‘American Gangster’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan

We celebrate movie no. 400 on The Rewatchables by revisiting Ridley Scott’s 2007 crime thriller, ‘American Gangster,’ starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Producers: Craig Horlbeck, Ronak Nair, and Chia Hao Tat 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:25Speaker 01

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

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

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

• 1:30Bill Simmons?

  This episode is brought to you by Searchlight Pictures Wild Horse 9. John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell. I like those guys. Star in the sharp-witted comedy thriller from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh, writer-director of The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, set in the 1970s, filmed on location on Easter Island. Malkovich and Rockwell play CIA agents Chris and Lee, who are caught in a dangerous game of secrets and survival. Also starring Steve Buscemi, another one of my guys, Parker Posey and Tom Waits. Wild Horse 9 is being hailed by critics as a revitalizing shot of pure entertainment and easily one of the best films of the year. Don't miss Wild Horse 9. Only in theaters Friday. Get tickets now.

• 2:21Bill Simmons?

  The Rewatchables, brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. We can find The Watch with Chris Ryan.

• 2:25Chris Ryan?

  Still cranking it out.

• 2:27Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Dan Lathan, you're in three podcasts now.

• 2:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:32Bill Simmons?

  College Football Tailgate, we call it The Ringer Tailgate, it's college football podcast. Coming live on Saturdays.

• 2:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:39Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Wednesdays as well, plus you're in Higher Learning, plus, uh...

• 2:41Speaker 05

  Midnight. Pew pew. There you go.

• 2:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 05

  Finally on board.

• 2:45Bill Simmons?

  I'm Bill Simmons. This is the 400th movie we've done on The Rewatchables.

• 2:51Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 2:51Bill Simmons?

  I was looking back at all the people. So Fantasy's in Telluride, so he couldn't be here, but Fantasy was a huge part of this podcast, really since we launched it in 2017. We'll tell the story in a second. Shay Serrano, Jace Cetepsion.

• 3:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:06Bill Simmons?

  Really big parts of the first, like, first half of the feed. Kyle Brandt, huge part of the last five years. We've had Mallory and Dobbins and Wesley, Koppelman, Rissillo, Juliet, all of them popped out many times.

• 3:22Chris Ryan?

  Tarantino twice. Three times.

• 3:24Bill Simmons?

  I was getting to that.

• 3:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, sorry.

• 3:25Bill Simmons?

  Three times. We've had some extended cameos from Joe, Joanna Robinson, Big Waz, Greenwald, Rembert, Chang, Mina Kimes, Logan Murdock, Cousin Sal, Chuck Klosterman, The Danies with Craig a couple times. We had Quentin Tarantino, Michael Mann, Bill Hader, Aaron Sorkin, Judd Apatow, Bill Lawrence, Jimmy Kimmel, all making memorable stop bys. Jennifer Lawrence was stopped by, not as memorable. She didn't understand the categories.

• 3:54Bill Simmons?

  My wife was on an episode.

• 3:57Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's right.

• 3:58Bill Simmons?

  My dad was on an episode with me and CR for my 50th birthday. We did Shawshank Redemption. That was great. Craig's wife was on an episode. Uh, when she was my assistant, she requested country strong, polarizing. Roll. Polarizing episode. We were originally produced by.

• 4:16Chris Ryan?

  Liz Kelly, yeah.

• 4:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, Liz Kelly.

• 4:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:18Bill Simmons?

  I'm just saying Craig's wife.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  He said his wife.

• 4:20Bill Simmons?

  For the commenters.

• 4:23Bill Simmons?

  Zach Mack, original producer. Nephew Kyle did a few. Jason Gallagher was involved a little bit.

• 4:28Chris Ryan?

  Are you retiring? What are we doing?

• 4:29Bill Simmons?

  Ronic, I'm just doing the, doing the list.

• 4:31Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 4:31Bill Simmons?

  Richie, who else, who else was producing in the background, Craig? That's. Dylan, maybe a couple of times?

• 4:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Dylan Berkey.

• 4:40Bill Simmons?

  Now we have Gao.

• 4:43Bill Simmons?

  We produced a Craig who's been with us, I would say 80% of the pods, Chris.

• 4:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:47Bill Simmons?

  Right?

• 4:47Chris Ryan?

  2019, I think.

• 4:49Bill Simmons?

  Started as a podcast intern. You could just see the hunger in his eyes, man. That was it. He's been with us ever since. He's hosted a couple. He's on one that, uh, he might be on 401 or 402. Van Lathan, do you remember your first rewatchables?

• 5:01Speaker 05

  I do not. I'm not even gonna try to act like a lot. It was Boys in the Hood? No.

• 5:05Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  I do not. Eight Millimeter.

• 5:08Bill Simmons?

  No.

