, but we're good people and like we have, we have strong values and we know art. Like, we, like millennials, like, like hipster culture was that. It's like, I'm gonna know the most niche thing.

• 1:35:24Sean Fennessey?

  We were obsessive consumers. Yeah, and we cataloged our taste. That's what I do for a living now. Yeah, I, I only knew you as a, as an actor. Um, for the longest time, I didn't know that you'd been making shorts. I didn't know that, you know, you'd been working on trying to make a television series for some time. So, was that, was there a moment where you felt like you were kinda hitting roadblocks with those things where you thought I should just stick to the acting portion?

• 1:35:47Speaker 04

  It was, I don't know, I, I, I think I went where the wind was taking me. Also, just, you know, you have to survive. So where the, where the jobs are, you go. And I think, I think I more thought I would be like, um, yeah, behind the scenes more because I was writing for TV shows. That was like the bulk of my mid twenties was I wrote for Search Party, I wrote for the other two and Big Mouth. And, and I was like, okay, like I have a place in these rooms. I'm like pitching things that are, you know, becoming the viral moments of these shows. And so that's why I wanted, I was like, I do feel like I should have my own show. And actually, I thought it was more the fact that I wanted to star in them that was holding

• 1:36:29Speaker 04

  me back a bit, but also that I was wanting to tell explicitly queer stories. I think it was like, time and time again, they would be like, we want to, but, you know, that niche is the word they would always love to use. But yeah, I was in a four year development on one show and then went, then, you know, the Instagram thing happened. So I sold another show and that was like, this is, we had like a bidding war and like, it was definitely happening. Four years later, that didn't happen. And so, yeah, this was always, this was always the plan. And I think, I think Club Kid came from, I think in the way we made it came from an urgency and a necessity. I was like, I'm not doing development again. I'm not, I, I'm, after that show didn't go, I was like, I'm not pitching a show again.

• 1:37:13Speaker 04

  Like ever, maybe. Um, I mean, never say never, but, but I was like, I am making a movie. Like I, and I'm going to make it as scale that is manageable. And I wanted to feel big and I wanted to feel like all of these years of work I've done in other arenas like are culminating, culminating in, in, in this piece, but I need to make it. And I, and so, you know, I had audience in mind when I'm making it more than anything I've ever done. I, I had scale in mind. I had, you know, I just had the way I knew I could make this movie.

• 1:37:49Sean Fennessey?

  So funny though, because you'd think that getting a TV show off the ground in this period of time would be easier than getting a movie off the ground. And a movie like this, you know, we're having a great year, but it's pretty unlikely. And I think one of the reasons why people like me and so many other people are responding to it is because it is kind of classical and it is new at the same time. Like, how much of that, were you strategizing for that? Was it just like an emotional outpouring when you were writing it?

• 1:38:13Speaker 04

  It was, it was both. I think, like I said, like I knew, I knew I wanted this to be like a marker for me. And, and I, you know, I made it at thirty-three, thirty-four years old. I'm like, this can't really feel like a first feature. Like I, I was like, it's a little embarrassing if this feels amateur. Because I've been in doing this for a long time. And so, you know, I held myself to a very high standard, but also I was like, yeah, I'm gonna use these, these benchmarks of these, these films that people know and love. Because I still want to say my stuff. Like I want to throw in my subversive, subversive messaging and, and, and say things that people haven't heard before. But in

• 1:38:57Speaker 04

  order to do that, I think I'm gonna need to let people into a story that feels familiar. So I really wasn't afraid of tropes if I was doing them in my own way. And I think every, every like quote unquote trope in the movie is subverted, whether it be like, I push him down to the ground. Like that, to me, I had that shot in my mind. I don't even know if it's a real shot, but like, I had the shot from behind of a father and son kind of tussling. And it's like, oh, I pushed him down. So it's like, that's my take on it. And then, you know, then adding my, my queerness and just like adding what the struggles I'm seeing in myself and my community are. But yeah, having these, having

• 1:39:37Speaker 04

  these familiar kind of, a familiar vibe, really, that, that audience can be like, okay, I feel safe on this journey. So I can take in more information. I can, I can take in some, some niche jokes and I can take in some things I've never heard before or things I've never seen before, because like I feel safe here.

• 1:39:57Sean Fennessey?

  Was it still hard to raise money for it?

• 1:39:59Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:40:01Sean Fennessey?

  But what does that tell you that, um, making a show about a queer guy versus making a film about a queer guy is, one is not as hard as the other, or there's not as many hurdles? Like, does that indicate anything to you? Is it just different projects?

• 1:40:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think timing too. It was like, I, I had more of a name for myself. I still wasn't and am not a household name, but you know, I, I Love L.A. had just gotten greenlit. Coco was on the movie Coco, the, we-

• 1:40:32Sean Fennessey?

