‘Obsession’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Joanna Robinson

Bill, Chris, and Joanna make a wish to revisit Curry Barker’s 2026 phenomenon, ‘Obsession,’ starring Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Chia Hao Tat, Eduardo Ocampo, Chris Wohlers, and Kevin Cureghian 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.

• 0:06Bill Simmons?

  Hey, we're live, rewatchables. I'm Bill Simmons, that's Chris Ryan, that is Joanna Robinson. We're about to do Obsession. Joanna, you can hear on House of R.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  CR?

• 0:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 0:18Bill Simmons?

  The year of CR. I was getting mail back questions about this, that this is the year of CR now because you have LeBron James.

• 0:23Chris Ryan?

  I listened to this on your podcast and I appreciated the fact that you think me hosting Aliens would be better than me appearing in Heat 2.

• 0:32Bill Simmons?

  I said it was more realistic.

• 0:35Bill Simmons?

  Either way, the year of CR continues. Obsession live, next. 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

• 1:19Bill Simmons?

  pieces that works with pretty much everything that's already in your closet. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. 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.

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• 2:56Bill Simmons?

  Well, we did From Hell Month. It was basically all of June. This is a belated From Hell Month.

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  Or in Hell Month.

• 3:03Bill Simmons?

  The Wish from Hell.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Wish from Hell, okay.

• 3:06Bill Simmons?

  I wrote down, big, crossed with Fatal Attraction, crossed with room, with a whiff of weird science. That's Obsession. This movie is a phenomenon, one of the most successful indie movies of all time. Why?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  I mean, for a million different reasons. The YouTube footprint that already existed for this film, the existential horror we're all existing under, the double feature with Backrooms, like kind of making a Barbenheimer sort of experience. And then just, yeah, just wanting to be out in the world of people feeling something true.

• 3:41Chris Ryan?

  Every once in a while, a movie broadly like this, so some of them are more like traditional horror, traditional thriller, what have you, but they just seem to catch lightning in a bottle. So whether it's Blair Witch, Sixth Sense, what, like Get Out, and then you get to Obsession. And I don't even know, there's not like a twist in Obsession that like you're running out to be like, you have to go see this in the theater the first weekend because you don't, it's really, it's really indie navarrete that's like the twist. It's like, you're not going to believe this girl when you see her. And, but it just caught fire. And it just became this thing that was like, people were going to see it

• 4:21Chris Ryan?

  two, three times. I think it was appealing mostly very most, like a lot to younger audiences. And it really revived like this feeling that there are new voices coming to movie theaters.

• 4:32Bill Simmons?

  I think the twist, other than the leaf blower guy, as always, four o'clock right outside.

• 4:36Chris Ryan?

  It's like, you guys on Netflix?

• 4:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. Hey, is this live?

• 4:41Bill Simmons?

  I think the twist was what I thought the movie was versus when I saw the movie. Because I just thought this was like a Fatal Attraction movie, right? This-

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Oh, you thought she was just-

• 4:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because I try not to read up on the movies. So it was like, oh, this is like the worst case scenario of a Fatal Attraction movie, and not realizing that Bear is actually the bad guy. And the first time you see her, you're like, oh, you're flipping this, even though she's the quote unquote villain. She's not, it's him. So that was one of the twists. But the fact that people are going back three, four, five times, this was my daughter, who might actually be watching this on Netflix. My daughter's generation, my son's generation, like they, they went back multiple times to watch this. So what, why? What, what are like the little hidden footprints of this that make people want to come back?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Remember how right before we started recording, you were talking about actors doing movies to impress their kids? Are we doing this rewatchable to impress your daughter?

• 5:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, really to impress Craig. Craig loves this movie.

• 5:39Chris Ryan?

  I did like it, yeah.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Why do you go back? I mean, I think you want to share it with people who haven't seen it. That's what I remember about the Sixth Sense, not just the twist, but just sort of like wanting to be in the theater when they see what this is. And it's like a nice tidy little movie. And I don't know, it's just like an incredibly satisfying experience.

• 5:57Chris Ryan?

  It's durable and it's not didactic. So by durable, I mean, if you go back and rewatch it, I think I saw it once in the theater, I've watched it a couple of times this week. Parts of her performance specifically are incredibly nuanced because if you know where it's going and you know what's happened to her already, you can see like real Nikki come out.

• 6:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 6:18Chris Ryan?

  Demon Nikki, or Possessed Nikki, enter the chat. You can see all these different like little wrinkles that maybe you don't catch the first time. And then I also think the fact that he doesn't come out and put a giant spotlight on any one of the characters and is like, good guy, bad guy, you know, or like, it's very like, you can watch it and it's a little bit of like a, keeps you off kilter because it really is about 40 minutes in, 35 minutes in, when he sleeps with her, where you're like, ah, this guy's a piece of shit. Like, this is really bad, you know, that you really, it changes the entire perspective of the film.

• 6:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the first time I watched it, I was so struck by just how awkward the guy was. And I didn't know if it was the actor or the character. And I kind of still don't. We'll talk about him later, like, whether it was the performance or he's actually playing it perfectly. But then the second time I watched, that's when you pick up all the hidden stuff and because you know where it's going. You're not, you're not going on a ride with the movie.

• 7:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Bill Simmons?

  You're just like, well, I know where this is going. What did I miss? And then you see all the nuances, all the stuff like basically her being trapped in Wish Nikki.

• 7:23Bill Simmons?

  You have that whole side. And then you realize like Bear had all of these outs really from the first night.

• 7:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Bill Simmons?

  Right? He's Googling it that night.

• 7:30Chris Ryan?

  Instantly.

• 7:30Bill Simmons?

  Easily could have gotten out.

• 7:31Chris Ryan?

  The way you said Wish Nikki, I was like, does that guy play tight end for Iowa? Did he just come via NIL?

• 7:37Bill Simmons?

  Wish Nikki. I think the Sixers took him in the second round. But yeah, and then I watched it the third time, and there was more stuff.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Bill Simmons?

  And I think it's going to be one of those movies. I don't think it's going to be The Shining.

• 7:48Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's like if you know what Ian does by the end of the movie, the whole rest of the movie looks a little bit different. If you know Sarah always likes Bear, the whole rest of the movie looks different. And those are really fun, fun return trips.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  I also think it's not, I don't, I don't actually think it's debatable who the bad guy of this movie is. And, you know, we can talk about maybe some of our friends and colleagues who disagree with that. But I, but I do think that it's like-

• 8:13Bill Simmons?

  What friend, what colleague?

• 8:14Chris Ryan?

  Should we get HR?

• 8:14Bill Simmons?

  Is there a Van?

• 8:17Chris Ryan?

  The funny thing is, we all knew exactly as soon as she said it.

• 8:21Bill Simmons?

  We had to actually ban Van from this podcast.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Van is not here for a reason, but like, but it's not actually debatable, but there's like enough that you could grasp onto, that I remember when, like when 500 Days of Summer came out and like people radically got that movie incorrect. And then it was just sort of like an ongoing argument for months and years to come about like who the bad guy in that movie is. Or like, as you grow older, you're like, oh, Summer was upfront from the beginning, who she was in that movie. So like those kinds of relationship dynamics, gender dynamics, experience dynamics that can be sort of debated, especially I guess if you're Van and you have access to Twitter. So, yeah.

• 9:04Bill Simmons?

  You bring your own baggage to this movie.

• 9:07Bill Simmons?

  I was thinking, biggest 21st century horror movies, if you're combining cultural impact, critical acclaim, box office.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 9:18Bill Simmons?

  And I really went through it and I was like, how many of these have there been? I only had seven. And two of them came out this year because I think Backrooms is there too.

• 9:27Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 9:27Bill Simmons?

  Get Out, It, Conjuring, Quiet Place, Sinners, if you count it as a horror movie, and Weapons. That's really it.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Because Hereditary didn't make enough at the box office?

• 9:39Bill Simmons?

  I don't think it did. I think Hereditary was critically acclaimed. I don't think it had the box office.

• 9:43Chris Ryan?

  I think Hereditary is so completely influential for Curry Barker, though.

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  No question. But that's a different list.

• 9:49Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 9:50Bill Simmons?

  Because I think you still need, are people going to go actually see the movie?

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  Boba Duke's a good one.

• 9:54Bill Simmons?

  Boba Duke was a good one. Chris and I loved Drag Me From Hell, but that wasn't, I don't think had the same critical acclaim. There's been others, like the first Insidious, like we could mention a bunch of them. But it's really hard to have the box office, the critical acclaim, and the cultural conversation all at the same time, which is what this did. And then this took a whole other life on the internets, on the reddits.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  On the internets?

• 10:17Bill Simmons?

  On the internets.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 10:18Bill Simmons?

  And then it had all YouTube culture of, here's what you missed. Did you realize this? Here are 20 Easter eggs.

• 10:25Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 10:25Bill Simmons?

  There's one guy who watched Obsession at 0.25 speed.

• 10:29Chris Ryan?

  Really?

• 10:29Bill Simmons?

  And does like a long YouTube clip on it? Like, these people are fucking nuts.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  How many, how much time do you think you've logged on YouTube watching videos about this movie?

• 10:37Bill Simmons?

  Enough that I think I have to go in and change my algorithm.

• 10:40Chris Ryan?

  You have an amber alert on you?

• 10:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have to amputate my algorithm and get it out. I don't want them-

• 10:44Speaker 01

  So it's no longer like fights, your YouTube fight algo has gone away? Okay.

• 10:49Bill Simmons?

  So you don't like horror movies?

• 10:51Chris Ryan?

  Not typically, although-

• 10:52Bill Simmons?

  Producer Craig.

• 10:52Chris Ryan?

  I've watched a lot over the years now.

• 10:54Speaker 04

  Because of this show.

• 10:55Bill Simmons?

  But you like this one, so why?

• 10:57Speaker 04

  I, this one is not, this one is like, one, it has a fantastic performance and I feel like sometimes like the star of a horror film is like the, the, some demonic creature and like the fact that I could watch Indy Navarrete, put on like an Oscar worthy performance in a horror film felt really cool. It also felt small and relatable and I think it's why people stuck to this movie. It stuck with me. I liked it. And then like a day after I saw it, I started to think about it and I kept liking it more and more. I don't know, there's just a lot of really small, little personal interaction stuff that I think people can really dig into and pull apart.

• 11:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think also there's, there's something to be said for the fact that it was new blood.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:33Chris Ryan?

  And, you know, often you'll watch, especially during Comic Con and like a bunch of like the summer movies, you see all these trailers and you're like, it's-

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Thanks for gesturing at me.

• 11:43Chris Ryan?

  I was just, I was acknowledging your service in going to San Diego for Comic Con. That you will watch trailers and you're like, ah, Callum Turner, ah, Callum Turner, Callum Turner again, you know, or, like they recycle actors, like actors get hot, they do five movies a year. I love Robert Pattinson, but he's obviously, got a lot of time to kill before Batman. But like, this is one of those things that Hollywood used to really be able to do, which is like, we'll also make stars, you know, like we'll, we'll find this person. And, you know, if there's a god, she'll be in heat too.

• 12:13Bill Simmons?

  I wrote my notes.

• 12:16Chris Ryan?

  No big deal.

• 12:17Bill Simmons?

  Is that possible?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  No pressure.

• 12:18Bill Simmons?

  Could she be Ashley Judd?

• 12:19Chris Ryan?

  She was, she was been rumored as a, as, as being, having met with Michael Mann.

• 12:25Bill Simmons?

  I wrote my notes, this is a social horror movie.

• 12:29Bill Simmons?

  Just trying to think of other examples of this.

• 12:31Chris Ryan?

  Get out.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  What do you mean by a social horror movie?

• 12:35Bill Simmons?

  Dialogue heavy.

• 12:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, social, like interactive.

• 12:39Bill Simmons?

  It ropes you in thinking that it's one kind of movie, right? And then she starts unraveling, but it's still, even though it's like, hey, good news, I dug up your cats. Like, okay, this, but it goes, the second part of this movie goes to the full horror level. But it ropes you in where it's like, these people are normal.

• 12:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Bill Simmons?

  Which I think is one of the hardest things for a horror movie to pull off. Like, you've made me feel normal. I feel like I know the people in this. They're all having beers at Barker's Pub.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  One of my favorite theories that I saw floating around this movie is there were, you know, some people are like, oh, well, she was behaving relatively normally inside of this wish scenario. Before she gave him the tiger's eye, like this whole thing about the tiger's eye, Jen, that she gives him. I'm like, before that, she definitely digs up a cat and puts it right away. So I don't think there's any, any, yeah, there's that like hilarious montage of like rom com moments that is like-

• 13:30Bill Simmons?

  That was really good.

• 13:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  Really funny. Um.

• 13:33Chris Ryan?

  And that keeps you so off kilter as a viewer.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  But she's already staged a cat and I think once you, once you go there.

• 13:40Bill Simmons?

  Same day is when she's behind the cash register, just staring at them as they're talking and her, she doesn't move for three minutes.

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Bill Simmons?

  Just eyeing them down. Um, Curry Barker.

• 13:50Chris Ryan?

  Curry.

• 13:51Bill Simmons?

  Curry Barker. I have, I have Curry. I said Curry. Who's Curry Barker?

• 13:55Speaker 04

  He played for-

• 13:55Bill Simmons?

  Did he play for Orlando?

• 13:56Speaker 04

  Gators, uh, with Chandler Parsons.

• 13:58Bill Simmons?

  Curry Barker.

• 13:59Speaker 04

  Curry Barker and Cory Booker.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Cory Booker.

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Curry Barker.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Cory Booker is what I was thinking you were.

• 14:05Bill Simmons?

  This was, I wrote down his sixth sense. Just a tremendous idea.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:11Bill Simmons?

  Like, and then Shyamalan had, had that sixth sense. It's like, oh, spoiler, it's 27 years old.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Give him enough time to X out of the Netflix app.

• 14:21Bill Simmons?

  You know what? I'm not gonna spoil it.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  The restraint.

• 14:24Chris Ryan?

  And Night Shyamalan had a good idea and he made it.

• 14:26Bill Simmons?

  And Night Shyamalan had a really good twist idea.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:30Bill Simmons?

  And he did it and he wrote it to 27 years of movies. One Wish Willow is right up there. It's just a great idea. And he's borrowing it from these other movies where somebody made a wish and it backfired.

• 14:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:42Bill Simmons?

  Not like this.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  The Wish Gone Wrong movie? Where are you on the Wishmaster franchise?

• 14:46Bill Simmons?

  Not really there. Um, I like Wish Gone Wrong, but to me like big, that's what I grew up with was like, oh, he wished he could be big and now he is and he's gotta get out of this.

• 14:56Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Home Alone is that too, right?

• 14:57Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 14:58Chris Ryan?

  You know, he's like, I wish my family would just disappear. Yeah.

• 15:00Bill Simmons?

  And Weird Science too.

• 15:02Chris Ryan?

  It's true.

• 15:02Bill Simmons?

  It's true. But this kid's clearly, what's he, 26?

• 15:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, something like that. Maybe a little young. No, Kane Parsons is younger.

• 15:09Bill Simmons?

  He's, have you hit the age yet where you start seeing people like this and you're like, what the fuck, man?

• 15:12Speaker 04

  A little bit.

• 15:13Bill Simmons?

  He's 26.

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm 31, he's 26. Kane Parsons is the one that really pissed me off. He was 19 when he made Backrooms. I was like, alright, fuck off.

• 15:20Bill Simmons?

  Unbelievable. Um, but he's gonna have, I think, there's a lot of good stuff in this movie.

• 15:25Chris Ryan?

  Did you watch any of his YouTube stuff?

• 15:27Bill Simmons?

  I didn't. Should I have?

• 15:29Chris Ryan?

  I think you'd enjoy it. Uh, it sounds like some of it's gonna get adapted as features, so you could also just hold on, but his sensibility is very distinctive, I think. It's got, there's some like Japanese horror influence, but then there's also like obviously sketch comedy and sketch comedy has been this huge platform for people to go from like Craigor went from sketch comedy to horror, Jordan Peele, sketch comedy to horror, now Curry.

• 15:53Speaker 04

  Even like Bill Hader now is making a horror film.

• 15:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Bill Simmons?

  You did sketch comedy at The Ringer. Why can't this be you?

• 15:58Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 15:58Bill Simmons?

  What the hell?

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Well, isn't your current existence a horror movie?

• 16:01Chris Ryan?

  That's true.

• 16:02Bill Simmons?

  So if we're pulling ideas from YouTube and turning them into movies, does this mean Coach Nick?

• 16:07Chris Ryan?

  I mean, you and I.

• 16:09Bill Simmons?

  Bebop breakdown.

• 16:10Chris Ryan?

  That would be an incredible last act to your Behind the Music where it's like, then Bill got really into cocaine and spent $50 million on a Coach Nick horror movie.

• 16:18Bill Simmons?

  Coach Nick made a horror movie. Alright, let's do it. Bear as the villain.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:24Bill Simmons?

  So.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Full stop.

• 16:25Bill Simmons?

  Listen.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  End of sentence.

• 16:28Bill Simmons?

  You know.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Oh, in defense of Bear? Is that what's happening right now?

• 16:31Bill Simmons?

  The opposite.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 16:33Bill Simmons?

  How is this even an argument or a debate where people are like, you know, who's actually the villain? Bear. I mean, is-

• 16:40Speaker 01

  That's the premise of the movie. Right.

• 16:42Bill Simmons?

  Bear was clearly the villain, a socially awkward weirdo, drinks pina coladas, like right there. It's like, what are you doing?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's the bar.