• 5:08Chris Ryan?

  No, that couldn't have been the first time.

• 5:10Bill Simmons?

  That was the one when I was like, this guy's a regular. First of all, he requested Eight Millimeter.

• 5:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:16Bill Simmons?

  He spoke my language.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 5:17Bill Simmons?

  No, your first film was Higher Learning.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that's a memory. Yeah, that's a memory.

• 5:21Chris Ryan?

  That's a nice tie in.

• 5:23Bill Simmons?

  And then CR, the legend. So this started in my, uh, my little pool house, my old house.

• 5:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:28Bill Simmons?

  20th anniversary of Heat. And we said.

• 5:32Chris Ryan?

  Let's just do a.

• 5:33Bill Simmons?

  We still had an entire podcast about Heat on my podcast. We did, I think in December. Around Christmas time, you came in. Backdoor pilot. We just talked about Heat for an hour.

• 5:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:45Bill Simmons?

  And we had no idea if anyone would wanna listen to it or care.

• 5:47Chris Ryan?

  It was the Wild West back then.

• 5:49Bill Simmons?

  Put it on my feed. And the general sponsors like, that was fucking cool. Wow, I loved Heat 2. So we were like, huh? And then tried to figure out the rewatchables. It got a little rocky for the first year, trying all kinds of different things. And then I remember the July 4th, 2018 area, we taped Jaws, me, you and fantasy. And we had had the pod for almost a year at that point. Bunch, we tried a bunch of different things, but we kinda knew what it was at that point. And that was the first one where I was like, oh, this, this pod's gonna go a while. Like, we've, we've kind of cracked the code on this. You remember that?

• 6:22Chris Ryan?

  I do, and I also remember like, feeling like that was the first one. Was that the first super long episode that we did?

• 6:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we had more category. We just kind of were like, this is what the pod should be.

• 6:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Bill Simmons?

  Been doing it ever since. Made some, some hairy times during COVID.

• 6:37Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 6:38Bill Simmons?

  We were doing stuff on Zoom. We're doing two a week. I did Cast Away by myself.

• 6:42Chris Ryan?

  That's right, we did, we were doing two a week.

• 6:44Bill Simmons?

  You did Cast Away by yourself? I did Cast Away by myself. By the way, solid pod. One of my best performances.

• 6:51Chris Ryan?

  Really, really good.

• 6:53Bill Simmons?

  But CR, great to have you back.

• 6:55Chris Ryan?

  Thanks, man.

• 6:55Bill Simmons?

  And obviously, uh, this wouldn't have happened if we weren't in the guest house that day, so.

• 6:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 6:59Bill Simmons?

  400th movie. Anyway, I gave you the call. I said, you picked the movie.

• 7:02Chris Ryan?

  I know, and it's weird.

• 7:03Bill Simmons?

  And CR said, my man. My man.

• 7:06Chris Ryan?

  I, you know, it's, but there's a couple of white whales out there, but I was really eyeballing American Gangster, because it's on, it's been on Netflix a lot recently, or it's on Netflix. And this has just been, uh, you know what? It gets suggested in my YouTube algorithm a lot, scenes from this movie.

• 7:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Chris Ryan?

  And I saw, there's a couple of scenes that have like 5 million views, and I was like, I think, I think there's like a ground swell behind American Gangster right now.

• 7:31Bill Simmons?

  I flew to Boston a couple of weeks ago, and it was on AMC. Can't say it was the best American Gangster experience to be on AMC, but, uh, it's been, I, I've been circling him for a while. I saw him in the theater. I remember being, uh, exhilarated and disappointed, and then over the years, it's kind of grown. But on the AMC, I was, and then I finally texted him. I was like, I'm watching American Gangster on AMC, and CR was like, just.

• 7:56Chris Ryan?

  I immediately grew a Josh Brolin mustache.

• 7:59Bill Simmons?

  So anyway, American Gangster, our 400th movie, is next. We're gonna take a break.

• 8:18Bill Simmons?

  American Gangster 2007. I wrote down, this is like if CR typed into ChatGPT, make me a movie combining French Connection, Scarface, Goodfellas, Heat, Serpico, Black Caesar, and Godfather 2. And ChatGPT was like, here it is. Oh, put Denzel Washington in it.

• 8:38Chris Ryan?

  Can I interest you in a quick scene in Bangkok?

• 8:42Bill Simmons?

  Six minutes out of nowhere. Why do you love this movie?

• 8:46Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of what you just said, which is that it's a collection of some of my favorite like genres, my favorite parts of American history, my favorite parts of like criminal underground history in a, in a sort of environment that honestly, like I never, ever, ever get bored of 1970s New York. It is like the never ending maze that I could just live in and explore for the rest of my cinematic life and reading about it life. And it somehow really Scott like brings it to life in a way that I think is reminiscent of some of the Sidney Lumet stuff from, from the seventies for sure. But it looks different. It feels different. And, you know, he's got these hitters in it. This is one of the, this is one of the best casts assembled in the century.