  Your producer, Alex.

• 1:40:32Speaker 04

  Alex Coco, like, we sent out the script like a couple of weeks after they won the Oscar, just like by coincidence. I think that didn't hurt us. But no, I mean, we, we sent it out and we had, we had offers to fully finance it immediately.

• 1:40:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:47Speaker 04

  And I've never had that even close to happen.

• 1:40:50Sean Fennessey?

  Were you ready to do it? Or was there any part of you that was like, oh shit, careful what I wish for?

• 1:40:54Speaker 04

  I was scared because I wanted it to be really good. That, and so it was more just, I put a lot of pressure on myself and it was very stressful. But I knew, I knew the script was good. And I knew I was saying, I was talking about something really personal to me. Um, and it was hitting. It was like, you know, everyone kind of cried when they read the script. And so I was like, this is translating. And so now my job is to, for everything to meet the script at the level that it's at. And so, you know, getting Adam Newport Barra to shoot it, getting, getting Carmen Cuba, getting Lucy Bevins, getting

• 1:41:34Speaker 04

  Stephen Phelps, like the department heads were a league above a first time filmmaker. I do think because the script, it was affecting them.

• 1:41:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. I mean, it's unmistakable that it does not feel like a first feature. Maybe some of the narrative structure does, it's sort of like an announcement of a new voice, but the style is so clean and tight. Is it, people, these people just read it and they wanted to do it?

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, Adam-

• 1:41:59Sean Fennessey?

  Is that how it works by the, I mean, honestly?

• 1:42:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, you send, you send the script and, and they say yes or no, basically. And Adam didn't have time, uh, didn't need, I mean, it was way lower rate than he was used to getting. But he had just had a kid and, and just related to it. And he, yeah, he was on a plane and said he like broke down crying and he was like, I have to shift stuff around to do this. And it was, I mean, it's such a miracle that we had him because I think, you know, he adds so much to this movie, even, even in terms of like, being a first time director and temperament. Like he has a very calm way of working. Like he is daddy. Like he feels, he feels like daddy. And he makes everyone around him feel

• 1:42:45Speaker 04

  really safe and calm. And, um, I, I just think creatively, we really complemented each other. I think he really has an eye for beauty and really values beauty. And I think I really value authenticity and, and grittiness and reality. And so I think the movie does have this really cool balance of like beauty versus reality. Um, and does feel like a fairy tale at some points. And, and, you know, I wanted it to feel, I wanted it to feel like when I was a kid and would go to the city in the fall with my parents, like what that felt like. It's like, it's the wonder and the, and the colors and the browns and the reds. And you know what I mean?

• 1:43:20Sean Fennessey?

  No, there's multiple moments in the movie where you and Reggie are walking down the street in Chinatown. And I'm like, that is New York. That is definitely, that is the New York that I lived in for sure, 100%. And it doesn't feel like whatever New York is now. It does, there is something a little bit more historical, whether it's seventies or nineties or however you want to define it.

• 1:43:37Speaker 04

  And that's why we shot in Chinatown. And it's why, why the, our, Peter lives there. I think it's a part of the city that feels more unchanged. I think we, we tried to find streets that didn't have cars on them. We really wanted it to feel, feel nostalgic and feel like this kid is experiencing the New York that I experienced growing up.

• 1:43:59Sean Fennessey?

  What about, um, finding all these people for the cast? I mean, obviously you worked with Carmen, who's extremely seasoned casting director, but, um, it feels like an amazing mixture of people that you know in your life, of discoveries, of very recognizable people doing something you don't quite expect. Like, how did you think about dotting the cast?

• 1:44:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was just, it was like person by person. And, and I knew I wanted to cast people from the scene as the friends. That was always, always the, you know, a non-negotiable for me. I just think party people look a certain way, they feel a certain way, they talk a certain way that I, I was just like actors, like Miss Benny is kind of our only traditional actress involved in that cast. And the rest of them I met at raves. And I scouted at raves. And I would, you know, um, Alaska, like I, I met at a rave and we spent the whole night. And like, there are, like, the, the club is its own kind of ecosystem and it has celebrities. Like the club, the, like inside the club, like Alaska walks

• 1:45:02Speaker 04

  in and everyone knows who Alaska is. Like she is a star in her community. So I wanted to find Saturn too in LA. It's like, everyone knows who Saturn is. Like they know when she's DJing, they know when she's gonna do a live performance. But yeah, I wanted to build this cast of like niche stars that all, I, I say this, but I think everyone in the cast could have their own movie. Um, and then, yeah, you just build it out. And then I met Diego Calvin. I was like, oh my God, this like, I rewrote the character for him because I'm like, our chemistry was just there. And then Cara, I like woke up one morning, I was like, oh my God, it's Cara. Like it's, because Sophie's like a tricky character. And I just felt, I felt it was an interesting choice. I felt like I hadn't

• 1:45:44Speaker 04

  seen her do something like this. I'm a huge Valerian fan, um, but different vibes.