• 16:51Bill Simmons?

  Has cats, likes them, but won't mourn his dead cat. He's like, yeah, I'll go out for drinks. Practices telling a girl that he loves her to some fucking random waitress. Completely chokes when he has the chance and then uses the one wish Willow to try to win her over. This guy's the loser of losers, then realizes that it worked and then basically keeps her captive for months.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:14Bill Simmons?

  Weeks? How long is this?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  You got, you got there in the end. I feel like you hit a few remarks like pina colada or has cats or whatever that I would not-

• 17:21Bill Simmons?

  One moment from this guy for two hours on top of how terrible the outcome of this was.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  But he's a type that we were like, are supposed to recognize from, from that like 500 Days of Summer era of like manic pixie dream girl, uh, storytelling.

• 17:36Bill Simmons?

  So he's Zach Braff in Garden State?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's Garden State. He's Josephine.

• 17:39Bill Simmons?

  Crossed with the guy from Room?

• 17:40Speaker 01

  He's like, it's Elizabeth Town. It's like all these other things. There's these, these like nermy yearning guys that we're supposed to be rooting for and it's just like-

• 17:49Bill Simmons?

  How many times have we actually rooted for the right guy in these movies?

• 17:53Chris Ryan?

  In these movies are just like a yearning.

• 17:54Bill Simmons?

  I kinda like Garden State. I, I'll defend that guy.

• 17:56Chris Ryan?

  I feel like he sometimes do drive bys on guys like this. Like, you know, you don't like Troy in Reality Bites. Do you like Grover in Kicking and Screaming?

• 18:03Bill Simmons?

  I do.

• 18:03Chris Ryan?

  Okay, just making sure.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  This is, remember when we did Can't Hardly Wait? This movie is exactly Can't Hardly, yeah, I know. If, this movie is exactly Can't Hardly Wait if it was a horror movie. Where he's like obsessed from afar. And what, like if Ethan Embry in Can't Hardly Wait, if Jenna Elfman gave him one wish Willow, he would have been like, I wish Amanda loved me more than anyone else in the world.

• 18:23Chris Ryan?

  Absolutely right.

• 18:25Bill Simmons?

  I hate this guy. Does one wish Willow. Nikki has no choice from the moment he breaks it.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  That's, yes.

• 18:33Bill Simmons?

  That night, he has a decent idea it might've worked. Googles it.

• 18:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Bill Simmons?

  And then he's like,

• 18:37Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't goo-

• 18:38Bill Simmons?

  Ah, fuck it. I'm gonna roll the dice. Cause how else would I have dated this girl?

• 18:41Chris Ryan?

  She's like, maybe she was on Molly. Yeah.

• 18:43Bill Simmons?

  Next day digs up the cat. He's like, yeah, well, I'll still give this a few more days. Keeps it going and going. Keeps having sex with her and that, that's like one of the most disturbing scenes in the movie. Cause you know, not freaked out by the duct taped door at all. Duct taped door should have been like the, the la, like I gotta get this girl some help. I gotta get the police involved.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  He's definitely freaked out.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  He went to work. Yeah, but he, his face was like staring in shock at that door.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  You think duct taped door is the-

• 19:11Bill Simmons?

  I'm just going through all the beats.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  It's not Dead Cat?

• 19:14Bill Simmons?

  I'm just going through all the beats. Never gets the second one wish Willow to nullify the first one, which would have been the easiest move. It's like, man, this one wrong. I'm gonna just get a second one.

• 19:22Chris Ryan?

  You're the Picasso of the trade machine. You would have thought of that immediately.

• 19:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Nikki says, Nikki's asleep. Wish Nikki's asleep.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:30Bill Simmons?

  And captive Nikki is going, just kill me.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  And she's like, shoot me.

• 19:34Bill Simmons?

  Just kill me. And he goes, what would be so bad about being with me?

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  And then goes and meets another woman.

• 19:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that night. He's not like, I should probably do suicide watch here. He takes off.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  When he starts like making eyes at Sarah, I was-

• 19:48Bill Simmons?

  But here's my question.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Ready to punch.

• 19:49Bill Simmons?

  This guy is a pathetic weak loser. Can you be a true villain? When you're a pathetic weak loser who drinks pina coladas and, and does mourn your dead cat?

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:59Bill Simmons?

  Okay.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Because the, the sort of like, cause he's a capital N, capital G, nice guy. Like that's Bear's whole thing, right? It's like, he thinks he's a nice guy. He thinks he's entitled to, uh, you know, this relationship. And we are, like we often, I root for like the nice guys, but this is the cautionary tale of the nice guy, which is just sort of like-

• 20:22Speaker 01

  When he doesn't see you as a person, he has no idea who you are and he doesn't really care who you are.

• 20:27Chris Ryan?

  Yes. There are two reasons, I think, why, we saw my first viewing. I was a little like, okay, so where, how do I feel about this guy? One is that young love can be reality altering, right? Like what the first time you really fall in love when you're a young person, you can like wish for things beyond what you're gonna be able to get. And like, it can sometimes distort, like, you know, I know she said she doesn't really wanna go out on a date with me and she just wants to be friends, but maybe like that didn't, she didn't mean what she said, like, you can make things up in your head, but that's really dangerous, as we can see from this movie. And second of all, they shoot this movie entirely from his POV. So the audience is corrupted in what happens and you're kind of like, just from the audience to screen relationship.

• 21:12Chris Ryan?

  I think there is like, an inherent like, am I also guilt culpable in this? Like, cuz I'm watching him do it and like, because I've watched so many of these movies, do I want him to get the girl? And what does that mean? So I think that's why people are almost thrown off a little bit.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  He's get the girl, you know what I mean? Um, I, I think it's interesting too that Curry Barker and, um, Andy Navarrete have talked about how they intentionally had those first few scenes when it's actually Nikki. They intentionally played it sort of both ways constantly.

• 21:41Chris Ryan?

  Right, they had her, she likes him in one scene, but didn't like him the next time they do a cut.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  And so you at the audience are not, I mean, she says things like, ew, when he says, I got her, I got you a gift. I think that's pretty clear, but, um, but you know, there, there are some moments like, Andy Navarrete has said in, in the moment where she asks Bear, do you like me? Uh, you know, and then he, and he chokes, and then she, she said, I played it as sort of disappointed. Like, that was, that was a choice we made. So they're just trying to maintain this ambiguity, uh, for the audience at least, to keep the audience unsure.

• 22:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and I love like even the detail of the setup that she's about to leave that job.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:17Chris Ryan?

  And that their, their sort of like work romance thing is gonna be over, like even though it's Chase, but like, their flirtation at work, part of their life is gonna be over. So like, if he ever wants to shoot his shot, he's gotta do it now and he can't manage to get it up, like, that's, that's a great little detail that she's leaving that job.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  He's like, yeah, sorry.

• 22:36Speaker 04

  And she says that, I mean, she kind of confides in him about her interests in writing and like the story she wants to tell. And she's like, you're the only person I can talk to about that. Which is very classic, like, you, the guy likes the girl, she's open to you, you so clearly know you're stuck in the friend zone, but you don't wanna disrupt it because you're like, this girl is actually confiding in me, something that she wouldn't do with anyone else. So they do a good job of setting it up where he's like, I clearly have something with her.

• 22:59Chris Ryan?

  Right, but it's not romantic.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  I just really love that she was like, you know, Ian, his friend who has another agenda, says you have nothing but time. And, but she says, we're running out of time when she says she's giving it her two weeks notice. And the message of that is, once we don't work together all the time anymore, we're not, this is not, uh, this is not transcend that. We were in high school together and then we worked retail together and our friendship is not strong enough.

• 23:23Chris Ryan?

  And we did the High Fidelity podcast together, like retail is also a reality distorting field where you're like, this is like my best friend. I stand next to a register with him for eight hours a day and then like, you leave for another job and you never see that person again.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  Name was school, sitting next to somebody in class.

• 23:36Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot of good tropes in this movie that Curry Barker is clearly like, I grew up watching movies and I've seen a million of these, but it has, like, obviously Sarah likes him, that's the one he should have gone after and doesn't realize it, like that's out of the fucking eighties. There, how many eighties movies were like that? It's like, oh, I loved her, but I didn't realize the one who liked me was right next door.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  She was a brunette and there was a blonde over there, man, yeah.

• 24:01Bill Simmons?

  Right. And then the four people working together, the dickhead friend.

• 24:04Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 24:04Bill Simmons?

  Who seems like he's on your side, but he's really not, you know, it, it hits a bunch of them. Michael Johnston, who's the guy who plays Bear.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  I can tell by the categories you picked, how you felt about this performance.

• 24:18Chris Ryan?

  I think it's a, it's, it is a great performance, but it, the reason it's great is cuz you do not like him.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:27Chris Ryan?

  And I don't think it would work if it was like,

• 24:31Chris Ryan?

  well, who would, who would you, why don't you just tell me?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, tell, tell us who you want in there.

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  Well, let me, so the movie is $750,000.

• 24:37Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  Right. They're not getting.

• 24:40Chris Ryan?

  Chalamet.

• 24:40Bill Simmons?

  They, they luck out with Andy Navarrete, who's like the all time jackpot for a movie like this, right?

• 24:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Bill Simmons?

  So I'll give you the scale of one to Dante from Clerks. Of like, fuck, if we had had a better actor here.

• 24:56Chris Ryan?

  Dante from Clerks, the highest high here?

• 24:59Bill Simmons?

  The highest high of, fuck, how did we not get a better actor?

• 25:02Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 25:04Bill Simmons?

  He was terrible.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Tough, yeah.

• 25:06Bill Simmons?

  There's a reason we can't do Clerks in the rewatchables cuz people ask it for it sometimes and I'm like, I just, it would just be two hours of just shitting on Dante. I don't wanna do it.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  You gotta cast your friend, you know?

• 25:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's really tough.

• 25:17Chris Ryan?

  I still have a lot of time for Clerks.

• 25:19Bill Simmons?

  Even with Dante?

• 25:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, of course.

• 25:21Bill Simmons?

  All right, so one to Dante, where is this guy as an actor, where we might have been able to get better?

• 25:25Chris Ryan?

  Dante being the worst.

• 25:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Dante's a 10 and 10 is bad.

• 25:29Bill Simmons?

  10 is bad.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And one is, this guy was.

• 25:31Chris Ryan?

  I think this guy is a three.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:34Chris Ryan?

  I think he does a very good job.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  Three, four. I think there's a thing, there's only one other thing you could have done if you had had a little bit of budget, which is the thing that Promising Young Woman did, which is cast a bunch of nice guy, you know, it's like,

• 25:46Chris Ryan?

  Oh, cast against type.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Bo Burnham and like Chris Lowell and like all the guys who are in Promising Young Woman and you're like, used to rooting for them, you're like, oh, Adam Brody's here.

• 25:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  And then you're like, oh, these guys are pieces of shit. So if there was like a, a nice guy, lowercase n, lowercase g, that we could, uh, root for in that role and then be betrayed by.

• 26:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, Andy Navarrete, career changey breakout role. She was in one film called Wander Darkly in 2020. See it?

• 26:14Chris Ryan?

  I have not seen that.

• 26:16Bill Simmons?

  She was in 13 Reasons Why.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  I did watch.

• 26:18Bill Simmons?

  A show I did watch, cuz my daughter watched it, it was during COVID. And Superman and Lois, apparently?

• 26:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:26Bill Simmons?

  I'm gonna give this the Bam Adebayo 83 point game award for where the fuck did this performance come from?

• 26:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  This is like Malachi Flynn scoring 50 in that one game a few years ago and you're like, who, what?

• 26:37Bill Simmons?

  But it feels sustainable cuz she's so good in this, like clearly she's gonna be in our lives now for the next 30 years.

• 26:42Chris Ryan?

  100%.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Starting with Heat 2 and then just with them.

• 26:46Bill Simmons?

  So, career changey breakout role. I'm gonna go even further though, cuz I was thinking like, how many iconic, great horror movie actress performances have there been? Where you're like, oh, so three I came up with, Kathy Bates in Misery, Toni Collette in Hereditary, and C.C. Spacek in, uh, in Carrie.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  You're not, you have no space for Jamie Lee Curtis.

• 27:13Bill Simmons?

  Obviously, I mean, I love Halloween. But I wouldn't say she's Meryl Streep in that movie, but she's really good.

• 27:19Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 27:20Bill Simmons?

  I'm talking about like a older level of acting.

• 27:22Chris Ryan?

  Aggressor, yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:24Bill Simmons?

  It's just, it's pretty rare. These movies are usually like, you have like the drag me from hell lady, who was Alison Loman?

• 27:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 27:30Bill Simmons?

  And it's like, oh yeah, she's good. But you don't have like, like she's probably gonna be the Oscar favorite.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  I would love that. That would be such a good narrative.

• 27:39Chris Ryan?

  I think she will get nominated.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, she will definitely get nominated.

• 27:42Bill Simmons?

  Our friend Lasker texted me this whole thing on the internet today about, it was like the early odds and it's a weak season and she's the favorite and there's rumors that the Odyssey, they're already trying to figure out, do we wanna?

• 27:53Chris Ryan?

  Hathaway's gonna duck her?

• 27:53Bill Simmons?

  Do we want, is Hathaway gonna duck her and go as supporting actress?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  I already thought Hathaway was running in supporting, like I thought that was already the.

• 28:00Bill Simmons?

  I think, I'm gonna say now, I think she's gonna win best actress. I don't think anybody's gonna beat her.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  And I think she deserves it.

• 28:05Bill Simmons?

  I think everybody loves her in this movie and it's gonna carry it, the narrative, the story, I think she's gonna win it. And she deserves it. I thought she was unbelievable.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  I think after, after the Amy Madigan win for Weapons and the Mikey Madison win for Enora, like that's those two narratives sort of combined. I can definitely see that happening.

• 28:23Bill Simmons?

  What do you think, Sierra? You know, it seems like you're, you think it's unrealistic.

• 28:26Chris Ryan?

  You know what, I just, I just get, we're gonna get beaten down by like six months of like, oh, Kate Blanchett's never been better. You know? You know, and like, or Renato Rhimes, but why not a third nom in a row, you know, it's like, but she's, she's cool, but like, I think this is like one of those.

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  Cuz one of the things with this, Joanna, is like, I always think about degree of difficulty with the part as part of the Oscars thing. Degree of difficulty of this movie is like a 10 out of 10. Like she's gotta do 19 things in this movie.

• 28:53Chris Ryan?

  If she's bad, I start looking at my phone in the middle of this movie.

• 28:55Bill Simmons?

  If she, if she's not great in this movie, this movie makes $20 million. It just doesn't work.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, increasingly, it feels like the Oscars wants to award, um, box office in addition to sort of prestige, but they want relevancy and this would be a relevant, a very relevant win.

• 29:12Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Bill Simmons?

  My advice to her now is, not a lot of interviews.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to go away for a minute.

• 29:17Bill Simmons?

  Keep some mystery.

• 29:18Chris Ryan?

  She's cool as shit though. Have you seen her?

• 29:20Bill Simmons?

  No, I know she is, but she, she, I think she'll have the lead, like just do the Michael B. Jordan, just.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, go away for a minute.

• 29:26Bill Simmons?

  Smile, do a couple of generic interviews, stay out of it and cash in after, cuz this will be her slus. Hathaway might duck her.

• 29:35Bill Simmons?

  She might be, she may run to the supporting actress category.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  I definitely think she's gonna do that.

• 29:39Chris Ryan?

  Hathaway's ring chasing?

• 29:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, she's ring chasing it.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  I think you.

• 29:42Bill Simmons?

  She's gonna go play with the B.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  I think you can make a, a, a real case for either category. That's not such abject category fraud as some other duckings have been. Penelope in, in The Odyssey, yeah.

• 29:57Bill Simmons?

  It's right enough, I don't, I never know what to think anymore, some of these stuff.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  It is the leading female role in that movie.

• 30:03Bill Simmons?

  She's the number two person in the movie. It's hard to think she's a supporting actress.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Is she the number two person? Tom Holland's the number one, two person in that movie.

• 30:11Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  You know? And then like, Hamish Patel has more screen time, yeah.

• 30:16Chris Ryan?

  But it's, it's messed up because.

• 30:19Bill Simmons?

  Tiny Tom.

• 30:20Chris Ryan?

  I wonder if Samantha Morton might get the like.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  No, I think, I think Samantha Morton is gonna be in.

• 30:25Chris Ryan?

  Supporting actress. And I'm like, it's messed up that Hathaway isn't like, I'm ducking Navarrete.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:31Chris Ryan?

  So I'm coming down and I'm gonna blot out Samantha Morton, cuz Samantha Morton could have an incredible like coronation of like, she's been so great for so long, you know?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  It would thrill me to my core.

• 30:41Bill Simmons?

  That's a standing O win if she wins.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  If Andy Navarrete and Samantha Morton won, I think that's like incredible. Sorry, Anne Hathaway, but you already have an Oscar, so it's okay.

• 30:51Bill Simmons?

  It's gonna happen. It's weird cuz she's also like, I mean, she's a couple of years older than my daughter, but she's this whole footprint that you have when you're a kid before you're a famous person now, this is this whole generation where if you like her, you can go and find, you know, 10 years of Instagram and all that kinda other stuff. This is just kinda how it's gonna be now.

• 31:11Chris Ryan?

  But she's like playing like, like Last of Us on YouTube, she like, you know, she's, she's just like a regular person.

• 31:18Bill Simmons?

  She's gonna win.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Maybe Anne Hathaway will win for Verity. What do you think?