• 9:32Chris Ryan?

  Whether or not they live up, the movie itself lives up to like all the talent that's assembled is another conversation. But like I was going through looking for Dion, looking for that guy. And I was like, where do you stop?

• 9:44Bill Simmons?

  It was a long Dion list.

• 9:45Chris Ryan?

  Are we, are this like a 26 man roster?

• 9:47Bill Simmons?

  It was like a basketball team. It was like a bench.

• 9:50Speaker 05

  That guy list. Like I just started grouping them together.

• 9:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 05

  Like in the whole squad could be a that guy. You know what I remember about the movie? The lore leading up to it, the rumors of the production, Denzel getting paid, the movie's going, then the movie's not going. Foucault was on the movie. Then Scott comes on the movie and changes the movie. And so then the version of the film that we get is kind of this mishmash of all of these visions. Then the cultural push behind it. Jay-Z, the theme album, the This is Denzel's first twenty million dollar paycheck. All of the whispers, by the time you got to see the film, you were actually, if you were like a cinephile,

• 10:34Speaker 05

  trying to see how this entire thing was going to come together after years of it being kicked around and stuff.

• 10:40Bill Simmons?

  It was very similar to Heat in the nineties. You knew about the movie for a while. It was two people I wanted to see in a movie again because they were in Virtuosity. It was Ridley Scott. It just felt like a big movie. It's like, I can't wait to go see this in the theater.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  You're saying that people saw Virtuosity and they were like, let's run it back.

• 10:58Bill Simmons?

  No, I'm just saying, but they did Virtuosity. Denzel was a big star. Crowe is not.

• 11:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:03Bill Simmons?

  But in oh seven, Crowe is a massive star and it felt a little Pacino De Niro-y.

• 11:08Chris Ryan?

  Well, there is an experience I had with this movie that is not dissimilar to what I had with Miami Vice, which is, you hear about that this is gonna happen. You find out who's gonna be in it and who's making it and you're like, this is, I'm gonna wake up soon and find out that I dreamed this. This can't be happening. Like a Harlem gangster story with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe's the cop chasing him. Same kind of thing with like Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx playing Crockett and Tubbs and it's Michael Mann going back to it. Then I think the initial reaction to it, probably Miami Vice because of how beautifully strange it is, an American gangster where there's just like, you're watching it and you're like, I want this to be Godfather, but it is, it is a different kind of movie and it's got a different kind of message and idea and it's different kind of like.

• 11:52Bill Simmons?

  Were you disappointed when you left the theater?

• 11:54Chris Ryan?

  I think so. I think a little bit.

• 11:55Bill Simmons?

  I was, I was disappointed. It didn't take me till this decade to really grow into this movie. I remember Miami Vice, we said it was like seven, eight years before we were like, wait, is this movie good?

• 12:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:06Bill Simmons?

  This movie was always pretty good, but I, I look at it now. It's just like a collection of scenes.

• 12:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:12Bill Simmons?

  It's like, almost like watching those SNL Best of Will Ferrell and it's just like a bunch of awesome wolf. Now you look at it, you could just jump in anywhere. It doesn't, the script's all over the place. Like, it's just a fun hang.

• 12:24Speaker 05

  The movie is insanely dense, like insanely dense. Everything is happening in every single scene, right? You look at the film now and you still see. A better movie in there somewhere.

• 12:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Bill Simmons?

  Well, I think that people seem to think the director's cut, which was like thirty minutes longer, filled in some of the blanks, but I'm not positive this movie needed to be longer, Van.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  I don't think that it needed to be longer. When I say, uh, uh, when I say it's, you know, a, a better movie, I'm talking about some really big choices. Like, it almost feels like if the movie focused more on Roberts or more on Lucas, that the film would have been better.

• 13:04Bill Simmons?

  What would you have, what would have been your choice? This is an interesting topic. I was gonna do this later.

• 13:09Speaker 05

  Probably more, more Frank Lucas, a little less of Richard Roberts.

• 13:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:14Bill Simmons?

  But I think that's the issue with the movie is Crowe is such a big star. They had to almost put more, and they're making up all kinds of shit about that character, too. But it really should have been a Frank Lucas movie.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  And, and it, it kind of, to me, I always thought, cause Roland is at the perfect point in his career.

• 13:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 05

  Where if the Roberts role was smaller, that he could have played it. Right? Cause he was, Josh Roland, he's an entity that we've known for a very long time, but he wasn't.

• 13:43Chris Ryan?

  He was in the wilderness before this movie.

