‘Snake Eyes’ With Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan are the kings of the sewer after rewatching Brian De Palma’s ‘Snake Eyes,’ starring Nic Cage, Gary Sinise, and Carla Gugino. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is brought to you by PayPal. Make the most of your money this holiday. Get 5% cash back when you Pay in 4 all holiday long, visit the PayPal app to save the offer. Expires 12/31. See paypal.com/promoterms. Subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payin4. PayPal, Inc. NMLS #910457 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.

• 0:00Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Quince. Finding a decent piece of clothing can be a lot harder than finding a decent movie, but that was before Quince. Quince has staple pieces made from premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, and everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. It's the perfect place to start building a cozy fall outfit without any absurd markups. For instance, I love a good vest. They have a lightweight, down, packable puffer vest, which is an easy fall layer, although nobody loves layers more than Chris Ryan. You can throw it over a sweater, long sleeve, whenever you want to make an outfit feel a little more seasonal, simple, classic, one of those pieces that works with pretty much everything that's already in your closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince.

• 0:45Bill Simmons?

  Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order, 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it's a Rewatchables podcast. They would appreciate that. It's the best way to support the show. The Rewatchables brought to by The Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find The Big Picture with Sean Finnis. Yes. You can find Higher Learning and The Midnight Boys. Bimbo. With Van Lathan. You can find The Ringer Fantasy Football Show with our producer Craig Horbeck. Bill Simmons podcast, right? Yeah, that's happening too. De Palma. Yeah. This is our fifth. Okay. Brian De Palma movie. It's called Snake Eyes. It belongs to another era, an era that I love very much, and it's next.

• 1:29Bill Simmons?

  This episode is presented by PayPal. Let's talk holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility to pay in four. No fees, no interest. Save the offer in the PayPal app to get 5% cash back when you pay later. So whether you're shopping for an ugly sweater party, or a gala, or whatever else, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday. Expires 12/31. See paypal.com/promoterms. Subject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payingfor. PayPal, Inc., NMLS 910457.

• 2:19Bill Simmons?

  Snake Eyes, 1998, it's under 100 minutes. It's in Atlantic City. It's Nick Cage, it's Brian De Palma. They say the title in the movie multiple times. There's a fixed boxing match. There's an assassination, there's a cover up, there's a dirty cop. Sean, they just don't make them like this anymore.

• 2:38Sean Fennessey?

  No, man. You know, I was thinking about this, rewatching it last night. There's a certain kind of movie that's, that I like to call the water slide movie. Where once you sit down, like you can't stop, right? You just go down. It doesn't mean that the end of the ride is gonna be the best part. And this is a situation where the end of the ride may not be the best part. It's may not be the best fall, but the slide down in this movie is so fucking fun. So I'm excited about this one.

• 3:03Bill Simmons?

  De Palma, a lot of craft and care. Nic Cage had a great point in his career. I threw this movie at you and wasn't surprised that you were excited about it.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  Loved it, saw it in theaters. It's back to back years of going into a movie thinking that I knew what the movie was going to be. And then in the first act going, wait a minute, this is different than what I thought it was gonna be. In 97, it was Eve's Bayou.

• 3:26Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Which I thought was gonna be, which I thought was gonna be a straight horror movie.

• 3:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  That ended up being this American, this great American southern drama. And then when I went into this one, Face Off was like a couple of years before this. So I think I expected more of a bombastic action film.

• 3:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Than this kind of scene by scene, like totally kinetic, driving, spy craft espionage type of deal. But I totally wasn't grossed by it.

• 3:54Bill Simmons?

  We'll talk about De Palma in a second. Nic Cage. I'll start here. I'm trying to think, is there a better actor to play a crooked cop? Who has to make a choice whether he wants to do the right thing or not that we've ever had in the history of American cinema? I don't know what it is about. I have some nominees. I mean, Denzel's done this a couple of times. Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta.

• 4:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Bill Simmons?

  Idris Elba, I think, has that kind of vibe to it, but it's, it's, I don't know what it is about an actor matching it with this. Like, I wouldn't buy McConaughey as a dirty cop.

• 4:30Sean Fennessey?

  No.

• 4:31Bill Simmons?

  Bruce Willis, I would still feel like he's Bruce Willis. There's got to be some sort of scumbag.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Sleaziness.

• 4:36Bill Simmons?

  Sleazy, but I'm still rooting for you. And it's a really hard tightrope, and I can't explain it.

• 4:41Sean Fennessey?

  It's really unusual, though, that that is the energy that he gives when you look at his background and the kind of roles that he took early in his career. And just the way that he is as a person, if you ever see him talk in real life, he's an artist. You know, he talks like an artist. He's from a, you know, very established, famous filmmaking family, and yet he does seem like a sleaze ball.

• 5:03Bill Simmons?

  He's got like the chest hair going all the way up to his neck.

• 5:06Sean Fennessey?

  His hairline.

• 5:07Bill Simmons?

  Seating hairline. He's just kind of.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  You know, I think that part of what makes Nic Cage Nic Cage is, is exactly what you're talking about. It is a rejection of, I am from a filmmaking dynasty. I don't want my last name Coppola to influence the way you think I should be doing what I am. I don't want to be the Francis Ford Coppola of acting. I want to be this almost force of nature on screen that goes from playing like one of the hardest to watch movies I've ever watched and loved was Leaving Las Vegas, to then Castro Troy, to this, Raising Arizona, which is the first time, all of these off-bill, off-kilter things, almost like a rejection of what you would think a Coppola would be

• 5:54Speaker 02

  doing as an actor.

• 5:56Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I like that you flipped him, made him a Coppola.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  He is a Coppola.

• 6:01Bill Simmons?

  He's Nic Cage.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  He is.

• 6:03Bill Simmons?

  Changed his name.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  He did, but he's, when I, it's funny, when I first learned that, I learned that actually on Saturday Night Live.

• 6:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  I learned that he, because there's this skit that they do where they're talking about it, it goes like, if we're talking about good bodies, why don't you mention Sofia Coppola or something like that? And he goes, that's my cousin. And I went, what? His cousin, that's why, that's why I kind of found it out, but he's in his career. That's something that for whatever reason, he definitely did not want to be. I think it's colored the way that he's taken roles and how he's acting and other things.

• 6:35Sean Fennessey?

  It's weird though, because I mean, he appears really early on in a Francis Ford Coppola movie, right? He's in Peggy Sue Got Married.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:41Sean Fennessey?

  He's in Valley Girl. He's in these movies in the eighties. He's in Raising Arizona, where he's got this more like comic goofball persona. Moonstruck is kind of an oddball.

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:51Sean Fennessey?

  And he finds a way to pivot into this like really pained, deep, sincere artist in the mid nineties. And then pivots out of that into these kinds of parts. These like action star parts with guys who are a little greasy, a little untrustworthy. You're rooting for them, but they've done bad things in their life. You know, Con Air is like this.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:16Sean Fennessey?

  Face Off is like this. It's just a.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Matchstick Man.

• 7:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Matchstick Man. Yeah, he's just a, he's a really weird screen persona. He's kind of transformed many times.

• 7:23Bill Simmons?

  He wins the Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas. Before that, he was kind of the, he was a draft pick for, hey, who could win an Oscar someday? He would have been the guy that was mentioned. And he rips, the movies he rips off after that, it was inexplicable as it was happening. And there, I had him when I did the Action Hero Championship belt. I think he actually had the belt because he's in The Rock and Face Off and Con Air. The City of Angels, which not an action movie, then Snake Eyes and Eight Millimeter. Though like five of his six, his next six movies are just like these action movies or action thrillers. They're all movies I like. By the way, we've done The Rock, Face Off, Con Air. We've done five, the five of those six unrewatchable.

• 8:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Bill Simmons?

  But as it was happening, we're like, you're a serious actor. You just won an Oscar. What are you doing?

• 8:07Speaker 02

  But also think about those characters to Sean's point.

• 8:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 8:10Speaker 02

  Those are not characters that really fit into the archetypes of action movie stuff.

• 8:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was like the two point O version of it.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like i- i- in, in The Rock, he, yeah, sure. He is the driving force of this big action movie, but he's.

• 8:26Sean Fennessey?

  He's a scientist.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  He's a scientist, egghead nerd type of guy.

• 8:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  And then in Face Off, he goes from being this magnificent evil at the beginning to playing the version of Tom, of John Travolta's, uh, because it's Casper Troy. What's John Travolta's name again?

• 8:44Sean Fennessey?

  I can't remember the other character's name.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  But, and, and he's like, gotta show all of this sensitivity and all of this stuff. He always flipped it. And, and Con Air. I remember seeing.

• 8:53Bill Simmons?

  Con Air is a real action movie. He's ripped.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Even that, though, he's big and he's got the hair and it was kind of like, that was a way that you hadn't really seen him before.

• 9:03Bill Simmons?

  Wrongfully imprisoned.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Wrongfully imprisoned.

• 9:07Bill Simmons?

  Killed a guy. Defending his wife in a rainstorm. And shouldn't kill them because he.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  The army ranger.

• 9:14Bill Simmons?

  He's, he had these skills that he shouldn't have used on another human being. Had to go to jail.

• 9:20Bill Simmons?

  No, it's just like, circumstance would never happen to real life, but in these action movies where they have to figure out how to get a guy in jail, it's never like, yeah, he had this 15 year old girl in his neighborhood. It's never like gross. It's always like, you know, he had these skills and he had to defend his wife and the guy, he didn't know the guy was gonna die.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  And even, even that scene in Con Air, isn't there one part where he's just looking up going,

• 9:43Speaker 02

  like he's so far out of it. They go so far to make you understand that he's not a bad guy.

• 9:48Sean Fennessey?

  He's just good at playing guys with baggage, with dark pasts, with this like unresolved problem. You know, Moonstruck is like that too. Raising Arizona is like that too. His best movies are always guys where you're like, what the hell happened to this guy? Why is he like this? This movie is kind of like that too. It's just like, why is this guy such a scumbag? Why is he such an operator?

• 10:07Speaker 02

  Don't you just get the feeling that almost more than any other actor, he just likes having fun on screen?

• 10:14Sean Fennessey?

  Definitely. This movie is a good example of that.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  He just likes.

• 10:18Bill Simmons?

  When do you think the wheels kind of started to come off with him as a best actor type of guy? Was it this movie or Face Off? Cause these, Face Off, he's dialing it up.

• 10:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 10:28Bill Simmons?

  And, cause I always thought with Pacino, when he did Son of a Woman, he just kind of morphed into the Son of a Woman guy.

• 10:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:34Bill Simmons?

  And with Nic Cage, I feel like Face Off, he never shed Face Off in his brain and just felt, he's nuts in this movie, which is why I like it.

• 10:42Sean Fennessey?

  But if you watch Vampire's Kiss. Which he made before this. That's one of the craziest movie performances of all time, where you can feel him just being like, screw it, I'm taking this movie over and I'm doing exactly what I want and it doesn't matter if any other actor is doing this. And he does tone it down in movies after that, like Red Rock West, right? He's really like low key and cool. But he, even in the early days, was just like, screw it. This movie, Safety Off, I'm doing whatever I want.

• 11:08Bill Simmons?

  Safety Off's a good way to put it.

• 11:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and he-

• 11:10Bill Simmons?

  That's a good, that's a good list, the Safety Off list. That's Pacino in Devil's Advocate, he's like, "Safety Off!"

• 11:16Sean Fennessey?

  But he meets-

• 11:17Bill Simmons?

  Hoo-ah!

• 11:18Sean Fennessey?

  He meets his absolute match in this movie because De Palma is one of the great Safety Off-

• 11:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Sean Fennessey?

  Perf- like, encouraging performers, filmmakers, because like, he did this twice with Pacino. Scarface and Carlito's Way are amazing Safety Off performances, so they're like, they're so good together.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  Something, it's funny about Nic Cage, it is a little unfair the way we look at how his career played out. Because he's been, not just Safety Off, he's been Bazooka Safety Off-

• 11:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  For like, the last 10 years. But even after this, Matchstick Man, The Weatherman, all of these movies, there are some real understated performances-

• 11:57Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  That people really don't give him credit for. Even like, National Treasure, of all the movies that he's played, where he's kind of played them straight up and down-

• 12:05Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  National Treasure might be one of those things. So it really, for a long time, for a long time even after this, there was a great variety in the roles, and some of the roles were a little bit more understated.

• 12:18Bill Simmons?

  He was a high-volume shooter. His next five after Eight Millimeter were Bringing Out the Dead, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Family Man, and Captain Crowley's Mandaline, along with Eight Millimeter. I remember Captain Crowley's Mandaline, that's when it was kind of ending for Nic Cage, where he was becoming a little bit of a punchline. It is interesting, it's like a different, Snake Eyes, it's not Apex Mountain for him, it's a different- It's almost like Last Title, or La- it's almost like the 1998 Bulls with MJ for the Nic Cage career.

• 12:47Sean Fennessey?

  The Last Dance, yeah.

• 12:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's almost like Last Dance for him, where you go to Snake Eyes, because it's him and De Palma, "I still have faith, everybody's gonna make the right decisions." And then it probably ends with Eight Millimeter, a movie that I love very much. "The film is real."

• 13:03Speaker 02

  But that, that, that movie, with that subject matter- He is the only guy, one of the only guys to me, and maybe you guys could think of somebody else, on his level of star, that would have went on that journey.

• 13:15Bill Simmons?

  That would have been like, yeah, showdown with me and machine in a cemetery.

• 13:19Sean Fennessey?

  He was, he was fearless and he was really into kinky, transgressive stuff. He's still really good, though. He's had like a little mini renaissance in the last five years.

• 13:26Bill Simmons?

  For sure.

• 13:27Sean Fennessey?

  He was in Pig, he was in Dream Scenario a couple of years ago, like, he's not a huge box office star anymore, but he's still a really interesting actor.

• 13:34Bill Simmons?

  Long Legs?

• 13:34Sean Fennessey?

  Long Legs, yeah, every third or fourth movie.

• 13:37Bill Simmons?

  Long Legs!

• 13:39Sean Fennessey?

  And he's still trying, he's still trying stuff, you know, like, even if you don't like Long Legs, he's going for it in that movie. He's doing something totally new.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  There's all kinds of stuff surrounding him about, like, you know, stuff that he's done off screen and stuff that he's bought and.

• 13:53Bill Simmons?

  He's fucking crazy. I mean, he's like a lunatic.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Nobody is. He is legitimately, to me, one of the freest artists of my generation. May, as far as actors, there are other guys out there, but Nic Cage is totally free. He makes movies, like, the movie that he made.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  By free, you mean blockers?

• 14:13Speaker 02

  No, I mean, free, like.

• 14:15Sean Fennessey?

  He's not, he's not afraid to be judged.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  He's not afraid to be judged. Like, he, he puts the movie out there, the premise of the movie could be crazy.

• 14:21Bill Simmons?

  So he's like Craig.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Whatever. Like Craig.

• 14:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he did make a film called Bangkok Dangerous, and we're of course here with Bangkok Craig.

• 14:27Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's right, I forgot about Bangkok Craig, yeah. He's right over there.

• 14:31Sean Fennessey?

  It comes out once in a while.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Even the whole Bangkok, Bangkok Dangerous era, that movie and then Knowing.

• 14:36Sean Fennessey?

  Knowing, yeah. That's a movie that on paper should have been amazing, and then you watch it and you're like, god damn it, what the hell happened here?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  So it's not, it's not a movie that is great, but it is a movie that is better than you remember it.

• 14:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:50Sean Fennessey?

  And he, he's just, he has a thing, before we started recording, we were talking about movie stars, he's got a thing where he can just hold a movie on his shoulders. No matter how good or how bad the movie is, if it's an hour and 10 minutes or two, you know, a hun, you know, an hour and 40 minutes, like, you can hang with him the whole time. And that is rarer than we realize.

• 15:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Good, remember Ghost Rider?

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 15:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, that was tough.

• 15:15Bill Simmons?

  That was when the wheels came off for him, but I still went, I saw that in the theater, because I was like, ah, this movie looks nuts, and Nic Cage is in it, and.

• 15:21Sean Fennessey?

  Ghost Rider, if it was released in 2017 in the Marvel machine back then, would have been cool.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  It would have been fantastic, because you might have got a different take on it. There's also a Ghost Rider sequel that is like. Almost unwatchable.

• 15:32Sean Fennessey?

  Spirit of vengeance.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Spirit of vengeance, yeah. Eat Yourself and Now one is very, very hard to watch.

• 15:37Sean Fennessey?

  Tough one.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  But um, he's also like a huge comic nerd. Him, he's, he's into that stuff. That's a cool character. If you're that type of star, maybe Johnny Blaze is not the comic book character that you choose to play, but that's the one that he wanted to.

• 15:53Bill Simmons?

  De Palma. We've done, this is number five. There's a few things left on the bone.

• 15:59Sean Fennessey?

  What do you, what, what do you really eye long term?

• 16:01Bill Simmons?

  Scarface, we haven't done yet. Carlito's Way, we haven't done yet. Um, and there's one other.

• 16:06Sean Fennessey?

  Dressed to Kill?

• 16:07Bill Simmons?

  Dressed to Kill, we haven't done it.

• 16:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Those, that's, I think that's the big three that are left.

• 16:11Bill Simmons?

  So I, I found a nineteen ninety.

• 16:12Sean Fennessey?

  Carrie, we haven't done Carrie?

• 16:13Bill Simmons?

  Oh, we haven't done Carrie. I found a nineteen ninety eight premiere magazine where they interviewed him about Snake Eyes. And it was a Q and A. And the question was, your leading men often seem ineffectual, dwarfed by insurmountable obstacles. De Palma's like, yeah. Here's his answer. The establishment kind of overwhelms the protagonists in my movies. And it's like the Tar Baby. It's very difficult to beat. You keep socking it, but you just keep on getting another limb sucked in.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Jesus.

• 16:44Bill Simmons?

  De Palma. Fucking weirdo. I love this guy.

• 16:48Sean Fennessey?

  He is the best.

• 16:48Bill Simmons?

  He's like just a maniac.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  I, I, I think of all the directors that are out there, the like, the, obviously, he's a really important director for, was it New Cinema?

• 16:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  It's called, like, he, his movies are the ones that I feel the closest to.

• 17:06Sean Fennessey?

  He's a freak like you.

• 17:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's. I'm glad you said it.

• 17:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's a freak.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  His, his movies are the ones I feel closest to.

• 17:12Bill Simmons?

  It's almost like one of, I was gonna have this on one stage, the worst. One of the most disappointing things about this movie is he kind of suppresses his freak.