• 1:45:50Sean Fennessey?

  She is serving.

• 1:45:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, but both, what do both movies have in common?

• 1:45:54Sean Fennessey?

  You tell me.

• 1:45:55Speaker 04

  Rihanna.

• 1:45:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:45:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:57Sean Fennessey?

  That's right. That's a very good point. That is the extended universe.

• 1:46:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think, and yeah, and then I was just like, oh, like her personal connection to this story. I like, I like kind of having those lines be a little blurred, like with my previous work. Like, I like, I like when things come with baggage and things come with history. Cause it makes you just kind of like see things in a different way. But I mean, the casting process was so fun. And then, and then Reggie, Reggie was our miracle. Like he, this movie lived and died with that kid. And, and yeah, I, he was sent to me by God, like it was.

• 1:46:38Sean Fennessey?

  How, I know you've told this story before, but I, how did you meet him? How did he come across your, your table?

• 1:46:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Carmen did, did our, our main casting and then we had Lucy Bevins in the UK, who had just cast Harry Potter. And so she's, she had just seen 40,000 kids.

• 1:46:54Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, right. She knew every kid.

• 1:46:54Speaker 04

  She knew every kid. And so she sent me my first, my first, like, you know, you got these files of like a hundred kids. She sent me a hundred kids and I saw Reggie's face in there. And it was, I, I had like, it was like a flash of like, that's the face I've been writing. Like it, where he had the same face. Cause when you're writing, it's like you, you either have people in mind and you write for them. But this movie I didn't, like Saturn kind of was the only person I had in mind when I was writing it.

• 1:47:26Speaker 04

  But.

• 1:47:27Sean Fennessey?

  Besides yourself.

• 1:47:27Speaker 04

  Besides myself. No, it was supposed to be Paul Mesko. No, no.

• 1:47:32Sean Fennessey?

  I was like, wow, this is a revelation. I hadn't heard that.

• 1:47:34Speaker 04

  No, I think he would actually be the only person that I could accept as Peter. But I just don't think he, it could be gay. Like he, he was gay in All of Us Strangers, but like faggot. Peter's a faggot.

• 1:47:46Sean Fennessey?

  It could only be.

• 1:47:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It always gave.

• 1:47:49Sean Fennessey?

  I want to ask you about that because, um, you know, you're doing something that, there's a long history of this, of sort of like writing your way into a kind of stardom that maybe you desire and that you'd always hope for, that you idolize or think about, you know, like Dennis Hopper did this, for example.

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:48:05Sean Fennessey?

  How do you think about how to personify yourself? Because coming into the movie, you did have like a public persona to people who knew you. You know what I mean? And it was very funny and it could be controversial too. Did you think of this as like a correction? Did you think of it as this is my true self? Like, how did you think about framing yourself?

• 1:48:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I felt like I wanted to write something from the heart. And like, that was most important to me. But if you had read my scripts for my TV show, I wrote all, both of those shows, I wrote the full season by myself. Like I, I was like tired of waiting for like lawyers and stuff. And so I just went and wrote it, but they're similar. Like this is my writing style and I just haven't gotten a chance to show it. And I do, you know, I, I like to think I am a deep thinker and I care about life. And I, and I've, you know, I spent my twenties doing ayahuasca trips and like learning a lot of stuff just about, about the world and about myself. And I love to travel. I love to go to new places and see new people.

• 1:49:06Speaker 04

  So that's who I am. And like, I think the persona, the persona kind of like swallowed me at a certain point. And I was, I was over it. I was like, I, I felt so misunderstood. And I was like, I was tired of people like talking shit about me online. I'm like, you don't know me. This is actually isn't who I am. Everyone in my life knows I'm a sweetie. And so like, it's time. It's like time to show this side of myself. But then also really just also wanting to write something super honest. I just, honesty was, was always the point.

• 1:49:42Sean Fennessey?

  No, there's something powerful about that though, about thinking about how you're perceived and trying to break that or redefine that. That I, I don't think you should shy away from that when you talk about what you made too. Because like you're the author of your own fate, right?