• 13:46Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 13:46Chris Ryan?

  Well, this is no country.

• 13:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, so like, this is, that's a situation too. If that role were a little bit smaller, you could have put him in that role and maybe the movie, it streamlines a little bit.

• 13:57Bill Simmons?

  But don't you think, the thing I love about this movie, but it's also frustrating, is Trupo and his whole crew just could have been the movie.

• 14:05Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 14:06Bill Simmons?

  You, and then you have Frank Lucas and his whole thing, that could have been the movie.

• 14:09Chris Ryan?

  Dude, Frank Lucas getting the drugs out of Vietnam.

• 14:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that could have been the entire movie.

• 14:14Chris Ryan?

  Would have been a nice movie. Roger Winfrey Smith and Denzel Washington getting drugs out of coffin, from coffins.

• 14:18Bill Simmons?

  But this goes, Van used the word dense. I think this is why this movie was such a slow burn and why I like it so much now. It's, there's five fucking movies in here and, and when you saw it the first time, you're just like, it, it's like being overfed at Thanksgiving or something, but now there's so many different beats and the way it moves and it's just like such a fun hang. And then, you know, one of the reasons we're doing this is Denzel, who's in the spotlight again. I think he's gonna get nominated for the Spike movie. But, uh, you know, he's been bringing it now for four decades.

• 14:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:49Bill Simmons?

  This is.

• 14:50Chris Ryan?

  Would probably not be a good rewatchables guest, cause apparently he doesn't like watching movies.

• 14:54Bill Simmons?

  No, he doesn't wanna talk about the past. Um, but in this one, I was thinking like, the Denzel dialing it upscale.

• 15:03Bill Simmons?

  Training days at ten?

• 15:04Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Bill Simmons?

  Where he's like, I'm dialed up. I'm going all out, like game seven, NBA star. Philadelphia's maybe an eight, where he brings it up.

• 15:16Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:17Bill Simmons?

  Highest to lowest, maybe a seven. He's like a six in this movie. And there's just a couple scenes, like the piano scene, where he just fucking brings it. But other than that, he's playing this pretty cool for the most part.

• 15:29Chris Ryan?

  It's pretty ice in his veins. I mean, the Tango scene, you know what I mean? Like, the entire point of Frank, the characterization of Frank is that, like, he's not gonna get flustered, he's not gonna get distracted. It's only when he wears the chinchilla that anything starts going wrong for him. And the whole time, he's kind of, he's got a code.

• 15:47Bill Simmons?

  Good lessons for all of us.

• 15:48Chris Ryan?

  For all of us, yeah.

• 15:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 05

  Yet, at the same time, he is always one step away from violence.

• 15:56Chris Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  Like, one step away. One of my favorite scenes is towards the end, when he's being interrogated by Richie Roberts, or actually, he's more interrogating Richie Roberts. And he's recounting the thought of this encounter with the police that he's had, and he's just getting madder and madder and madder until he snaps. That happens so many times in this movie. To wear the chinchilla, or the fur, or whatever it is, and then to have it go bad, and then to come back after your wedding and burn it in front of your wife while she cries, is all time psychotic. You know what I mean? So he's, he, he.

• 16:34Bill Simmons?

  It's like, my wedding night went better.

• 16:35Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 05

  Tell us about it.

• 16:37Bill Simmons?

  I wasn't, wasn't arrested by the police. I didn't burn my chinchilla. It's a pretty average night.

• 16:43Chris Ryan?

  Detective Trupo didn't pull you guys over.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Trupo was a, I love that character.

• 16:50Chris Ryan?

  You bring up a really good point, though, because the film concludes with the most revealing, traditional character moment with Frank. That's where he tells his life story. That's where he gives his biographical background and talks about why I am the way I am. What we usually see is, all my life, I've wanted to be a gangster, and then it's Henry Hill's. Childhood.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 17:13Chris Ryan?

  Michael Corleone is gonna become a senator or a congressman. But then his father gets

• 17:19Speaker 05

  It's a slur.

• 17:20Chris Ryan?

  Hit on him and it it changes who he is and he becomes the godfather. Frank is Frank when we first see him. The first image of Frank is shooting a Burning Man. Then it's bumpy for like five minutes and Frank just becomes this great white shark out there. Immediately. And I think for some people watching this film, it's a little disorienting because you're used to. Take me on the arc of this character. How does this guy get to the point where he's shooting Idris Elba in the head on the street? And not caring about the consequences. And we only really get that at the end. And at the end, it's almost like two minutes of Frank Lucas is the good guy.

• 17:53Speaker 05

  Right. Well, and that's another thing that was always odd to me about the movie.

• 17:58Bill Simmons?

  The abrupt ending?

• 17:59Speaker 05

  Well.

• 18:01Chris Ryan?