• 17:19Sean Fennessey?

  A little bit.

• 17:20Bill Simmons?

  When they're, when we're going over the hotel rooms. 1970s, early 80s De Palma would have had some crazy fuck scene in one of the rooms.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  But aren't we-

• 17:28Bill Simmons?

  This was like mid 50s De Palma, like, I don't need to do that anymore.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  At this point, though, aren't we at the point where De Palma is most flirting with mainstream cinema filmmaking?

• 17:39Bill Simmons?

  He's coming out of Mission Impossible.

• 17:40Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, he's on, I think he's on the mountaintop. I mean, this is really the highest, the pinnacle of his commercial appeal as a filmmaker. But you, you think that that might have like muted his desire to show some of that stuff?

• 17:51Speaker 02

  He flirts with it, right? Like, there's, there, there are ladies in the movie that their sexuality plays a big part in the film. But there's a little bit of holding back, to me, of that stuff, that some of the movies that he made in the past, obviously, like Scarface is just like, just-

• 18:10Bill Simmons?

  Well, dressed to kill.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  Like, all of that stuff.

• 18:12Sean Fennessey?

  We did Body Double. I mean, you know, yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 02

  But in this, you can feel those urges being rolled back a little bit. For the sake of, I want you to see the story and how the story shakes out.

• 18:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  I feel like we're doing something really smart.

• 18:23Sean Fennessey?

  All the movies are about, they're not about the women and they're not even about having sex with the women. They're about men watching the women. That's what all the movie, they're all about voyeurism. So the movie is still like that. It's just that like, I guess the women don't take their tops off in this movie, but for the most part.

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Sean Fennessey?

  It's just, it's the same thing.

• 18:39Bill Simmons?

  If it should be a PG 13 or an R, and I think it ended up, they said fuck it and went for R.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Speaking of that, when we're doing Fem Fatale.

• 18:46Sean Fennessey?

  That, well, I would argue that's his last great movie.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  I know.

• 18:48Bill Simmons?

  Which one?

• 18:49Sean Fennessey?

  Fem Fatale. That's a couple of years later.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:52Bill Simmons?

  He saw something in Rebecca.

• 18:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:56Bill Simmons?

  Look, you always know when it's his film. I think that's the, it's like we always, Sean and I would always talk about back when, uh, back when our fingers used to work. When we'd see other writers and you could cover their byline and you knew who the writer was.

• 19:09Sean Fennessey?

  It's the best feeling.

• 19:10Bill Simmons?

  I know who that is.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:11Bill Simmons?

  De Palma, like, you know.

• 19:12Sean Fennessey?

  Well, you know, how the camera's moving. As soon as the camera starts moving and you see what it's once, what it's looking at, then you can tell.

• 19:19Bill Simmons?

  He's always gonna take one big, long shot swing at some point. Just to kill he does it.

• 19:26Sean Fennessey?

  This one might be the granddaddy.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Which is why I always thought, I mean, looking back on it, he was the perfect director to get the Mission Impossible franchise started.

• 19:37Bill Simmons?

  Well, he agrees because it allowed him to do movies like Snake Eyes. Because it did well and he made money from it.

• 19:42Sean Fennessey?

  It's still shocking to me, though, how that worked.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  How so?

• 19:46Sean Fennessey?

  Because he's, he never made anything even close to that scale of a movie. Scarface is a big movie, but it's only got like seven characters in it.

• 19:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:54Sean Fennessey?

  And him being able to pull off like the, the tunnel scene at the end of that movie is stunning.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  Oh, just the set pieces, the action.

• 20:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, the scope of that movie is so big, but it's so, I still love the original. It's so good.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  And it's, it's the hideous one of all of them. Some people would argue that the movies became more and more ridiculous from a plot standpoint.

• 20:12Bill Simmons?

  What's your favorite De Palma?

• 20:14Speaker 02

  Ever?

• 20:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Carlito's Way.

• 20:17Bill Simmons?

  What's yours, Sean?

• 20:20Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably Blowout. I mean, we talked about it on the Blowout pod, which I just think is like a perfect movie. Um, but tha- that whole stretch.

• 20:27Bill Simmons?

  I respect Blowout the most, but I enjoy Scarface the most. I fucking love Scarface.

• 20:31Sean Fennessey?

  Scarface, dressed to kill, blowout.

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  Because it's like, I, I don't want to waste it yet.

• 20:36Sean Fennessey?

  I know. All those movies are great. Carlito's Way is great. There's, there's like a 15 year period where he is unmatched and able, being, being able to make a sequence in a movie. His, his sequences are so cool.

• 20:46Bill Simmons?

  You know why I can't have a baby with her, Manny? Her womb is so polluted.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  We'll keep going.

• 20:53Bill Simmons?

  Nah.

• 20:56Speaker 02

  But like, Scarface, so the reason why I like Carlito's Way, I can't say that I like Carlito's Way more than Scarface, but the reason why I'm more connected to Carlito's Way is because Carlito's Way feels like Al Pacino and De Palma and Sean Penn together doing an actual thing. Scarface is legitimately, take the reins off somebody.

• 21:20Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Let them fucking go until they can't go anymore. It is like something to behold and while Carlito's Way does actually really, really deep themes of connection and betrayal, like recidivism.

• 21:36Sean Fennessey?

  There's bad hair.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, this, I just, I, I feel real, me being a.

• 21:40Sean Fennessey?

  I, I love Penn's wig in this movie. In that movie, it's so good.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  But I, but I.

• 21:43Sean Fennessey?

  Dave? Yeah, I love Dave.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  I love that, I love that character.

• 21:47Bill Simmons?

  Craig, when we do Carlito's Way. Between Sean, Chris and Van, if it's a three-person pod, we should have some sort of reality show competition where two people can make it and the third one just gets voted off somehow.

• 22:01Sean Fennessey?

  The running man, but for, yeah.

• 22:02Bill Simmons?

  Bowling at Lucky Strike, just like that.

• 22:06Sean Fennessey?

  Wow, you want to have a bowl-off? To get on the Carlito's Way pod?

• 22:08Bill Simmons?

  To see who gets the two spots.

• 22:10Sean Fennessey?

  There's an incredible Carlito's Way homage in this movie.

• 22:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, here's the other thing, the long shot, which I think is the signature from a rewatchable standpoint, it's, it's so amazing how they do it. And he's never really said that it was, it's 12 straight minutes.

• 22:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Bill Simmons?

  But he's never really admitted it was all 12 straight minutes. So then in this premiere magazine thing, they ask him about it. And he says, the movie starts on the boardwalk, blah, blah, blah. The shot establishes Nic Cage's character as he wanders through the arena and the blah, blah. It's a steady cam shot that goes on for about 12 minutes. Then he says, one continuous shot can really only be the length of a 30, 35mm magazine, a 400-foot load. In Bonfire, that was one five-minute shot. We went as far as we could go. Of course, you can make it look longer, like Hitchcock's rope, have somebody pass in front of the camera, keep going. Need artful staging and very good actors. So I think he's saying it was five minutes and they figured out some sort of cheat code. And you could, I was watching it again and you can see like.

• 23:10Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's four cuts.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  You can see it.

• 23:12Sean Fennessey?

  Ultimately, yeah.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  He rounds the corner one time on the wall, you can kind of tell. Down at the fight floor, they do it once.

• 23:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, he definitely is cutting, but the staging of the scenes, even with the cuts, is crazy because of the size of the, of the sequence.

• 23:27Bill Simmons?

  It's a fucking boxing match.

• 23:28Sean Fennessey?

  He's in a freaking arena doing this, it's amazing.

• 23:30Bill Simmons?

  Guzman goes down the escalator at one point and you're like, how the fuck did they do all this?

• 23:33Sean Fennessey?

  Camera going around that corner, yeah, that is just wild.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I, I mean, looking back on it when I watched this, because I hadn't seen this in a while. This is technically really impressive movie.

• 23:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 23:44Sean Fennessey?

  One of his most impressive. It's one of his least interesting thematically, I would say. It is very relevant right now, which I'm sure we'll talk about. But it unlike Dress the Kill or Carlito's Way, it's not like a heady movie about the way that people really feel in the world, you know, it's it's kind of trashy. It's like a trashy noir movie, but he's using it as this vehicle to do all this cool shit with the filmmaking.

• 24:05Bill Simmons?

  Nic Cage does say one interesting thing though at the end. When he was like, basically he was like, well, at least I get to be on TV or whatever. Something there's something about celebrity going on in the late 90s that I think De Palma was interested in, but I don't. He didn't really hit it hard enough.

• 24:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, the the movie is is good and it's one that, you know, I really liked when it came out. It's not quite as smart as it probably wanted to be.

• 24:28Bill Simmons?

  It needs like 10 more minutes, weirdly. Sorry, Craig. Hundred and eight minutes might might have been able to nail it. There's some sort of thing about instant celebrity and I the most interesting part of the movie to me is the the fall after where it sets him up as the hero. And then you're just like, hey, by the way, he was found with cocaine. And then all of a sudden, he's just on the boardwalk and he had his moment. It was gone.

• 24:49Sean Fennessey?

  But that I think that's a reshoot, which we can talk about why. But I don't think any of that stuff is supposed to be there in the first place. And you could have made the case that if they had thought about it more, that they could have made it more this arc about leaning into like what you want out of celebrity in life, which is like a part of that character. There's other ideas in it that are kind of interesting about conspiracy thrillers. But there it's more like the classic De Palma stuff of being about other movies. Like this is very much, you mentioned Rope in that quote. He's constantly being compared to Hitchcock, who's his great inspiration. And he's always like looking for a way to take a framework that Hitchcock has and then elevate it. So he has some movies, you know, like Obsession from the 70s with Cliff Robertson is kind of like this. Fundraising Kane is kind of like this.

• 25:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Sean Fennessey?

  Where they're like more exercises than they are great movies where he's like, let me see if I could do this.

• 25:37Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 25:37Sean Fennessey?

  And they're still crazily entertaining. But you don't walk away from them with the same feeling that you do as like Dress the Kill or Blowout.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. The movie here is like surprisingly straightforward.

• 25:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Like there, the things happen, right? Uh, you find out that Gary Sinise is your bad guy. There's no levels to that. That just continues to play itself.

• 26:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's revealed and then goes.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  It's revealed and then it goes. And there's not a lot of, oh, my God, I did not see that coming in the movie at all. That's why the technician part of the movie and is so important because you need that to keep the kinetic energy of the film going. It's kind of like what's gonna happen next from your eyes and like not what's gonna happen next from your brain.

• 26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  So it's like what the next thing you're gonna see rather than the next thing that's gonna happen plot wise. Real quick, where are you on Bonfire of the Vanities?

• 26:34Sean Fennessey?

  Oof, I don't think it really works very well.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:37Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I do think that sequence that he's talking about is interesting, the long, that long tracking city cam shot that they do, but it's like totally gratuitous and you can, he's just a mismatch with the material.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 26:46Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I think if you had a different filmmaker make that movie, even if you had Scorsese make that movie, it'd be a little bit more interesting, but I don't, I never get the impression he's like interested in that world, you know?

• 26:55Bill Simmons?

  That's why there's been books and podcasts and everything else done about that movie because it's was such a great piece of IP. And then every choice that, every actor they cast was wrong. He was the wrong director.

• 27:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 27:09Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty tough. Every like five years I forget that it's bad and I'm like, oh, you know what, I'll give this a whirl and it's just not good.

• 27:15Sean Fennessey?

  Here we go.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  I always liked it.

• 27:16Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my God.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, my bad, guys.

• 27:20Bill Simmons?

  Hanks is, Hanks is bad in it. It's weird.

• 27:23Sean Fennessey?

  He's also miscast.

• 27:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's just not good in it.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  I, I, I always liked it. I think I was at a time in my life.

• 27:29Bill Simmons?

  You just would have, you were destined to like it.

• 27:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Speaker 02

  Where it was like Willis, Hank, Melanie Griffith, like all in a movie together being like that entire, but remember also I liked, you know, at that time, anything set in New York in that whole, who's that girl, Madonna? Loved the movie.

• 27:46Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  So like, I just, I've always liked it and I've tried to go back and watch it and find reasons to like not like the movie, but I always go, oh, man, I like this.

• 27:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, that came out in 90. After that, it did Raising Cain, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Snake Eyes.

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  It's kind of over after that. Like, he didn't really have the commercial movie after that. That's kind of the end of the run, which is interesting because it's also the end of some sort of, it's some sort of invisible line with the end of the Nic Cage run, even though we didn't know it yet.

• 28:14Sean Fennessey?

  He says something, he did, I read a couple of interviews with him around this time. I wanted to read this to you guys, something he said right around the release of this movie. He said, "I think that something new is coming. I really think that the conventional movie making world is over and the greatest work is behind us. I really do." "The industry sort of peaked in the 40s, 50s and 60s mainly because of the turmoil, wars, all that stuff, European influx into Hollywood. That was the beginning of movies and it's over. It's never going to be again. I think the next thing that's going to happen is going to happen on the internet with interactive media. Now you can have all this video technology, your own little video camera, and edit stuff at home. You can make movies like novels now. You really can. You can make them inexpensively with your friends and put them on the internet."

• 28:54Bill Simmons?

  Wow, and he didn't even see the prestige TV coming, but he basically nailed 95% of it.

• 28:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, that's 1998 when he said that.

• 29:00Bill Simmons?

  He was early, but he was definitely right. Also, his whole class, which we've talked about before, that there's been books written about with Spielberg and Lucas and Coppola. All of them are kind of hitting the end of some sort of road, right? Scorsese is about to transition into those 2000s, which were really interesting.

• 29:17Sean Fennessey?

  He's about to take off and become kind of the winner of this coming moment, which is really interesting because De Palma, for a period of time, was kind of kind of big dogged him a little.

• 29:24Bill Simmons?

  Lucas is transitioning into, "I'm just gonna redo the IP I did before." I'm just a corporate god. Spielberg has his crazy like Minority Report, like he's moving into like that post Saving Private Ryan world and De Palma kind of doesn't know where to go.

• 29:39Sean Fennessey?

  He demands a lot of control on his movies too, and you can tell that he's not able to convince people to let him make the stuff he wants to make. I mean, he's only made four movies in the last 25 years.

• 29:51Bill Simmons?

  Some more stuff to talk about this movie. We're gonna take a quick break. This episode is brought to you by PayPal. Let's talk about holiday shopping. Make the most of your money with PayPal. They give you the flexibility. To pay in four, no fees, no interest and save the offer in the PayPal app to get 5% cash back when you pay later. So whether you're shopping for an ugly sweater or a work gala, PayPal helps you make the most of your money this holiday. All you have to do is save the offer in the PayPal app. Expires 12/31. See paypal.com/promotermsubject to approval. Learn more at paypal.com/payinfor. PayPal Inc. NMLS 910457.

• 30:34Bill Simmons?

  A couple of actor stuff to talk about this. Evil Gary Sinise.

• 30:37Sean Fennessey?

  That's great stuff.

• 30:38Bill Simmons?

  So I was thinking, we were one Evil Sinise movie away from Evil Sinise Month. We could have done Reindeer Games, Snake Eyes and Ransom. We already did Ransom.

• 30:47Sean Fennessey?

  You want to re-ransom? I gotta say, I love Ransom.

• 30:50Bill Simmons?

  We could have.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Is Ransom the peak of Evil Sinise?

• 30:54Bill Simmons?

  So I was gonna ask you, what's the most Evil Sinise? I think it's Ransom.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  I think it's Ransom.

• 30:59Sean Fennessey?

  You dropped the Reindeer Games in there, huh?

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Reindeer Games is in there, but Reindeer Games is not as.

• 31:04Bill Simmons?

  I like Reindeer Games, unfortunately.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  I like it too.

• 31:07Bill Simmons?

  It's a guilty pleasure movie.

• 31:09Speaker 02

  But that was a DVD classic for me, man. That was a DVD.

• 31:11Sean Fennessey?

  We gotta do Frankenheimer Month, you know, 52 pickup.

• 31:14Bill Simmons?

  Oh, wow. There's a lot of Frankenheimers.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  But like.

• 31:17Bill Simmons?

  What is it about Sinise though, that you just make it like, oh, man, this motherfucker?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  He's got that thing. Like even at the end of Ransom, where the kid hears his voice and he starts peeing himself, like Gary has that thing, that intensity, that face where he can go from somebody, because he does this in, does this in Ransom and also in this movie, where he goes from a face that you're supposed to trust. And then as soon as the turn happens, he is legitimately a face that you can revile in one thing. And like.

• 31:51Bill Simmons?

  And Gump, he does the flip. He's, he feels like he's evil and then you root for him.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Like, he's like, it's, he can do either thing so effectively that it works in movies.

• 32:01Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, what, who is the modern day Gary Sinise? I mean, these kinds of actors who are like, he was pretty much a star, you know, Academy Awards.

• 32:11Bill Simmons?

  Because he had the pilot 13 piece too, and Gump, he's the third leading.

• 32:15Sean Fennessey?

  Gump became so famous. Yeah. I mean, I, that's a really interesting thing where it's, he's got this incredible stage background. He transitions to Hollywood and he gets cast in big Hollywood movie after big Hollywood movie, whether he's the hero or the villain. And he's not. Uh, heartthrob?

• 32:31Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 32:31Sean Fennessey?

  He's not always the villain, right? He's not like JT Walsh or something like.

• 32:35Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 32:36Sean Fennessey?

  He is.

• 32:37Bill Simmons?

  No, he feels like he's a little more leading man-ish.

• 32:39Sean Fennessey?

  But he's like that weird, really weird blend between character actor and leading man. Right? Where like he could carry a movie. It's probably not ideal if he's carrying your movie. But if he's in the number two spot, like in a movie like this.

• 32:49Bill Simmons?

  He's Scottie Pippen.

• 32:50Sean Fennessey?

  It's probably gonna be good.

• 32:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  It's like he is a super duper talented, like backup quarterback.

• 32:57Sean Fennessey?

  Right, right.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  To where.

• 32:58Sean Fennessey?

  The Jeff Hostetler of movies, yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  To where you kinda don't know like what to do with them. But he can definitely be a crazy addition to your team if in fact he has to carry the team.

• 33:09Bill Simmons?

  What's your Sinise relationship, Craig?

• 33:12Speaker 03

  Gump in Apollo.

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  Uh, see, that's, see, he's a good guy in those movies.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, but just a really awesome, steady, it's like side character. Oh, who, yeah, he's good in everything. I like Gary Sinise.