• 31:21Chris Ryan?

  That would be great. What if Anne Hathaway gets nominated for like four roles?

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, double or triple to Anne Verity, yeah.

• 31:26Bill Simmons?

  I have a really interesting list for you.

• 31:30Bill Simmons?

  It's the crazy lady movies by decade and what they said about each decade.

• 31:34Chris Ryan?

  Oh, okay.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Great.

• 31:36Bill Simmons?

  Now, you, you, I'm gonna lay in the plane on this, you're gonna like this.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  I'm actually really glad I'm here. I, I, I, I love this.

• 31:44Bill Simmons?

  You're gonna like this. All like horror movies. But each one in a decade.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  It's funny, because I have a list of nice guy movies, nice guy horror movies.

• 31:52Bill Simmons?

  You could do that, too.

• 31:53Chris Ryan?

  That'd be great.

• 31:55Bill Simmons?

  Play Misty for Me with Clint Eastwood.

• 31:57Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 31:58Bill Simmons?

  That's the movie that set up Fatal Attraction. Really interesting, uh, Look at the Bay. Have you seen that one, Craig?

• 32:04Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 32:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. He's a, he's a radio host. Um, and a caller becomes obsessed with him and starts terrorizing him and it's, he basically has to go Dirty Harry to get out of it. And it's, that's how we did in the seventies. Then we had Fatal Attraction in the eighties. It's like Michael Douglas, oh, he just had an affair. Can't a guy just make a mistake for a weekend? And now he's getting tormented and all that's told through the guy. We get to the nineties. Disclosure. Now it's getting a little more ambiguous. It's like, stuff that happened the way, that Demi Moore is still the quote unquote villain in that, but Michael Douglas is not blameless either. And there, there's, it's, when we did this on rewatchables, it's about, uh, you know, the workplace dynamics, which was a big thing that was in dialogue back then.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:49Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 32:50Bill Simmons?

  Now we get into two thousands, Unfaithful. More thoughtful versions of what happens if somebody's happily married, but they just make a mistake? And then the husband finds out and now, so basically Richard Gere is kind of the villain in that movie, I think.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  I don't think Diane Lane's the villain in that movie.

• 33:09Bill Simmons?

  So we've moved toward the Richard Gere side. Get Out.

• 33:13Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 33:13Bill Simmons?

  Two thousand and sixteen, Alison.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 33:16Bill Simmons?

  Alison Williams.

• 33:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 33:17Bill Simmons?

  It's the villain, right? But now we're bringing all of like race politics and all of these.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  And the whole family.

• 33:22Bill Simmons?

  Awesome, the family and the, the South, all this stuff. And now we have the obsession where it flips. It seems like a crazy lady movie, but actually Bear is the villain.

• 33:31Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 33:31Bill Simmons?

  So it took us, see, I landed the plane. It took us six decades to get here.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  I liked it.

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  You're still dubious.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  I liked it more than I thought it would.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Here's my like twenty first century nice guy TM movies, right?

• 33:45Bill Simmons?

  I can't wait.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Like you have the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Five Hundred Days of Summer, Ruby Sparks. I was thinking about Ruby Sparks a lot, the Paul Dano, Zoa Kazan movie where he like types her into existence. And then she just has to do whatever, he's a writer and he just like writes what she does. And that's very much on my mind when I'm watching this.

• 34:04Chris Ryan?

  Can I throw a, a honorable mention on that one? Lars and the Real Girl?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yes, of course, of course.

• 34:10Bill Simmons?

  That movie is, yeah, that's a weird one, that movie.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Then you have your like tech era, because you've got like her and Ex Machina and recently Companion. This sort of like, can I build a girl and just have her do whatever I want her to do?

• 34:23Bill Simmons?

  Which is weird, because we made these movies in the eighties, too, not knowing how to actually build something like this.

• 34:28Chris Ryan?

  Kind of also Don't Worry Darling kind of on there.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's on my list, for sure. Hundred percent. Um, the one, Promising Woman and, and Gone Girl are a really interesting moment of just sort of like, because Gone Girl is.

• 34:39Bill Simmons?

  Getting dark.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  These are all sort of like waves of backlash of the manic pixie dream girl idea. And it's just sort of like, that happens at the turn of the century, which is, makes me feel really old to say. But that happens in the, the manic pixie dream girl era happens. And then it's sort of like grappling with it. And there are these like light, sort of indie cutesy movies of just sort of like.

• 35:00Chris Ryan?

  I can fix her.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sort of thing. And then it's like the tech phobia. I'm afraid of tech and I'm afraid of women and I'm just gonna put that together in Ex Machina and that's, that's something to think about. And then there's like, to your point, in terms of when things flip, Gone Girl is engaging with that sort of cool girl idea, right? Amy is like, uh, you know, the cool girl.

• 35:20Bill Simmons?

  And an awesome flip halfway through, if you don't know the book.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  And it's just sort of like, it's an incredible moment. Don't Worry Darling.

• 35:26Bill Simmons?

  Nick's kind of a dirtbag, though, in that movie, Ben Affleck's character.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Well, absolutely. But it's just sort of like,

• 35:33Speaker 01

  you've, you've made these girls quirky little dolls that just exist. I do like Garden State because I was the exact right age for it. But also objectively, like the Natalie Portman's character is just absolutely repulsive to a certain degree. And so, um, what, how we've grappled with that narrative, mostly male filmmakers actually on this list, but grappling with this idea of just sort of like, oh, are women whole people and do I need to consider their existence and their thoughts and their ideas?

• 36:04Chris Ryan?

  And I may be putting like my own, uh, my own narrative bullshit on this real person. But I'm like, you know, you, you're, you, you would love me if you knew the real me. And it's like, I know the real you. I don't love you. It's okay. Like.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  I think the moment in Five Hundred Days of Summer that I was thinking about a lot, and I was talking to Van about this when, when, when he called me, he was like, do you think Bear's the bad guy in this movie? Um, there's a sequence, there's a sequence in Five Hundred Days of Summer where Joseph Gordon-Levitt, they like, Zoe Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have broken up. And then she, they meet up again and she invites him to a party and this, and the screen splits. And it's what Tom thinks what was gonna happen and what actually happens. And what he thinks is gonna happen is she's gonna warmly greet him and they're gonna get back together. And instead, it's just sort of like, she's got someone new. She doesn't really care. Like the reality versus his imagination.

• 36:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  And I just sort of feel like that's what Bear is in this movie is he's just existing in the fantasy version of that party. And then he just has this like horrible power to make it a, a reality. And, um, yeah, nice guy movie.

• 37:08Bill Simmons?

  Well, that's why we like kicking and screaming.

• 37:10Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 37:12Bill Simmons?

  He's in love, but he just keeps listening to the answer machine over and over again. But then ultimately, nothing happens.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:17Bill Simmons?

  And that's just the end of the movie.

• 37:18Chris Ryan?

  I think that they are, both of those characters in that movie are writers. And they, like, I think Jane, the character in that movie is like, you're, I'm not a character. You know, like I'm actually like a person and I can't fit into a story of like, your disinterest and your interest in me wavering because it's like narratively pleasing to you.

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  CR, how many times have you been One Wish Willow in love?

• 37:41Chris Ryan?

  Uh, like hardcore out of control love?

• 37:44Bill Simmons?

  Just, just AJ Brown?

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  I actually, my wish came true with AJ.

• 37:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 37:52Chris Ryan?

  Ruined your team. You know, it's honestly, it's more of like a fleeting thing. It's like, you'll be at like a party or you're dancing one night and you're like, this is, this is my fucking soulmate.

• 38:04Bill Simmons?

  Not, not now, because you're married.

• 38:06Chris Ryan?

  Like when I was a kid, like when I was like seventeen.

• 38:08Bill Simmons?

  Trying to clarify.

• 38:08Chris Ryan?

  Sorry. Like, but like when I'm like seventeen and I'd be at a party or if you, you know, and you'd be like, this person, like, I think that we're gonna like run away together. And sometimes drugs help in those situations. And you're just like, Maya, like, you're like, this is really happening. And then you're like, oh, no, it's not happening at all.

• 38:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Boy, did I call that one wrong.

• 38:30Chris Ryan?

  Have you ever had that experience?

• 38:31Bill Simmons?

  Everybody has.

• 38:32Chris Ryan?

  Sure. Yeah.

• 38:33Bill Simmons?

  I think that movie, this movie taps into that, where he kind of deep down knows this girl's too, too much, too much firepower for him. He can't handle it. He's not, not capable of actually like having a successful relationship with her, which leads to the One Wish Willow. That's his only chance. And then he gets it.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  I think there's also like, both Ian, you know, his, his shitty best friend and, and Bear are constant, saying in the beginning of the movie, she would hate this. Nikki would hate this. They like keep sort of saying like what she would want or what, how she would react to something. And I'm just watching and I'm like, you have no, I feel like you have no idea. Or when.

• 39:13Bill Simmons?

  Who this person is.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Or when the needle drop hap, when she like borrows a twenty to go give it to a guy and then needle drop happens. And he's just sort of like heart eyes staring at her. And I'm just sort of like, you have just like, you've just like written a complete story in your head that has nothing to do with who this woman is.

• 39:26Chris Ryan?

  It's also, you know, it's kind of a play on, a lot of these kinds of stories are, they, they basically rely on like romantic gestures. Like if you think of Jerry Maguire and you think of him riding back from Phoenix, middle of the night, interrupt the book club, you know, you complete me. Bear doesn't even have the courage to do something like that. When Bear is offered an opportunity to say, I like you too, he chickens out. He just takes the most demonic way possible to do it.

• 39:55Bill Simmons?

  You know why? Because Bear sucks.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  And you knew it from the first pina colada.

• 39:59Bill Simmons?

  I knew it from the opening scene. He was practicing a speech to a fucking waitress.

• 40:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:05Bill Simmons?

  Which, which was, there's some good swerves the first time you see this movie and that's one of them, right? Because you feel like, oh, he's pouring his heart out to somebody. Then, then it's like, no, that's some random waitress. Can we talk about the twenty twenties really quick?

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Please.

• 40:21Bill Simmons?

  So you think like Euphoria?

• 40:23Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:25Bill Simmons?

  Pretty demented show.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 40:28Bill Simmons?

  The, the effect of online on people, fake friendship, some crazy sexual stuff. Tell Me Lies, another very popular show.

• 40:39Chris Ryan?

  Hell, yeah.

• 40:40Bill Simmons?

  That show's another, like, completely demented show that we all.

• 40:43Chris Ryan?

  You're basically going down your daughter's watch list.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was about, I was gonna say, these sound like.

• 40:47Bill Simmons?

  You know what I'm going down?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I think this is.

• 40:49Bill Simmons?

  I'm going down, and these are some of the most popular program we've had the last couple of years.

• 40:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Bill Simmons?

  And then Obsession, which makes $500 million.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  What is that saying about this decade?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  The kids aren't all right?

• 41:01Speaker 01

  I don't know. Uh, even though, you know, these, these characters are not kids.

• 41:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, can we talk about some of the reasons for that? Cause I think about this all the time, cause I have a 21 year old and an 18 year old. Social media, this is the social media generation, they grew up with it, all the potential damage from that. Online porn, revenge porn, the COVID lockdown. Underrated, sneaky, really terrible way, if you're anywhere basically under 25 and you're still forming how to connect with people and you're just on the shelf for however many months.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Do you think their COVID bubble was like these four?

• 41:39Chris Ryan?

  These people?

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:40Bill Simmons?

  It probably wasn't great for Bear.

• 41:41Chris Ryan?

  Pretty loose, cause like, where do you think this takes place, right? Like, do we ever get like?

• 41:45Bill Simmons?

  It's like North Hollywood?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  I was gonna say Ohio.

• 41:47Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I was gonna say Pacific Northwest, that's interesting. But I think I associated it a little bit with River's edge for some reason.

• 41:53Bill Simmons?

  Uh, our friend Wesley, I was, I was talking about this movie and we were talking, cause he's, he thinks there's this whole, he has this whole theory about young people don't wanna fuck. It's like his whole, he's gonna write about it at some point. And he was talking about like.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Spoilers.

• 42:07Bill Simmons?

  The, well, he's, he, he loved this movie, cause he was like, this movie is really about how afraid young people are to just like communicate and, and connect that way. And, um, and this guy has to like resort to the one wish Willow over actually whatever. And I, I do feel like this is a generational movie to some degree. Cause I do think these are things people think about all the time. You're home all the time, you're online all the time versus like being out, connecting with people, trying to meet people.

• 42:35Chris Ryan?

  There's not a lot of like, sitting on the phone on this, on this, in this movie. There's like a little bit of like light, not Googling, but Googling going on.

• 42:43Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 42:44Chris Ryan?

  There isn't like a ton of like, I'm obsessively looking at my phone and texting and stuff.

• 42:48Bill Simmons?

  True.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 42:49Chris Ryan?

  Which is refreshing.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  He was just on her Instagram before she called him to go.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  They at least had a party where there was like the boys' night. Which sadly Nikki kinda ruined it a little bit.

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  There you go.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  By, um.

• 43:00Chris Ryan?

  Wow.

• 43:00Bill Simmons?

  Doing a hands on Gretel poem and then smashing a beer bottle against her head.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Or improved it. Chris and I love live theater, so I don't know.

• 43:08Bill Simmons?

  Hey, how was boys' night? Ah, things went a little off the rails.

• 43:12Chris Ryan?

  I thought we were gonna do a 2021 redraft.

• 43:17Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, this movie is on pace to make 500 times as much as the budget of the movie.

• 43:22Chris Ryan?

  Which is insane.

• 43:23Bill Simmons?

  It has surpassed Enter the Dragon as the highest grossing movie ever with a budget under $1 million. And in its, cause it kept growing, in its third weekend, it made 27.4 million, making it the first movie since E.T., the Extraterrestrial, to increase its box office for three weeks in a row. It was the biggest focus features movie ever.

• 43:46Bill Simmons?

  As we talk about the resurgence of movies, horror movies are leading the forefront here. Horror movies and.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Do you agree with that? Because.

• 43:54Bill Simmons?

  And event movies like The Odyssey.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, The Odyssey.

• 43:56Bill Simmons?

  Like IMAX stuff.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Like large format.

• 43:58Bill Simmons?

  Comedies, comedies, no.

• 44:00Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 44:02Bill Simmons?

  It's all drifted to the horror and it's all drifted to like the big director IPs. What, what else works, Craig? If you're programming a studio, would you just do directors and horror?

• 44:13Chris Ryan?

  Animated kids movies.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, Toy Story 5 is the number and.

• 44:16Chris Ryan?

  Kids movies will always do well, but.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Super Mario Galaxy, those are like the top two movies.

• 44:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't even know if I would say that horror is taking off in a way that's new, cause I feel like horror has been.

• 44:26Bill Simmons?

  Horror is like unassailable.

• 44:27Chris Ryan?

  For like the last 20 years, horror, or even longer, I almost think everything else has lowered, but horror has remained. Well, horror also is the only thing that seems cost controlled somehow. You don't need stars typically. So it's like, you can do.

• 44:38Bill Simmons?

  The star is the horror.

• 44:39Chris Ryan?

  Patrick Wilson and, and Vera Farmiga can like lead the biggest horror franchise of the last 20 years. You don't need stars, it's inherently theatrical, it's budget friendly.

• 44:47Bill Simmons?

  See, I and I have seen every horror movie ever. Or at least everyone from the last 54 years.

• 44:53Chris Ryan?

  And you and I will also see any horror movie.

• 44:55Bill Simmons?

  I've, I've, I'm not kidding, I've watched all of them. There was a drought in the late 90s when we, the sequels, we've talked about this on previous pods, the sequels and just kinda ran out of ideas and it was like, how many times can we do?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Dimension films, teen, like, we'll be teen theater.

• 45:11Chris Ryan?

  Jesse Eisenberg Werewolf movie.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and, and then Scream kinda revived the movies that we all, but then the 2000s just brought a, once we started figuring out that there's something wrong with the house.

• 45:23Chris Ryan?

  Scared of Ring. I, I wanna do The Ring and you won't do it.

• 45:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Saw, then we had like the grisly kind of.

• 45:28Chris Ryan?

  Hostel.

• 45:29Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we had like that gross era.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Six Sense and Blair Witch, and those are both 90's.

• 45:33Bill Simmons?

  Paranormal Activity, another one.

• 45:34Chris Ryan?

  Huge one, yeah. Yeah.

• 45:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  I just think it's funny, I, um, interviewed Jason Blum years ago where I was talking, it was like after, I think after the hereditary sort of moment. And I was asking him about this idea of elevated horror, which is what everyone was sort of calling in at the moment. And he was just like, I hate that. He's like, I actually really hate that term. He was like, I hate every time people try to reclassify like, you know, or, or, or try to make you feel less embarrassed for watching horror or something like that. He's just like, horror is just, horror is just eternal. You know what I mean? And you don't have to slap a label on it, you can just go and experience this thing with other people in the theater. But I do have a question about why that's not working for comedy, because like, that communal, we laugh together, we scream together, sort of, we go to the cinema together to feel.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Why that's not working for comedy, I, I don't know.

• 46:23Bill Simmons?

  It's heartbreaking, feels good in a place like this.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  It does.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  People have been trained to think that you can watch a comedy at home.

• 46:30Bill Simmons?

  I think that's part of it, but.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  Huge crowd, you know?

• 46:32Bill Simmons?

  I honestly think the bigger reason is we don't have stars anymore for comedy.

• 46:35Chris Ryan?