  The idea that Frank is like, I'm a cop now.

• 18:03Speaker 05

  The idea that like, so.

• 18:04Bill Simmons?

  Let's get some coffee.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  So the movie has to reconcile itself. Because they've made Frank into this immensely likable character. And then you have to watch him fall. Now, normally what happens in these films is when the drug dealer falls. Besides blow, which is tragic by the time George like legitimately tragic, right?

• 18:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  But normally the the drug dealers, it's a fictional characterization. The drug dealer dies and oh my God, the excess got to him. In this one, we know that that doesn't happen. So how do we feel good about Frank going to jail? And the way that they do that is aha, he put a lot of bad cops away.

• 18:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  And this kind of allowed him to get all of the trauma that he had from the police blowing off his cousin's head. Out because he put cops away. But like, I remember when the movie came out. We left the movie and so and culturally, we think it's so like Frank Lucas is a snitch.

• 19:03Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  He's he's working with the police.

• 19:06Bill Simmons?

  They they flip it so that the cops are the true bad guys, right? That's the thread of the whole movie is cops just steal drugs and do money.

• 19:13Speaker 05

  That's the thing. I don't think they quite get there.

• 19:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? And I don't think that they quite get there. That's why you'd have had to have more Frank to do that.

• 19:20Bill Simmons?

  Or more Trupo.

• 19:22Speaker 05

  Right.

• 19:22Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Trupo is kind of limited to. We don't really know why Trupo is doing what he's doing. I mean, he just seems like a fucking asshole and is just like, nobody's allowed to come into New York without paying my, my taxes. But we don't get a ton of time with him ultimately for a movie that's two and a half hours.

• 19:38Bill Simmons?

  Could have had more time.

• 19:38Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Josh, Josh Brolin was a borderline, did I steal the entire movie? Kind of candidate. When you think he did this and No Country in the same year.

• 19:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's incredible.

• 19:48Bill Simmons?

  And was just this child actor who had bounced around forever. And then all of a sudden he's doing these two movies. He's doing W, he's hosting SNL. He's married to Diane Lane.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  How does that happen? I always think about that. So before this, the last thing I could remember really seeing Josh Brolin in was like Hollow Man. Remember that joint?

• 20:05Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  Where like they were invisible and Kevin Bacon's dick is in the movie for some reason.

• 20:10Bill Simmons?

  He wanted to show it off.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  Uh, he, he, well, yeah, he, he does it.

• 20:13Bill Simmons?

  Fluffed himself a little bit. He, he fluffs himself and then bangs it out. Self fluffing. Like that guy in, uh, Saltburn. That guy was tugging it before he was like, hold on.

• 20:25Chris Ryan?

  Oh, is it my shot now?

• 20:26Bill Simmons?

  Don't say action, Dan. Hold on, hold on.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  All right.

• 20:28Bill Simmons?

  Just gotta play with myself a second.

• 20:30Speaker 05

  All of a sudden, we are in the era of Josh Brolin.

• 20:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  And it's.

• 20:34Bill Simmons?

  A fun era.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  One after another, one after another.

• 20:37Chris Ryan?

  He like gets to that point and I, I have a lot of Brolin stuff later, but like it's that funny thing of success truly coming later in life. And you're like, I'm not letting this opportunity pass me by. Cause Brolin works and does two or three movies a year at a time when most guys are like, cool. I'm in my 40s now. Like I can, I can dial it down a little bit and do maybe one big one and one, you know.

• 21:01Bill Simmons?

  I always liked him though. I, I'll tell you when he went on my radar as a real guy. Into the Blue. A rip off of The Deep.

• 21:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 21:10Bill Simmons?

  With Paul Walker and Jessica Alba.

• 21:12Speaker 05

  Mmm. Wait a minute.

• 21:15Bill Simmons?

  That was her Pedro 1999 season.

• 21:18Speaker 05

  This was a very important moment for me, Into the Blue. Yeah.

• 21:22Chris Ryan?

  Like, um.

• 21:23Bill Simmons?

  Into the Blue.

• 21:24Chris Ryan?

  Like formatively.

• 21:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 21:26Bill Simmons?

  In your twenties at that point.

• 21:27Speaker 05

  I'm, I'm no, no, no, no, I'm, but I'm still forming.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  The beginning scenes of Into the Blue.

• 21:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 05

  I remember, we went to see this in theaters. I was like, well, the beginning scenes of Into the.

• 21:39Bill Simmons?

  The royal we or who's we?

• 21:41Speaker 05

  This is the.

• 21:42Bill Simmons?

  This movie knew what it was.

• 21:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 21:43Bill Simmons?

  Two very attractive people are gonna scuba dive and then get in trouble.

• 21:46Speaker 05

  Really, I cannot even remember really what the movie is, but they find like a treasure or something like that.