• 33:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I don't know who he is now.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  Who's like that guy who can then be the bad guy and stuff like. But you know what? Can I tell you something? The American character actor of that ilk. Like you've talked a lot about, I think it's an interesting, um, observation about sort of the next great Italian American actor. That can like, you know, you're talking about Leoto or, you know, the rest of these guys and Robert De Niro and all of these. But like, just the stalwart American character actor, like who are those guys now?

• 33:56Bill Simmons?

  They're on TV.

• 33:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not something movies are even sold on anymore. There are plenty of them, but.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  I'm sure there are plenty of them.

• 34:03Sean Fennessey?

  Sinise is a, is a, is an unusual one. So I was just thinking of one of my favorite Sinise parts is, uh, he's Stu Redman in the Stand adaptation, which was on TV in the nineties. And he's, you know, I, I always loved that. That's kinda my Bonfire of the Vanities where I saw it at an age where I was like, this is my favorite thing of all time. If you watch it now, it's a little harder to sit through, but he's so good as Stu in that series.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that movie is still terrifying to me.

• 34:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I loved it.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Who's the guy that plays Randall Flagg in that one?

• 34:26Sean Fennessey?

  Jamie Sheridan.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Just, that, that's still.

• 34:28Bill Simmons?

  Jamie Sheridan.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Like, that's a mini-series, but that's still like a haunting, terrifying, weird movie.

• 34:34Bill Simmons?

  Sinise is good, cause it's like, he's a stage actor. He didn't really wanna get into Hollywood, but he really loves and he really takes it. And then like 10 years later, it's like CSI New York with Gary Sinise.

• 34:46Sean Fennessey?

  Didn't he do that show for like 10 years?

• 34:47Bill Simmons?

  They're seaming on the bed. Get the blue lights.

• 34:51Sean Fennessey?

  Well, money's good, right? Everybody likes money.

• 34:54Bill Simmons?

  At some point, everybody's like, yeah, fuck it. CS:GO, New York, sounds great.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  To be real with you, if you look at him, William Peterson.

• 35:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Like, a lot of those guys ended up finding their homes on shows like that. They're trusted faces that let you know that a procedural or something like that is a serious piece of art.

• 35:12Sean Fennessey?

  And who came up playing cops and detectives in movies and then they transitioned, yeah. And then they killed movies.

• 35:17Bill Simmons?

  Did you read the Peterson interview for the 40th anniversary of To Love and Die in L.A.?

• 35:22Sean Fennessey?

  Your guy Bill?

• 35:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he hasn't acted in 15 years. They asked him why and he's like, because I've done everything. I don't need to do anything anymore. I love when I hang out with my kids and my grandkids. I live in Chicago, I have a great life.

• 35:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's nice.

• 35:33Bill Simmons?

  I've played every part I've wanted to play.

• 35:34Sean Fennessey?

  I respect it.

• 35:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I loved it.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  I respected it too.

• 35:36Bill Simmons?

  I was like, you do your thing, William Peterson.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I just.

• 35:39Sean Fennessey?

  He gave us Manhunter, you know?

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Manhunter, fantastic. Like, I just kept waiting for the role or the moment. I guess J.K. Simmons is one of those actors that we were talking about.

• 35:50Sean Fennessey?

  He is.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, I kept waiting for the role. I kept waiting for the J.K. Simmons moment.

• 35:54Bill Simmons?

  Like the later in life?

• 35:56Sean Fennessey?

  Oh.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, the I.

• 35:57Sean Fennessey?

  A big supporting part.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  The I'm in whiplash, now you gotta contend with me.

• 36:01Bill Simmons?

  Was it Fear with Mark Wahlberg for you?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't. It wasn't, I fuck with that movie though.

• 36:05Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  It's very hard, I mean, people keep hearing me saying, it's very hard to mention movies that I really don't fuck with.

• 36:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, like 1991 to 1997, it's kind of like, eh, they're all good.

• 36:15Bill Simmons?

  They really are.

• 36:16Sean Fennessey?

  I.

• 36:17Bill Simmons?

  I would go all the way to 99.

• 36:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:19Bill Simmons?

  I was watching the last hour, I was doing some work and I wanted to put on something, so I was flipping cable and Fight Club was on, which we've already done. And I was watching the last hour of Fight Club, kind of half-heartedly, as I'm doing football stuff. And then I just started watching the last 15 minutes and then it ended with the Pixies song and I was like.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Legitimately a brilliant movie, though.

• 36:38Bill Simmons?

  I was, and things are blowing up and he's staring out the window and Where's My Mind comes in. I was like, man, we used to fucking make great things in this country.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  We'll even have the nuts to make that one now. The movie interrogates too many things. I mean, if they.

• 36:50Bill Simmons?

  It's a nuts movie.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  If they made it, it would probably be a little overwrought, a little too self-serious. That movie's winking at you a little bit in a way.

• 36:57Bill Simmons?

  It's very fit for the book, too.

• 36:59Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, man. One, Eddington, One Battle, these movies are pretty angry and pretty much about what's going on. Like, it happens, it just doesn't necessarily happen in the same way.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  They are, but they're in. There's, there's, there, there is a specific.

• 37:12Sean Fennessey?

  Great movie.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  There's a specific critique and question that Fight Club asks that was would turn so many people off now. It feels like, like the whole, the, the whole conversation around masculinity. The fact that hurting people makes these guys feel, there would be a thousand really annoying think pieces.

• 37:31Sean Fennessey?

  There were then, I mean, it was not, it didn't have the warmest perception, yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 02

  Fair enough.

• 37:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  Fair enough. I guess I was part of one of those.

• 37:38Sean Fennessey?

  I was a very angry seventeen year old that came out and I was like, this is clearly the greatest film ever made. You know, like this, there will never be another, a better movie than this. I've had like a weird relationship to it over the years. But maybe you could cite that movie as kind of like the end of an era in some ways. Like it is, it is ninety nine, it is kind of like closing the book.

• 37:53Bill Simmons?

  Y two K really did shift us from here to here and it's hard to explain.

• 37:59Sean Fennessey?

  Not literally, not the computers.

• 38:01Bill Simmons?

  It just felt, everything felt slightly different after Y two K and I don't know why. And then nine eleven was the other big catalyst, but it just, that, that late nineties just felt like something.

• 38:10Sean Fennessey?

  When Snake Eyes came out, I was like, every movie will be cool forever. You know, like to go see a movie like this in theaters, you're like, yeah, of course this was pretty good. And I don't want to get over my skis about it.

• 38:20Bill Simmons?

  Same weekend as Halloween H two O and Saving Private Ryan came out the week before. And it was just like, that's kind of what we did back then, Craig.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  I was just so into movies.

• 38:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  I was in, I was at, uh, City Place. So I was just in the movie theater. My man Stefan worked there. Stefan would hook us up with the tickets. Like it, like I would, he was, Stefan was the man. But like, I, I was just so into movies. I was finding myself there all the time at that point. And I think that it used to be that it was like, you could just make a movie and cool was the barometer. It's just cool.

• 38:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  It's ju, it's just like you make a, I was watching So I Married an Axe Murderer.

• 39:02Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Uh, like.

• 39:03Sean Fennessey?

  All time classic.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Like a couple of weeks ago, I'm like, would they make this movie now? A movie where it's, would they, it's just a, I mean, there's a whole MTV type of ecosystem because you have the making of the movie type of deal, Mike Myers was on there.

• 39:16Sean Fennessey?

  I have a take about this.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Would they make, would they make just a cool story now that didn't like, So I Married an Axe? Would they make that movie?

• 39:23Sean Fennessey?

  One thing I'm really surprised hasn't happened, because we've talked about many times over the years, the SNL to movie pipeline on pods, how there has not been a streaming movie pipeline for SNL actors, where you're like, oh, this, this person's kind of like, Chloe Feynman's got, kind of got something.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:41Sean Fennessey?

  But maybe he doesn't need her own TV show, but maybe let's give her a $20 million Netflix movie and see what happens.

• 39:48Bill Simmons?

  I mean, they kind of did this with Please Don't Destroy, and it was on Peacock, and it bombed.

• 39:52Sean Fennessey?

  But that was supposed to be a theatrical movie that Judd Apatow produced, and then like, it didn't turn out, and then they put it on streaming. I'm talking about like, shouldn't there be like a little division?

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  Could Marcelo have a thing where he's like?

• 40:01Sean Fennessey?

  Right now, he's a perfect example. I'm like, that guy's just funny, you could tell he's funny, he could carry something, make it low stakes. So I Married an Axe Murder isn't the greatest movie of all time, but it was like, it was a road tester.

• 40:12Bill Simmons?

  But this is the problem with comedies now, and why horror movies have, have, just keep ascending, and they just have not figured out comedy at all, the way that, we had them in the 90s. Because now it's, you just put them on Netflix or Amazon or whatever, they spend no money.

• 40:26Sean Fennessey?

  Let these guy, young guys take some at bats.

• 40:28Bill Simmons?

  They don't want to take the at bats. I'm with you.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I know we got to get back to Snake Eyes, but I will say about that particular movie. I, I know, I mean.

• 40:33Bill Simmons?

  What are we talking about?

• 40:34Speaker 02

  I, I know we got to get back to, but I will say with that particular movie, if you, you look at the movie, right, and it's Mike Myers doing his thing, it's like, almost like a pilot for, uh, Austin Powers.

• 40:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 40:45Speaker 02

  Because he plays the dad, he's singing the, um.

• 40:48Sean Fennessey?

  He's gonna cry himself to death on this huge pillow.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the whole nine, right?

• 40:52Sean Fennessey?

  Son, heed, heed, move!

• 40:54Speaker 02

  He's doing all of that stuff, and you're like.

• 40:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's a virtual planetoid.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Right, and he's singing the, the Ross Stewart song, it's hysterical, right? And it's almost like proof that that guy can play those characters in a movie that, it, it, it works as proof of concept, and it's kind of like, they don't do that anymore.

• 41:12Bill Simmons?

  You know why? Because they overthink everything. We talked about this with Dirty Work. They're just like, Norm MacDonald's, we'll figure it out.

• 41:18Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, they're absolute banger.

• 41:19Bill Simmons?

  We don't need a full script yet.

• 41:21Sean Fennessey?

  Perfect movie.

• 41:21Bill Simmons?

  Chris Farley said he'd be able to have two days on the set, we'll figure it out. I think they spend too much time overthinking. What do you think it is, Craig? I mean, part of it is your generation's fault.

• 41:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. You guys killed comedy.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, we're trying to bring it back. I, I think that SNL doesn't cast the same type of people anymore is also part of it. Like, they're, they're not, I don't think there's a lot of people who are try, who are like, character actors on SNL anymore.

• 41:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Like, it is, it's rare that they bring somebody in who can do like 10 different characters. It's not really like what they do anymore. So I, I don't even think the pipeline is set up to work because it's completely different casting now.

• 41:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Shane, Shane could have done it. I mean, Shane doing tires is basically like a 90 minute comedy in 1993.

• 42:02Sean Fennessey?

  That's it. That, that actually replaced his movie, his dirty work.

• 42:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Um, back to this.

• 42:10Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible pivot.

• 42:11Bill Simmons?

  We never talked about Carla.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Who's gonna go first?

• 42:15Sean Fennessey?

  God damn. This is a real Venn diagram for Bill Van Sean.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:20Sean Fennessey?

  This is, this is one of the real like.

• 42:22Bill Simmons?

  You know, we've talked about this.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  We gotta be professional.

• 42:25Sean Fennessey?

  We met on a cold, dark night.

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:27Sean Fennessey?

  This conversation stays between us.

• 42:28Bill Simmons?

  In a deep Reddit board?

• 42:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  Um, look, man, sometimes people just don't find the right.

• 42:36Bill Simmons?

  Sometimes they just don't find the right roles. And there's, we talk about like in the seventies and eighties, it was just because they didn't have good roles. In her case, the role, I just, I don't know whether it was her fault, she couldn't read the scripts, like didn't know which ones to do. No, no director saw what was sitting there.

• 42:55Sean Fennessey?

  I'd love to know how many great roles she finished in second place.

• 42:59Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  And it was, and you guys gotta think, man, we're talking about, first of all, I wanna say she's had a fantastic career.

• 43:06Sean Fennessey?

  Great career. Very successful.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  In the nineties, where we're talking about, we're talking about the rise with Julia Roberts as a Stranglehold, but then right under Julia, there's Sandra Bullock, there's, uh, Cameron Diaz. It, this is.

• 43:20Bill Simmons?

  But don't forget the Friends thing, and it's like, if you put her on Friends as Rachel, I think she's like an A plus lister. She just never had the one thing.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  But, but all of this, though, this is a crowded, crowded field.

• 43:33Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  And she took the Sarah Jessica Parker, where she was in Miami, she was in Miami Rhapsody.

• 43:38Sean Fennessey?

  That's exactly who I was gonna say. I was like, Sarah Jessica Parker had the kind of career she could have had. She could have been a.

• 43:44Bill Simmons?

  Could Carla have been the Carrie Bradshaw?

• 43:45Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, definitely.

• 43:48Bill Simmons?

  Because the thing about her is she could be in a rom com, she could be in a movie like this. I think she could have been in like an early eighties De Palma movie. Like she could have played the Deborah Shelton character in Body Double.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  And every guy was in love with her.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Devastating.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  And I thought she was a good actress. And she's funny. Like at the end, when she's turning on the charm with Nic Cage. And you're like, this guy's a fucking loser. Why do you, why, but I, I believed it.

• 44:13Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, there's a hot moment there where both Carla Gugino and Connie Britton were on Spin City. And I was like, what is, what is happening?

• 44:21Bill Simmons?

  Connie Britton's another one. Think about how long it took for Connie Britton. It took, and then it was Coach Taylor. And it's like, oh yeah, Connie Britton, she survived.

• 44:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she's just, I'll, I'll just be very frank, just insanely hot in Snake Eyes. Like it is, it is insane how hot she is, at least to me in this movie. And it is weird because she's like, still working and, and doing really good work.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 44:45Sean Fennessey?

  But there are a few people like we've talked about on the show over the years where you're like, one, one turn of the dial and it would have been a different career.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  Right. You, you see her now, she's in the Mike Flanagan stuff a lot. She's doing a lot of different stuff. She's all, she's a presence and a deal, but once again.

• 45:00Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's weird. The last seven, eight years was the, probably the best run she's had from an IMDB standpoint.

• 45:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, she, she had, she had Karen Sisko. That was supposed to be a big TV show. That didn't pop, you know, but she did.

• 45:11Bill Simmons?

  She was in the Cameron Crowe Roadies, that Showtime show. That didn't work. That seems like it should have.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's, once again, it's somebody that you always feel like is, who's having a great, great career. But you feel like is one role away from that next echelon of stardom.

• 45:30Bill Simmons?

  Like she probably was looking at Aniston like, I could fucking have her lunch. Could kill her.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  I'll be honest with you. Well, I'm looking at the, uh, the, the list of roles here. It's very, very, she took, Miami Rhapsody is a movie that I love that not a lot of people have seen.

• 45:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's a really fun movie.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  It's a really fun movie.

• 45:48Sean Fennessey?

  She's really good in it, Carla Gugino.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  She's good in it. Sarah Jessica Parker, Antonio Banderas, it's kind of like free willing. Jeremy Piven, story of love and relationships that takes place in Miami. It's like a really interesting.

• 46:01Bill Simmons?

  There's some Amanda Peet parts she could have played.

• 46:03Sean Fennessey?

  Hmm, that's a good comp too.

• 46:04Bill Simmons?

  It's just like, I just think you're right. I think it was a loaded.

• 46:07Sean Fennessey?

  Comedic actress with dramatic chops.

• 46:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 02

  Right. And then, you know, later on, her career just keeps trending. She's in Sin City, which is a role that I really, really enjoyed from her.

• 46:18Sean Fennessey?

  Did you?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was.

• 46:21Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think was the best part?

• 46:22Speaker 02

  I thought she brought a lot to the table in Sin City, like a lot.

• 46:26Sean Fennessey?

  Anything specific?

• 46:27Speaker 02

  Some things were unexpected, but I liked that it happened.

• 46:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:31Speaker 02

  But if you guys want to just get into the whole thing.

• 46:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good film with some good scenes.

• 46:35Bill Simmons?

  She never had, like even if she played the Ellen Pompeo part in Old School, with some sort of thing that just was like on all the time for 25 years. She never had that movie.

• 46:46Sean Fennessey?

  She did For My Wife, which is True Beverly Hills.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Oh, come on.

• 46:49Bill Simmons?

  Interesting.

• 46:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:51Sean Fennessey?

  To Eileen, she'll always be the girl from True Beverly Hills.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  I know you love it.

• 46:54Bill Simmons?

  Well, in this movie, she tests missile results for power aircraft.

• 46:58Speaker 02

  Speak on True Beverly Hills.

• 47:00Bill Simmons?

  Which one?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  Speak on True Beverly Hills. Just, I want your opinion.

• 47:03Bill Simmons?

  I haven't seen it in 45 years, remember? Yeah?

• 47:08Speaker 02

  Beverly Hills, what a.

• 47:09Bill Simmons?

  Can we talk about how Carla was, Carla was testing missile results? Which, I'm just gonna give her this. Special category. We don't get to give out much. The Elizabeth Shoe is an Oxford Electrochemist Award for most ridiculous casting.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  I was hoping that would fall to me. It didn't, damn it, that category.

• 47:26Bill Simmons?

  You, that was gonna be yours?

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 47:28Bill Simmons?

  Oh, my bad, Craig.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  Can I ask?

• 47:30Speaker 03

  I knew it was gonna go.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  What does, cause I always bring this role up when we, when we do this one. Denise Richards as.

• 47:38Bill Simmons?

  That's the, that, that could probably be the title of this.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Nuclear physicist.

• 47:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, her name is Dr. Christmas Jones.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  I remember she's on Jay Leno and Jay Leno goes, nuclear scientist, Dr. Christmas Jones. And she goes, I can play a scientist. Like, what, when we do this, is this category, what do you need to play a scientist?

• 48:01Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's more her age is the issue. It's like she's a 26-year-old missiles expert.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  They're so specific about this. She's like, I'm 26. It's like, ah, you could have been 31. Why are you 26?

• 48:12Sean Fennessey?

  It's very strange.

• 48:14Bill Simmons?

  Um, we also have a very crowded that guy and graduated that guy group.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  This is, is this the that guy movie of the nineties?

• 48:22Bill Simmons?

  There's been others, but.

• 48:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good one.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  Louis Guzman, Stan Sean, John Heard, Mike Starr, who's the guy who dies from eating the peppers in Dumb and Dumber and was in a million mob movies.

• 48:33Sean Fennessey?

  Great pull on that being Mike Starr. Yeah.