• 1:49:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree. And I think I moved to LA being like, I'm gonna reinvent myself. I didn't know anyone here. I had had a really traumatizing year in New York and, and a bad thing happened. And I was like, I'm gonna go to LA and like make, make myself different. And I think I've had different eras. And yeah, I mean, the, the persona part, there's still that side of me. And Peter's like a little like bit of a bitch sometimes. Like he's like, like he has that sass. He's a, he has the sass in him, but like he's a, he's a sweetie. Like, and I do think, I do think I share the heart of Peter. I think we're different in a lot of ways, but I would like to thank the people around me and like my family especially.

• 1:50:39Speaker 04

  I think this is really, really nice for my family to see because they know like the kid. They like know the kid that I am. And I think it hurt them a lot to like see people like hating on me. And like, you know, one of my sisters like really was like way too online. Like she would like send me tweets about myself. I'm like, I really, this is helping no one.

• 1:51:01Sean Fennessey?

  This happens.

• 1:51:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. But I don't know. I think it hurt them. It hurt them to like see me be so misunderstood because they, they knew me.

• 1:51:10Sean Fennessey?

  How about, um, directing yourself and knowing if you're doing a good job, getting the performance that you need out of yourself and trying to balance that while shooting your first feature?

• 1:51:19Speaker 04

  I think a lot of it is just instinct. Like you just know when something feels good, but I just knew, I knew this script so well by that point. I like, I had done 40 rewrites of it. I knew every, I knew everyone's lines. And so I think having, having that, being with the script for that long helped. And then, yeah, just my team. Like Adam Newport Barrett would give me acting notes. Uh, like Alex Coco would be behind monitor, Galen Core, Ryan Heller, like these, everyone, I trusted everyone. Um, there were a couple of times where like, you know, four people were running up to me, giving me, and I'm like, let's choose one, one person, but also I know, I, I know when it's right.

• 1:52:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:03Speaker 04

  I also, having acted in so many things, I think I, the, the great part about it and why we always made our days is because I knew when we got it. I did not, I, I knew the second we had the scene. And I was also kind of editing in my head. I was like, well, well, we have that. I know we have that line. That delivery was amazing. We have that delivery. And I would be saying like, note that delivery. Like we would kind of like, note that delivery, note that delivery. And people would be writing it down. So, you know, there was like a lot of like cylinders being, being.

• 1:52:33Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:52:34Speaker 04

  Being fired. Um, but yeah, I think it was, it was a great combination of like trust in others and instinct. And like actually like really checking my ego at the door.

• 1:52:45Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I'm a relatively new father. I think a lot of fathers of young kids are kind of pulverized by the movie. You know, you're, you're not a father.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:55Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I know that you, you donated sperm to your sister's wife, but, um, like, how do you get into the mentality of portraying that?

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  I think I really tried to just think of these characters as people and write the most honest conversations. And I think, I think I learned a lot about fatherhood in making the movie. And kind of just like what's happened with me and Reggie. Like, I can't even, like I, I always, I, even when I think about it, I get emotional because it's like this kid, like he feels like my best friend now. And it's like, I've learned so much from him. And like, I, we were like backstage in San Francisco. I don't even remember what the joke is, but we were like crying laughing right before we had to go on. And I was like, I haven't laughed this hard since middle school.

• 1:53:47Speaker 04

  Like I feel like I'm like nourishing like my inner child by like being friends with a teenager. And it's like such innocent laughter. And I think you do get to a place in your, your thirties where a lot of your friendships, you talk about work or you talk about, you know, it becomes a little heavier, the subject matter. You talk about politics and, and I think having a child, a child as a friend has just like, has made me so much lighter. And like Reggie's also like, he's so even keeled.

• 1:54:16Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:17Speaker 04

  And I get really stressed out about stuff. And so just even being, being next to him like calms my nervous system a little bit because he's not stressed.

• 1:54:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:25Speaker 04

  Um, so yeah, I think, I think I didn't go into it being like, I'm gonna make this. The, the movie to me is more, more of a coming of age film than like even a father, son movie. It's both, but I think I just tried not to think about like, oh, dad, son. But it's also like, sorry, I talk so much. Um, that.

• 1:54:45Sean Fennessey?

  I asked you the question. Yes. This is what we're here for.

• 1:54:48Speaker 04

  You know, the, like the scene of me and him in bed together. I think I was also pulling from like stuff I wished I had with my parents. And I wish I knew that they were people.

• 1:55:01Sean Fennessey?

  So this is something that's so beautiful about the movie is that obviously Peter makes a lot of mistakes with, uh, with his, his son. But he also does things that are counterintuitive that a young person would do just to try to like seem cool or to befriend their kid in a way, which can be dangerous. But if done right, like just opens a portal to connectivity.

• 1:55:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:55:21Sean Fennessey?

  That like certainly it sounds like maybe our parents were not capable of. Or didn't understand or did. So there's something very, uh, like raw and specific and good about some of the stuff that you're modeling. You know, that's what parents say, the model behavior. But I, I just love that you landed on some of those things, even though he also makes tremendous mistakes.