  But like so many comedies, I don't know, like.

• 46:38Bill Simmons?

  Think about the ones that you love.

• 46:39Chris Ryan?

  Like did American Pie have huge stars? Superbad wasn't huge stars.

• 46:44Bill Simmons?

  But they became huge stars.

• 46:46Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 46:46Bill Simmons?

  American Pie was one of the only ones where the gimmick of the movie became the star. But when you think back to the Appetar, all of those people became really famous.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  But they were, I mean, like Steve Carell was not, when you made 40 Year Old Virgin.

• 46:59Chris Ryan?

  True.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Steve Carell and like Seth Rogen had been in Freaks and Geeks, but wasn't like a star. Like, but when the Appetar verse started, it was a star making thing, which is what you were just saying about horror, that it can be a star making moment.

• 47:11Bill Simmons?

  SNL used to find these people too and just has not lately.

• 47:14Chris Ryan?

  And it's fascinating that all these comedians are making horror films and not comedies.

• 47:18Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Or The Invite.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  I mean, this movie's funny though, like.

• 47:22Chris Ryan?

  It is funny, I agree. The Invite's an interesting case where I wonder if they had shot, I mean, do you feel like that was shot as a comedy?

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  No, but I finally saw it on Friday and it was, it's, it's really funny. Like there were parts where the whole theater was really laughing and into it.

• 47:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:38Bill Simmons?

  And, uh, I wasn't prepared for that, cause it's such an unsettling movie. This movie has a couple of funny things too. Quick backstory, so Curry Barker wrote, edited, directed.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Curry.

• 47:47Bill Simmons?

  You mentioned, or Curry.

• 47:50Bill Simmons?

  Who was that? So Cory Booker.

• 47:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Bill Simmons?

  Curry Barker. Who are the other famous Currys?

• 47:56Chris Ryan?

  Steph and, and.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:58Bill Simmons?

  Curry Barker, I'm gonna get this right.

• 48:00Chris Ryan?

  Dell, the food.

• 48:02Bill Simmons?

  Curry.

• 48:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Bill Simmons?

  A producer liked his short film, The Chair. Wanted to make a movie and Barker pitched Obsession, which was partly inspired by the Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror 2.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  The monkey, a monkey's paw.

• 48:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Sort of segment in that episode.

• 48:18Bill Simmons?

  So they offered him a million, they offered him 2 million if Bear could be the hero at the end. And he said, no, he did the Sly Stallone. I will play Rocky. He's like, Bear will not be the hero of this, and did the 1 million and, uh, does it, premieres at TIFF, it crushes, Focus buys it for 15 million.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  But also didn't do the Rocky, because they said he could play Bear if you, cause he, he wants to, he's been an actor as well as a director.

• 48:43Chris Ryan?

  And he is, and in his YouTube stuff, he plays some creepers.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:46Chris Ryan?

  So it's not like he's like, oh, but like, I think if Curry Barker had played this part, you would be like, that's the fucking bad guy, the second he walked on screen.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  He doesn't even have to order a pina colada before he's.

• 48:55Chris Ryan?

  I mean that affectionately for his skills as an actor, but like, if you watch Milk and Cereal, which is one of his YouTube movies, you're like, this is one of the creepiest dudes out there.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  But I just like, I, I really like that restraint, because he's, he's wanted to be an actor as well as a director, sort of his whole life. And he had this opportunity to put himself in there and he was just sort of like, no, for the, for the betterment of the movie, I'm gonna restrain myself and I'll just be the director.

• 49:17Chris Ryan?

  Everything that's good about this movie is because it didn't get fucked with.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:20Chris Ryan?

  And maybe he got notes from different people and maybe he got, you know, mentorship, but that's the reason why I think horror has been working so well at the kind of level that it's at right now, like this Backrooms, uh, Obsession level, is that they're like, at this price point, I won't mess with you.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, let her rip.

• 49:37Chris Ryan?

  Go for it. And then when it gets to, it costs 50, 60, 70 million dollars, it's like, I'm gonna need Ethan Hawke in this and he's gonna have to be the good guy at the end, somehow he's gonna have to save the day or something like that, you know? Like, there, there starts to become more like, we need to have Bear try to find the one wish Willow company and it's like a road trip with him and Sarah, but when, you know, like, it's like, there would just be extra shit and.

• 50:00Bill Simmons?

  I would've watched that.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  I was gonna say sequel, but that.

• 50:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I love Sarah. More Sarah in this movie would have, would have been good.

• 50:08Chris Ryan?

  We'd have to do a prequel, yeah.

• 50:09Bill Simmons?

  One of the funny things about this movie is, so we're in this cycle now, when a movie's not gonna, they don't think it's gonna make that much money. We've really ramped up the VOD and then.

• 50:19Chris Ryan?

  Shortened the window, yeah.

• 50:20Bill Simmons?

  Popping on, on the, on the streaming.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:23Bill Simmons?

  So in this one, it had it all set up, like, alright, it'll be out, and four weeks later, it'll be on VOD. And they had to delay everything, because it was like a money machine. And the VOD, I think, got delayed by, what, five, six weeks. It went on Peacock.

• 50:36Chris Ryan?

  Last Friday.

• 50:37Bill Simmons?

  Last Friday.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  But it going on Peacock was like another pop for it.

• 50:40Bill Simmons?

  No question.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  You know?

• 50:42Bill Simmons?

  But what's interesting is, all that tells me is, they still didn't know, even as they're getting to, like, when the movie was coming out, that this was gonna happen.

• 50:49Chris Ryan?

  The big thing with this one was the second week, great.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 50:52Chris Ryan?

  Like, it was like, it did well, it did sixteen, seven, I can't remember what it did the first week, and then it was like.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  It did like twenty, then twenty-five, then twenty-eight.

• 50:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's like, it's like.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Leggy. And the narrative, the whole narrative became around the horrible Star Wars movie that came out at the same time, but,

• 51:09Speaker 01

  it's bad, it's a terrible movie, but, uh, so yeah, I re-listened to your big pick episode with Sean talking about it.

• 51:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  To prepare for this, it's just a very sweet time capsule, because you guys are like, this is a pretty good movie, really hope some people will go see it.

• 51:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh, seriously?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Really hope people give Obsession a chance.

• 51:27Chris Ryan?

  There's this weird thing that happened with the success of this movie is, A, I think it got way more scrutiny than any horror movie usually gets, where everybody's like, are we sure it's really that good? But then it's also like, before it got big, me and Sean were like, cool movie.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  People check it out.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Let's champion it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really sweet.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  This was a tough internet movie. This really, this really, all the things we don't like about the internet were percolating, like, the moment this movie started to do well. Sadly, no Roger Ebert. No review from him.

• 51:56Chris Ryan?

  Ask any?

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Don't.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  No, you told me not to do that anymore.

• 51:59Chris Ryan?

  Thanks for listening to me.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  And I co-sign.

• 52:00Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  I love this.

• 52:01Bill Simmons?

  You know what I did do then?

• 52:04Bill Simmons?

  I asked, I asked Claude, if Bill Simmons was still writing, what would the first paragraph of his review of Obsession be? And this is what Claude said.

• 52:14Chris Ryan?

  Claude Simmons?

• 52:15Bill Simmons?

  Claude writing in my voice. Real talk, I almost skipped Obsession because the title sounded like a Lifetime movie that got confused about what network it was on. Then I actually watched it, and this is a full Simmons reversal, it's the best horror movie of the year, and it's about something.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  You think you would ever say?

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  Kinda sounded like me. I kinda wanted to die after I read that.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Full Simmons reversal, is that something you would say?

• 52:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Bill Simmons?

  I think I would have made the Lifetime movie joke.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Lifetime movie. How do you feel about making yourself redundant, uh, on this podcast?

• 52:43Bill Simmons?

  Which one?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  With AI. You just, uh.

• 52:46Bill Simmons?

  I just did it.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Market corrected yourself with AI. How does that feel?

• 52:48Bill Simmons?

  It made me feel really bad about all the stuff I wrote over the years, that somebody could just be like, here we go.

• 52:53Speaker 05

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• 53:19Speaker 06

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• 53:30Speaker 07

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• 53:51Speaker 06

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• 54:17Speaker 07

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 54:23Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Whether it's a pumpkin spice coffee that goes splat in your seat, or a weekend tailgate that leaves your trunk full of gear and who knows what. You're gonna want WeatherTech in your vehicle, whether you call it fall, autumn, or spooky season. Whether the mess is your fault, the kids, the dogs, or the weather's fault, you're gonna want WeatherTech. For American-made floor liners and a cargo liner that laugh in the face of fall weather, visit weathertech.com today. Most rewatchable scene.

• 54:51Bill Simmons?

  The opening diner scene, we mentioned, has to be mentioned, just because it very perfectly establishes Bear as a schmuck in four minutes. Barker's Pub, really good bar talk scene, good camaraderie with the four.

• 55:03Chris Ryan?

  I like.

• 55:03Bill Simmons?

  Some interesting dynamics.

• 55:04Chris Ryan?

  Ian, just a guy who lives for bar trivia.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Relatable.

• 55:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  But they need a better bar trivia name.

• 55:08Bill Simmons?

  But we learn.

• 55:11Bill Simmons?

  Cock blocker.

• 55:12Chris Ryan?

  On, yeah, for a reason, for a reason.

• 55:14Bill Simmons?

  They go to go get the shots, and he's gonna have this moment, and he goes crashing in. It's like, ah, I don't trust this guy.

• 55:20Chris Ryan?

  His whole behavior makes sense once you get to the end of it.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Once you know, yeah.

• 55:23Bill Simmons?

  Bear and Nikki in front of her place, it's the next scene.

• 55:27Chris Ryan?

  Amazing.

• 55:28Bill Simmons?

  You like me?

• 55:34Bill Simmons?

  Share that half a pina colada?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  That's your Ethan Embry impression, perfectly.

• 55:39Bill Simmons?

  And it's One Wish Willow time. I wish Nikki would love me more than anyone in the fucking world.

• 55:46Bill Simmons?

  Boom. She's on the steps, acting weird all of a sudden, and we're off. Next scene.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Bear has never seen a movie with like a genie, like, never.

• 55:57Bill Simmons?

  At the, in the trivia.

• 55:58Chris Ryan?

  All these horror movies, though.

• 55:59Bill Simmons?

  One of the trivia questions is a lot.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a lot. Never thought I should word this carefully, you know?

• 56:05Bill Simmons?

  But this is every movie where there's something wrong with the house, and nobody has ever watched any horror movie where there's something wrong with the house. Like, huh, the attic, it's getting weird up there, hmm.

• 56:15Chris Ryan?

  Can I ask a question about The Wish?

• 56:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Chris Ryan?

  Is he wishing that she loves him more than she loves anyone else in the world? Or is he wishing that she loves him more than anyone has loved anyone in the world?

• 56:27Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think that's where you get into the fine print of The One Wish Willow. So the exact.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  I thought it was the first one, but.

• 56:31Bill Simmons?

  The exact quote is, I wish Nikki would love me more than anyone in the fucking world. I think he means Nikki, but One Wish Willow got confused.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  But grammar loopholes.

• 56:40Bill Simmons?

  This is gonna be number one, yeah. Should've said it better.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Need an editor.

• 56:44Bill Simmons?

  We have the cat memorial in the kitchen, followed by Bear telling Ian everything that happened last night, as she's staring them down. This is the okay motherfucker award, right?

• 56:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:53Bill Simmons?

  We're like, okay, motherfucker, we're off.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Her just staring in the background?

• 56:58Bill Simmons?

  Just the cat combined with that, and it's like, man, we have flipped the switch.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  That's not mine, but.

• 57:03Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm just giving you scenes.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  No, I know, I know.

• 57:05Bill Simmons?

  The wear and love rom-com montage, where it's like, she's the perfect girlfriend.

• 57:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:08Bill Simmons?

  They're having a great time. And then the booth and the date, the, when she does the Betty Gabriel and get out. That's okay, motherfucker. No, no, no, no. Thought we're having a nice date.

• 57:21Bill Simmons?

  Next scene, she's in the corner in the bedroom.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  That's mine. That's my okay, motherfucker. When she starts moving like humans don't move.

• 57:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 57:28Bill Simmons?

  Backwards.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  That's when I was like, oh, no.

• 57:30Bill Simmons?

  Has Liz ever done that, Craig?

• 57:32Chris Ryan?

  Not to my knowledge.

• 57:33Bill Simmons?

  Okay, good.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  It's not even the backwards, it's when she's doing sort of the like Pink Panther creep out of the shadow.

• 57:38Chris Ryan?

  You're too locked in on your 11th fantasy league, you're like, huh.

• 57:41Bill Simmons?

  Why don't you love me? And puts the flower over her face. Then we get the duct taped door scene, frozen smile, she pees in the rug, makes him a dead cat sandwich, we've gone off. These next two scenes, one of these two would be my, my two. Nikki freaking out that she didn't get invited to Boys Night, followed by Boys Night.

• 58:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Bill Simmons?

  Boys Night, this scene is fucking bonkers. We get the Hansel and Gretel incest monologue.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  With the accent work.

• 58:09Bill Simmons?

  Wanna break that down later, or no?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  I have the whole thing here.

• 58:12Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Wanna do it now?

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 58:14Bill Simmons?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  You wanna read it?

• 58:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 58:19Chris Ryan?

  Can you read it in like a live ad read voice?

• 58:24Speaker 01

  This episode brought to you by incest. Um, Hansel, come lie with me like the old woman taught us when we were children, I said. He closed the door and leaned against it. You're not my wife, Gretel, he said. I'm more your wife than, I'm your sister. Hansel flinched and reached for the door handle. I knew he would not leave this place. He would, he would relent and choose to be inside me, like he had many nights before. If not, I would have filleted his meaty forearm, rolled it like a stick of licorice, and inserted his flesh between my legs. Hansel is my soul, my cud. Brother, you will be inside me tonight. I went to him at the wall and reached for his sharp shoulders. His eyes were on the door, but his hands grabbed my hips. That's from the original screenplay, it might be slightly different in the, uh, finished product, but I do think.

• 59:08Bill Simmons?

  It's just a book I'm working on.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  I do think, I do think her accent work is my favorite part of all of that, when she just decided to go for the accent, which was Indy's choice, and I just love it.

• 59:17Bill Simmons?

  I don't even know which part of the Oscar clip, when she's nominated, do they use from this scene, but, because the crazy smile. The overlap, she does the poem.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  I think it's when she like pops up and she's really excited to read it. That was sort of my favorite.

• 59:32Chris Ryan?

  When she's just like, guys, I'm joking.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:34Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm not, deal with it.

• 59:37Bill Simmons?

  And then he pulls out the next thing, and it's kiss the person to your left, and it cuts to her, and she makes the single craziest face of the movie, and one of the craziest ever. And then pulls the chair out. The sound in this movie is really good, too.

• 59:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 59:50Bill Simmons?

  Like, right as she pulls the chair out, it does this jump scare sound, scare sound, pulls the chair back, and just the reaction of everybody else in the room, where they're just like, what the fuck is going on? All time, all time Michael Jordan-esque performance by her in that scene.

• 1:00:06Chris Ryan?

  And then we get what is now becoming a pretty, uh, prominent trope in modern horror movies, which is.

• 1:00:13Bill Simmons?

  Hitting yourself?

• 1:00:13Chris Ryan?

  Blasting your own head.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Chris Ryan?

  Happened in Hereditary, it happened in Talk to Me, it happened in Bring Her Back, and now, yeah, we got this one.

• 1:00:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I wonder who, who was the Jonas Salk of.

• 1:00:26Chris Ryan?

  I think Talk to Me was the one where I was like, holy shit, but I guess Hereditary would predate that.

• 1:00:32Bill Simmons?

  Well, then the next one I have is Bear sneaking out to see.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Sarah.

• 1:00:36Bill Simmons?

  Sarah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Your fave.

• 1:00:38Bill Simmons?

  This is my number one. Really good scene. You know Nikki's gonna show up.

• 1:00:43Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:44Bill Simmons?

  But then the way they do the diet and she's like, Luther, and she's like, oh, I was the one sitting that. And you just kind of forget about Nikki for a second and then all of a sudden the window breaks. And it's the most violent, awful horror movie scene. It's just great.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Did you see the behind the scenes where they put like literally like a bike helmet on her and then a wig on top of the bike helmet? And that's like, that's how this movie cost less than a million dollars.

• 1:01:04Bill Simmons?

  They had, um.

• 1:01:05Chris Ryan?

  It's like a cast of her head too, right?

• 1:01:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, this was when Harry Met Sally crossed with the shining. Um, they made two dummies of her. And, um, just smashed.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Oh, of Sarah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:17Bill Simmons?

  Just smashed the head over and over again. Uh, CR, one of the best kill scenes in a long time.

• 1:01:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's the testament to the way they did it that you can see it coming literally from a hundred yards away. Cause if you're watching, you're just like, that's, that's Nikki. Here she comes, you know, like, and it's just, it's just incredible. It's hit every single time I've watched it this week.

• 1:01:36Bill Simmons?

  Two more. Ian making the one wish Willow. I wish for a billion dollars.

• 1:01:40Chris Ryan?

  Perfect wish, man.

• 1:01:41Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, the ending of this movie is great. And I didn't even pick up the first time that she broke the one wish Willow.

• 1:01:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Bill Simmons?

  After he was overdosing. I just thought he overdosed and he dreamed the rest of it. And then, cause I'm an idiot, the second time I was like, oh. That was the one wish Willow. Oh, I, and it was just.

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  My favorite part of that is Bear chickening out and trying to vomit up the, the pills.