• 48:35Bill Simmons?

  Kevin Dunn, who was that guy from Dave?

• 48:38Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 48:38Bill Simmons?

  Who was the dad in Mad Love and was just in a lot of nineties movies.

• 48:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Michael Rispoli, who is Grandma in Rounders and this in the same year.

• 48:47Sean Fennessey?

  I was just gonna say, I mean, you're stepping on a X amount here. Yeah.

• 48:50Bill Simmons?

  Going for The Sopranos and finished the second again, Dolphine.

• 48:53Speaker 02

  Oof, tough.

• 48:54Bill Simmons?

  Ninety-eight for Rispoli.

• 48:56Sean Fennessey?

  He must have really felt like the world was right in front of him.

• 48:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:58Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he's, I'm in a Brian De Palma movie. I'm in this exciting movie with Matt Damon and Edward Norton. I'm gonna be Tony Soprano.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this HBO show.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  He ends up as Jackie, right?

• 49:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, he ends up as Jackie. So it's like, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's crazy. You miss one. Jeanard Burks, you know who that is?

• 49:16Bill Simmons?

  Which one was that?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  So in Devil in the Blue Dress, remember the movie Devil in the Blue Dress?

• 49:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  He plays in the movie, I'll never forget this, it's one of the great cuckings in any movie that's ever happened. In Devil in the Blue Dress, it takes place easy, goes over to this guy's house and he has sex with his wife while the guy is sleeping. Do you remember this?

• 49:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Leesin Nicole Carson in the other room.

• 49:47Sean Fennessey?

  Continue.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, he has sex with his wife.

• 49:51Bill Simmons?

  That's who's in this?

• 49:52Speaker 02

  Is sleeping, huh?

• 49:53Bill Simmons?

  That's, that's this guy?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  He's like, he's like, uh, cause he says to Leesin Nicole Carson's character, he goes, yo man is sleeping in the other room. She doesn't care. She's like, he's so drunk, he's knocked out and then they do it and Jeanard Burks plays the guy that gets cut to no, shout out to him. He's been in a lot of stuff, but.

• 50:09Bill Simmons?

  Well, there's a that girl in this too. That girl from Devil's Advocate, the, the black witch lady.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, she's in the first scene.

• 50:18Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:19Bill Simmons?

  What's her name? She's the announcer.

• 50:20Sean Fennessey?

  Tamara Tooney, is that her name?

• 50:21Bill Simmons?

  Can't remember.

• 50:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 02

  That's her name.

• 50:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Bill Simmons?

  Uh, written by David Koep, who apparently is the fourth most successful screenwriter ever by box office.

• 50:29Sean Fennessey?

  He wrote Jurassic Park, among many other movies.

• 50:31Bill Simmons?

  War of the Worlds, Carlito's Way, Mission Impossible, Spider-Man. Also directed seven movies that weirdly, The Trigger Effect, Stir of Echoes, Secret Window, they're all like, kind of the same weird,

• 50:42Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 50:42Bill Simmons?

  strange movie.

• 50:43Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, he's had a amazing career.

• 50:46Bill Simmons?

  Really good career.

• 50:46Sean Fennessey?

  He is considered one of the like, geniuses of screenwriting.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Have you guys done The Trigger Effect?

• 50:52Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Would you do The Trigger Effect?

• 50:53Bill Simmons?

  Probably not.

• 50:54Sean Fennessey?

  I like it. Another movie that came out in the nineties where I was like, the concept alone is so cool to me.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Elizabeth Shue.

• 51:00Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 51:01Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Another actress that's right there, crowding up.

• 51:05Bill Simmons?

  Grabs leave in Las Vegas, yeah.

• 51:07Speaker 02

  Crowding up the space.

• 51:08Sean Fennessey?

  Wow.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  For Carly, would you like, another, it's, I'm telling you, it's a deep, deep.

• 51:11Sean Fennessey?

  Boxed out, yeah. We could have had At First Sight, you know, with, I don't know, was that?

• 51:15Bill Simmons?

  No, that was Mira Sorvino. She was also in there.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Mira Sorvino, I'm telling you, there's a lot going on. Gwen Palchro.

• 51:21Sean Fennessey?

  I'm thinking of The Saint.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Towards the end, it's like a lot of people coming in.

• 51:25Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you know what At First Sight is?

• 51:26Speaker 03

  No.

• 51:27Bill Simmons?

  It's a drama that's now comedy.

• 51:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 51:30Bill Simmons?

  Um, Val Comer's blind, but there's an operation where he can get his sight back. So he can see things for about thirty minutes in the movie and falls in love with Mira Sorvino. But guess what? The surgery had after effects and he's gonna lose his sight again. And now he has to decide what's important to him.

• 51:48Bill Simmons?

  And they go to a hockey game at one point.

• 51:49Speaker 03

  Why don't we do dramas that are now comedy month?

• 51:51Bill Simmons?

  I have it, I have it.

• 51:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good idea.

• 51:52Bill Simmons?

  I've done all the work. Cause it's a regarding Henry driven month.

• 51:55Sean Fennessey?

  I saw At First Sight in high school on a first date with a girl who loved it and I broke up with her after that.

• 52:02Bill Simmons?

  That was it.

• 52:05Bill Simmons?

  It's a true story.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  You're over it. Regarding Henry as unintentional comedy is going to be a really interesting movie to do.

• 52:13Bill Simmons?

  There's another one for dramas that are now comedy month that I might be the only one that thinks it's funny, but Legends of the Fall is hilarious now. I haven't seen it in a long time. It's, that was like a very serious drama that is now like laugh out loud funny.

• 52:26Speaker 02

  Man, that's just another movie in the never ending chapter of my mama's white boy thing. Just every once in a while, my mama would say something that would really piss my dad off.

• 52:34Bill Simmons?

  Want that to be a month fan?

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:35Bill Simmons?

  My mama's white boy thing month?

• 52:37Speaker 02

  My mama's white boy thing, my mama watched Legends of the Fall and be like, I told you about the, uh, the Thelma and Louise story.

• 52:43Bill Simmons?

  Yes.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, my mom goes.

• 52:45Bill Simmons?

  Your mom like Brad Pitt.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  With her friends, she goes, I just saw the finest white boy I've ever seen before in my life. And then she go, she's watching Legends of the Fall and she just says, he keeps getting finer. I don't understand what's going on. My father could not handle it.

• 52:58Bill Simmons?

  Just think, when she went to see Once, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, did she go?

• 53:03Speaker 02

  No, she didn't see it. She's over it now. She's militant again.

• 53:05Bill Simmons?

  Seventy-three million dollar budget for, seventy-three million dollar budget for Snake Eyes that made a hundred and three point nine million dollars. And our guy Raj. Oh no. He one starred it. Oh no. I think this is only like the fourth one star we've gotten from Raj. He said, it's the worst kind of bad film, the kind that gets you all worked up and then lets you down instead of being lousy from the first shot.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Damn.

• 53:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, settle down Raj. Come on.

• 53:31Speaker 02

  He said the movie's.

• 53:32Bill Simmons?

  He loved the, he loved the Steadicam shot in the beginning and then he just thought it fell apart.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  Man, oh man, oh man. Interesting.

• 53:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 53:38Speaker 03

  He get Halloween two, two stars and this movie one star?

• 53:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was, sometimes Raj would just be in a bad mood.

• 53:45Speaker 02

  Cranky.

• 53:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is, this is, this is a tough review. Oh, you read it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a tough one. Uh, most rewatchable scene. It's brought to you by the Home Depot. Black Friday happening now at the Home Depot, which means it's the perfect time to add to your collection. Right now, when you buy a select battery kit from top brands like Ryobi, Ryobi, Ryobi, Ryobi.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Fucking Drew.

• 54:06Bill Simmons?

  Or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tree for free with Black Friday deals like these. The Home Depot has got you covered. Uh, we mentioned for the first rewatchable scene, the opening one shot.

• 54:20Bill Simmons?

  In the running for best overacting of Cage's career.

• 54:24Bill Simmons?

  He's going for it. Because I was made for the sewer, baby, and I'm the king. He's just screaming for no reason.

• 54:30Speaker 02

  It was like an Ace Ventura moment for me. Like when I sat down to watch Ace Ventura, it took me 10 minutes to be like, yo, why is he acting like this? And then you got it.

• 54:37Bill Simmons?

  Tyler!

• 54:38Speaker 02

  When you got, when you saw Nic Cage in this, you're like, yo, what the fuck is going on?

• 54:41Bill Simmons?

  Is he supposed to be on cocaine?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's like, he's.

• 54:44Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's the cocaine my ass line at the end of the movie, I think indicates he likes to indulge in this fight night. I think it's reasonable to assume. That said, Cage is kind of like this in a lot of movies.

• 54:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this is a nine and a half out of 10 on the Cage scale.

• 54:57Sean Fennessey?

  He's nuts, yes.

• 54:58Bill Simmons?

  An all time dial up by him. A really cool scene.

• 55:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's great when you can see him nailing the synchronization with the crowd. Like, there's a moment when he is watching the fight and he stands up and as he stands up, the whole, and he yells something and then the whole crowd stands up behind him, where it's like, that is, to get that many extras to work at the same time is master filmmaker A plus it. There's, that's not CGI, all those people in the crowd, though. That's like hundreds, maybe thousands of extras.

• 55:29Bill Simmons?

  I think it helps the rewatchability of the movie, too.

• 55:31Sean Fennessey?

  Totally.

• 55:32Bill Simmons?

  Cause it's, it's like, definitely like, how the fuck did they do this 10 minutes?

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Also, very skilled. He's going back and forth between the girlfriend and the wife on the gold flip phone, the pizza with the wife, the birthday with the girlfriend.

• 55:44Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 55:44Sean Fennessey?

  And they let you figure it out, right? They're not like, over explaining everything. You're just, the movie just drops you into his world.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  You get like one second to set up and then we're going.

• 55:54Bill Simmons?

  The shooting scene itself, pretty good. When he watches the video, the knockout punch,

• 56:03Bill Simmons?

  where he realizes it's a Sonny Liston situation, right into Carla wiping blood off in the bathroom, which I just put it for Van.

• 56:11Sean Fennessey?

  That scene alone, I think, is worth spending some time on.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Alone, yeah. Just right there.

• 56:15Bill Simmons?

  Hey, the blood off.

• 56:16Sean Fennessey?

  The angle that he chooses, I think, is really interesting, you know?

• 56:18Bill Simmons?

  Gotta get the blood off.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Once again, the Palma-esque.

• 56:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  You keep thinking that he's gonna go for it, that there's a change of clothes happening or something, but he.

• 56:27Sean Fennessey?

  I admire the restraint.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  I admire the restraint as well. As regable as it might be.

• 56:31Bill Simmons?

  The next scene I wrote down, Stan Shaw and Nic Cage scream at each other.

• 56:37Bill Simmons?

  It's an all time Ruffalo Hannah Rubenek Partridge combo overacting award. They're just screaming for two minutes.

• 56:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, I'll come back to that.

• 56:47Bill Simmons?

  Flashback to the redhead pulling, um, pulling Sinise away from the fight. That whole, I like when De Palma goes backwards. Always fun. The elevator chase.

• 57:01Bill Simmons?

  The overhead shot of the Atlantic City rooms.

• 57:05Bill Simmons?

  I'm thrown in the Mallory Rubin Award for did this movie need a better sex scene here? I feel like one of those rooms could have had some freaky Atlantic City shit going on. De Palma's like, you know what? I'm older now, I'm wiser, I'm not gonna put that in.

• 57:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's more important that frat boys spray beer on each other in a hotel room.

• 57:19Bill Simmons?

  Which was just weird. Yeah, that was weird. Carla tells her story to Nic Cage on the staircase. I thought I'd get fired, not killed.

• 57:31Bill Simmons?

  De Palma goes split screen as she's telling the story. I always liked how De Palma would use boxes and split screens. I just feel like not enough directors do that. They see multiple things at the same time. By the way, even when the Dodgers won the World Series, I would have gone split screen, multiple boxes, so we can see three different things happening at the same time. They always discount. Our TVs are better now.

• 57:53Speaker 02

  What did you mean to things? What like for the Dodgers?

• 57:56Bill Simmons?

  No, like we see the people on the mound celebrating, but then they split screen and we also see the people in the dugout celebrating.

• 58:02Sean Fennessey?

  I gotta give a shout out to my friend John Di Marsico, who does the, directs the Mets broadcasts, because he's, this has been written about many times, but he's a huge cinephile and in the baseball broadcasts that he directs, he constantly is using all of those.

• 58:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, really?

• 58:16Sean Fennessey?

  He has like huge, he's a huge De Palma fan, has all kinds of De Palma much. You just Google him and look up all the stuff he's done. You'll just be watching a Mets game and he'll just pull a move from Scarface in the middle of the Mets game.

• 58:26Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 58:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, it's really cool.

• 58:27Speaker 02

  What the fuck I'm talking about?

• 58:28Bill Simmons?

  That sounds like your soulmate.

• 58:29Sean Fennessey?

  He, he is the man.

• 58:31Bill Simmons?

  Does he hate his sports life like you do or no?

• 58:33Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think he has as tortured a relationship to the Mets as I do. He sees them as a vessel for his creativity, much like De Palma sees Carla Gugino and Nicholas Cage.

• 58:41Bill Simmons?

  You almost got passed by Ariel Hawani this weekend because he almost had the back to back days of the Blue Jays losing the World Series, then the Bills blowing the Chiefs game.

• 58:49Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, well, we share, Ariel and I share the Knicks.

• 58:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and, and you had the Hal Burton game in, in May.

• 58:54Sean Fennessey?

  Thanks for reminding me. Yep, awesome. Great stuff.

• 58:58Bill Simmons?

  Cage finds the hidden video of Sinise. The classic. You're like, oh, man, you just have your back to that door for too long. We're gonna see the legs going down this thing. There it is. It's Sinise. I really like when bad guys explain why they did what they did. And you're kind of like.

• 59:16Bill Simmons?

  I see his point.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 59:20Bill Simmons?

  He's trying to save the country.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  You feel like Sinise has a point. He's trying to save a country with something that doesn't really work.

• 59:25Bill Simmons?

  He's a bad guy.

• 59:26Sean Fennessey?

  Uh huh.

• 59:27Bill Simmons?

  But at least he he seems a little conflicted, but I think he's just a good actor. He seems a little, as he's telling it, he's like. I know this is kind of fucked up, but here's how we got to this point versus like, I'm evil.

• 59:39Sean Fennessey?

  Is he just rationalizing his own greed?

• 59:42Bill Simmons?

  Totally.

• 59:42Sean Fennessey?

  You know?

• 59:43Bill Simmons?

  Totally, but I bought it as he was doing it. I was like, okay.

• 59:46Sean Fennessey?

  It's also, you guys see House of Dynamite? Like, this is a plot point in House of Dynamite where it's like. This technology might not work, you know, it's like there's only a fifty fifty percent chance of these, you know, anti ballistic.

• 59:58Bill Simmons?

  I saw the first episode of House of Dynamite. I didn't get to the second episode yet.

• 1:00:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  I saw the part it was it was about to get to where the bomb was and then the credits came up. So I just, I'm gonna wait till next week to finish it.

• 1:00:10Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, let us know when you finish the season.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  It's not, I mean, it's not that good. It's really not.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  Curse is again in the second one. He isn't cursed in the first one.

• 1:00:19Bill Simmons?

  Uh. By the way, Nic Cage smoking in this, the Sean Penn, I brought my own pack award for excellence on screen smoking. Underrated smoker, Nic Cage.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, smokes on all these.

• 1:00:28Bill Simmons?

  Kind of could have it dangling in the right way.

• 1:00:30Sean Fennessey?

  I would say very believable.

• 1:00:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Sean Fennessey?

  Almost as though he has partaken.

• 1:00:33Bill Simmons?

  We also, Van, we get. Somebody says the name of the movie in the. In the in the dialogue.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Love that.

• 1:00:40Bill Simmons?

  You got nothing, kiddo. Snake eyes. The house always wins. Great. You did it.

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Love it.

• 1:00:45Bill Simmons?

  You worked that.

• 1:00:46Sean Fennessey?

  Cage runs it back too at the end.

• 1:00:47Bill Simmons?

  Runs it back. Um, yeah, there's no we, Kevin. You got snake eyes. With the chess suicide, which we don't see a lot in the action thrillers.

• 1:00:56Speaker 02

  I.

• 1:00:57Sean Fennessey?

  Have some notes on that.

• 1:00:57Bill Simmons?

  I love it.

• 1:00:58Speaker 02

  That you like the chess suicide?

• 1:01:00Bill Simmons?

  I think it's smart. Open coffin.

• 1:01:03Sean Fennessey?

  But he's like, I have to, I have to turn my back.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Fuck.

• 1:01:11Bill Simmons?

  He's thinking, he was looking out for his family.

• 1:01:13Speaker 02

  On in your brain, man.

• 1:01:15Bill Simmons?

  Chess suicide. You don't see it in action movie.

• 1:01:19Sean Fennessey?

  You think he'll be getting like a really a formal military funeral?

• 1:01:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, now it'll be much better for him. And then last but not least, the fall of Richard Santoro, which happens for reasons we'll discuss later. What's your most rewatchable scene, Sean? Steadicam?

• 1:01:33Sean Fennessey?

  So the the opening scene is no question the the best scene, the most memorable scene in the movie for me. Gugino notwithstanding, but I do like all four flashback sequences or basically all all of the POV sequences. So you get you see it through Rick Santoro's eyes in that opening scene. You see it through Tyler Lincoln's eyes when he's telling the story, his version of the story. You see it through Kevin Dunn's eyes when he's telling his false version of the story. And then you see it through Julia Costello's eyes, Gugino's character, when they're sitting on the steps. You know, it's it's an obvious homage to Rashomon in a lot of movies about like the failure of memory. But you you you mentioned it when you were describing them, like every time he goes back, even though we're seeing something that we think we already know,

• 1:02:15Sean Fennessey?

  he manages to turn the key just a little bit differently, which makes it to me a huge improvement on a movie like House of Dynamite, which does a very similar thing, way worse.

• 1:02:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Sean Fennessey?

  And there is a way to do this kind of storytelling and make it very exciting. I don't love how this movie concludes, find the final 10 minutes a little tough, but everything leading up to that, I think, is really engaging.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  So the the open is obviously, like you're saying, the the best stuff to me. However, the specific scene where Garry Sinise, he turns bad and you see that he is really bad, not turns bad, you actually see what he is, for me is was just way more compelling than I remember it.