• 1:55:38Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 1:55:38Sean Fennessey?

  That engine the movie.

• 1:55:39Speaker 04

  For sure. And I think it's like. Yeah, giving Arlo saffron and like giving him that creative practice. And for like a traumatized kid, an art practice is like, is everything. And like, so I think there's, there's certain gifts that even, you know, his, his mom gave to him. Like she gave him tastes in music and she gave him acceptance in people. Like the fact that he knows what dolls are and he, and he's not scared of, of queer people and trans people. Like those, you can be a really bad parent, but like still give really good stuff to your kid. And I think that is the question of the end.

• 1:56:19Speaker 04

  It's like Sharon, Sharon with the comfortable life that he's not gonna learn much that he doesn't learn in school. Or Peter with like the, who's rough around the edges and is gonna make some mistakes, but opens his mind up and opens his world up and, and fosters creativity. I think like Peter knows the soul of an artist, cause he's, as someone who's in the party scene, like you're around artists all the time. And so I think he knows how to foster creativity in other people. And I think he gives that to Arlo.

• 1:56:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I don't wanna psychoanalyze you, but that's a very common dynamic amongst children of divorce. Is that you have one parent that gives you one thing and another parent that gives you another thing. And so I don't know if there's a subconscious element to that too. But yeah, I mean, the other thing is it's the music is so amazing in this movie. And my experience growing up, sneaking into the city was just going to record stores. Sometimes shows when I got a little older, but going to record stores, you have this great moment in the record store where you see that Arlo knows Elliott Smith and, and has taste and is interested in stuff. And then the music is kind of this kaleidoscope of obviously a lot of the club music. But then, you know, Ethel Kane sing along and all these very specific, seemingly very personal choices. Like how did you think about choosing the songs?

• 1:57:30Speaker 04

  It's really funny. I think, I think there's like the, the PR answer. And then like the honest answer, I was like, it's my fucking movie. I'm gonna put my favorite songs in it. Like I want these songs in it. You know what I mean? And, and I think-

• 1:57:43Sean Fennessey?

  That's the best stuff.

• 1:57:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm like, it's gonna feel, I don't even think it's like gonna feel like personal. I was just like, this is what feels right to me and that this song works in this moment. So like, even though it's, it's such a hodgepodge, like you have, yeah, like Cocteau Twins and Slater. Like for, to go to like, yeah, like Ethel Kane directly into Slater is like such a, such a mindfuck. And then to, to like with Cocteau Twins and yeah, Elliott Smith and Pinback. And you know, the, it's very varied, but I think the connective tissue is that I love all the songs and it feels like someone's personal playlist. It feels like, yeah, like, oh, I get, I get the through line because it feels like personal.

• 1:58:26Sean Fennessey?

  And the different mood of the character. Like this character can like this kind of music and this kind of music and this kind of music, based on where they are and that station in their life.

• 1:58:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:58:33Sean Fennessey?

  Did you have to write letters to artists? How do you get the songs?

• 1:58:37Speaker 04

  The letters, honey. The letters. But what was it? But her emails? But, but her letters. But her letters.

• 1:58:43Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, but that works.

• 1:58:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, yeah, I wrote a, a letter to Elliott Smith's family, cause he's not alive.

• 1:58:52Speaker 04

  Arthur Russell has like a foundation I had to write letters for. I mean Rihanna, upwards of 20 letters.

• 1:58:57Sean Fennessey?

  Really?

• 1:58:58Speaker 04

  I mean, she was hard to get to. She was really, and we didn't-

• 1:59:00Sean Fennessey?

  But you did it.

• 1:59:01Speaker 04

  Two weeks before Cannes, we did not have that song.

• 1:59:03Sean Fennessey?

  No way.

• 1:59:03Speaker 04

  And they, and my producers begged me to shoot in alt. And I was like, no, we're getting it. I promise you, we're getting it.

• 1:59:10Sean Fennessey?

  That was risky.

• 1:59:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I was like, we're getting it. I just, I, I, I like to will things into existence and, and I don't even real, like, yeah, we got in touch with her manager. I explained to her manager how important this moment was and how important she is to queer people. Like this is like, it's like she having her stamp in this movie, open the movie. Like people will recognize the game, that get the game.

• 1:59:38Sean Fennessey?

  I wanted to ask you about that scene actually, cause it's such an amazing announcement. Like stylistically, emotionally, what the scene itself is like, uh, was that something that came very early in writing it? Did you see it visually in your head as soon as you wrote it?

• 1:59:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was the first thing.