• 21:51Bill Simmons?

  Josh Brolin's the bad guy.

• 21:53Speaker 05

  He's the bad guy.

• 21:53Bill Simmons?

  And he's a really good bad guy in that.

• 21:55Speaker 05

  But that film was interesting because everything happens at the beginning and, and you know, Jessica Alba, these scenes had leaked on the internet, but they leaked on the internet. Jessica Alba's like in the bathing suit and the whole nine is happening. And then we just keep waiting for that scene to like happen again.

• 22:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 05

  We keep waiting for us to go underwater with Jessica Alba again. And then it kinda doesn't happen.

• 22:19Bill Simmons?

  That's what The Deep was like.

• 22:20Speaker 05

  And the movie gets really serious about like real stuff. And I'm like, I kinda didn't come here for that, man.

• 22:25Bill Simmons?

  I kinda wanted to see her look for fish.

• 22:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, for the entire time.

• 22:29Bill Simmons?

  That's The Deep with Jack, The Deep, by the way, a classic, definitely watch this on Tubi movie. It starts out with Jacqueline Basset in a white t-shirt, scuba diving with Nick Nolte for like eight minutes. And then getting back on the boat, just white t-shirt, you can see through everything. You're like, oh, this is gonna be a fun hang with, with a half name. And then all of a sudden, voodoo's involved and Luke Goss is like an evil Haitian guy. And, uh, but yeah, they rope you in and then they get into the pot. C R remembers.

• 22:56Chris Ryan?

  No, I'm just imagining what's gonna happen when you get your hands on like the A I tech that's like voiced to video. Where you're just like, I just wanna see Jessica Alba scuba dive for like 20 more minutes. And then just make a video of that.

• 23:08Speaker 05

  But it's true, cuz really they stopped.

• 23:10Bill Simmons?

  Getting close.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  This was one of the thing when Craig's generation took over.

• 23:13Bill Simmons?

  Uh huh.

• 23:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. They stopped doing this. They stopped getting us to the movies.

• 23:17Bill Simmons?

  Fucking Craig.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  With fucking Craig's generation.

• 23:19Chris Ryan?

  Oh, cuz his like the woke mind virus kept Jessica Alba out of scuba gear.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, they, we stopped going to the movies. They would say, hey, we want you to know that there is a ridiculously good looking person in this film and you should come watch it. And then we're going to do a movie as well.

• 23:34Bill Simmons?

  Instead of blue haired Paul Walker for the latest.

• 23:36Speaker 06

  Can I refer you to the film that just won best picture?

• 23:39Bill Simmons?

  What was that?

• 23:39Speaker 06

  We're back, Enora.

• 23:41Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  Could be.

• 23:43Bill Simmons?

  Could be back.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  Could be back.

• 23:44Speaker 06

  My generation's bringing it back now.

• 23:47Bill Simmons?

  Well, so Denzel in the rewatchable standings. Cruise has been 17 rewatchables. Pacino and De Niro were tied for second place at 13. Denzel is at 12. He has now moved into second place. And we have

• 24:00Chris Ryan?

  Several.

• 24:01Bill Simmons?

  Several Denzel movies.

• 24:03Chris Ryan?

  Including some huge ones, right?

• 24:04Bill Simmons?

  Some huge ones, even like

• 24:07Chris Ryan?

  Come on, Deja Vu, Out of Time.

• 24:08Bill Simmons?

  Well.

• 24:10Speaker 05

  This is my favorite era.

• 24:10Bill Simmons?

  What's the one with, with Son of a Lathan?

• 24:13Speaker 05

  Son of a

• 24:13Bill Simmons?

  Son of a

• 24:14Speaker 05

  That's out of, that's out of time.

• 24:16Bill Simmons?

  I love that movie.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  That's

• 24:18Bill Simmons?

  But we have to save that for Sleazy Florida Keys Month.

• 24:21Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:23Bill Simmons?

  We just have that, things, and I don't know what the other two are.

• 24:26Chris Ryan?

  What's the Florida Keys with Gene Hackman and Melanie Griffith? Young Melanie Griffith? Night Moves?

• 24:32Speaker 05

  Is Miami Blues in the Florida Keys? No, that's Miami.

• 24:35Bill Simmons?

  It's a Miami.

• 24:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:36Bill Simmons?

  We'll find

• 24:37Chris Ryan?

  We'll out it.

• 24:38Bill Simmons?

  Sleazy Florida Keys. Not enough time, that and New Orleans, the two most underrated movie locations. Uh, anyway, Denzel, uh, making it happen. And then Russell Crowe. Oh, I should mention one thing with Denzel. So Remember the Titans is 2000. Training Day wins the Oscar. John Q, Antoine Fisher, Out of Time. Man on Fire, my single favorite Denzel performance, as we've discussed. Manchurian Candidate, really interesting movie. It's aged.