• 1:02:04Chris Ryan?

  And that was a Michael Johnston idea. He was like, this guy's coward.

• 1:02:09Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for most rewatchable CR?

• 1:02:10Chris Ryan?

  Uh, no, no, no, dinner.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:02:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's mine too.

• 1:02:15Chris Ryan?

  That's the, the phone call about that she's lying about her dad, although the Ian's very specific research he's done.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  I know. He's like, he comes to work.

• 1:02:22Chris Ryan?

  Dad has been to work every day. Like, how the fuck do you know? Uh, but he, you know, and you can, you know.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Ian has spies everywhere.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  I like the two scenes where he wakes up in the middle of the night and she's got the flower pot her in the corner. When he's sleeping and she's awake, I am fucking locked in.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Terrifying.

• 1:02:39Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 2026 thing about this movie? I would say the internet dialogue about it.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  Isn't it just like too close to know? I'm really glad that we're doing this rewatchable of like a current movie, but like.

• 1:02:51Bill Simmons?

  We do it once a year. What did we do? We did Top Gun Maverick. We did Get Out. We did Sinners. We've done, what else have we done? Same year. I feel like we've done one a year. I don't remember the other ones.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  But it's hard to know what.

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  Once upon a time in Hollywood, you did.

• 1:03:05Bill Simmons?

  Once upon a time in Hollywood.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  But it's hard to know like what is 2026 when you're still in 2026.

• 1:03:11Chris Ryan?

  I think it's probably a director coming from YouTube.

• 1:03:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:14Chris Ryan?

  Which could be more of this era, but as a story, like.

• 1:03:18Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for the Floyd Gondelli Butter in My Ass Award for something you just enjoy?

• 1:03:22Chris Ryan?

  Post-high school teens bumming around a small town. Really hard to turn me off of that. Like if they were playing pickup basketball, I'd be fine, you know, like. I dig it. I dig people like being like, we have this stupid job. We go out to a bar at night.

• 1:03:34Bill Simmons?

  You would have had some cigarettes outside Barker's pub.

• 1:03:36Chris Ryan?

  I have some stuff to say about smoking later. Yeah.

• 1:03:39Bill Simmons?

  What do you have, Joanna?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  I like, to your point, I like a movie that just, um, you think you're watching one movie and you're watching a different one. That that's, that, that's what happened to you. I love that that happened to you. Cause you, you avoid promo.

• 1:03:54Speaker 04

  Can I give you the least 20, 2026 thing about this movie?

• 1:03:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  That four people plus a manager work in a tiny music store every day at the, at the same shift.

• 1:04:03Chris Ryan?

  There's not that many people working at a CVS right now.

• 1:04:05Speaker 04

  Four people in a Best Buy, maybe. Now. Four people having the same shift in that store is.

• 1:04:12Bill Simmons?

  I went into, uh.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Well, they're all like favor hires, right? Cause it's her dad's store and then all of her friends.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  All working. Yeah. Like how many customers you get a day?

• 1:04:19Bill Simmons?

  That's where Andy Richter was gonna end up after Conan show got canceled. Running Castle's Music. Mine is cross famous movie locations.

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:04:31Bill Simmons?

  Castle's Music. Also the location of Wayne's World, the guitar that he always wanted when he does that. It will be mine.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Bill Simmons?

  That was the story where they filmed it.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:04:40Bill Simmons?

  I like when a cool location is in two kind of iconic movies.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 1:04:44Bill Simmons?

  That was where he wanted the 1964 Fender Stratocaster. Uh, Castle's Music closed. It, uh, they filmed this and then like six months later it shut down. It's in San Fernando. It's done.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  The house that they filmed the party in.

• 1:04:58Speaker 04

  Burned down.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Burned down in Eltona Fire's, right? So, yeah.

• 1:05:01Bill Simmons?

  What's age the best? Really hard to say, cause this movie came out two months ago. But I'm gonna offer you an old school Memorial Day box office weekend where we had. Michael, the Michael Jackson movie's still killing it. We had Devil Wears Prada two coming out and Obsession. Kind of movies we grew up with, CR. Has a little bit in 1989, a couple of bangers. The no, no, no, no, no, no, no, was an obvious get out montage, which they said, but I like that. Get out has now been long enough that.

• 1:05:32Chris Ryan?

  You can reclaim it.

• 1:05:33Bill Simmons?

  Eight hours later, it'd be like, oh, this is clearly no match. I have for what's age the best Ian just as a bad friend. Stuff you pick up on the second viewing, but that, that's like a particular one where it's like, oh, this guy's actually a bad. Bad actor in the friend sense.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  I think for me, it's the more I learn about how, how bare bones this production was, the more impressed I am with the movie. You know what I mean? Like if you just watch these like two people on a table dumping the like rubber money on top of Bear and behind, like all the behind the scenes stuff. Where it's just sort of like, let's put on a show in our backyard essentially, and it looks great and it made a gajillion dollars. That's a great story.

• 1:06:16Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 1:06:17Chris Ryan?

  A couple of little details. I mean, first of all, Navaretti and, um, the way that she switches between. Obsessed Nikki and normal Nikki or, you know, and I think. There's like little moments like Nikki turning off the shower when Bear tells her it's boys night and she's behind the door and you just hear the shower go.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. You hear the pipe, the water in the pipes.

• 1:06:37Chris Ryan?

  Which I don't think I caught necessarily first time around that were really good. And I also love Bear dies just like his cat.

• 1:06:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that's a really good one, CR.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  That's a great one.

• 1:06:48Bill Simmons?

  That's why this is the year of CR.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Have you seen the theory that people think she's possessed with the, uh, the spirit of the cat?

• 1:06:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that's great.

• 1:06:55Bill Simmons?

  I had that in Unanswerables. My daughter thinks that's true.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:58Bill Simmons?

  She thinks she became the cat.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:01Bill Simmons?

  I had the Easter egg stuff in this movie as, uh, what's age the best, just that you can go deep diving it, which I did. In the one wish Willow store, we get the wide shot and there's a magic eye. And there's a voodoo doll or the other two things you could buy. People think that's gonna be the obsession universe.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  A franchising, franchising mentality.

• 1:07:22Bill Simmons?

  Voodoo doll.

• 1:07:23Chris Ryan?

  We'll have the same guy who's like, don't bring that energy in here, man.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  I love these. I love both of the people who worked in the, in the Crystal Show.

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, the woman on her AirPods.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Bill Simmons?

  Another one is Nikki is reading The Art of Seduction in bed, but it's upside down.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Chris Ryan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07:38Bill Simmons?

  Bear's Google search history.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:41Bill Simmons?

  Which his last seven days are how to woo a girl, how to impress a girl, how to flirt and how to know if you've been friend zoned. Once again, Bear loser.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  How to play Green Day's Basket Case on acoustic guitar is one of his search terms. And I just like really like that detail.

• 1:07:55Bill Simmons?

  July oxycodone.

• 1:07:59Bill Simmons?

  So this is an internet theory. I think I believe it cause the third time I watched it, I looked for it. Sarah is always on Bear's left.

• 1:08:06Chris Ryan?

  Oh.

• 1:08:08Bill Simmons?

  And Nikki's always on his right.

• 1:08:11Bill Simmons?

  Every time he's with Sarah, she's on his left.

• 1:08:14Chris Ryan?

  Move in the stage.

• 1:08:15Bill Simmons?

  And I have no idea if this was completely accidental or whether this was actually.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  And what does that mean to you?

• 1:08:21Chris Ryan?

  Like devil angel kind of thing?

• 1:08:22Bill Simmons?

  I don't know. But it seemed relatively intentional. Nikki also never eats unless Bear's eating.

• 1:08:30Bill Simmons?

  And then, um, I didn't notice this till maybe the second time, but she's, the TV's on and it looks like they're watching some commercial from the nineties, but it's just Bear sleeping. She has this video that that's what's on the TV.

• 1:08:43Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:43Bill Simmons?

  When there's like something running on the TV, it's Bear sleep, it's Bear sleeping that she videotaped, obviously. There's a lot of good ones in there.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Did you see that someone broke down the, the like rom com montage and broke it down that it's just two days?

• 1:08:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:59Bill Simmons?

  Oh, really?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  It looks like it's a month, but they let you track the clothing and it's just like two days.

• 1:09:03Chris Ryan?

  It makes sense though, because like if they, it would be strange if she was like normal for that long, you know?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a question I have.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  Oh, interesting. I didn't really, do you think the intention though is to make you feel like it's a month?

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Speaker 04

  Or two days?

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  I think it's to make you feel like, I mean, in his mind, he's like, oh my God, we're in this like long and it's just been like two days.

• 1:09:21Speaker 04

  Us to think that it's been a month.

• 1:09:22Chris Ryan?

  I don't think he cares, but it's, I think it's more like when he goes back to Ian. Ian's like, so you guys are just fucking like living together now? Like it's, it's, and it's only been a couple of days.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Bill Simmons?

  I had this in Unanswerables. How many days do you think this was?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  Cause she gives her two weeks and she's still working there when the movie's over.

• 1:09:39Bill Simmons?

  I think it's like 11 or 12 days. It just feels longer. Uh, a couple more quick.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  I still do have friend questions though.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Semi what's age the best. Um. Barker wrote and filmed an ending inspired by Romeo and Juliet where Nikki kills herself after breaking free from the wish.

• 1:09:54Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:55Bill Simmons?

  And they decided not to use that one. Then he said the characters of obsession are unlikely to appear in another film. Which I hope he sticks to.

• 1:10:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, there are not too many of them left.

• 1:10:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, but they could do, I don't know, prequel.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  And Andy Richter spinoff?

• 1:10:09Bill Simmons?

  Maybe.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:10:11Bill Simmons?

  He did say he was thinking about an anthology TV series where each episode explores a new character. Making a wish. I threw that at my wife and daughter and both of them were like, and I don't have to sell Joanna who watches Cape Fear and enjoyed it.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  And enjoyed it is not.

• 1:10:28Bill Simmons?

  Episodes every week.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Is not, uh, how I enjoy the experience.

• 1:10:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  But it's not a good show.

• 1:10:34Bill Simmons?

  You like Cape Fear. Don't lie to us. Deep down, you like it. You look forward to it. You liked it.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 1:10:40Bill Simmons?

  Just admit you liked it.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  You, you.

• 1:10:43Bill Simmons?

  It's like having a canker sore in your mouth there. I kind of wish I had that canker for.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you could just stop tongueing it. I have texts from you about how much you are all in on Cape Fear.

• 1:10:52Bill Simmons?

  It's the worst show I've ever watched. That was well done.

• 1:10:55Chris Ryan?

  I quit after five. I had to do it.

• 1:10:56Bill Simmons?

  It's really horrible.

• 1:10:57Chris Ryan?

  I punched out.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 1:10:59Bill Simmons?

  There's one other thing that's fun from a what's age the best standpoint where. When Nick, right after Nikki turns into Wish Nikki and she comes around the driver's door and then she walks out and she kind of does like this 360. And Bear's like, what are you doing? Like the actress actually got confused where to go and they just kept it in the movie because they thought it was funny.

• 1:11:18Chris Ryan?

  She's also still like kind of glitching out. Like I think it's the, the fresh possession. She's just like, what is happening?

• 1:11:24Speaker 04

  Like my cat died.

• 1:11:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 04

  And she's like, wait.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  Your cat died. My dad's dying cancer.

• 1:11:29Bill Simmons?

  Last one. Christopher Nolan, big fan of the movie.

• 1:11:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Bill Simmons?

  He said, when you go see a film like obsession, that's an amazing idea. That movie works like a motherfucker. I'm telling Anne Hathaway to go best supporting right now.

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  You have me in the first half.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  We needed to get a W. All right. Great shot, Gordo Award, most cinematic shots, CR.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  I had a couple, but the one I liked the most is when Bear is on the phone in the restaurant and in the background of the shot, but still clear, you can see Nikki emerge as Ian's telling Bear about the cancer diagnosis and you can see her like staring at Bear. I thought that was like a great, and there's not a lot of shots in very broad lit rooms. That was one of them, but there's obviously some iconic ones in this.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  I would say her showing up in the red dress where her face is just completely in shadow and her eye and her eyes are gleaming. That's part of the whole, she's actually a cat theory. But yeah.

• 1:12:21Chris Ryan?

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, because that's what cat.

• 1:12:22Chris Ryan?

  Sandy, you're back.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  But I just love, I love all the times that her face is just completely in shadow inside of this.

• 1:12:29Bill Simmons?

  They kind of debunked that. They said they had so bare bones, no money at all, that she had to kind of do her own makeup and made it darker and whatever, however she did it with the lighting that they didn't have great lighting for either, made her eyes kind of crazy in a good way. That helped the movie, apparently. So I have Nikki in the bedroom corner for great shot, Gordo.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 1:12:50Bill Simmons?

  Where I like, it's always fun in a movie where it's like, is there somebody back? And then you realize there is, like the famous one is Halloween and Halloween one where she comes out after she sees her three friends butchered and it's like, oh no, Myers is probably still in the house. And then he kind of comes out of the, you just kind of see his white face come out of the back.

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Hereditary has an Alzheimer. But yeah, like the way that the camera is just in that corner and it's not moving. So you're like, okay, she's there somewhere, but I can't see her. Where is she? That was my experience anyway.

• 1:13:21Bill Simmons?

  Kid Cudi Award for best needle drop. You mentioned it before, Nikki feeding the homeless guy and the music kicks in and Bear's googly anger. What do you have for chess Rockwell Brock Laners Award for best character name?

• 1:13:32Chris Ryan?

  Baron Bear Bailey.

• 1:13:34Bill Simmons?

  Baron Bear?

• 1:13:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  I think that's undeniably the answer, but the fact that her last name is Freeman, Nikki Freeman.

• 1:13:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  It's giving me real Matt Damon plays Dr. Hugh Man in Interstellar vibes.

• 1:13:47Bill Simmons?

  Nikki Freeman.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Bill Simmons?

  Do you think?

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  But she's not free, man, you know?

• 1:13:52Bill Simmons?

  Do you think Donald and Melania called Baron?

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Bear?

• 1:13:55Bill Simmons?

  Bear?

• 1:13:56Chris Ryan?

  I hope not.

• 1:13:59Bill Simmons?

  You think anyone would be called Bear again after this movie?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Do you think Donald and Melania talked to Baron?

• 1:14:03Bill Simmons?

  I do. I think they've talked.

• 1:14:04Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Donald Trump has seen obsession?

• 1:14:07Bill Simmons?

  No, he wouldn't like it.

• 1:14:08Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:09Bill Simmons?

  I don't think he would be able to hang in on that one.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Baron loved it though.

• 1:14:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Baron.

• 1:14:14Bill Simmons?

  Big Kuna Burger Award, best use of food and drink. Obviously the cat sandwich.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Cat sandwich.

• 1:14:19Bill Simmons?

  The dead cat sandwich. One of the worst orders you can make at a diner.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  The way that like Sarah from afar was like, it smells weird. And I'm like, Bear just tore into that thing. Like, what did it smell like?

• 1:14:29Bill Simmons?

  I'm not eating anything this lady had made after the way she's behaved for the last five days. Like, oh, you made me a sandwich? Thank you.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  That's right after she duct taped the entire door. He's like, let's dig in.

• 1:14:39Chris Ryan?

  My award for when I would have died.

• 1:14:42Bill Simmons?

  The cat sandwich?

• 1:14:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I would have just been like, it's time to, to, to drink a whole can of Clorox.

• 1:14:47Bill Simmons?

  I would have.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Pack it up, pack it in.

• 1:14:49Bill Simmons?

  I had for that probably of a heart attack when she was hiding in the corner watching me sleep. I just would have dropped dead. Did you have one for that with Jonah?

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would have been really early because if I were Sarah, if I were her friend, I would have checked in with her, which none of her friends really seemed to be doing. And she would have gotten freaked out and killed me.

• 1:15:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  That's what I think would have happened. But they're not asking, like Sarah's not asking any hard questions, you know?

• 1:15:13Bill Simmons?

  Well, I don't think Sarah likes Nikki.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  No, but like.

• 1:15:16Bill Simmons?

  The friends in this movie don't actually like each other is one of the funny things.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  This is one of my hot takes. I'm like, does Nikki deserve anything to happen to her? Obviously not. Bear is the bad guy. The fact that she doesn't have any friend, like good friends that notice that this is happening to her is a question I have.

• 1:15:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This is a really good category. Was there a better title for this movie?

• 1:15:39Chris Ryan?

  I had two. Make a wish. Uh, what?

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  You get sued?

• 1:15:46Chris Ryan?

  What about darling Nikki? A little tip of the cap to Prince.

• 1:15:49Bill Simmons?

  Wow.

• 1:15:50Chris Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  What about the bear?

• 1:15:51Bill Simmons?

  They couldn't have afforded it.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  The bear. Yeah. Is that taken?

• 1:15:55Bill Simmons?

  Why isn't this just called One Wish Willow?

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  That sounds so kitschy. I think that would be a real turn off for audiences.

• 1:16:02Chris Ryan?

  I think it's what makes it different than calling it Ouija too. You know, like it's, it's like, it's not about the game. It's about the, the condition.

• 1:16:10Bill Simmons?

  What do you think?

• 1:16:12Chris Ryan?

  I agree that obsession, I don't know if it's like the absolute perfect choice, but I couldn't think of another one.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Bill Simmons?

  I feel like obsession has come out as a title 130 times in the last 50 years.

• 1:16:21Speaker 01

  If you call it one wish will, that's like calling a movie Matchbox, which they have done.