• 1:59:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:53Speaker 04

  It was like I, that was the first thing I thought of. And to the T of like the shot, the song, the Uber driver, the group, the style, the clothes they're wearing. Like everything just like came flashing back to 2016 for me. And I was like, this, it's, you gotta gag them. Like I think like, I do believe in the power of like opening shot and closing shot. And like if you, if you, if you know what those are, like you're gonna figure out the middle stuff. But I had the opening and the, the closing shot and I was like, okay, they're like, I have the movie.

• 2:00:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's really smart. I mean, I don't know if I told you this already, but you know, I saw it at like eight o'clock in the morning at Cannes. And I was like so relieved after that, that shot, that sequence where I was like, oh, great. This person knows what they're doing. You know, this is so, this is a lot of intention here. And a lot of thought and a lot of spirit.

• 2:00:44Speaker 04

  And I think it also, it tells, it's not just a statement in, in the vibe, but it's like, you know, you have, you start with this outsider of the scene, the Uber driver. And like, we come in like a hurricane and like, that's my announcement of like, you're in our movie now. And we're not like, we're not, we didn't make this movie for you, but we're inviting you into our space. And so be here, like be here or don't, but like, we're not gonna compromise just cause you're here.

• 2:01:12Sean Fennessey?

  So great. Um, why was it important to shoot on film?

• 2:01:15Speaker 04

  I mean, it looks better. It just, it's so objectively looks better. And I think that was initially, I think, I think one, there was not a single movie on the mood board for this movie that wasn't shot on film. I didn't have one digital reference for this film.

• 2:01:31Sean Fennessey?

  Can you give me a couple of mood board movies?

• 2:01:32Speaker 04

  I mean, yeah, we obviously Kramer versus Kramer in a big way, Cruising.

• 2:01:40Speaker 04

  And Unmarried Woman, I've said a lot of time, kind of all Mizzursky. Like there's like a kind of unknown Mizzursky.

• 2:01:45Sean Fennessey?

  So underrated.

• 2:01:46Speaker 04

  I know. I'm like-

• 2:01:48Sean Fennessey?

  I talk about this with all my physical media dork friends, cause so few of his movies are available.

• 2:01:51Speaker 04

  I know, but yeah, Unmarried Woman's only on Blu-ray, which I'm like, every time I see a Criterion, I'm like, guys, get it together. Like get it together. It's such a good movie.

• 2:02:01Sean Fennessey?

  There's a bunch of them though, like Bloom in Love and Alex in Wonderland.

• 2:02:04Speaker 04

  Alex in Wonderland's on Amazon Prime.

• 2:02:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, I know, but you can't get them on like, on, looking really nice.

• 2:02:09Speaker 04

  But Alex in Wonderland 2, I love.

• 2:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  So, such a cool movie.

• 2:02:12Speaker 04

  That movie. And also, I love the way he writes kids. He writes kids as people and like the relationship with Jill Claybergen, her daughter is so adult.

• 2:02:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, very similar to the one that you, yeah.

• 2:02:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, that movie was kind of my, my North Star. Like anytime I didn't know what to do with the camera, I would go to that movie.

• 2:02:31Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:02:31Speaker 04

  Cause there's an elegance, like I, I, you know, like I taught, Adam Newport Barrett didn't like know what a gaggy shot meant. And he thought I said gack. So like one day he was like, I think we can do a gacky shot here. And so it became a slogan on our set, maybe restraint is the biggest gack of all.

• 2:02:49Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, that's beautiful.

• 2:02:50Speaker 04

  Um, but yeah, I think we want, I, I, I chose my gacky moments and, but the rest I did wanna feel kind of elegant. And I wanted the move, I wanted the style cinematically to grow with Peter.

• 2:03:01Sean Fennessey?

  Sure.

• 2:03:01Speaker 04

  And so, you know, we start very chaotic, very, you know, 360, very immersive. And by the end, it's like, most of those shots either like, don't move or, or don't move that much. Like I think there's like a real soberness to like those last, like from the courtroom to the end of the movie. Like feel, the camera work feels very sober to me.

• 2:03:22Sean Fennessey?

  Had you mapped things out? Were you storyboarding or anything like that?

• 2:03:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. We were, I mean, we had to be, cause I was in every scene. Like I just was, I wanted to be overprepared and you know, we had like a 600 page like reference mood board.

• 2:03:37Speaker 04

  Like, yeah, I mean, Adam had like birth in there, like, yeah, like there were, he had his own kind of thing and I had my own kind of thing. And I think they, they-

• 2:03:46Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, birth also tracks in terms of the odd adult dynamic between a kid and an adult.

• 2:03:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:03:51Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and the mysterious skin moment is also very, uh, it's like the one time where you really like, put your thumb on the scale, you know, or you're like, this is an overt reference in a way.