• 25:08Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:08Bill Simmons?

  Fantasy's a big Manchurian guy.

• 25:10Chris Ryan?

  Of the Demi one?

• 25:11Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, Inside Man. Deja Vu, American Gangster. That's about, that's an eight-year run. That's about as good as it gets.

• 25:21Chris Ryan?

  It's special, it's, it's also like made for us.

• 25:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Chris Ryan?

  Right? Like, that's like a

• 25:26Bill Simmons?

  Like, that's

• 25:26Chris Ryan?

  A list of films.

• 25:28Bill Simmons?

  That's 10 movies in a row over the span of eight years that you could just take on a desert island and be probably okay with.

• 25:35Speaker 05

  You always wonder how someone's gonna respond to the Best Actor, Best Actress Academy Award. Like now, especially when somebody wins it like Denzel. When Denzel, who had been a Hollywood mainstay for all of his time, right? Uh, a bunch of movies, people loved him in these films. And then he makes it to the Top of the mountain with the best actor now. Denzel solidified, top five, uh, top 10 leading man, maybe of all time.

• 26:04Bill Simmons?

  And that also, cause he was a black actor, that also had like triple significance.

• 26:08Speaker 05

  Huge.

• 26:09Bill Simmons?

  So what did he? The Oscars didn't even know black people existed until like 1970.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  It was a bad, the 90s were bad for that. So the, the, so huge. And what does he do? Like, how does he round into being this gigantic magnetic star? And then he kind of gives you every different part of Denzel with all of these movies. But all of these movies have edge.

• 26:28Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:28Speaker 05

  They're edgy performances, which when you look back at the 90s, it, it's not that Denzel wasn't in edgy movies. It was that he gave you a different side of himself than he did in the 2000s.

• 26:40Chris Ryan?

  He also, I think in the 2000s, creates the idea of like a Denzel Washington movie rather than being another people's movie.

• 26:48Bill Simmons?

  Season tickets thing.

• 26:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:50Bill Simmons?

  I have a movie coming out and you will see it.

• 26:52Chris Ryan?

  And I think, I think guys like, I mean, the first person who jumps to mind, who has obviously tried to like mimic that, although I do not think he's anywhere close to the same actor, is Wahlberg. Where, you know, Wahlberg will make a family movie, an action movie and a drama and like has a lot. And he's making more and more action and thriller stuff now. But Denzel kind of like decides like, what I like doing is working with these guys. I like making these kinds of movies and I'm going to make two of them a year or one of them a year and always have something going. And now, you know, more recently, yeah, tragedy of Macbeth, you know, doing the August Wilson films, you know, like he's, he's coming, he, he's trying different things, but for that 2000s run, he's kind of making Denzel incorporated movies, you know?

• 27:35Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Well, he's also, uh, goes head to head with Hanks. Hanks is his big kind of rival in the 90s, right? But they're in a movie together that they elevate each other.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  Well, Hanks is his rival in the 90s.

• 27:47Bill Simmons?

  And Russell Crowe is his rival in the 2000s.

• 27:50Speaker 05

  Hanks is his rival.

• 27:51Bill Simmons?

  Cause Cruise is kind of over here and like.

• 27:53Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but I think.

• 27:56Chris Ryan?

  Look, so American Gangster is like 98% sounds like pretty much made up. You know, like.

• 28:01Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna get to that, but based on a true story, which then you can just do anything you want.

• 28:05Chris Ryan?

  I, I really.

• 28:07Bill Simmons?

  Guy's name was Frank Lucas. Now, now let's go nuts.

• 28:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I really like Russell Crowe's performance in this movie. But there is like a question of whether or not like Russell Crowe is almost like too deferential and too like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be down here so that Denzel can be up here in the course of this film. And what would have happened if Russell Crowe had kind of chewed more scenery and like, made Richie like a larger than life character in that way.

• 28:34Speaker 05

  Looking back on it, when I watched it, it almost felt like he did it like as a favor. Like Russell Crowe, the character doesn't have any bite like at all.

• 28:42Bill Simmons?

  Well Ridley Scott was this guy. They had just done a good year together. They had done Gladiator, obviously. And I think he, he just wanted to do another movie with them. They seemed like they beefed the part up a little bit for him. This was the Russell Crowe run. Speaking of runs, this goes back to 99. Mystery Alaska, which we have not done yet. Where do you stand on that movie?

• 29:02Chris Ryan?

  I like that movie.

• 29:03Bill Simmons?

  The Insider, Gladiator, Proof of Life. When are we doing the reproof?

• 29:08Chris Ryan?

  I mean, when are we gonna go?

• 29:09Bill Simmons?