• 1:02:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  In this particular time where he's executing his accomplices and all of that stuff. To me, it just it it worked a lot better. Like after that, that's a real turning point in the movie to where this guy embodies scumbag asshole. Well acted, very high leverage, so that really worked for me.

• 1:03:10Sean Fennessey?

  Do you guys buy them as old friends?

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 1:03:15Bill Simmons?

  Good question.

• 1:03:16Sean Fennessey?

  They have, they have different energies.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  They, they do, and they needed something else. There needed to be, they're old friends, yeah, cool, we get it. But there needed to be something else that undergirded their friendship.

• 1:03:30Sean Fennessey?

  Are we supposed to believe that they were in the service together?

• 1:03:33Bill Simmons?

  Either that or like high school.

• 1:03:34Sean Fennessey?

  It said that they were friends, like childhood friends, but did they all, did, was Nic Cage's character, did he serve? I, I couldn't figure that out.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  Garrison Neese's character has such a, a faith in his ability to come work for like the State Department or something like that. It's almost as if he knows that he, that he has a set of skills that can be useful on the federal level because of something they did together, yeah.

• 1:03:57Bill Simmons?

  That was today's most rewatchable scene brought to by The Home Depot. Time to check out the Black Friday savings at The Home Depot. So go online or in-store to check out the best deals of the season. Stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Black Friday savings happening now at The Home Depot. This will be fun. Next category, the most 1998 thing about this movie. I have a couple nominees for you.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  Huge heavyweight fights in Atlantic City.

• 1:04:22Sean Fennessey?

  This was my number one.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the obvious.

• 1:04:24Bill Simmons?

  The 90s were like, Atlantic City was the place for nine years, and then it died.

• 1:04:28Sean Fennessey?

  This was right in the heart of Tyson Holyfield.

• 1:04:31Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:04:31Sean Fennessey?

  When those two fights.

• 1:04:32Bill Simmons?

  Foreman had a couple there, yeah.

• 1:04:34Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, those two fights were right in that 96, 97, 98.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  And Vegas was making a very direct move to become like, not just a place where you gamble and have, but the actual entertainment capital of the entire world. There was a very direct corporate move to Vegas, and that's what ended up happening to Atlantic City, just Vegas just had the support of all the big hotel chains.

• 1:04:57Bill Simmons?

  Vegas got it back in the early 2000s. The, the fights all came back.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it, at the end of it, it started to be like you couldn't have a big fight in, in AC anymore, like you couldn't be out there.

• 1:05:08Bill Simmons?

  Uh, next, 1998 cellphone.

• 1:05:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's the other one I wrote down, the gold embossed flip phone.

• 1:05:14Bill Simmons?

  And it's giant.

• 1:05:15Sean Fennessey?

  That's the most 98 thing ever.

• 1:05:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's like you could, you couldn't even fit it in your jeans pocket. I also have people caring about the Defense Secretary.

• 1:05:25Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean? Pete Hegson is in the news every day. I'm just people like, oh, he's here. He's at the fight. It's like, I don't know, in 1998, I would not have cared. The Defense Secretary was in a fight.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  I have people clapping for the Defense Secretary.

• 1:05:38Bill Simmons?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Still a situation to where people went, hey, somebody high up in the government, yay.

• 1:05:45Bill Simmons?

  The only other one I have is at some point, one of the characters says, we got a goddamn Columbo around running loose. You know who Columbo is?

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Only because of Poker Face.

• 1:05:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:56Bill Simmons?

  What stage is best? Hasn't trickled down?

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Culturally inspired.

• 1:06:00Bill Simmons?

  That was, that's a good show. Need Kathy Bates to bring him back. It's a very enjoyable TV show. What's, what age is the best for you? Yeah.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  One more thing. If so and so is having it like, you're watching it, you're like, ah, you're fucked. Columbo knows.

• 1:06:14Bill Simmons?

  I like Quincy. I was a Quincy guy. Never saw that. That's when the-

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  The doctor?

• 1:06:18Bill Simmons?

  Coroner. M.D.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Quincy M.D. Of all of those detectives, if you're in a draft of TV detectives, what do you got to tell Savalas?

• 1:06:26Bill Simmons?

  Kojak. Kojak.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  Kojak, you got Kojak, you got Matlock, you got-

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  It's Dan Tana from Vegas is the answer. Dan Tana, Robert Yerke? He got down. Even his like assistant was hot. Down? He was just surrounded by the ladies.

• 1:06:40Speaker 02

  That's not what we were talking about.

• 1:06:41Bill Simmons?

  That's my favorite one.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Who's the best at solving crimes, you freak?

• 1:06:44Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Quincy. Cause Quincy could use coroner shit.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  But I feel like-

• 1:06:48Bill Simmons?

  He was a cop who could also do autopsies of the victims. Like, nobody can beat that. It's a crazy act for a TV show.

• 1:06:56Bill Simmons?

  It's not enough to just be a detective. And every once in a while, he would, he would look up at Sam, his assistant, and go, it wasn't suicide, Sam, it was murder.

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  Okay, just different situation, cause one guy is legal and the other guy is medical. But as far as doctors who are also somehow detectives.

• 1:07:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:15Speaker 02

  Do you have Quincy or House M.D.? Cause House M.D.

• 1:07:20Bill Simmons?

  House M.D. was good.

• 1:07:21Speaker 02

  House M.D. was looking to some shit and give you, House M.D. was the man.

• 1:07:26Bill Simmons?

  House M.D. was good. Did you like House?

• 1:07:28Speaker 03

  Didn't watch it. No interest.

• 1:07:32Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best? An athlete falling into debt and having to do something illegal. Oh shit. Wow. With the mafia. I wish that wasn't topical right now.

• 1:07:41Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:07:42Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:07:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. There's a couple of these you're gonna be able to cite.

• 1:07:45Bill Simmons?

  Man, don't just talk about the players. Show the mafia.

• 1:07:49Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah?

• 1:07:50Bill Simmons?

  Those are my people.

• 1:07:50Sean Fennessey?

  You wanna talk about the mafia?

• 1:07:52Bill Simmons?

  I don't really wanna talk about them as much. Uh, what do you have for what's age the best, Sean?

• 1:07:57Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, interesting how you kicked it to me. I mean, this is a very topical film right now, right?

• 1:08:04Bill Simmons?

  Let's do that part later.

• 1:08:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:08:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have another spot for that.

• 1:08:08Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I think the, uh, Maestro movie is like a thing where it's like, let this guy cook. Like, we're gonna, we're only making this movie because this guy knows how to make movies feel fucking awesome. Like, this is something that is also kinda gone now from movies, but as I said, like, this is maybe the 10th or 11th best Brian De Palma movie.

• 1:08:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Sean Fennessey?

  But it is one of the most watchable movies of the 1990s, and it is only that way because he can see the movie in his head and he makes it so special in the style that he has. So, I don't know, there's just not, that has aged nicely. We don't get those as often as we used to.

• 1:08:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh. I have the moment in action thrillers when we realize someone we thought we knew is the bad guy. There's always that, like, in this movie, he's Sinise is walking in the hallway and he kinda, somebody's going ahead and he kinda stops and he looks around and you're like, oh no.

• 1:09:08Bill Simmons?

  It's you? You're the bad guy?

• 1:09:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:09Bill Simmons?

  And he just gets on his phone. But they always, those moments are always fun. Um, Sinise as a bad guy, we talked about. Did we have another acceptable loss? Like, acceptable losses.

• 1:09:21Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:21Bill Simmons?

  Been a good fantasy team name.

• 1:09:25Bill Simmons?

  An award for the random guy who didn't do anything wrong in an action thriller, but has to die anyway, we might have to consider for this next batch when we do our 26. In this case, the guy who thinks he's getting laid by Carla and takes her up to the room, and that guy just gets shot with a silencer. It's like, did that guy do anything wrong?

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  That's what's aged the best to me.

• 1:09:44Bill Simmons?

  What, that guy getting murdered?

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Uh, asshole Josh Gad, um, being used by a super-

• 1:09:52Bill Simmons?

  I thought the same thing was Josh Gad.

• 1:09:53Sean Fennessey?

  I forgot the guy's name. He was on Malcolm in the Middle, that guy.

• 1:09:55Speaker 02

  It's not Josh Gad.

• 1:09:56Bill Simmons?

  It's pre-Josh Gad.

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  It's pre-Josh Gad. It's Gad before the Gad.

• 1:09:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, pre-Gad.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  That guy being used by a hot woman for her own thing, thinking that he's the man. I, I never understand. So you're that dude. Shout out to the Josh Gad guy.

• 1:10:12Sean Fennessey?

  Josh God, yeah.

• 1:10:13Speaker 02

  Josh God. You're that guy.

• 1:10:15Bill Simmons?

  I call him Gad too.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  You're at AC.

• 1:10:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  One night, Carla Gugino, for some reason, shows interest in you.

• 1:10:23Bill Simmons?

  It's over. Yeah.

• 1:10:25Sean Fennessey?

  She's, she's wearing a white miniskirt and a black bomber jacket that's zipped up with only a bra underneath.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  And she comes up to you and is like, yeah, let's go up to your, and you don't in any way-

• 1:10:36Bill Simmons?

  Do you have air conditioning? I do.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. You don't in any way think, what's going on?

• 1:10:41Bill Simmons?

  It can make it really cold.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Like, what's the deal? Cause there's guys, that guy just knows he's hot. He came to AC to fuck. And now it's about to happen.

• 1:10:48Bill Simmons?

  Whatever happens in AC in Vegas.

• 1:10:50Sean Fennessey?

  I, he, he's not a very nice guy, that character.

• 1:10:53Bill Simmons?

  He's not.

• 1:10:53Sean Fennessey?

  You know, when she's like, I'm in trouble, he's like, get the fuck out. He puts his wedding ring back on very pointedly.

• 1:10:58Bill Simmons?

  Did he deserve to die with a silencer?

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  So here's the thing though, he's not a nice guy, and the wedding ring thing is fucked up. But him actually, at the moment that he realizes that it's not gonna go down, putting some distance between him and her? That's smart.

• 1:11:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Hey, I don't want there to be any type of, like, you know what? You're not down. Let's, let's end the night right here.

• 1:11:21Bill Simmons?

  Well, what's aged the worst for this is, now in 2025, you just assume this, this woman who's all of a sudden randomly interested in you is gonna drug you in your room and take all your stuff.

• 1:11:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause there's been a lot more awareness of that the last 25 years, especially in Vegas and Atlantic City.

• 1:11:35Sean Fennessey?

  Literally happened to a friend of mine. I will not say who that friend is, but that literally happened to a friend.

• 1:11:39Speaker 02

  New Orleans?

• 1:11:40Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, in Las Vegas.

• 1:11:42Bill Simmons?

  Um-

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  I blame him.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  Here's one for Sean.

• 1:11:45Sean Fennessey?

  I'm not casting any blame.

• 1:11:47Bill Simmons?

  Here's a what's age the best for Sean. De Palma Easter eggs and pivotal moments that we circle back to. The bring that you're watching this live for the first time. Here comes the pain. Here comes the pain. And it's basically the owl in blow in blowout. But it's like, man, he's really interested in this owl. And then it's like, oh, he's John Travolta's character is gonna watch this video. And it's like, oh, there's the owl hooting.

• 1:12:11Sean Fennessey?

  Before he says that, though, we do see that he's wearing an earpiece.

• 1:12:15Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 1:12:15Sean Fennessey?

  And that you that's a dead giveaway that something is up.

• 1:12:18Speaker 02

  That he's fucked, yeah.

• 1:12:20Bill Simmons?

  Dirty cops who decide once and for all, nobody's gonna buy me anymore. I was like that movie. I've been bought for one last time.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think of another time I've seen that.

• 1:12:33Bill Simmons?

  I just have to mention a Palestinian sniper terrorist assassinating someone over their cooperation with Israel is topical in 2025.

• 1:12:40Sean Fennessey?

  It is.

• 1:12:40Bill Simmons?

  When I move on. Snake Eyes was the last Brian De Palma film for which Steven Spielberg viewed the rough cut. It's an official end of the group.

• 1:12:50Speaker 02

  Oh, they're not fucking with each other anymore.

• 1:12:52Bill Simmons?

  And they just kind of got old. It's like college buddies who don't really talk anymore.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  God damn, are you telling me that there's an end to the Bill Simmons, Joe House run coming?

• 1:13:00Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Wow.

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:13:02Sean Fennessey?

  So I will say, De Palma is interviewed in the new Martin Scorsese doc, Mr. Scorsese. And it's a he's great in it because he's known Scorsese for 60 years. But he's still a little competitive with him and you can tell.

• 1:13:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Like, how come this guy got five parts? My documentary is 100 minutes.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  When, when, when I was getting into movies and I just thought there those guys' relationship was so awesome. I think Spielberg comes on the set of Scarface and he's like, do this, do that, all of that stuff. And then one day, like all things, it must end, it's over.

• 1:13:33Sean Fennessey?

  It is cool, though, that it's like, let me just call it my best friend, who's also the the greatest living filmmaker. And he'll just help me on one day. That is fucking awesome.

• 1:13:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, like this is the way and then that scene becomes fucking. But it's it's also like a testament to the collaborative nature of these guys and, you know.

• 1:13:51Bill Simmons?

  It's like when Craig asked me for advice for the fantasy football show. I just pop in like Spielberg. Cut this, move this around. High Fits, quiet down. Have you ever thought about High Fits, maybe not doing?

• 1:14:01Sean Fennessey?

  So Craig, the Spielberg in this, in this analogy?

• 1:14:05Bill Simmons?

  I think it's Soderbergh.

• 1:14:06Speaker 02

  The punk, yeah.

• 1:14:07Bill Simmons?

  I have one last what's age the best, Trump? Who I think would have hoard out his Atlantic City Casino for just about anything in the 90s, being like, eh, this is a little rich for me, this, this whole evil casino owner. So can you make that the Powell Millennium instead? And they don't use the Trump.

• 1:14:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:14:24Bill Simmons?

  Very surprising that he did not allow them to use this.

• 1:14:26Sean Fennessey?

  Or that he didn't appear in the film himself. Yeah, that's the real surprise.

• 1:14:30Bill Simmons?

  Trump's right there.

• 1:14:31Sean Fennessey?

  You would have started, yeah.

• 1:14:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, so something must happen.

• 1:14:33Sean Fennessey?

  John Heard, though, love John Heard.

• 1:14:35Bill Simmons?

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• 1:15:14Bill Simmons?

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• 1:15:51Sean Fennessey?

  One of the great categories on this wonderful show. My favorite is the scene when Gugino and Cage are sitting on the staircase. And there's an overhead shot of the staircase and showing you all the levels of the stairs. And it gives you this sense of disorientation, which is a direct lift from Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. There's a scene near the end of the film in the, in the chapel where we see Stuart looking down the staircase and feeling the sense of disorientation. And obviously De Palma. I think Vertigo is his favorite movie of all time and also one of the most perverse movies ever made about. You know, wanting to have sex.

• 1:16:27Bill Simmons?

  I want to actually do it for rewatchables in 2026. Cause that movie is full fledged, off the rails, bonkers.

• 1:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  It is the, it is the like, origin point of so many of our favorite movies.

• 1:16:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:39Sean Fennessey?

  And favorite directors.

• 1:16:41Bill Simmons?

  It would be hilarious if they just released that movie in like, March with Sydney Sweeney as the Kim Novak character and they just gave nobody any context. People would be like, what the fuck is happening in this movie?

• 1:16:54Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, I will kill myself if that happens and yet I would watch it. Like I need to see it first and then kill myself.

• 1:17:00Bill Simmons?

  What'd you have for great shot, Gordon Award for most cinematic shot? I had the overhead A C rooms.

• 1:17:06Sean Fennessey?

  That's a good one.

• 1:17:06Bill Simmons?

  Long shot, just cause I always think about like, huh, how'd they do that? Did they have to build all these rooms one by one on a set? Did they steal, did they have to match it with the casino like?

• 1:17:19Sean Fennessey?

  I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's all sets that they've built. There's a recent example of that in John Wick four. There's this very similar sequence where they enter an apartment building and you, it's the entire action sequence takes place overhead that is fucking amazing. But you, I would not be surprised if they looked at this to do that.

• 1:17:35Bill Simmons?

  It's long.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  No, you, have you seen that sequence?

• 1:17:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:39Sean Fennessey?

  Where he has the fire gun. It's crazy.

• 1:17:41Bill Simmons?

  Apparently in episode four of House of Dynamite, there's something like that. I haven't seen it yet. Front of my head screener.

• 1:17:48Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, my cinematic shot is when Carla Gugino falls to the floor and her glasses fall on the floor. And the camera's all the way on the bottom of the floor and it's just looking at the glasses and you're like, oh no, somebody's gonna step on those glasses. And then crunch, somebody steps on the glasses.

• 1:18:00Bill Simmons?

  It's a good one.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  Uh, mine is, uh, there is a sort of pretty long shot through a cracked door at the party.

• 1:18:11Bill Simmons?

  With the two guys talking, yeah.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  In there where it starts with a bunch of hot models smoking crack, it looks like.

• 1:18:17Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:18Speaker 02

  There's smoking crack cocaine, which I didn't realize.

• 1:18:21Sean Fennessey?

  In Tyler's room.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, in Tyler and, and so, but there's a long, and it stays there for a second. And you look like you're watching something that you're not supposed to be watching. So it puts you directly, and I like when the camera or the style of the movie puts you in an emotional like situation.

• 1:18:39Bill Simmons?

  Then you're like, is that Bobby Brown?

• 1:18:43Speaker 02

  Out of nowhere. New Edition getting back together.

• 1:18:46Bill Simmons?

  Chess Rockwell Brocklanders Award for best character name. Lincoln Tyler, the AC Executioner.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:18:52Bill Simmons?

  AC Executioner is really good.

• 1:18:54Sean Fennessey?

  I do think the main characters' names are really good in this movie. Detective Rick Santoro, Atlantic City PD, and Commander Kevin Dunn, US Naval Service.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  Commander Kevin Dunn.

• 1:19:05Bill Simmons?

  And they had a Kevin Dunn in the movie, but they didn't change the name of Commander Kevin Dunn. So there was the actor Kevin Dunn from Dave, but then there was a character Kevin Dunn.

• 1:19:15Sean Fennessey?

  Must have been confusing.

• 1:19:16Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a flex category, Sean?

• 1:19:18Sean Fennessey?

  I chose the I used to fuck guys like you in prison award for craziest quote. It's kind of more of an exchange, but it's very fast. Starts with Kevin Dunn saying, how's Angela? And Rick Santoro says, fat, fabulous, fantastic. I love her. Then Commander Kevin Dunn says, how's the other one? What's her name? Candy? And Santoro says, oh, Monique, skinny, mean, expensive. I love her. That's just a great moment in this movie. That's a cage cooking.