• 1:16:24Chris Ryan?

  Yes, they sure have. Yeah.

• 1:16:26Bill Simmons?

  What about just wish?

• 1:16:28Chris Ryan?

  I think there are lots of movies called wish.

• 1:16:31Bill Simmons?

  What about Bear sucks?

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  What about no pina coladas ever?

• 1:16:37Bill Simmons?

  CR and flex category.

• 1:16:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, the Sean Fantasy Award for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. Uh, the way Nikki moves specifically is very reminiscent or an homage to Kiyoshi Kurosawa's pulse, the way the characters, the haunted characters move in that movie.

• 1:16:54Bill Simmons?

  Let's see, this is why this is the year of CR.

• 1:16:56Chris Ryan?

  A little Japanese horror.

• 1:16:57Bill Simmons?

  Fucking bringing up Japanese movies.

• 1:16:59Chris Ryan?

  I was just crushing some cursed tape last night, you know?

• 1:17:05Bill Simmons?

  We don't get to give this out that up. And the Fortune 3 Clap Award for most giftable moment is it Nikki's face right after kiss the person to your left?

• 1:17:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that has made the rounds.

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  I think it's no, no, no, no, no. Well, I mean, I think there's a couple of options.

• 1:17:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, no, no, no, the frown.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Chris Ryan?

  The most memeable image for me, which is problematic because of what actually is transpires in the movie, is Bear turning her head back to the screen.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Chris Ryan?

  And I want to do that for like the first time the Sixers practice, you know, like turns her head back and it's just guys doing layup lines. But yes, I think that there's like a ton of, of really.

• 1:17:44Bill Simmons?

  So you'll do the no, no, no. And game 10, Jaylen Brown's like, it's hard to get in a rhythm. You don't get a lot of shots. You just put the no, no, no meme right under it.

• 1:17:53Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 1:17:54Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I think the frown is probably the best one. Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Know what you think?

• 1:18:00Bill Simmons?

  I have another one, actually.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Okay. I think it's, I do, I feel bad because I think it's fine to cast your friend, but Cooper Tomlinson, who plays Ian, like, I think we could have plus that performance a little bit.

• 1:18:11Chris Ryan?

  I had a really hard time with this. I, I agree with you that he would be a kind of an obvious, but I think knowing he's such a dirtbag at the end of the movie, I guess it was just sort of like.

• 1:18:21Bill Simmons?

  I kind of liked him.

• 1:18:23Chris Ryan?

  You like Cooper?

• 1:18:23Bill Simmons?

  I just thought he was supposed to be a dick. I had, I had a really one that really bothered me and then three times, third time bothered me the most. So he calls one wish Willow to not even cancel. He just wants to alter his wish.

• 1:18:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  And then it was like, ah, yeah, maybe I should cancel it. But then at some point,

• 1:18:43Bill Simmons?

  the guy's like, do you want to talk to her? And then Nikki's like on the phone just screaming.

• 1:18:46Chris Ryan?

  From hell. Yeah.

• 1:18:48Bill Simmons?

  I just would have cut that. I didn't think it worked.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 1:18:51Bill Simmons?

  Really? I didn't like it at all.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  That's Curry Barker's voice. I loved that.

• 1:18:55Bill Simmons?

  I liked the Curry Barker part. I'm not talking about her being, her being trapped.

• 1:19:00Chris Ryan?

  Fucking diabolical for what he does.

• 1:19:01Bill Simmons?

  But her being trapped, so she's, that's just what she's doing for two weeks. But where's she trapped?

• 1:19:06Chris Ryan?

  In this demonic purgatory where they send people who have been taken over by the wish.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  And he can't deny what's happening. He heard her screaming.

• 1:19:15Bill Simmons?

  It's too weird.

• 1:19:16Chris Ryan?

  Love that line where he's like, I think you have like a moral obligation, man, you know?

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  I also just think the way that Curry Barker like delivered all of that was so perfect.

• 1:19:23Chris Ryan?

  Would you like to cancel? You'd like to fill out like a cancel wish form? He's like, yes, yes, I do. He's like, we don't really do that.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Bored customer service.

• 1:19:31Bill Simmons?

  But does that scene still work though? If we don't hear her screaming?

• 1:19:34Chris Ryan?

  I think it works either way. Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  But I think the screaming, I think the screaming, I think you need the screaming and you need that shot of him like fucking her while her face is like completely checked out.

• 1:19:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Bill Simmons?

  All right. I got outvoted two to one on the screaming. So I have to go to Craig.

• 1:19:47Chris Ryan?

  I liked it.

• 1:19:48Bill Simmons?

  God damn it. I just lose.

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:50Bill Simmons?

  All right.

• 1:19:53Bill Simmons?

  I put in the Ted Levine Award for a performance so good and distinct it may have ruined the actor's career. Just for Indy Navarri, I hope, I hope there's other things where we're like.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  I think she's good.

• 1:20:04Bill Simmons?

  I think she has a long, giant.

• 1:20:06Chris Ryan?

  It's going to be tough next time Bear is like, I'm a nice dude who works in a bookstore in this like Nancy Meyers movie. And people are going to be like, fuck you.

• 1:20:14Bill Simmons?

  See, I'm going to have the next time I see her, just in a normal scene in a movie, I'm going to, I'm going to have to shake obsession. But I also watched it three times. What's age the worst? I love Blumhouse. They victory lap being involved in this movie and they just kind of put their slogan on it at the end. And it was, I thought that was just weird. I didn't like that. Um, the only other one I could find was the, um,

• 1:20:40Bill Simmons?

  was an NC 17 rating was in the mix because the car, the brick scene with Sarah was so violent that they were like, this can't be R. We have to go up a level to NC 17.

• 1:20:52Chris Ryan?

  Kind of similar to the scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with Mikey Madison, getting her face slammed against the telephone.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:20:58Chris Ryan?

  Another great head trauma.

• 1:20:59Bill Simmons?

  Yes. So.

• 1:21:00Chris Ryan?

  Of the 21st century.

• 1:21:02Bill Simmons?

  So Curry, don't call me Curry Barker, had to, um, remove six head smashes to get the R rating.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  Okay. What's, what's the number of head smashes that, that tip you over in NC 17?

• 1:21:14Bill Simmons?

  I didn't like any of this. First of all, it's a violent scene. Like we could have kept a couple more head smashes and all, all been okay. But I, I just think, I, I don't understand when they do stuff like that. We're like, you can keep eight head smashes, but 14 is too excessive. Like what are we doing?

• 1:21:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:32Bill Simmons?

  The rating system. Fuck off.

• 1:21:34Chris Ryan?

  Is it worse than the, the light pole in Hereditary? I mean.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  So your answer is the MPAA. That's what Sage the worst.

• 1:21:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, fuck off.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:21:42Bill Simmons?

  Good one.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Eternally.

• 1:21:43Bill Simmons?

  Here comes the telephone pole bang.

• 1:21:48Bill Simmons?

  Ruffalo Hannah Rubinek Partridge over acting award?

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Can I give what's age the worst?

• 1:21:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What do you got?

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Fan's Twitter feed?

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Evergreen.

• 1:22:00Bill Simmons?

  Did you, did you fight with him at Comic Con about this?

• 1:22:03Speaker 01

  No, he called, like, the day that he was getting, like, raked over the coals, he called me and was like, hey, who do you think the villain in, in this movie is? And then talked to me for like, an hour about it.

• 1:22:14Chris Ryan?

  Who did he think the villain was?

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Well, he was, no, he was just sort of like, the villain is existence itself.

• 1:22:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Was sort of his argument. Um, but yeah. I don't think I swayed him, uh, but I guess eventually he, he heard, I think he heard through the pipeline from like the filmmakers and he was like, oh, I guess Bear's the villain. Yeah.

• 1:22:32Chris Ryan?

  He got, he got enough.

• 1:22:34Speaker 01

  I don't know that it came from like Curry, but it came, I.

• 1:22:36Chris Ryan?

  It came from Corey though. Yeah.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it came from Corey. His twin brother, Curry Barker.

• 1:22:41Bill Simmons?

  I missed all of this, but he did text me about, had I seen Obsession, I was like, this will be a three hour rabbit hole.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  I was on the phone with him when you texted me.

• 1:22:50Bill Simmons?

  And you told me you were on the phone with him and I was like, I'm staying out of this.

• 1:22:52Chris Ryan?

  Don't, don't you think the reason why this movie works is it, it is slightly nuanced, at least for the first bit of the movie?

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:58Chris Ryan?

  Like, you can make the case in the first half, once like, it starts to flip and you're like, okay, this guy's horrible, but like, you can make the case that he's like, did this wish actually work? This is some fucking stupid stick. Maybe she did, that she does like me. And then once he's in, he's like, well, maybe I can make it real. Like you can buy into perhaps what he was thinking about, like, maybe I'll get her to like me for real. And then it obviously switches and he becomes like totally screwed up. But for the first half of the movie, I feel like the point is that it's like, if this were you, if this were Mike from Swingers.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:30Chris Ryan?

  He would have done the same fucking thing.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  I don't think it's half the movie, but I think it's, I think it's.

• 1:23:35Bill Simmons?

  Once he says, why won't, why won't you, what does he say to him?

• 1:23:39Chris Ryan?

  Would it be so bad?

• 1:23:41Bill Simmons?

  Why don't you, would it be so bad to be with me or whatever he says? Like, that's like, all right, this guy's lost his fucking marbles.

• 1:23:46Chris Ryan?

  He's done a lot of really bad shit up until then.

• 1:23:48Bill Simmons?

  Totally.

• 1:23:49Chris Ryan?

  And then the, the fact that he says that, she's like, kill me. He goes, would it be so bad to be with me? Then, then he's like, I'm gonna go hang out with Sarah. Like.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  I think before that, when he's having sex with her and she's just like, not actually there.

• 1:24:04Chris Ryan?

  After the no, no, no scene.

• 1:24:06Bill Simmons?

  Doing like the boring star.

• 1:24:06Chris Ryan?

  Very like knowingly like consent wise. Yeah.

• 1:24:10Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for a flex category?

• 1:24:11Speaker 01

  Oh, um, thing, things you can smell just by looking at them. Um.

• 1:24:19Bill Simmons?

  Did you make one up? You made a flex category? Wow.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  That house.

• 1:24:24Chris Ryan?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  That's his dead grandma's house that a dead cat died in and then she like.

• 1:24:29Chris Ryan?

  And he doesn't seem like a big cleaner.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like that house already was musty as hell.

• 1:24:33Bill Simmons?

  So this could be the Borat Award for rancid body odor, but for the whole house.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:24:37Bill Simmons?

  The obsession house for, yeah, this is good. I like this.

• 1:24:40Chris Ryan?

  She soils herself.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then she soils herself and then the like, foley on the squelching on the carpet. It's just like, that house reeks.

• 1:24:47Bill Simmons?

  I hesitate to ask, but what was that on the carpet? Looked like.

• 1:24:50Chris Ryan?

  Her human waste?

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  I think it was shit. Yeah.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Bill Simmons?

  I was hoping it wasn't, I was hoping it was throw up.

• 1:25:00Chris Ryan?

  It was.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  You're like, come on, vomit. Come on, vomit.

• 1:25:03Bill Simmons?

  But that, doesn't that tie into the cat theory though?

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  That she shat on the carpet?

• 1:25:08Chris Ryan?

  Going anywhere it was.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  I think it's better than the, you know, Sarah's always on his left theory, which like, I don't know, but like, she, but is she actually a cat? I could buy.

• 1:25:19Bill Simmons?

  The obsession house for what the hell did that place smell like? That's definitely a category. We finally got a category out of this. Uh, all right. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison for the hottest take award. I've already said this, I'm gonna say it again. If Shalhoub plays Bear, this is the greatest horror movie of all time.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:25:39Bill Simmons?

  With the firepower of that Indiana Veretti performance with Shalhoub, sky's the limit.

• 1:25:44Chris Ryan?

  Would you accept Shalhoub as such a piece of shit?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Would you?

• 1:25:48Bill Simmons?

  That's a great move for him.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Can I offer you?

• 1:25:50Bill Simmons?

  How many times can you be making Dune? Jesus Christ.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Can I offer you the?

• 1:25:54Bill Simmons?

  Dune 7. Oh, back, we're back.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Can I offer you the original Shalhoub B-side, Lucas Hedges instead?

• 1:26:01Bill Simmons?

  What's happened to Lucas Hedges?

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  I don't know, but should he be in this movie?

• 1:26:04Chris Ryan?

  Dude, I just saw, I watched the, the, I can't beat it scene from Manchester by the Sea came up on YouTube the other day and I was like, this fucking guy.

• 1:26:11Speaker 01

  He's great in Sorry, Sorry Baby. He was really good in that movie, but like.

• 1:26:15Bill Simmons?

  I love that you just watched that randomly. You're just cracking that. Weren't you in a good mood from the LeBron signing? You're like, I'm gonna bring myself down.

• 1:26:21Chris Ryan?

  Nothing can bring me down. Let's test it.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I have to believe you're constantly watching Manchester by the Sea.

• 1:26:26Chris Ryan?

  It's just the algorithmically got served to me. Yeah.

• 1:26:28Bill Simmons?

  It is unbelievable. What do you have for hottest take?

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Is Nikki a, a good person? Um, because this is my question. Why does she not have anyone in her life who's like, what the fuck is going on with you? Like, where's her friend network? Like, where's her, like, her mom still alive, right?

• 1:26:48Chris Ryan?

  Where's Richter?

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Or did her mom die?

• 1:26:49Chris Ryan?

  Well, her dad's alive. I don't know if her mom's alive.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Like, yeah.

• 1:26:52Bill Simmons?

  It's like an Aaron Rodgers thing. We don't know what a relationship with.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  No one, no one knows this girl enough to like, see what's going on here? That's my spicy take. Does she deserve what happens? No, but.

• 1:27:04Bill Simmons?

  Sarah clearly doesn't like her.

• 1:27:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Bill Simmons?

  Ian just hooks up with her every once in a while.

• 1:27:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, Sarah's probably like, this girl is secretly hooking up with Ian and has, has, has Bear.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  And is now having sex with my crush. Like, I understand Sarah's resentment, but I'm just sort of like, if you're in your mid twenties and you don't have one friend who's can like intervene here, like.

• 1:27:24Chris Ryan?

  None of them have any friends. Like, are, because they're not longtime friends. They all met at this place, right?

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  Well, they went to school together.

• 1:27:30Chris Ryan?

  They all went to college together? No, high school.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  High school.

• 1:27:32Chris Ryan?

  They're all like waiting to try and get into art school.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Cause Bear keeps going like, remember when we were in this class together and then that was.

• 1:27:38Chris Ryan?

  Right, right.

• 1:27:38Bill Simmons?

  Yet another reason Bear sucks. People talking about what we were all doing in high school. Like, shut up dude.

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  And again, that is like, that is like basically ripped out of. It's basically ripped out of Can't Hardly Wait. Of like, Ethan Embry's character being like, first day of school, she walked in, she was eating a Pop-Tart, you know, like, that's, that's the speech he gives.

• 1:27:58Bill Simmons?

  I had a picky knit actually, but you, the, I'll just do it now, cause you just dove into that whole world about Sarah. Sarah definitely tells Bear that Ian and Nikki hook up occasionally. She likes Bear.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Bill Simmons?

  If she likes Bear, that's a preemptive.

• 1:28:14Chris Ryan?

  There's a couple of real, like, this, this was done, like, Sarah needing to tell Bear about art school in the middle of the night.

• 1:28:20Bill Simmons?

  At four in the morning?

• 1:28:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it is, was like, we can, we can find a better time.

• 1:28:23Bill Simmons?

  But she's like, she's, she doesn't like Nikki anyway. She's throwing Nikki under the bus.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  I'll see what work tomorrow.

• 1:28:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:28:31Bill Simmons?

  Cause once she tells Bear that, he's not gonna like, like Nikki anymore, cause Ian will have been, you know. What do you have for hottest take?

• 1:28:38Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's a little bit of a question. It's a little bit of a statement, but Bear never really loved, uh, Nikki.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:28:44Chris Ryan?

  Um, which you can tell because when she cracks the wish, that's when he falls in love with her. Now, you could say he was off put by her, just, you know, like, you know, like revolted by the fact that she liked him. But I think that the irony of this movie is that this guy never actually wanted the person that he damned to hell in the first place. And I, uh, I really love that that moment is included in the film. When he comes out and he's doing the kind of rom com like, hey, here we are, just a couple of crazy kids like to fucking make things honest, you know? And it's like.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Here we are, stuffed to the gills with oxy, you know?

• 1:29:21Chris Ryan?

  It's, but it's a great moment, cause you realize like, this guy is never actually emotionally committed to this person, even after damning her.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  I just also think he has no idea who she is and he doesn't, it doesn't matter to him who she is. She's just like this hot sort of status. Like, if I can attain her, then I am worthy.

• 1:29:38Bill Simmons?

  Maybe there's not a ton there.

• 1:29:40Chris Ryan?

  A Nikki's part or Bear's part?

• 1:29:42Bill Simmons?

  Maybe Nikki's just cute and good hang, but not like the.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Um, have you read her Hansel and Gretel incest poetry?

• 1:29:49Chris Ryan?

  We're going together, actually.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  She's got depth. She's a writer.

• 1:29:53Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  He wants to be a food critic. What is this, three bite baling?

• 1:29:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:58Bill Simmons?

  Three bite baling. That's like when I wanted to do, I wanted Sean to do one blurb.