• 2:04:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and I feel like that movie, it's so well timed, cause like the movie was just restored.

• 2:04:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:04:05Sean Fennessey?

  Greg made a movie this year. Like I don't, can you talk about that at all?

• 2:04:08Speaker 04

  I mean, to me, it just, it tells you about what kind of gay guy he is. Like you're either a mysterious skin gay guy or you're a hocus pocus gay guy.

• 2:04:22Speaker 04

  Or, or you're like, I, I think of Diego's character as a Marvel gay.

• 2:04:29Sean Fennessey?

  Right. Kind of normie.

• 2:04:30Speaker 04

  Normie. Yeah, there are Marvel gays out there too. It's so funny. If I like, go to a gay club in the middle of the country, they're like, you're the guidance counselor for Miss Marvel. I'm like, yeah, among other things.

• 2:04:42Sean Fennessey?

  But that's progress.

• 2:04:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but yeah, I think I love that scene. I love that Diego is like, I don't know, is it an action, horror, comedy? And like, and I say, you need to be a better gay guy. But yeah, I think it just, it tells you about a certain type of gay guy and like what they are. And I say later in the scene, like, I'm like every other faggot New York damaged goods. And I think it's like, there's alignment with these types of films. And these are the types of film, like Weekend broke me when I saw that movie. And it's like, I, I, I love the sadness of the gay experience and the loneliness. And I think, I think, yeah, Mysterious Skin, just like, I don't know, it was, it was a really big moment in my life when I watched it. And so I wanted

• 2:05:27Speaker 04

  to also, yeah, give that to Peter.

• 2:05:29Sean Fennessey?

  It just felt very true.

• 2:05:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:05:32Sean Fennessey?

  How has it been? So, you know, you premiered the movie six months ago. I think some people were taken by surprise and really excited about it. You get this amazing reception. The movie is acquired out of the festival. And now you're on what is just a very strange thing that happens in the movie world, where you're wait, you're showing the movie at festivals and waiting six months for people to see it.

• 2:05:49Speaker 04

  Waiting to be back on your list. You're on for a, for a second, got, got bumped. But you know, there's still time.

• 2:05:56Sean Fennessey?

  You know, there's still time. What, how are you feeling?

• 2:06:00Speaker 04

  I, I feel good. I feel like I watch people leave the theater and people are moved. And like, that is, it's, I think, a rare thing to happen. Like, people love movies, but like, to, to really move people, I think, is a special thing. And it's, it's what I've always wanted to do. And so, you know, I'm tired. I get stressed. I hope I don't say the wrong thing. I want to take care of my cast. There's a lot going on. I also am like, you know, I made a party movie. So I, we go to our after parties and people shove drugs in my face. And I can't do them. And that's hard because I want to. But I can't because I have to wake up at seven for hair and

• 2:06:43Speaker 04

  makeup to go do my next press day. So it's been a really.

• 2:06:47Sean Fennessey?

  You're all grown up.

• 2:06:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:06:49Sean Fennessey?

  This is it. You know, I, I. Game of age.

• 2:06:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. No, it's like, I have to, I do think of this movie as my baby because I'm like, I can't say certain things now that I maybe would have wanted to at another time. And I have to dress differently. And I have to, you know, be responsible. So I think the movie did for me what, what Arlo does for Peter.

• 2:07:09Sean Fennessey?

  Is there, you have any like regret or like suspicion about that too? There's something really interesting. It's even in the dynamic of the movie that is like, how much should I be changing just because I'm getting older? Like, there's one thing about giving up a vice, but there's also something about like, not losing yourself.

• 2:07:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I don't know. I think, I think there's such a beauty in maturing now that I'm like, starting to do it. And, you know, I get why old people are like, like, the good old people are like, yeah, I love being old.

• 2:07:37Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:38Speaker 04

  You know what I mean?

• 2:07:38Sean Fennessey?

  More confidence.

• 2:07:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, you can actually like, see, the more you know yourself, the more you can like, have space to like, really see the beauty in life. And like, that's something I, I just hope I never lose. I hope I never lose my humor. And I hope I never lose my, my openness to life and beauty.

• 2:08:04Sean Fennessey?

  So what are you doing next? Like, are you a filmmaker now? Is that, is that the plan?

• 2:08:07Speaker 04

  I think so. I think it was like, honestly, the day, first day of pre-production, it was like, a switch happened. I was like, oh, duh. Like, this is what I've been supposed to have been doing my whole life.

• 2:08:20Sean Fennessey?

  But so you're doing I Love L.A. season two. And like, do you think you'll try to two-track it? Where you'll do acting work and try to make movies at the same time?

• 2:08:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, if, for me, right now, the focus is like, immediately starting the next one. Like, I just want to make another movie.