• 1:19:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:45Sean Fennessey?

  The line reading is perfect and sums up what an asshole this guy is.

• 1:19:51Bill Simmons?

  The Butch's Girlfriend Award for weak link of the film. Well, let's talk about the tidal wave. There's supposed to be a tidal wave in this movie that ends the movie. It was filmed by Industrial Light and Magic. You can see some of it online because the original ending or part of it is in there. And for some reason, they bail on this in the post edit, do the different ending. But it explains why when you're watching this, it's thunder, it's rain, people are looking up. The movie begins with them talking about a storm and then there's no payoff. And I have no idea why they cut it.

• 1:20:27Sean Fennessey?

  He has talked about how he ultimately didn't feel that this is what this movie was about. It wasn't a spectacle movie. It was a movie about that intrigue that Van was talking about at the top.

• 1:20:36Bill Simmons?

  But how did they not know that before they committed to this tidal wave?

• 1:20:38Sean Fennessey?

  I think that they weren't happy with how the tidal wave looked. You can watch the tidal wave sequence on YouTube. It's on YouTube. It is okay. This is kind of getting into my hottest take, but I think my hottest take is that it's significantly better. If you put the tidal wave back in, even what's existing.

• 1:20:54Bill Simmons?

  That's why I have it as the weak link. I don't know why they took it out. It's like that we danced toward it for 90 minutes and then it just doesn't happen.

• 1:21:01Sean Fennessey?

  The movie just deflates. And also, the, the Kevin Dunn self assassination, you know, is just weird. Like, that whole moment is very strange. Where he turns his back to the camera and then does the-

• 1:21:14Bill Simmons?

  Put the gun down. We know who you are. It's like, how do they know who he is?

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  I think the, the movie ending with the tidal wave is, to me, like, a natural evolution of the chaotic nature of the film.

• 1:21:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, the escalation.

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, to where something just kind of like, random, or not so random, but something that's been building comes along and sweeps everything up.

• 1:21:33Sean Fennessey?

  Totally agree with that.

• 1:21:34Bill Simmons?

  You pro tidal wave?

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  Pro tidal wave.

• 1:21:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Speaker 03

  I thought, I think even at the very end, like the cage in Gugino on the, on the beach, like the kiss, it felt like very outside what the movie was. It felt a little too buttoned up and rom-comy.

• 1:21:46Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:21:47Bill Simmons?

  Woods age is the worst. Um, I think if you made this movie in 25, there would have been all the cameras, they would have been trying to, they would have figured out so many weird things about this assassination. Why did this girl in the white dress with the blonde wig go? And it fell off? And who is this? And we would have had all of these people-

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  So are you arguing that?

• 1:22:07Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm saying just 1998, you could get away with an assassination thing like this at a fight and not have people, they didn't even know that blimp thing was there.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  Oh, know who it was.

• 1:22:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:18Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  Well, obviously.

• 1:22:19Bill Simmons?

  This whole assassination thing made way more sense in 1998, I think, than it would in 2025.

• 1:22:24Sean Fennessey?

  It's an insanely elaborate plan.

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:22:26Bill Simmons?

  Really, with a lot of people, pieces and-

• 1:22:29Speaker 02

  With a lot on the line, like, at this particular time, it's almost, there's, one of my picking this is that there's a more efficient way to do what it is that they wanted to do.

• 1:22:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, why, why did this boxer have to take a dive for them to kill this guy in the front row?

• 1:22:43Sean Fennessey?

  I don't fully understand that. Obviously, the enlisting the Palestinian to, to be the trigger man, but then immediately killing the trigger man is very, you know, shades of JFK, obviously, in this. And then also, I don't really understand Carla Gugino's character's plan either. Like, why does she have to use this event to go talk to the secretary of defense?

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  It just seems like there's a simpler, much more straight to the point way of everyone getting what they wanted to get accomplished in this movie.

• 1:23:11Bill Simmons?

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• 1:23:56Bill Simmons?

  Van, you're up with the flex category.

• 1:23:58Speaker 02

  Uh, my flex category is Van Lathan, how would you have gotten out of this?

• 1:24:03Bill Simmons?

  Oh, which character are you playing?

• 1:24:06Speaker 02

  So I'm Rick Santorum.

• 1:24:07Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:24:08Speaker 02

  And so you have a wife.

• 1:24:09Sean Fennessey?

  Rick Santoro or Santorum?

• 1:24:11Speaker 02

  Excuse me, Santorum. I'm thinking of political.

• 1:24:13Sean Fennessey?

  You should be Rick Santorum in this, in this.

• 1:24:16Bill Simmons?

  Rick Santorum as Rick Santorum.

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  As Rick Santorum. So you have a wife and a girlfriend that you have to explain where you've been. Okay? It's like something's going crazy, there's all this stuff going on, but you haven't been home, you're not really on the phone anymore, you have a wife and a girlfriend, it's two completely different ways.

• 1:24:32Sean Fennessey?

  So you have to call Angela and Monique.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  Angela and Monique, because they're both calling you and they want to know what's going on. The wife is Angela, right?

• 1:24:38Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:39Speaker 02

  So you, you talk to her first, and you let her know that, look, honey, I don't know if you know, what's the, what's the homeboy's name again?

• 1:24:45Sean Fennessey?

  Commander Kevin Dunn?

• 1:24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Man, Kevin, this guy is not who I thought he was.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  All right, Kevin, not coming back to Christmas, baby. No more, no more Kevin. Kevin is like one of the most, you know how he picks up, he plays with the kids, he does all of this stuff?

• 1:25:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  That's not the guy. This guy's a killer, this guy's an asshole, she's on the other end of the phone like, I always told you there was something about him that I didn't like, I saw, I saw the darkness in him, I could look at him and I could tell that there's just something wrong about that guy. And you're like, baby, you were right, you were right, this guy's out of our life forever. Look at my face, look at what happened to my face. That was him. He had the heavyweight champion of the world assault me. Baby, you were right about him. Totally different situation with the girlfriend, the girlfriend's name again as well.

• 1:25:32Sean Fennessey?

  Monique.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Monique. Where have you been? I haven't talked, ay!

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  That's not how our relationship goes. What did Jay-Z say? Our time together is our time together. Our time apart is our time apart. So you love Rick with your mind and not with your heart. I got a whole family. You don't call me and ask me where I've been. That's not what you do. Now, I will tell you this. The rooms at this hotel in AC are amazing. So if in a couple of days after this all blows over, you want to come check this out, that's cool. If you want to have some fun, that's cool. But I got kids and a family and a wife. Don't call this phone no more after 10:30.

• 1:26:13Bill Simmons?

  Wow, a clinic on how to deal with the Gumar.

• 1:26:18Sean Fennessey?

  One thing I really like when he's talking to, to his wife early in the movie is she's asking about what pizza order they should do.

• 1:26:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Sean Fennessey?

  And he's giving her the details about what's on the different pizzas. And he's like, I don't fucking know. I'm not gonna be eating it. I'm not gonna be home. You know, it's a very relatable fight.

• 1:26:35Speaker 03

  Also, why does she, can his wife not order a pizza? Why does he have to bring the pizza home at 1:00 in the morning? Fucking order a pizza yourself.

• 1:26:42Speaker 02

  This is, but that's the kind of, that's what he got in his, he the man of his family.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  I guess.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  That's what he got going on.

• 1:26:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? Maybe y'all let, y'all women have free reign to order pizzas and stuff like that, but not Rick.

• 1:26:54Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like since we know that Monique is skinny, mean and expensive, she might push back a little bit on Rick's attempt to manage that scenario.

• 1:27:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:03Speaker 03

  And we know his wife is, to use his words, fat.

• 1:27:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and fantastic.

• 1:27:07Bill Simmons?

  So it might have been a late night pizza for her. She might have already had dinner.

• 1:27:10Sean Fennessey?

  Might have been her second pizza of the day.

• 1:27:12Bill Simmons?

  We're gonna take a break and then do hottest take.

• 1:27:16Bill Simmons?

  All right, the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Sean, did you do yours?

• 1:27:21Sean Fennessey?

  So I said the title would have been a much better ending, but I, I do think the less classy the material, the better the Brian De Palma movie. So like, obviously we talked about Bonfire of the Vanities, very classy novel, um, adaptation of a Tom Wolfe book. Not a successful movie. The, the hot take part is that I just don't think The Untouchables is very good. And I, it is like the classiest of the De Palma movies, and it's never been one of my movies. I've never really cared about it. I don't think it's that interesting. And I would much rather watch Blowout, or Dressed to Kill, or Body Double, or this movie than The Untouchables.

• 1:28:02Speaker 02

  Now, do you think those movies are better? Or do you think The Untouchables kind of sucks?

• 1:28:06Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if it sucks, like it obviously is so well made. I just find it kinda dull.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  You agree.

• 1:28:13Bill Simmons?

  We did on rewatchables, I, there's some, it's got the De Niro stuff that I love. It's got the costume. Like, I, I like it more than Sean. I get it. I get his take.

• 1:28:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's just.

• 1:28:23Bill Simmons?

  He, if a different director had made it, I think you would like it more.

• 1:28:27Sean Fennessey?

  That might be it. It's like, I'm, I'm like, this is a missed opportunity. Like, switch this, like, two directors should trade again.

• 1:28:31Bill Simmons?

  You're watching Jason Kidd in the triangle offense going, what's going on? Give this guy the ball and let him go.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  So, yeah, that's kinda the thing, right? When a director like him, with like, De Palma, plays it slate, safe and straight up and down the line.

• 1:28:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:44Speaker 02

  It kinda weighs on you a little bit, and that is a very.

• 1:28:47Bill Simmons?

  It's like when Van Gogh's on CNN.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  I'm a rabble rouser on CNN.

• 1:28:54Sean Fennessey?

  You did, you did.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Hell raiser.

• 1:28:55Sean Fennessey?

  You did, uh, the glaze moment. That was, that was, that was good.

• 1:29:00Bill Simmons?

  You did do the glaze.

• 1:29:00Sean Fennessey?

  That was really good.

• 1:29:01Bill Simmons?

  Do you have a hat's take?

• 1:29:03Speaker 02

  Um, I do. That, it's not a better movie, but it might be a more interesting movie if the lead's roles were reversed.

• 1:29:11Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:12Bill Simmons?

  Sinise as the hero.

• 1:29:13Speaker 02

  Sinise as the hero in this, and Nic Cage sort of playing up, but Nic Cage dialing it down and Sinise dialing it up.

• 1:29:23Sean Fennessey?

  Can Sinise pull off that shirt?

• 1:29:25Speaker 02

  Maybe not, but maybe you get something, maybe, maybe Sinise wears, you know what he could pull off? A notorious big, uh, B I G Versace type joint.

• 1:29:33Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah, the sweater.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  A little louder and stuff like that.

• 1:29:35Bill Simmons?

  I thought you were gonna go Travolta Cage reunion.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  Oh, that works too.

• 1:29:41Bill Simmons?

  Where either of them could have played either part.

• 1:29:43Speaker 02

  But you know what? Travolta can dial it up.

• 1:29:46Sean Fennessey?

  He could have been Kevin Dunn, I think, cause he, he's got the general's daughter in him. We know he can wear the uniform, right? General's daughter, you seen that one?

• 1:29:53Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:29:54Sean Fennessey?

  It's an unfortunate film.

• 1:29:54Speaker 02

  As I saw the movie, I, I kinda felt like in this movie, at a certain point, Cage was doing what he was doing.

• 1:30:01Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  And Sinise was doing what he was doing.

• 1:30:04Sean Fennessey?

  That was what I'm saying. They had different energies. They're kinda like not really on the same wavelength in this movie.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  Right. If they would have switched it up, each guy would have subverted something and it might have been a little bit more interesting.

• 1:30:15Bill Simmons?

  My hat's take. Nic Cage, number one guy all time you could cast in any part of a Vegas or Atlantic City movie.

• 1:30:23Speaker 02

  Oh, he's done it.

• 1:30:24Bill Simmons?

  He could play all the parts.

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:30:25Bill Simmons?

  He could be a blackjack dealer, cop, crooked cop, gambler, bookie, fight fixer, pimp, security guard. Name a, name anybody that works in a casino, Nic Cage could play that part.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  Hmm, great take.

• 1:30:38Bill Simmons?

  The only one that, I can't think of anybody else you could say that about.

• 1:30:41Speaker 02

  Also can be the, the everyman that kind of gets his girl stolen by James Cullen.

• 1:30:46Bill Simmons?

  Could have been in the car with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, younger Nic Cage, that's like the third buddy. Being like, Vegas! Could have done everything.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  Great take.

• 1:30:54Bill Simmons?

  Casting whatevs. Wow. De Palma offered Sinisa's role to our guy, Al Pacino.

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:31:06Bill Simmons?

  Who turned it down. Who, uh.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  Would have been, would have needed an older actor to play the other part. If you do that, right?

• 1:31:18Bill Simmons?

  I was with Rick Santoro half an hour ago!

• 1:31:24Speaker 02

  He, of course, is the original utterer of.

• 1:31:27Bill Simmons?

  Here comes the pain!

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  Carlito's Way.

• 1:31:31Bill Simmons?

  And then, this is where it gets.

• 1:31:32Speaker 02

  You want to be big time? You're gonna die, big time!

• 1:31:36Bill Simmons?

  This is where.

• 1:31:37Speaker 02

  Carlito's Way is so. So good. Yo, I, I, I been with made guys, connected guys, who you been with?

• 1:31:45Bill Simmons?

  Ben, this casting whatevs is gonna break your brain.

• 1:31:48Speaker 02

  Okay, let's see.

• 1:31:49Bill Simmons?

  Offered Sinisa's role, wouldn't take it because he wanted 20 million and they offered 12. Our guy Will Smith decided to do Enemy of the State instead. We all won.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  Good movie.

• 1:32:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:02Speaker 02

  Good movie.

• 1:32:03Bill Simmons?

  Two winners. I'm glad he did Enemy of the State.

• 1:32:05Speaker 02

  I like Enemy of the State. Look at the incestuous Enemy of the State he takes, because Tom Cruise turned it down, who worked with De Palma.

• 1:32:12Bill Simmons?

  That's how movies go.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  Like, the whole nine. Interesting movie with Will Smith in this movie, man.

• 1:32:19Bill Simmons?

  Could have, also could have played either part, but I think him as Commander Kevin Dunn, Will Smith never played a part like that.

• 1:32:24Speaker 02

  Right. I, actually.

• 1:32:27Bill Simmons?

  Would have been really interesting. Either one.

• 1:32:29Sean Fennessey?

  He never plays sleazy guys either.

• 1:32:31Speaker 02

  Never plays sleazy, never really plays villain. So like.

• 1:32:36Sean Fennessey?

  He needed a couple of those, man. He really did.

• 1:32:37Bill Simmons?

  Give Will Smith the fucking 20 million. It's 1998, like, that's, he was the most bankable.

• 1:32:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's kind of surprising that they wouldn't pay up.

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:46Sean Fennessey?

  It is kind of surprising. There's a long line of.

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  They had to pay for the title wave.

• 1:32:50Bill Simmons?

  Best that guy word. We went through all the candidates.

• 1:32:56Bill Simmons?

  I think it's, I think it's Michael Rispoli, even though we know what his name is. I think he's the most that guy of all the that guys.

• 1:33:02Sean Fennessey?

  I have Don Rispoli and Mike Star. I think those are like elite that guy actors.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  I have Burks just because Denzel fucked his girlfriend in the other room while he was sleeping, Devil in the Blue Dress.

• 1:33:13Bill Simmons?

  Who do you have for Deon Waiters' word?

• 1:33:16Sean Fennessey?

  It's the first I'm hearing of this.

• 1:33:17Bill Simmons?

  Who do you have for Deon Waiters?

• 1:33:18Sean Fennessey?

  Uh.

• 1:33:19Bill Simmons?

  Carla's not eligible.

• 1:33:20Sean Fennessey?

  A woman named Jane Hightmire, who plays Serena, the redhead, AKA the blonde, who, uh, is my pick for the CR. I would throw my life away for her.

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 1:33:31Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:33:32Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, she's just, she's.

• 1:33:33Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna say, the Palma movie with the redhead and gambling and it's a lot of things that check Sean's boxes.

• 1:33:39Sean Fennessey?

  Very comfortable movie for me, yeah. It's like a warm bath.

• 1:33:42Speaker 02

  She's like, like a prototypical Deon Waiters in this role.

• 1:33:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Like prototypical.

• 1:33:46Bill Simmons?

  I'm down with it.

• 1:33:49Bill Simmons?

  Recasting Couch director or city. Can we talk about Stan Shaw being a little bit too old to be Lincoln Tyler?

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  Isn't it?

• 1:33:57Sean Fennessey?

  He was gonna be my weak link.

• 1:33:59Bill Simmons?

  He's like, looks like he's 47. Now, we did have older champs at that point, like Foreman was older.

• 1:34:05Sean Fennessey?

  But if this is, if this is.

• 1:34:07Bill Simmons?

  He seems like he's almost 50.

• 1:34:08Speaker 02

  But yeah.

• 1:34:09Sean Fennessey?

  But if, if this is Michael Clarke Duncan or Ving Rhames, aren't you like, yeah, I buy that?

• 1:34:15Speaker 02

  It, it, like, I like seeing him as a boxer. He played a boxer at Harlem Nights, all of that stuff. I love him as an actor, but when you watch it, I know he's supposed to be a little bit older, but he's jarringly a little bit older in this situation, like jarringly old to me.

• 1:34:29Bill Simmons?

  Yes. We're two, it's two years too early, but this would have been a great 50 Cent part.

• 1:34:35Speaker 02

  Two years too early.

• 1:34:36Bill Simmons?

  Cause he wasn't 50 Cent yet. That that came out in like 2000. I was trying to think this. It felt like a good stunt casting. I don't think we need a real actor.

• 1:34:43Sean Fennessey?

  There's just not a lot of actors who could credibly play a heavyweight.

• 1:34:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:47Sean Fennessey?

  You have to be tall.

• 1:34:48Bill Simmons?

  By the way, he didn't have to be a heavyweight. He could have been a welterweight or a middleweight. It didn't really matter.

• 1:34:52Sean Fennessey?

  That's true.

• 1:34:53Bill Simmons?

  You know?

• 1:34:53Speaker 02

  You know, it I I guess, but at that time during the 90s, there's probably a reflection to the fact that we only really, really at that point in the 90s, were really super caring about heavyweight boxing. The only guy that was really drawing someone at the lower weights was Della Hoya.