• 1:30:03Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:30:03Bill Simmons?

  Where he just came out of movie theme. He's like, one blurb, the Odyssey. Excellent. Lived up to it. Uh, casting what ifs, you mentioned Barker.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Bill Simmons?

  Initially wanted to cast himself as Bear and talked himself out of it. And then, uh, they had Tomlinson as Bear during some setup scenes, but then got somebody else. Best that guy, everyone in the movie. Um, but I guess Andy Richter, even though he's Andy Richter.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Andy Richter.

• 1:30:27Bill Simmons?

  About as close as we can get, even though most people, you know Andy Richter is, right? I, I feel like he's Andy Richter, but we don't have any other choices.

• 1:30:33Chris Ryan?

  But the funny thing is like, Cooper or Curry Barker's been on things like, It's Always Sunny. Like, these guys have actually been on TV and stuff, so they. And just the two of them, they're, they're like sketch comedies, pretty popular online. Like, I used to see their stuff all the time.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:47Bill Simmons?

  Diane Waiters, pick somebody who works in the crystal shop. You could have the male or the female.

• 1:30:52Chris Ryan?

  The man, the Harry, the guy at the end.

• 1:30:54Bill Simmons?

  I'm going with the female. I like the lady. I thought she was funny.

• 1:30:56Chris Ryan?

  What did you do? He's like, I may wish for her to love me. He's like, oh, I thought you did something really bad.

• 1:31:03Bill Simmons?

  Uh, recasting couch director city.

• 1:31:05Chris Ryan?

  Well, you've already done Shalhoub.

• 1:31:07Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm, I have another angle for this.

• 1:31:09Chris Ryan?

  Okay, let's hear it.

• 1:31:12Bill Simmons?

  Is this way better as a Boston movie?

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  What, uh?

• 1:31:17Bill Simmons?

  Bear is like Casey Affleck in Good Will Hunting era Casey Affleck.

• 1:31:22Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:31:22Bill Simmons?

  Young Casey Affleck. And then Nikki's basically Blake Lively's character in the town.

• 1:31:27Chris Ryan?

  I knew you were gonna say that. She's Chris.

• 1:31:29Bill Simmons?

  She's like, Bear, what's up with Chris? She's fucking acting crazy. What the fuck's wrong with her? She banged a beer bottle against the head.

• 1:31:37Chris Ryan?

  What are you talking about? It's boys' night. I can't come. I love the socks.

• 1:31:42Bill Simmons?

  What'd you have anything for this?

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  I think you just call that category like thinly veiled excuse to do the Boston act.

• 1:31:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Category. Um, what about Austin Abrams as Bear?

• 1:31:55Bill Simmons?

  Could've been really good.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  In his like nice guy euphoria mode. Yeah.

• 1:31:59Bill Simmons?

  Did you hear about Bear?

• 1:32:02Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Craig, you have flex category?

• 1:32:04Speaker 04

  Uh, a mini quick one. Best racehorse name, One Wish Willow.

• 1:32:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:08Speaker 04

  Fantastic. Um, I'm gonna tweak the, is it Rick Sissetti? Is that how he says it?

• 1:32:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:13Speaker 04

  I'm gonna tweak the Rick Sissetti guard meat award for the most memorable death by a security guard or other bystander whom the movie treats as an inconsequential, but who probably had a spouse and kids who loved him. Man, poor Andy Richter, who, who is Sarah's dad in this film and the music store owner, loses his daughter and all four music store employees in one day.

• 1:32:33Bill Simmons?

  That's true.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  That whole business is gonna collapse.

• 1:32:35Chris Ryan?

  The only person who lives is Sarah's murderer.

• 1:32:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So his daughter's dad is store fucking ruined.

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Is the sequel Andy Richter leads the hunt for, um?

• 1:32:46Bill Simmons?

  Or maybe Andy Richter goes to Ian's house.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  And gets a billion dollar.

• 1:32:50Bill Simmons?

  Grabs the billion dollars. It's like, eh.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Or is killed by the actual tonnage that would require to be one billion dollars in one place at any given time.

• 1:32:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's still coming down.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a lot.

• 1:33:01Chris Ryan?

  We should do, like, as I was just gonna make a joke about, he gets the billion dollars and then buys, buys a piece of the Portland Trailblazers. We should do like a sports One Wish Willow pod.

• 1:33:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:11Chris Ryan?

  Where you think the wish was that got them Tom Dundon kind of thing.

• 1:33:16Bill Simmons?

  That's funny. Uh, half ass internet research.

• 1:33:21Bill Simmons?

  We mentioned most of it. Bear's home was in Burbank. Location stuff. Casell's music, Castle's music, whatever, San Fernando. The Green Man Crystal Shop. We could go there right now after this podcast. Rogue Leg Tavern in Burbank, um, was Barker's pub. You been there? I feel like Sierra's been there.

• 1:33:39Chris Ryan?

  I'm sure I have.

• 1:33:40Bill Simmons?

  You've hit, you've hit the Burbank scene.

• 1:33:41Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  He's never skipped a tavern.

• 1:33:45Bill Simmons?

  And then the pizzeria, the booth scene.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:33:47Bill Simmons?

  That's Little Tony's in North Hollywood, um, which is now, um, fighting them off.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:33:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, people going.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  People going and reenacting.

• 1:33:57Bill Simmons?

  Pictures in the booth.

• 1:33:58Chris Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 1:33:58Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah. I gotta be honest.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  Filming TikToks where they're going, no, no, no, no, no.

• 1:34:03Bill Simmons?

  Turn down an invitation.

• 1:34:04Chris Ryan?

  Little Tony's?

• 1:34:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, they head down to Little Tony's.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  And then, and then go to the crystal shop.

• 1:34:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:11Bill Simmons?

  And then, uh, Barker said he learned stuff about how to make movies as he made this movie. Like he did a lot of long takes, but didn't have the, you know, the experience yet to be like, oh, here's why long takes are really hard.

• 1:34:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:24Bill Simmons?

  One thing can screw and it's hard to cut them together. So he would do that over again. And then, um, they reshot the opening scene.

• 1:34:35Bill Simmons?

  And then we mentioned the lighting. You mentioned the two takes.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  The original opening is Bear is watching like a rom com.

• 1:34:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  And then the camera pans down and the cat is just dead on the floor at his feet.

• 1:34:46Bill Simmons?

  Yep.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  And he liked it because it was a mirror of the ending and then they recut it instead. But I, I don't know. It's kind of like the idea that the cat just died and like he hasn't noticed. Is that what it's supposed to be? Like,

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Sandy's just dead on the floor. Also, that cat was awfully like stiff for having been freshly dead.

• 1:35:02Chris Ryan?

  I know. You're wondering whether.

• 1:35:03Bill Simmons?

  A little more mally.

• 1:35:04Chris Ryan?

  Has, has, has he like really checked the kitchen out a couple of days? Yeah.

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  And would he notice the smell? Because that's just what that house smells like.

• 1:35:12Bill Simmons?

  So Nikki, when she vomits on Bear, there was some tubes so that would make her throw up, but it almost made her actually throw up. And the actor, the, who plays Bear is actually really afraid because he thinks she's about to puke on her.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 1:35:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then, uh, they made a cast of Sarah's face and used two separate dummies to annihilate her face in the car scene. Apex Mountain, uh, everyone involved in the movie?

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  Really quickly for half ass internet research.

• 1:35:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:39Speaker 01

  The fact that, uh, Michael, because Andy Navarrete was already cast, but the fact that he got the role because of their lack of chemistry in their read, like that they, during their audition, Curry Barker was like, these two have no chemistry. Sold.

• 1:35:51Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:35:52Chris Ryan?

  It's such a, that's such a hail Mary for that to work.

• 1:35:54Bill Simmons?

  That's how we put Chris and Andy together. For the watch, 2012. Um, Apex Mountain, everyone involved in the movie. Indie horror movies?

• 1:36:05Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I mean, I think Blair Witch and, and.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Constantly.

• 1:36:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  It's like a mountain range. It's constantly doing this.

• 1:36:11Chris Ryan?

  This in backrooms, if you call them like indie is, have, have really certainly.

• 1:36:15Bill Simmons?

  Did this make, I think this movie made more money than Blair Witch, though.

• 1:36:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Blair Witch made 250 on a, yeah, 500K budget for inflation is probably the same.

• 1:36:24Bill Simmons?

  I think this is Apex Mountain. It's made 500 times what they, what they spent on the movie and probably that's gonna keep going up and it's gonna, I don't know. This, this feels like a bigger movie than Blair Witch.

• 1:36:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:37Bill Simmons?

  It's hard, it's hard though because Blair Witch was so big.

• 1:36:40Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I don't know, like.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  Blair Witch was everything.

• 1:36:42Chris Ryan?

  We're still talking about Blair Witch 30 years later. I, I don't know if like obsession in 10 years, we're gonna be like, oh yeah, I remember that. That was cool.

• 1:36:49Speaker 04

  Also, I think the internet helps spread the word like in a way that Blair Witch just couldn't in 1999.

• 1:36:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Speaker 04

  The fact that every time you go online, you're just seeing obsession stuff over and over.

• 1:36:58Bill Simmons?

  Would you go Apex movie, Apex Mountain for make a wish that backfires movies?

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  No, I would do it for Hansel and Gretel erotica.

• 1:37:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:09Bill Simmons?

  It's a good one. How about Dead Cats?

• 1:37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, Dead Cats is on my list.

• 1:37:13Chris Ryan?

  I feel like Dead Cats have been popping up a lot in our, in our choices recently.

• 1:37:16Bill Simmons?

  Really like torturing Mallory.

• 1:37:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  What about fugly sweaters?

• 1:37:20Bill Simmons?

  For which one?

• 1:37:20Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  All of his sweaters are so ugly.

• 1:37:23Chris Ryan?

  Dork cardigans, yeah.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're hideous.

• 1:37:25Chris Ryan?

  When he's with Sarah, he's got the Baja sweater over the hoodie.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Apex Mountain for Drinking Game Jenga? I've played that a couple of times.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  I've also played that. It's really fun.

• 1:37:34Chris Ryan?

  Never done that.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Ringer Retreat?

• 1:37:37Bill Simmons?

  He wanted, are we doing a Ringer Retreat?

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ringer Retreat.

• 1:37:40Bill Simmons?

  Do we invite Van?

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Um, we'll play Jenga. I'll bring my Hansel and Gretel erotica and we'll have a great time.

• 1:37:48Bill Simmons?

  Cruiser Hanks.

• 1:37:49Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I don't know. Uh.

• 1:37:52Bill Simmons?

  What do you mean you don't know?

• 1:37:53Chris Ryan?

  I'm trying to think of like what, no, I know, but I just, when you say it, it's like, I think Hanks.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  Think it's Hanks.

• 1:37:58Chris Ryan?

  I think Hanks.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Splash era Hanks.

• 1:38:00Chris Ryan?

  As Bear.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  As Bear.

• 1:38:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:04Bill Simmons?

  New category, just for this pod. 1984 Sharon Stone, 2004 Scarlett Johansson, 2014 Brie Larson.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:38:13Bill Simmons?

  Or 2021 Sydney Sweeney, if we couldn't get Indy Navarrete.

• 1:38:16Chris Ryan?

  I go 04 Scar Jo.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Scar Jo, that's my.

• 1:38:19Bill Simmons?

  I think she would have been great.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:21Bill Simmons?

  Like, oh, like Match Point, Lost in Translation, right? That era. I think she would have crushed it. I did have best name for a racehorse. I had the same one. One Wish Willow.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  Not, not Three by Bailey?

• 1:38:34Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  Picking Nits, I have a few.

• 1:38:37Chris Ryan?

  All of my picking nits are, you could explain because of the cravenness of the characters at various points, but Bear doesn't insist Nikki get her bottle stab wounds treated at the hospital. He allows her to come home, right? Like, which would have then

• 1:38:52Chris Ryan?

  triggered like all sorts of investigations as to how that had happened. Bear's reaction to the One Wish Willow call is that he's still gonna go out with like his boys that night and nobody called the cops at the party. Nobody calls like the, like 911 at the party. And Sarah needing to meet in the middle of the night, but like, those are all just like.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  No one at the party intervening and being, not just being like, hey, this is weird, but being like, this is fucked up. Let's call the cops.

• 1:39:18Bill Simmons?

  Even Sarah afterwards is like, Nikki at that party. It's like, I, my reaction would have been 20 times bigger than that.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:27Bill Simmons?

  Like we were, we were at something together on Saturday. Can you imagine if somebody was just hitting themselves in the head?

• 1:39:32Chris Ryan?

  In the face, yeah.

• 1:39:34Bill Simmons?

  I had a, a bunch of cat related ones. The cat, the cat opened a bottle of OxyContin pills and ate them?

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  The cat didn't heed the don't eat warning on the bottle, on the bottle?

• 1:39:45Bill Simmons?

  Was the thing open and the cat knocked it down and was then like, oh, cool pills?

• 1:39:50Chris Ryan?

  Really loosey goosey and I bet he's been dipping.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  He's been dipping.

• 1:39:53Bill Simmons?

  Dead Cat Sandy, you could really feel the 750K budget on the dead cat. That looked like they just bottled up an animal.

• 1:40:00Chris Ryan?

  Disclosure day it where it's like an animated cat, dead cat, you know?

• 1:40:04Bill Simmons?

  Okay, fair. Um, Bear, Bear accidentally kills the cat. It's his fault. The cat overdoses on oxy.

• 1:40:10Chris Ryan?

  Yes, his carelessness.

• 1:40:11Bill Simmons?

  Wounds it for a couple of hours and then he's just saying, I'm gonna go out with my buddies and not tell anybody what happened.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Well, when your crush calls, when your crush calls and is like, we're running out of time.

• 1:40:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:22Bill Simmons?

  Terrible cat owner.

• 1:40:25Bill Simmons?

  Trying to think of the worst pet owners. Mallory always said, we've decided the Michael Douglas in Fatal Attraction is the worst pet owner of all time.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  You're putting Bear up there?

• 1:40:33Bill Simmons?

  Gone for two days and then comes home and gives the dog spaghetti meatballs.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  I think that was his grandma's cat. I think, I think the cat belonged to his dead grandma.

• 1:40:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  Like didn't really care as much. Yeah.

• 1:40:45Bill Simmons?

  I just feel like a dead cat sandwich, you're getting incredibly ill.

• 1:40:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:49Bill Simmons?

  I think that's like, that could start the next.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  He also hadn't vomit, doesn't he vomit?

• 1:40:53Chris Ryan?

  He pukes into it.

• 1:40:53Bill Simmons?

  I don't care. He can vomit 10 times.

• 1:40:55Chris Ryan?

  Idea. I don't think he refrigerated that at all. Like, it's not.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:40:59Chris Ryan?

  It's just been sitting at room temperature.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  But like where? Cause like, he must've put it back, like how many times did she take it out of the trash? Or wherever he put the body? Because like.

• 1:41:07Chris Ryan?

  There's a lot of questions about the sandwich. Like, how did she get it to look so close to leftover turkey? Like.

• 1:41:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it looks like a nice turkey club.

• 1:41:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Speaker 04

  It would reek the second he opens it.

• 1:41:16Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 1:41:17Bill Simmons?

  He's an idiot.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  Again, maybe he can't smell it because that's how bad the house smells all the time.

• 1:41:23Bill Simmons?

  Bear calls One Wish Willow, not initially to cancel the wish, but to alter it.

• 1:41:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:41:29Bill Simmons?

  He still doesn't want to cancel the wish at this point?

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  No, he wants it to love it.

• 1:41:33Chris Ryan?

  Bad guy.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  Cause he sucks.

• 1:41:35Bill Simmons?

  Nikki, I feel like her face is more fucked up from four broken bottles against the head. Like, like that's like, that's like the Clint Malarchek injury at, at that point. There's just, there's blood going everywhere. Um, Sarah's dead body. Another example of really feeling the 750K budget when she's behind the steering wheel and it just looks like a mannequin.

• 1:41:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  And then later when it's in the chair.

• 1:41:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. And then, uh, it's a big one for me. What did he do with Sarah's car?

• 1:42:05Chris Ryan?

  There's not a lot of police oversight in this town.

• 1:42:07Bill Simmons?

  Wolf comes in and helps them clean it with Marcellus.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  I hope so. Um, it also seems like she had time to go to the music store, get the gun out of the safe. Cause presumably that's where the gun comes from.

• 1:42:20Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  And then also like recreate Sarah's tattoos in Sharpie.

• 1:42:25Chris Ryan?

  And haircut.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  And yeah.

• 1:42:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  She, she got a lot done, so I believe in her.

• 1:42:30Chris Ryan?

  That would have been great if Winston Wolf had shown up. It's just been like, okay, Nikki, make some coffee.

• 1:42:37Bill Simmons?

  The biggest nitpick is none of the friends intervening as Nikki completely spirals.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying.

• 1:42:42Bill Simmons?

  She comes to the apps. That's very bar. Okay. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Introducing new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. For those that want to be fueled up and fired up with 100 mile an hour tropical tasting power. Ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new NOS Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can and get after it. This episode is brought to you by Viori. When it comes to clothes that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers. Oh yeah. They have the perfect, I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the meta pant, that's my number one, I need to look like I tried option.

• 1:43:23Bill Simmons?

  Get 20% off your first purchase at Viori.com slash Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV all podcast are untouchable. So that whole thing about a prestige anthology series where each episode is about a wish.

• 1:43:46Bill Simmons?

  I'm in, I've signed up.

• 1:43:47Chris Ryan?