• 2:08:36Sean Fennessey?

  And you know what it is? You wrote it?

• 2:08:38Speaker 04

  I, I have idea.

• 2:08:41Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 2:08:41Speaker 04

  I have idea.

• 2:08:42Sean Fennessey?

  I have idea.

• 2:08:44Sean Fennessey?

  Aloquence escaped.

• 2:08:45Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. You don't need all the words in this sentence every time.

• 2:08:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's true.

• 2:08:51Speaker 04

  You got what I was trying to say.

• 2:08:52Sean Fennessey?

  I did.

• 2:08:53Speaker 04

  But no, I just want to, to go into, I love shooting, I love L.A. It's like, we're such a family. I, but I think as far as, you know, other things coming in, I definitely, I don't want to feel like an actor for hire. It doesn't like, do as much for my soul creatively. And I, yeah, I want to tell, I want to tell stories and, and tell them in my way. And I think, yeah, like, can was this moment where I was like, yeah, like, I do deserve to be here. And I, I, I am a filmmaker. And I, this, like, it was, it was the most, it was the most like, validation I've ever gotten in my career, which I think has to tell me something because I have been doing it for a while.

• 2:09:38Sean Fennessey?

  You got it, man. Keep pursuing it.

• 2:09:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah. I want to keep making movies.

• 2:09:41Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they have seen?

• 2:09:45Speaker 04

  Ooh, okay.

• 2:09:48Sean Fennessey?

  I know this is not, it's hard to watch movies at a time like this.

• 2:09:50Speaker 04

  Can I do something that I, I rewatched two days ago and I hadn't seen in a while?

• 2:09:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:56Speaker 04

  I rewatched My Own Private Idaho.

• 2:09:58Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:09:58Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. I forgot the scale. I forgot how many locations it had.

• 2:10:02Sean Fennessey?

  What spurred you to watch it?

• 2:10:05Speaker 04

  I was just like, I don't, someone, someone was a, in the, they, Criterion posted my pics and like, a couple people were like, why, why not My Own Private Idaho? And I was like, oh, I should rewatch that movie.

• 2:10:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:18Speaker 04

  And so I wa, it was on, and it was on the plane. And yeah.

• 2:10:22Sean Fennessey?

  They offered it on the plane?

• 2:10:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:10:23Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 2:10:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so I was like, oh, I'm gonna watch this.

• 2:10:26Sean Fennessey?

  You want to shout out the airline just to give them some dap?

• 2:10:28Speaker 04

  I think it was Delta. I want to say it was Delta. I'm a Delta girl. So I, I mean, they try to put me on Delta when they can. But yeah, I just forgot how, there's a lot of similarities in Club Kid two, like the junkiness and like, the world of the, the junkies in that movie. And just like, the, the loss. And there's some, some mysterious skin vibes in that.

• 2:10:51Sean Fennessey?

  No question.

• 2:10:52Speaker 04

  Like.

• 2:10:52Sean Fennessey?

  And it's this weird mix of sentimentality and the kind of brutality at the same time, you know, like, super emotional movie, but also Shakespeare. And, you know, kind of, you know, stiff in that way too.

• 2:11:04Speaker 04

  And very, very like, for its time, very transgressive, very transgressive.

• 2:11:11Sean Fennessey?

  This wasn't on the mood board?

• 2:11:12Speaker 04

  No, it wasn't. I always kind of thought I liked it and didn't love it. Like, I think, I think I just wasn't in the right mood. I watched it in my early twenties. And, and I've literally said, I would say that I'd be like, that's, it's like, not my movie. I don't know why, but it's.

• 2:11:27Sean Fennessey?

  Gus was probably around your age when he made it, maybe late thirties.

• 2:11:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, probably. Yeah. I mean, I'm a huge Gus Van Sant fan, but that one never was like, my movie. But rewatching it, I was like, oh, maybe this is like, my movie.

• 2:11:39Sean Fennessey?

  It's a great recommendation. Jordan, thank you.

• 2:11:41Speaker 04

  Thank you so much. This is so fun.

• 2:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  Well, thank you to Jordan. Thanks to Amanda. Thank you to the birthday boy, Jack Sanders. Jack, how you feeling?

• 2:11:51Amanda Dobbins?

  Yeah, we, we move.

• 2:11:55Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Thanks to Lucas Cavanagh for production support. Later this week, we're digging into I Play Rocky. You've seen I Play Rocky?

• 2:12:02Amanda Dobbins?

  I'm going this afternoon.

• 2:12:03Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:12:03Amanda Dobbins?

  I know.

• 2:12:04Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. And we're going to be updating our Best Picture power rankings. We will see you then.

• 2:12:28Speaker 02

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