• 1:35:08Sean Fennessey?

  And the the executioner is obviously modeled on Tyson in a lot of ways, right? They're like, hasn't been knocked out in 28 professional fights and I saw him in the Gold Gloves.

• 1:35:16Bill Simmons?

  They could have just cast Tyson.

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  Could have. They I always like it. Does I have something later on, but like, I always like it in these movies where they go with actual fighters. This role is a little bit maybe too much because then you gotta act.

• 1:35:31Sean Fennessey?

  He's got some real scenes with Cage. Yeah.

• 1:35:33Speaker 02

  But like when they get like a real fighter, somebody that could do it.

• 1:35:36Sean Fennessey?

  He could have done it. He ran a boxer and undisputed.

• 1:35:38Bill Simmons?

  Could have kicked the tires, maybe called Wesley Snipes his agent, being like.

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  Too small of a role for Wesley.

• 1:35:44Bill Simmons?

  98?

• 1:35:45Speaker 02

  Too small of a role for Wesley.

• 1:35:46Bill Simmons?

  In the late 90s?

• 1:35:47Speaker 02

  Blade. Same year.

• 1:35:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  Too small of a role for Wesley. Yeah.

• 1:35:50Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you still have your flex category or no?

• 1:35:52Speaker 03

  A lot were swiped. I I was gonna bring up Lincoln Tyler. I got the Elizabeth shoe for uh Gugino. Also, like, why did she have to wear that wig and dress? Why didn't she dress super understated? I don't understand why she looked like that. That makes no sense to me.

• 1:36:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, she could have worn like a hat and a brown wig.

• 1:36:09Bill Simmons?

  Baseball hat.

• 1:36:10Speaker 03

  Doesn't make sense at all. This one might not go over well. I I don't know about the title of this movie. I don't think it has anything to do with the movie. I feel like Snake Eyes is more of a casino term. There's no dice in the movie. It's about boxing. I just thought Snake Eyes didn't make any sense. So like, we could have had a better title. Call Fight Night.

• 1:36:25Sean Fennessey?

  Well, it it.

• 1:36:26Bill Simmons?

  Fight Night.

• 1:36:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's a double entendre.

• 1:36:28Bill Simmons?

  Fight Night's a good title.

• 1:36:28Sean Fennessey?

  Double entendre because it's like.

• 1:36:30Speaker 03

  House always wins.

• 1:36:31Sean Fennessey?

  No, but Sinise is the snake. Like, he's the one who you think he's one thing, but he's actually the opposite.

• 1:36:36Bill Simmons?

  And they said the title.

• 1:36:37Sean Fennessey?

  He's luring you into his trap and he's a predator.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Everybody loses. Everybody comes up Snake Eyes.

• 1:36:41Speaker 03

  Well, like, the house always wins. It's like, well, there who is the house? Like, there wasn't. There's no real.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  Casino gambling.

• 1:36:47Sean Fennessey?

  It was the missile defense system, which eventually gets pushed forward, which you learn about. So Gilbert Powell, who is at the seat of power, wins, as power always does. That's the house.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  That's why I said I don't think it would go over well. Get your head out of your ass, Craig. I'm just saying.

• 1:37:01Bill Simmons?

  Craig, I like that.

• 1:37:02Speaker 02

  Stay woke.

• 1:37:02Bill Simmons?

  I like when Craig zags.

• 1:37:04Speaker 02

  So what, what's a good title then? Fight Night. Oh, you did say Fight Night.

• 1:37:08Bill Simmons?

  Fight Night's good.

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  Fight Night works. Everybody's fighting. They're on battle. Sure. Yeah.

• 1:37:13Bill Simmons?

  Apex Mountain for Cage, no. The Palma, no. Fixed Boxing Movies?

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Dick's Town.

• 1:37:21Sean Fennessey?

  Ooh.

• 1:37:22Bill Simmons?

  Rispoli, Rispoli, yes.

• 1:37:24Sean Fennessey?

  I have a Rispoli.

• 1:37:26Bill Simmons?

  Carla, no. Atlantic City as a viable destination for a movie like this, yes.

• 1:37:33Sean Fennessey?

  Now, I think the answer to that is the movie Atlantic City, the Louis Malle movie. With Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, which is an amazing movie, but this would be number two for me.

• 1:37:42Bill Simmons?

  You know that movie?

• 1:37:43Speaker 02

  I saw it.

• 1:37:44Bill Simmons?

  That's a throw your life away, Susan Sarandon performance.

• 1:37:46Speaker 02

  What era are we talking about?

• 1:37:48Bill Simmons?

  1981?

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah. That's her throw your life away era, for sure.

• 1:37:52Sean Fennessey?

  She's very attractive in that.

• 1:37:54Bill Simmons?

  That's another movie that's gone. That's one of those 80s, 90s movies. There's no record.

• 1:37:59Sean Fennessey?

  Older Guy Character Piece?

• 1:38:00Bill Simmons?

  No, it's like gone.

• 1:38:01Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, people don't watch it. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:38:02Bill Simmons?

  No, I think it's like, doesn't exist. I think it's one of those that's just out.

• 1:38:07Speaker 02

  I have thoughts about the Older Guy Character Piece.

• 1:38:09Sean Fennessey?

  I love those movies.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  I love them.

• 1:38:11Sean Fennessey?

  I love a movie where it's like, this guy's 63.

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  But they won't do them anymore.

• 1:38:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's all slipping through his fingers.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Because the older guys.

• 1:38:16Sean Fennessey?

  They want to be too young.

• 1:38:16Speaker 02

  They want to be too young.

• 1:38:18Sean Fennessey?

  This is the problem.

• 1:38:19Bill Simmons?

  You know, Criterion, the, the, the streaming app, which is really good, and every month they change the movies, and they'll have some that haven't been streaming for a while.

• 1:38:31Sean Fennessey?

  Their programming is amazing on that service.

• 1:38:32Bill Simmons?

  Them and AMC are the only ones left that would have a movie like Atlantic City. But for the most part, they're just gone. And I don't know whether it's like a rights thing, but it's really frustrating, especially for this show, because there's movies we can't do because they don't exist. Revenge of the Nerds is gone.

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Do you know, like, this is interesting that we're talking about this. Like, a month ago, like, I'm at the crib, and I was just like, I want to watch The Mac.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  You seen The Mac?

• 1:38:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  I want to watch The Mac. I could not find a Mac to watch it.

• 1:39:02Bill Simmons?

  Bernie Casey?

• 1:39:03Speaker 02

  No. The Mac is, uh, The Mac is, um, Max Julian. As.

• 1:39:09Bill Simmons?

  That's what it was.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:10Speaker 02

  So like.

• 1:39:11Sean Fennessey?

  The closest you can come is watching them watch it in True Romance. That's what Drexel Spivey is watching on the TV, right?

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:17Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:39:18Speaker 02

  You see, I, I know I'm pretty, but I'm not pretty as a couple of titties. But like, it, it, it's.

• 1:39:23Bill Simmons?

  That one's gone.

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the Mac, couldn't find the Mac, wanted to watch the Mac, couldn't find the Mac. Watch, settle for Superfly.

• 1:39:28Sean Fennessey?

  As always, I'll just say, by physical media, you will always have access to these movies.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:33Bill Simmons?

  That is true. Some of them, oh, Atlantic City is, you can rent it.

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  Mac somewhere.

• 1:39:37Sean Fennessey?

  Great. Recommended.

• 1:39:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh, no, that's the wrong one.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  I bet my mom and them got it. They gotta have it in Louisiana somewhere. I know we got it somewhere.

• 1:39:45Bill Simmons?

  Atlantic City, huh, anyway. All right, moving on. This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse Nine. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, I like those guys, star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh. Writer-director of The Banshees of Minnehoshan and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys. Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse Nine is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year.

• 1:40:29Bill Simmons?

  Don't miss Wild Horse Nine, only in theaters November 6th. Get tickets now. Uh.

• 1:40:35Speaker 02

  Oh, Apex Mountain. How about this?

• 1:40:37Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:40:37Speaker 02

  Boxing matches in non-boxing movies?

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  In a movie that's not about boxing.

• 1:40:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm trying to think who, what else is in there.

• 1:40:47Speaker 02

  Like, in a movie that's like.

• 1:40:48Bill Simmons?

  Pulp Fiction?

• 1:40:50Sean Fennessey?

  There's no, we don't see the fight at all.

• 1:40:53Speaker 02

  Like, think about it. It, this movie is not about boxing. Normally boxing matches come in movies that are specifically about boxing or about the sport.

• 1:41:02Sean Fennessey?

  It's a very good call. There definitely has got, gotta be another example out there.

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  There's gotta be, yeah.

• 1:41:06Bill Simmons?

  You should prep Sean.

• 1:41:07Speaker 02

  It's gonna come.

• 1:41:08Sean Fennessey?

  Now I'm gonna just be haunted when I forget to name one movie.

• 1:41:12Bill Simmons?

  His, his own Criterion closet, just looking for a boxing movie.

• 1:41:15Sean Fennessey?

  Well, there's a lot of movies in the 40s and 50s like this, right? Like, The Harder They Fall is technically about, the 50s version with Bogart. It's technically about fights, but it's not a fight movie, but there's a fight in it.

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:41:30Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I'm trying, there's gotta be a good example of this. I can't think of it.

• 1:41:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I'll think of it about nine hours from now after the pod's already done.

• 1:41:37Bill Simmons?

  Stan Shaw, no. I do like Stan Shaw.

• 1:41:41Speaker 02

  He's awesome.

• 1:41:43Sean Fennessey?

  I think he's a little miscast in this.

• 1:41:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he's too old. But I think, I was trying to think what his, he's been in a lot of good stuff, but I think that number one is probably Great Santini. But he's also in this movie that doesn't exist anymore, Tough Enough with Dennis Quaid, where Dennis Quaid's in a tough man competition. And Stan Shaw is like his, I think he's the other guy in it, but he's been around. Stan Shaw was in five boxing movies somehow.

• 1:42:08Sean Fennessey?

  I feel like I know him best, where do I know him best?

• 1:42:10Speaker 02

  Does he have a boxing background?

• 1:42:12Bill Simmons?

  Because he must.

• 1:42:13Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, I know him from Monster Squad. Ever seen Monster Squad?

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  The kids, they, they all get together and they're gonna go fight the monsters because the monsters come out of the, the vortex, right? And Abraham Van Helsing, he comes in at the end of the movie, but then like then, before he comes in, they have this girl, she's supposed to have a virgin, read this incantation that's gonna send Dracula back to this thing. And they have one of their friends of the monster squad, they have their sister read the incantation. And it doesn't work because it turns out she's not a virgin. And that you didn't know this because you figure like she's like sixteen, seventeen years old. It's facts.

• 1:42:53Bill Simmons?

  I definitely haven't seen this.

• 1:42:55Speaker 02

  It turns out, and then they have one of their little sisters who's a little girl. She reads it, Van Helsing comes back through the thing, gets Dracula, pulls him back through the vortex. They win. I think Shane Black wrote that.

• 1:43:07Bill Simmons?

  What year is that?

• 1:43:08Sean Fennessey?

  It's directed by Fred Decker, it's like eighty-six.

• 1:43:11Speaker 02

  All the monsters come back to this town.

• 1:43:12Sean Fennessey?

  Dracula, Wolfman, Frankenstein.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  The creature from the Black Lagoon, all of them.

• 1:43:17Sean Fennessey?

  It's perfect gateway horror. If you're eight years old and you see it, you're like, I'll watch horror movies forever.

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  And it fucked with me because I learned about the lore of the Wolfman because they killed a Wolfman in the movie.

• 1:43:27Sean Fennessey?

  Wolfman's got nards.

• 1:43:28Speaker 02

  Wolfman's got nards. They killed a Wolfman in the movie and then a Wolfman goes, oh, thank you. Because he's been released from his curse. I fell for him.

• 1:43:36Sean Fennessey?

  Stan Shaw's in that movie.

• 1:43:44Bill Simmons?

  Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:43:45Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, it should, so this is gonna be my other hottest take, but I didn't want to step on this category. It should be Cruise and Hanks. Cruise is Santoro.

• 1:43:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Sean Fennessey?

  And Hanks is done. And then when Hanks, it's revealed that Hanks is the bad guy. It's the most shocking reveal of the nineties.

• 1:43:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:00Sean Fennessey?

  And this movie would have made nine hundred million dollars. You leave the tidal wave in, you get an extra fifty million dollars in the budget because you've got the two biggest stars of the era. And it's directed by Brian De Palma, who's just worked with Cruise on Mission Impossible. And we know it will be great in the movie. And it, Hanks, of course, was already in Bonfire of the Vanities. What make this movie?

• 1:44:18Bill Simmons?

  Wouldn't, couldn't you make the same argument for Cruise and Will Smith?

• 1:44:22Sean Fennessey?

  They're not the same age.

• 1:44:24Bill Simmons?

  You, you.

• 1:44:25Sean Fennessey?

  To me, you could, you could get away with, I think, Cruise and Hanks being the same age.

• 1:44:30Speaker 02

  I- if it's Cruise and Hanks, this movie is the espionage version of Interview with the Vampire. It's like two titans coming together to where just the fact that their names are up there together sparks a whole bunch of interest for the movie.

• 1:44:45Bill Simmons?

  Is there a spot for Cruise to run in this movie?

• 1:44:49Speaker 03

  Not really. It's pretty confined. Maybe through the back hallways. You can always find spots for him to run.

• 1:44:54Sean Fennessey?

  Down the hotel room.

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  Maybe he, oh, he has to run down the hallways.

• 1:44:57Speaker 03

  Hotel hallway, yeah.

• 1:44:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:58Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. I think he would have put that in his, uh, in the negotiations.

• 1:45:02Sean Fennessey?

  In his contract, yeah.

• 1:45:04Bill Simmons?

  He's like, I read the script. When Rick's on the thirty-fifth floor, what if he's on the wrong side and has to sprint the other way? Uh, Scorsese or Spielberg? This is obviously Scorsese. This would have been a cool Scorsese movie.

• 1:45:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:45:19Bill Simmons?

  And what part would Philip Seymour have played? I think Sinisa's part would have been.

• 1:45:24Sean Fennessey?

  I wrote Gilbert Powell.

• 1:45:26Bill Simmons?

  Which one was that?

• 1:45:27Sean Fennessey?

  The Donald Trump figure that John Heard plays.

• 1:45:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:45:30Sean Fennessey?

  When he gives the big, he's yelling at Sinisa's character about all the, his plan and what's gonna happen and how he needs the millennium to open. That's just a very PSH kind of moment in the movie.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  Pick a nits. What do you got, Van?

• 1:45:45Speaker 02

  Uh, they're having a full-on party with crack before a heavyweight title fight. Um, they're smoking crack. It's pre-fight. Now, I know that boxers get crazy, but I don't know how many times I've seen them go to the back where the fighters are getting ready, and there's a full-on model party happening in the dressing room of the boxer where they're getting down and...

• 1:46:09Bill Simmons?

  I think that might have actually happened during the Tyson post-jail era.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  Maybe.

• 1:46:14Bill Simmons?

  Maybe.

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  Before the fight. Um, just the, she's covered in blood and she's running through the thing. One guy stops her. Other than that, nobody really gives a shit. It's the whole time she's covered in blood. I'm like, I'm trying to think of any time I've ever seen someone even with a bloody nose. You're like, hey, man, I don't know if you know, but your nose is bleeding. She's got blood all over. Nobody cares.

• 1:46:34Sean Fennessey?

  You wanted a cop to set her aside, full-body cavity search. That's who you wanted.

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Full search.

• 1:46:39Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  And why don't you get out of those bloody clothes?

• 1:46:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  Those are the types of movies I like. Um, he's running security. Garrison Easys' friend, Garrison Easys' running security. He, however, gets his boy tickets to the fight, and there's been no security screening of any kind. He just chills right there with the Secretary of Defense. I'm like, is there no lyric or no piece of dialogue where you go, hey, man, I'm glad that you guys put me through this extensive security search where now I get to chill and sit right next to the Secretary of Defense? All of that stuff, none of that happened. It's just, I'm the bodyguard for the Secretary of Defense. Hey, my friend, come to the fight. I don't think that it works that way. I don't know why. It popped in my head. Uh, another thing is...

• 1:47:26Bill Simmons?

  Wow, you're really bringing it to the table this time.

• 1:47:28Speaker 02

  Just one more time.

• 1:47:29Bill Simmons?

  You're snake-eyesing it up.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  These are some slightly high BMI heavyweights. Now, I am not in any way...

• 1:47:35Bill Simmons?

  I thought the same thing.

• 1:47:37Speaker 02

  I'm not in any way...

• 1:47:37Bill Simmons?

  This looks like an ESPN Friday Night Fights fight.

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  If you guys look at me, I'm not in any way shaming anyone. I'm just saying, this is a two heavyweights fighting that...

• 1:47:49Speaker 02

  In the 90s, this wasn't the heavyweights. It was Lewis and Tyson and Holyfield and all of that.

• 1:47:56Bill Simmons?

  Razor Ruddock.

• 1:47:57Speaker 02

  Razor Ruddock, you know, you had maybe a couple of guys. But these, these are some high BMI heavyweights. That's it. That's all.

• 1:48:04Bill Simmons?

  What'd you have, Sean?

• 1:48:06Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mentioned already that Carla Gugino's plan is incoherent. Craig also points out that she's dressed like Marilyn Monroe in an attempt to get the attention of the Secretary of Defense at a fight. But then is her, her whole intention is to be a whistleblower, to have this whole plan destroyed and then so she would put herself out of work in theory.

• 1:48:26Speaker 03

  He also, he doesn't need to get her attention. He invited her theoretically.

• 1:48:29Bill Simmons?

  More importantly, we have fucking email in 1998. Send him an email.

• 1:48:33Speaker 03

  She said she wanted to deliver it by hand because I think she didn't want to get.

• 1:48:37Bill Simmons?

  No, she, she, we have email.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  There's specifically some mention in this movie somewhere of an email that was sent.

• 1:48:43Bill Simmons?

  But it was a mention and that was said in a way where email was still kind of new and it seemed conceivable she wouldn't be able to get an email to him.

• 1:48:50Speaker 02

  No, but she, she says something in the movie about either she sent an email or there was an email or something in the movie.

• 1:48:59Bill Simmons?

  I feel like she could have gone up to him before the fight versus during the fight.

• 1:49:04Sean Fennessey?

  Right, rather than during the fight.

• 1:49:04Bill Simmons?

  And maybe given it to him.