  Would you ever want the wishes to work out well?

• 1:43:50Bill Simmons?

  I think I don't know what to expect each time I get a wish.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  One of those Reddit boards, it was like, my mom used to be ugly and now she's gorgeous.

• 1:43:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  So maybe that one worked out. Um, I would want to press like a 1970s set, One Wish Willow movie.

• 1:44:05Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's good. Period piece.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, period piece.

• 1:44:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Bill Simmons?

  I also can offer you the sequel, Ian now has a billion dollars, but he didn't die. Just, it was like one of those gunshots that went through, but he somehow lived and now he's a billionaire, but all his friends are dead. And then, uh, someone else finds Ian's billion dollars. Maybe even Andy Richter.

• 1:44:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Bill Simmons?

  And then spends the money. Could be another one. There will be some version, we all know.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  Of obsession.

• 1:44:35Bill Simmons?

  There will be an obsession to something.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  Obsession.

• 1:44:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, there's too much money at stake for it not to happen.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:40Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 1:44:41Chris Ryan?

  He's got one movie, he's already like in the middle of making, I think, which is like him and Cooper Tomlinson with Aaron Paul.

• 1:44:47Speaker 01

  Ghost Hunter.

• 1:44:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Ghost Hunter thing. And then I think he is supposed to make Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Florist, Zane Lowe, Robert Evans, Dr. Charles Nichols, Ted Levine, someone else?

• 1:45:01Chris Ryan?

  I've been thinking about this.

• 1:45:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Chris Ryan?

  You know, cause Concepcion did a good, good Bernthal.

• 1:45:06Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:06Chris Ryan?

  Tom Holland does a very good Bernthal. I am hearing footsteps. I also hear, you know, like, we should maybe put Bernthal on the bench. Is he overexposed? But let me just offer you this. When he calls up the customer service line, what if King Menelaus picked up the phone?

• 1:45:24Chris Ryan?

  You interested in rumors, huh? Gossip? Who has a story about Freaky Nikki, huh? You, you, you have a story? Some say she's rich, some say she's poor, some say she's Paris, some say she's in prison. What say you?

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  Astounding work.

• 1:45:42Bill Simmons?

  Wow, Wayne Jenkins retired for King, which is like.

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  Menelaus.

• 1:45:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Temeculus.

• 1:45:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Temeculus? Is he the king of Temeculus?

• 1:45:52Bill Simmons?

  That's a good one, Sierra.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  That was really good.

• 1:45:54Bill Simmons?

  I actually.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  Can you do, um, what you imagine it was like for Bernthal to, uh, spar with Kevin Feige on stage at Sandy Go Comba?

• 1:46:03Chris Ryan?

  I can't.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Okay. It was great.

• 1:46:04Bill Simmons?

  Did you get to meet Bernthal?

• 1:46:06Speaker 01

  No, but I saw him from afar. He looked great.

• 1:46:08Bill Simmons?

  I ironically had Tony Roma written down to do for that section. I'm gonna pass on that one because Tony's had some issues this week. Trying to support Tony, trying to stay classy. Uh, just one Oscar who gets it.

• 1:46:20Chris Ryan?

  Never ready.

• 1:46:20Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Bill Simmons?

  The Zouatnail Award for what happened the next day.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:28Bill Simmons?

  What did Nikki's next 10 years look like?

• 1:46:30Chris Ryan?

  Well, there's no police in this town. She goes to jail, right?

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  I mean, that's what Curry Barker says, right? That she's probably going to jail for a long time, but I would like to believe that she

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  somehow knows about the billion dollars. Gets a billion dollars and literally goes to Zouatnail.

• 1:46:45Chris Ryan?

  That'd be cool.

• 1:46:46Bill Simmons?

  Facial, probably some small facial reconstructive surgery because she has a giant hole in her forehead.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  She deserves something nice. She did nothing wrong and she got tormented this whole movie. So she deserves, I mean, Sarah also did not deserve to die, but, uh, you know, she like, give her the billion dollars, hit the road, never come back.

• 1:47:06Bill Simmons?

  So the question is, wish Nikki heard about the billion dollars, but did.

• 1:47:12Chris Ryan?

  Oh, it is the consciousness.

• 1:47:13Bill Simmons?

  Captured Nikki.

• 1:47:14Chris Ryan?

  I think the reason she's screaming is because she remembers everything that's just happened.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:18Chris Ryan?

  That is, that has been said by Curry Barker.

• 1:47:21Bill Simmons?

  So if this movie ended with Nikki with a billion dollars in the trunk, just driving toward the Pacific.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:27Bill Simmons?

  Like Andy Dufresne.

• 1:47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:29Bill Simmons?

  Better or worse ending versus her willing crying.

• 1:47:31Chris Ryan?

  Jesse in Breaking Bad, just like.

• 1:47:35Speaker 01

  I feel like it should be like one of those where like, it's just like suitcases stuffed with cash and there's so much cash that it's just like blowing out the like convertible.

• 1:47:43Bill Simmons?

  Cars, like money coming out of it.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:45Bill Simmons?

  Unanswerable questions.

• 1:47:47Chris Ryan?

  I have one for this.

• 1:47:47Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:49Chris Ryan?

  What's crazier? What is a crazier thing to say? Is it crazier to say, I'll rip my eyes out of my fucking skull and shove the barrel into my pussy? Or if I was a Bulls fan, I would have no sperm left in my body.

• 1:48:07Bill Simmons?

  First one.

• 1:48:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:10Chris Ryan?

  Uh, my other unanswerable question is, what would you wish for?

• 1:48:15Bill Simmons?

  I'd be too afraid of this thing.

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  I just seem too much to know, to like even fuck with something like this, even jokingly. What would you wish for? Or did you already do it earlier this year?

• 1:48:25Chris Ryan?

  I've already done it. That's how I wound up.

• 1:48:27Bill Simmons?

  You obviously, the move is just to wish for money or something that's immediately positive.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, this is why in the, um, you know, prestige text that is Aladdin, you can't bring people back from the dead. You can't make people fall in love with you. You don't fuck with stuff like that.

• 1:48:43Chris Ryan?

  How pedantic it is. So it's like, if I were to say, I wish Heat two to be good. Is it only good?

• 1:48:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:48:50Chris Ryan?

  Do I have to say, I wish Heat two is the best movie ever made? And what would happen if that happened? Would there then be a backlash? Cause people are like, people like fucking Heat two too much. You know, like if that was your one wish.

• 1:49:00Bill Simmons?

  That'd be really weird.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  Can you do, I need Heat two to be good. And then really quickly say something like, no loopholes, no fucking with like, you know.

• 1:49:08Chris Ryan?

  Uh, yeah, that's like, when does the wish, like narrative end? Like, when do you have to like have a complete wish?

• 1:49:14Bill Simmons?

  How weird could your wish be that it actually is conceivable? Like if you were like.

• 1:49:17Chris Ryan?

  I know exactly what I would wish for.

• 1:49:19Bill Simmons?

  Like, I wish the all would come back.

• 1:49:20Chris Ryan?

  I wish smoking cigarettes was healthy.

• 1:49:25Chris Ryan?

  It would be so awesome.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  Not only neutral, but like actually good for you.

• 1:49:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Like if it was just like, we could all go back to Don Draper style.

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  Just like as healthy as your sweet green addiction. It'd be your cigarette addiction. All right. Craig, what would you wish for?

• 1:49:39Speaker 04

  Probably Rogers to win MVP this year.

• 1:49:41Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:42Speaker 04

  Chargers align to stay healthy.

• 1:49:43Chris Ryan?

  What would you like, keep it, like you have to be specific. Like what if Rogers was like, trade me to the Niners?

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  Oh, you're right.

• 1:49:49Chris Ryan?

  And then I win MVP, you know?

• 1:49:55Bill Simmons?

  Was Nikki possessed by the cat?

• 1:49:58Chris Ryan?

  I think no.

• 1:49:59Bill Simmons?

  Unanswerable.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  I think no, but I really like it.

• 1:50:02Bill Simmons?

  There's a lot of clues and there's people convinced on the internets.

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a way stupider movie. It's a way stupider movie if that's true, but it's really fun.

• 1:50:11Bill Simmons?

  If it's like a YouTube sketch comedian made a horror movie and one of his ideas was the lady was actually possessed by the cat. But now he's realizing that would be stupid. So he's just not going to say that.

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:50:21Bill Simmons?

  And they stumbled into the better version of the movie.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  It's a commentary on insult culture.

• 1:50:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Hmm. But really it's the cat possession movie.

• 1:50:29Bill Simmons?

  Next question.

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:50:30Bill Simmons?

  Was the sales lady who sold bear, the one wish Willow, an evil person?

• 1:50:38Speaker 01

  I think what she thinks is that if you're dumb enough to do this, you deserve what's coming to you. That's the entire narrative I'm putting on the crystal shop.

• 1:50:47Speaker 04

  Yeah. But it does, there are like two scenes in this movie that are a little bit, I bump on a little bit, I mean, there's, there's a fair amount. But one, when we see, when Bear leaves the duct tape house, we stay with Nikki. That's like the one time we break from Bear's POV, really. The other is that when the crystal store people are like, oh yeah, the one wish willow, it totally works and you should have read the fine print. Like, that just would have been a bigger deal. It makes more sense if Bear can't get any help on it, you know? Um, but yeah, like I, I do think that the people at the crystal store are a little bit complicit.

• 1:51:22Bill Simmons?

  That also could be the prequel or the sequel, the store that has these.

• 1:51:26Speaker 04

  Well, that's a great, if it's a great idea, if the anthology is all that stuff has to come out of that store.

• 1:51:30Bill Simmons?

  Um, what happened to all the one wish willow buyers, the other ones?

• 1:51:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:34Bill Simmons?

  It's unclear. Did, was just crazy shit happening all over the place?

• 1:51:37Speaker 04

  Find out when he too comes out.

• 1:51:39Bill Simmons?

  We mentioned Ian, we mentioned Ian's billion dollars, like.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:46Bill Simmons?

  So did Wayne Jenkins and his crew find that? Like, goddamn, Ian? And then, uh, just started pocketing it? But there is a billion dollars in that house.

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:51:56Bill Simmons?

  So somebody found it.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Waiting for her or waiting for Andy Richter? There's really only two options.

• 1:52:01Bill Simmons?

  Coach Finstock, Mr. Miyagi, word, best worst life lesson? You can't pray for someone to fall in love with you. It's bad karma.

• 1:52:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'd say just, sometimes it's okay to be in the friend zone.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:52:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Sometimes friendship's fine.

• 1:52:12Bill Simmons?

  Can't will somebody to like you. Uh, best double feature choice? I actually had played Misty for me.

• 1:52:17Speaker 04

  Go on.

• 1:52:18Bill Simmons?

  Going as far back as possible and then the complete.

• 1:52:21Speaker 04

  Obsessive relationships.

• 1:52:22Bill Simmons?

  With this one, yeah, the complete flip of it.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm gonna do the craft, cause it's, uh, classic nineties and also there's a similar plotline with, um, was it like Skeet or Rich in that movie, I think?

• 1:52:34Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. And she's like, I want him to be in love with him and then he becomes obsessed with her.

• 1:52:38Bill Simmons?

  Neff Campbell, Fruze Bach, who else is in that? There's one more. Alexis Baddell?

• 1:52:44Speaker 04

  Is that, not Rose, right?

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  No, Robin Tunney.

• 1:52:45Speaker 04

  Robin Tunney.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  Robin Tunney.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  I have, uh, Milk and Cereal, which is Curry's, like, 50 minute film that's on YouTube.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  Cereal not spelled the way you.

• 1:52:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, S-E-R-I-L. Hale.

• 1:52:57Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 1:52:58Speaker 04

  Indy.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  Or Curry.

• 1:53:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, I guess, okay, so.

• 1:53:03Bill Simmons?

  This is one of the toughest ones we've ever had.

• 1:53:04Speaker 04

  I feel like.

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  Like he already has his blank check, you know?

• 1:53:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  From this, uh, she might be in heat too, but she might not, I don't know.

• 1:53:15Bill Simmons?

  Well, uh, we go back to Sixth Sense with M. Night. We would've said, oh, M. Night or Haley Joel Osment and then Haley Joel, but he was a kid actor.

• 1:53:23Speaker 01

  Actually Toni Collette all along.

• 1:53:26Speaker 04

  You're probably right that Curry Barker is gonna win.

• 1:53:28Speaker 01

  It's, it's tough though. It is tough.

• 1:53:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:53:31Bill Simmons?

  It's a weird, I, I hate doing this, cause we always say no ties for this award, but I honestly think it's a tie.

• 1:53:37Speaker 04

  Well, cause it's like, who, just, just strictly professionally, who would you rather be? Like, who, who do you, like, who would you rather bet on going for?

• 1:53:44Bill Simmons?

  Curry Barker's gonna have a 30 year career now of making movies. She's gonna have a 30 year career, she's gonna be the A-list actress out of this.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Maybe, but like, I hope so.

• 1:53:52Speaker 04

  Like, he could make two shitty movies and then it's kinda over. She could also pick a bunch of bad movies and it could be over for her.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  I just think the risk is higher for her.

• 1:54:01Bill Simmons?

  For any actor or actress, yeah.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  Right. That like, what, whatever she does next could make her break. I think he can make a bad next movie and still.

• 1:54:09Speaker 04

  And she could be in like Ghost Rider or something, you know? Yeah.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:12Speaker 04

  No, no shots of Ghost Rider.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  No, but.

• 1:54:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  Please no.

• 1:54:17Speaker 04

  What do you got? Banger? The hype was so high. I, I, I feel like it usually never works when you see a movie post hype. Like, I remember, I saw everything ever all at once, right? When it came out, I loved it. And then the hype got so big and then so many people saw it six months after it came out and hated it.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:32Speaker 04

  And so I was kinda fully expecting to go in and be like, alright, this is gonna be mediocre and it, you know, just cause the hype was so high. And I really thought it delivered, not as a horror person at all. Like, I thought Indy was incredible, really. Like, her war is like 20 in this movie. I can't believe how good she is and I do think about what this movie would be if they didn't find her. But like, the production about this movie is so good, like, it looks like a studio movie. It's truly remarkable, the lighting, the blocking, like, all of it is just really well done. Um, and I was trying to think about why this movie stuck and is like so sticky to young people. I don't know, I think there's something about how small it is and how, it's about just like a relationship between a man and a woman who are young. And it's like this morbid curiosity of getting to see this relationship in intimate settings in a, in a house.

• 1:55:17Speaker 04

  And it never really gets bigger than itself, the movie. It doesn't go huge, doesn't turn into like the scary monster shows up at the end. And I think people, I think that like the struggle with relationships now, people just really, uh, related to that with this movie. There's a lot of really cool, high concept horror movies that have come out over the last couple of years and they, many of them wind up becoming about a person trying to solve the mystery of what is happening to them. And Bear never does that. Bear knows what's happened.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:45Speaker 04

  And, and is like, I'm gonna pursue it anyway. But like Smile, like the woman in Smile is like, I have to find the original Smiler so I can like reverse what's happening.

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

  Or Happy Death Day or To You or whatever.

• 1:55:56Speaker 04

  Totally. It's a great idea. Yeah, but this is like, what if the guy was just like, well, we could maybe date still though?

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:56:03Speaker 04

  You know, like.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  Consent, overrated. Um, I, I just, um, I really appreciate the Hudsba of the movie to not explain so many things. You know what I mean? Like, it just like, we don't need to know the full history of all these people. We don't need to know, they just like all work at a music store and that's fine and they all know each other.

• 1:56:19Speaker 04

  You don't have to explain the rules of where she is and how she could get out. Also a great ending. I thought like the rare satisfying and terrifying at the same time ending. That's like a real, like, you come out speechless, like, we gotta go talk about that movie.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and I had no problem doing this for rewatchables, cause I think this movie will have real legs.

• 1:56:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:56:36Bill Simmons?

  Um, cause it's fucking scary. It's got like three or four iconic scenes that when they're on or when somebody's watching, you're like, oh, I wanna see this scene coming up. And the performance was by Indy Navarrete was like, you know, that's like when Scarlett was in, uh, Lost in Translation and you're like, wow, this person's gonna be in our lives now. And it's, doesn't happen that often.

• 1:56:58Speaker 04

  Well, the last couple of years, we've had a lot of young actresses. We've had, we've now had Mikey Madison, Chase Infinity and now Indy Navarrete in the last two years. Really pop.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  Pop, but then like, what's next? You know what I mean? Like, with Mikey, like, everyone's asking questions now about Mikey, so. But you, I mean, you're absolutely right and, uh.

• 1:57:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well Chase was, what was that terrible apple show she was on? Presumed Innocent?

• 1:57:22Speaker 04

  That was before.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  That was before.

• 1:57:23Speaker 04

  Before.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  She's on the Hulu. The Testaments.

• 1:57:25Bill Simmons?

  But that's, it's so funny how that flips though, where I watched her on that show and I was there and be like, this will be a very serious actress who's gonna be nominated for Oscars, cause it was a terrible show. Um, in this one, anyway, uh, really good one. Well, thanks, Craig. Thanks, Cahill. Thanks, Eduardo. Uh, thanks for doing this live with us on Netflix.

• 1:57:46Speaker 04

  We beat the runtime of the movie? Nice job.

• 1:57:48Bill Simmons?

  We're coming back, um, next week with another rom-com gone wrong. Mr. Miyagi and Daniel's Son and Karate Kid 2. That is gonna be next week, so, uh, that's on Netflix. If you wanna watch that, check it out. Thanks for joining us.