• 1:49:06Speaker 03

  When every camera's on him and she's gonna hand him an envelope.

• 1:49:08Bill Simmons?

  Everything is out there. I agree.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  Couldn't she just have also gone to the press?

• 1:49:12Sean Fennessey?

  In theory, yes.

• 1:49:13Speaker 03

  Probably worried about her life.

• 1:49:14Sean Fennessey?

  Although because he was being applauded, maybe he was a beloved SecDef.

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:49:18Sean Fennessey?

  You know, he could have been a hero.

• 1:49:20Bill Simmons?

  I have a really stealth boxing nitpick. The crowd is just too energetic and into it and upset in the first minute of the fight. They're just booing because there's not enough action. No crowd has ever been this.

• 1:49:32Sean Fennessey?

  He got two knockdowns in the first round.

• 1:49:34Bill Simmons?

  But, but initially they're booing because there's not action yet and it's like the fight just started. That never happens.

• 1:49:38Sean Fennessey?

  Can we talk about Jose Pacifico Ruiz for a moment?

• 1:49:44Sean Fennessey?

  So I didn't know where to put him. I don't know if he should have been in overacting. I don't know if he should have been weak link. I don't know if his characters.

• 1:49:51Bill Simmons?

  It might be a new category. It might be the Jose Pacifico Ruiz worst sports movie character.

• 1:49:56Sean Fennessey?

  First of all, you know, I'm sure he was a wonderful boxer. His acting is abominable. Like, he is absolutely terrible in this movie. Also, when Stan Shaw.

• 1:50:04Bill Simmons?

  He really is awful.

• 1:50:05Sean Fennessey?

  He's so bad. He's mugging in the camera.

• 1:50:08Bill Simmons?

  His name sucks. Jose Pacifico Ruiz.

• 1:50:11Sean Fennessey?

  He, if we're to believe what Tyler Lincoln says, this guy was also on the take, but he's fucking up the plan? Because he doesn't know how to box? Like, what exactly is going on? Where he, he pulls back on the phantom punch? He doesn't, he doesn't go for the kill when he's supposed to. He's kind of jabbing him. You know, you know what he's describing?

• 1:50:31Speaker 02

  And he's talking shit. Yeah, he's talking too much shit. He's losing sight of what the job is to do.

• 1:50:38Bill Simmons?

  Do you think he even knows that there is a job?

• 1:50:40Sean Fennessey?

  Isn't it clear that he's, he's supposed to know? When he hears the sign two?

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think they're both.

• 1:50:47Sean Fennessey?

  They're both in on it, right?

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  I think they're both in on it. I could be wrong.

• 1:50:51Bill Simmons?

  It's terrible. Good play, Bushon. Uh, here's my biggest nitpick. Why isn't Carla wearing contact lenses? It's 1998. It's like, if I lose these glasses, I just become Mr. Magoo? Like, you have a job working for a defense? You, you know, of your weapons analyst? You can't put in some contacts?

• 1:51:10Sean Fennessey?

  There is really, there is one really funny Mr. Magoo's style pratfall moment, though, where she comes out of the bathroom after she's cleaned herself up, and she's walking back into the arena and she bumps into the wall? And she like looks at the wall because she can't see.

• 1:51:22Bill Simmons?

  Right, because she can't see.

• 1:51:23Sean Fennessey?

  It's like a nice reminder of the fight.

• 1:51:24Bill Simmons?

  Also, if she was that blind, the glasses would be way thicker. And I, I say this as somebody who's blind, and I've never had a pair of glasses that, those look like reading glasses.

• 1:51:32Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:33Bill Simmons?

  Like, come on.

• 1:51:34Sean Fennessey?

  Contact lenses, A+. Love them. Where would I be without them?

• 1:51:40Bill Simmons?

  The actual, uh, oh, nobody notices the heavyweight champ punching out a cop. That one jumped out to me. And then obviously Carla making a move on Nick at the end. Where, where does that come from? They have no sexual attention the whole movie. And she's batting her eyelashes and being cute and being like, maybe you should look me up sometime. It's like, what, what is happening?

• 1:51:59Speaker 02

  They did that.

• 1:51:59Bill Simmons?

  This guy's a loser scumbag.

• 1:52:01Sean Fennessey?

  He does make a move on her earlier in the movie. When he sits her down before it gets real and he learns that his friend has betrayed him. But, so there's some indication that he wants, he's, he's down.

• 1:52:12Speaker 02

  The only nineties movie that had the sense to take out the underlying sexual energy between the man and the woman was The Pelican Brief.

• 1:52:24Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, because America's racist, right?

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  That's part of it.

• 1:52:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  And that's where the sense came from.

• 1:52:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, missing some, a major chunk of that movie.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, that's the only movie that was like, you know what?

• 1:52:34Sean Fennessey?

  You think they showed full penetration in that scene that they cut out?

• 1:52:37Speaker 02

  Gone, I think they.

• 1:52:38Bill Simmons?

  Darby Shaw got her world rocked.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  I think they should have gone with The Pelican Briefs.

• 1:52:42Sean Fennessey?

  Heyo.

• 1:52:43Speaker 02

  Like, you, you make that movie, right? I'm surprised I haven't come out with that.

• 1:52:46Sean Fennessey?

  Did this movie have a porn parody, you know?

• 1:52:48Speaker 02

  Definitely could, and so like, but everything else, they just had to do it. Like, they, they had it, they, they had to do it. They had to make the people have some type of energy. They, they always had to do it. I guess they didn't do it in, um, didn't they take it out of, uh, of, um, You Can't Handle the Truth?

• 1:53:06Sean Fennessey?

  A Few Good Men, yeah.

• 1:53:07Speaker 02

  They took it out of that one, too.

• 1:53:08Sean Fennessey?

  Joe.

• 1:53:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:10Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Joe doesn't get it.

• 1:53:12Bill Simmons?

  She was with the galactically stupid.

• 1:53:14Speaker 02

  You with the galactically.

• 1:53:16Bill Simmons?

  Sequel, prequel, Prestige TV, all black cast, untouchable. Um, Prestige TV, maybe, I don't know.

• 1:53:24Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, wow, so defeated.

• 1:53:25Bill Simmons?

  No, I just.

• 1:53:26Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:53:27Bill Simmons?

  I wouldn't fuck with this.

• 1:53:28Sean Fennessey?

  Never seen you be so defeated by your own category.

• 1:53:30Bill Simmons?

  I think this movie's fine. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do.

• 1:53:33Sean Fennessey?

  I, I, I think a prequel about Rick and Kevin growing up is kind of fun.

• 1:53:37Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 1:53:38Sean Fennessey?

  And then we see Kevin's dark side, but Rick can't see it because he's kind of a scumbag.

• 1:53:42Bill Simmons?

  Hmm. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, Doris Burke, Buffalo Bill, Sam Jackson, Nell Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Consor, Dana Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in The Firm? I, uh, I have a new, new combo for this. Joe Davis and John Smoltz announcing the fight.

• 1:54:05Bill Simmons?

  And there's another knockdown, John. Whoop, gunshots. The Secretary of Defense is down. And John Smoltz goes, "Yeah, we've never seen this before, Joe." "This is pretty crazy."

• 1:54:19Bill Simmons?

  That's all I got.

• 1:54:21Sean Fennessey?

  Is the idea there that they don't have enough energy?

• 1:54:25Bill Simmons?

  Yes, that's the idea, Sean.

• 1:54:29Sean Fennessey?

  But if Shohei Ohtani was present at that fight, they would have cut to him and said, "There he is! The greatest man in the history of attending fights! Ohtani again!" Joe Davis, that bastard. If it's a Dodgers moment, he really gets his dander up. Poor Blue Jays fans.

• 1:54:49Bill Simmons?

  I should have put in something about them bringing up the Joe Carter homerun. During the Lincoln Tyler fight.

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  Fucking, just stop bringing the fucking shit up, man.

• 1:54:58Bill Simmons?

  Joe Carter. It's like history lesson time.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, now it's tough. A moment for Blue Jays fans, that was brutal.

• 1:55:05Sean Fennessey?

  Brutal.

• 1:55:06Speaker 02

  That was brutal.

• 1:55:06Bill Simmons?

  And Lincoln Tyler is down again.

• 1:55:11Bill Simmons?

  He sure is, Joe.

• 1:55:15Sean Fennessey?

  I do think, I can't adequately do this because Chris is not here, but I do think Byron Mayo would be incredible in this movie. If he was like, "Kevin Dunn, my old friend, meet my friend Serena."

• 1:55:29Bill Simmons?

  Oh, in the backstage? Yeah.

• 1:55:31Sean Fennessey?

  That would have been good.

• 1:55:33Bill Simmons?

  What was Carlos' name in this movie?

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  I forget.

• 1:55:37Bill Simmons?

  Carla! "I noticed you lost your top. Let me take you to the gift shop."

• 1:55:43Sean Fennessey?

  Carla, I've got air conditioning.

• 1:55:47Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions. I just don't know why all bad guys don't use a silencer. What's the downside?

• 1:55:54Sean Fennessey?

  Great note.

• 1:55:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a good note.

• 1:55:56Sean Fennessey?

  Incredible note.

• 1:55:57Bill Simmons?

  Is it heavier? What is it, Craig? It's bigger, bulkier, harder to pack, it's longer.

• 1:56:02Speaker 02

  Harder to conceal.

• 1:56:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:04Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 1:56:04Bill Simmons?

  Just like if I was ever an assassin, silencer every time.

• 1:56:07Sean Fennessey?

  But I love a scene when I, when like two assassins are getting ready to go to work and they start screwing the silencer on. I'm like, this is, that's movie magic to me.

• 1:56:14Speaker 02

  Because you're getting ready for, to do a job.

• 1:56:16Sean Fennessey?

  Action's gonna happen.

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Shows how deliberate they are.

• 1:56:19Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 1:56:20Bill Simmons?

  Fan duel line for Lincoln Tyler versus Jose Pacifico Ruiz heading into the fight?

• 1:56:25Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:25Bill Simmons?

  Like Tyler minus 650? They said he was 10 to 1. Mm-hmm. Oh, they did? 10 to 1 favorite.

• 1:56:30Sean Fennessey?

  Ruiz was, oh, he's 10 to 1 favorite.

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  Well, that's why he was getting his, he, he, he was so fucked up about the bet.

• 1:56:35Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I could offer you the bloody $100 bill.

• 1:56:41Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:42Bill Simmons?

  I could offer you Nic Cage's jacket, which you could wear. I could offer you an actual poster of the fight.

• 1:56:48Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:49Bill Simmons?

  Could frame that. What would you take?

• 1:56:50Sean Fennessey?

  I have another answer.

• 1:56:51Bill Simmons?

  Go.

• 1:56:53Sean Fennessey?

  The ruby red ring, which is revealed in the concrete slab at the end of the movie, at the end of the credits.

• 1:57:01Bill Simmons?

  Oh, good point.

• 1:57:02Sean Fennessey?

  Which is the ring that Serena, the redhead, wears. And she's killed and then they're pushed off into a, into the concrete slab. That's like, there's all this, this big sequence where after he kills them, we see them getting loaded up.

• 1:57:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:15Sean Fennessey?

  Into this truck, which is really a weird way to dispense, and the two dead bodies are inside of that concrete slab.

• 1:57:20Bill Simmons?

  So you'd want the ruby red ring?

• 1:57:22Sean Fennessey?

  Chip that out.

• 1:57:23Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock, our best life lesson? I'm naive. There's worse things to be. Guess that would be it. Don't be naive. Best double feature choice? Blowout? Face Off?

• 1:57:35Speaker 02

  I'll put Face Off. I'll put Face Off. Just run it, run it right back. Nick?

• 1:57:40Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 1:57:40Sean Fennessey?

  I have five nominees.

• 1:57:41Bill Simmons?

  Domino?

• 1:57:42Sean Fennessey?

  You tell me which one you like.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 1:57:44Sean Fennessey?

  Dressed to Kill. JFK. In the Line of Fire. No Way Out.

• 1:57:50Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:57:52Sean Fennessey?

  L.A. Confidential.

• 1:57:55Sean Fennessey?

  Which of those do you like?

• 1:57:57Speaker 02

  No Way Out.

• 1:57:58Sean Fennessey?

  It's pretty close, tonally, right? Where you're like, this is a sleazy crime drama, set in the world of high-power politics.

• 1:58:05Bill Simmons?

  Craig ruined No Way Out, though.

• 1:58:07Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:58:07Bill Simmons?

  He said Sean Young wasn't hot.

• 1:58:09Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, that was the worst.

• 1:58:10Speaker 03

  This is one of the greatest big time fuck-ups.

• 1:58:13Sean Fennessey?

  No, no.

• 1:58:14Bill Simmons?

  Classic Generation.

• 1:58:15Speaker 03

  Let's get a poll. Let's get a poll going online.

• 1:58:17Speaker 02

  It's just embarrassing. Because the poll would have to be. It sends me to like, in like, an actual.

• 1:58:23Sean Fennessey?

  Gen Z can't participate. Like, we need like, we need like geo-blocking, but for a generation.

• 1:58:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, only boomers get to vote.

• 1:58:29Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  It's like, sends me to a range.

• 1:58:31Sean Fennessey?

  That's just how she'd be in America, too. Only millennials and boomers get to vote now.

• 1:58:34Speaker 03

  Here's the poll. Watch the movie, does she do it for you? I'm winning that.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  But I, okay. I mean, maybe amongst your generation, the ones that shy away from perfectly good press movies.

• 1:58:43Speaker 03

  I'll take it across the board. I'll take your generation, too.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  It's like, but dude, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a tough one, bro.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  I also remember, she is Finkel to me. She is Einhorn.

• 1:58:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:58:53Speaker 03

  It's a whole different relationship with her.

• 1:58:56Bill Simmons?

  It's fair.

• 1:58:57Sean Fennessey?

  It's a stellar performance.

• 1:58:58Bill Simmons?

  That's fair.

• 1:58:58Speaker 03

  But also, she's not getting it.

• 1:59:00Bill Simmons?

  Who, uh, who wants Snake Eyes for you guys?

• 1:59:05Speaker 02

  I don't think Cage has ever lost a movie he's starred in.

• 1:59:08Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  I don't. A movie where he's the guy?

• 1:59:12Sean Fennessey?

  Now, that would have been a great hottest take.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  He has this overwhelming energy that like, I don't think he's ever lost a movie he's starred in.

• 1:59:20Bill Simmons?

  I had De Palma.

• 1:59:21Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, you know.

• 1:59:22Bill Simmons?

  I thought about Carla. I, I did test drive Carla, but I think it's De Palma.

• 1:59:26Sean Fennessey?

  Carla's bra?

• 1:59:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, because it's De Palma's last one that actually made some money and was memorable and.

• 1:59:33Sean Fennessey?

  That was my other probably unanswerable question is, did De Palma quit or get fired from the role of major director? Like, what actually happened?

• 1:59:42Speaker 02

  Let's look.

• 1:59:43Sean Fennessey?

  Because he makes Mission Impossible, massive sensation. He makes this movie, makes money. It's a well-known movie. We're doing it on the show right now. And then, what happened?

• 1:59:54Bill Simmons?

  It's his late 50s and directors usually have a run of somewhere between seven and 25 years, unless you're Scorsese or Spielberg.

• 2:00:03Sean Fennessey?

  I think he turned 50 when he made this movie.

• 2:00:05Bill Simmons?

  It said he was 56 in this.

• 2:00:07Sean Fennessey?

  50, okay, maybe it's 56.

• 2:00:09Bill Simmons?

  56, 57, yeah.

• 2:00:10Speaker 02

  So, we talked about Mission to Mars.

• 2:00:13Sean Fennessey?

  That bombing, you think that killed it?

• 2:00:15Bill Simmons?

  That's a bad movie.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  Disney swing, right? And

• 2:00:18Sean Fennessey?

  He never should have made that movie.

• 2:00:19Speaker 02

  And then he comes back and femme fatale was like a movie that people enjoyed, but it lost money. And it was sort of controversial.

• 2:00:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Speaker 02

  And a little bit off kilter.

• 2:00:29Sean Fennessey?

  It was like a Euro sensation.

• 2:00:31Speaker 02

  Right, right. And then after that, he kind of just.

• 2:00:34Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, it's like Black Dahlia, redacted.

• 2:00:37Bill Simmons?

  What was that movie?

• 2:00:38Sean Fennessey?

  Passion.

• 2:00:39Bill Simmons?

  The McAdams, that one's weird.

• 2:00:40Sean Fennessey?

  Passion, yeah.

• 2:00:41Bill Simmons?

  Office one.

• 2:00:41Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's interesting, yeah, it's cool.

• 2:00:43Bill Simmons?

  Ever seen that?

• 2:00:43Sean Fennessey?

  It's very, it's very classic De Palma, really kinky.

• 2:00:45Bill Simmons?

  It's a to be classic.

• 2:00:49Sean Fennessey?

  But yeah, he's.

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  But it's almost like he, I think maybe he threw his chips in, because he didn't go back to do.

• 2:00:54Sean Fennessey?

  That quote about him saying it's the internet's time now, movies are over in 1998 is chilling.

• 2:00:59Bill Simmons?

  He's pretty lit, and I think there were some things that happened too. There's things that happened to him in the seventies and eighties. That I think there were some things ingested and smoked and, and done.

• 2:01:10Sean Fennessey?

  God bless him. The, the no bomb back Jake Paltrow documentary about him is one of the most pleasurable things I've, I've ever seen. I can put that on at any time of day and enjoy myself, or just him talking about what a genius he is making his movies.

• 2:01:23Bill Simmons?

  Him and, and Schrader, well, I guess and Friedkin too, three guys who were like, is that recorder on?

• 2:01:34Bill Simmons?

  Just a fire blower, they could give a shit. Craig, let's hear it, what'd you think?

• 2:01:38Speaker 03

  Loved it. Every time I watch, every time I watch a De Palma movie, I'm like, man, I fucking loved this movie. I gotta watch every De Palma film, because I think I've only seen the ones that we've covered on the show. I love Body Double. Uh, I, yeah, I, I just like in general when great directors make smaller movies, like this, even though the budget was big or whatever, the story feels small. And kind of random or insignificant. And I just think it's more enjoyable, the stakes feel lower.

• 2:02:03Bill Simmons?

  That's the end of the rewatchables.

• 2:02:05Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:02:07Bill Simmons?

  Thanks to Craig Horlbeck for producing. Thanks to Gahav who passed out an hour ago.

• 2:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  Under the.

• 2:02:11Bill Simmons?

  Thanks to Rana, as usual. And we'll be back next week.

• 2:02:27Speaker 04

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