  Where do you stand on that?

• 29:10Speaker 05

  Well, I, I remember this was very controversial. I enjoyed the movie, but I said that the movie was the film that like, no, no, what, what am I fucking doing? I don't like that shit. That shit.

• 29:22Chris Ryan?

  You don't like Proof of Life?

• 29:23Speaker 05

  No.

• 29:24Chris Ryan?

  The way, how'd you start it? I like that movie.

• 29:25Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't like the cut, the cuck part.

• 29:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:28Bill Simmons?

  He doesn't like hostage cuck movies.

• 29:30Speaker 05

  I don't like, so I like Proof of Life as a movie. Proof of Life is okay. Wait a second, listen, here's the deal. Proof of Life does not exist as a movie to me. It exists as the cucking of a man and the ruining of his, like, I, I can't separate the movie from the scandal. I can't, I can't. The movie itself is okay, but it ruined America's sweetheart, Meg Ryan.

• 29:53Bill Simmons?

  You know what it is? Stuff a legend.

• 29:57Speaker 05

  It ruined America's sweetheart, Meg Ryan.

• 29:58Bill Simmons?

  It did.

• 29:59Speaker 05

  It embarrassed Dennis Quaid.

• 30:00Bill Simmons?

  She had to die for.

• 30:01Chris Ryan?

  Dennis Quaid did not ever get it back together after that.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  He never did. The movie is just like, it's a bunch of fucking mess.

• 30:06Bill Simmons?

  Well, Sierra and I love it, and he followed it up with A Beautiful Mind.

• 30:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Bill Simmons?

  Then Master and Commander. I remember Concepcion was a big Master and Commander guy.

• 30:15Chris Ryan?

  I'm a big Master and Commander guy.

• 30:16Bill Simmons?

  I need to get that in another world.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  Jason is, I am.

• 30:18Bill Simmons?

  Cinderella man, which was.

• 30:19Chris Ryan?

  Many, many, many people are.

• 30:20Speaker 05

  Now, that's an underrated movie to me.

• 30:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I think there was just too many boxing movies in a row.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Man, that to me.

• 30:25Bill Simmons?

  I gotta watch that one again.

• 30:26Speaker 05

  That is an underrated movie. When people talk about sports movies and particularly boxing movies, they don't mention it as much as they should. I love that movie.

• 30:32Chris Ryan?

  Is that Ron Howard?

• 30:33Bill Simmons?

  Ron Howard. A Goodyear, 310 Yuma, an American gangster. That's all nine years.

• 30:38Chris Ryan?

  310 Yuma is sick, by the way.

• 30:38Bill Simmons?

  Crow wins the 2000s, I think, of all actors.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  That is the best movie out of all of those movies to me besides The Insider.

• 30:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Bill Simmons?

  Love that fucking movie. He won the 2000s, I think.

• 30:48Chris Ryan?

  I mean, especially.

• 30:48Bill Simmons?

  He was in the most, like, high-end, good movies.

• 30:50Chris Ryan?

  2000 to 2010, yeah. Yeah.

• 30:53Bill Simmons?

  Anyway, this was it. This was like, kind of the last one. This is the next year he's in that weird Leo movie.

• 30:58Chris Ryan?

  So when you watch American Gangster, are you like, I wish he hadn't taken a couple of miles per hour off the fastball? Do you wish, like, he was a little bit more?

• 31:06Bill Simmons?

  I gotta say, I really liked the Crow parts. I just think it's a, it's, it's a different movie. We're kind of over here. I don't, the child custody stuff is just bad. They should have cut it.

• 31:14Speaker 05

  None of that makes, that should not be in the film at all.

• 31:17Bill Simmons?

  Fuck me like a cop!

• 31:21Bill Simmons?

  Don't fuck me like a lawyer!

• 31:24Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, uh, he, they, that's the part of the movie that's overstuffed. We just don't need to know that about him.

• 31:32Bill Simmons?

  No, that's not.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  And by the way, in real life, he didn't have a kid.

• 31:35Chris Ryan?

  I know.

• 31:35Bill Simmons?

  Right. It's like, why is this in here? They were like, oh, we gotta beef up, gotta beef up this character. It's like, no, you actually don't.

• 31:41Speaker 05

  I guess it's an attempt to give him an arc?

• 31:44Chris Ryan?

  To give him anything. Like, you don't know anything about him. But it's like, interesting enough that he's like, I'm trying to go to night school and I don't like public speaking. Like, those feel like real details. The kid stuff is just like.

• 31:56Bill Simmons?

  By the way.

• 31:56Chris Ryan?

  It's the classic, like, the cop has to be neglecting his family to do his work. But, but, but we do get Carlo Gignac.

• 32:03Bill Simmons?

  We do, but once again, like, not in the perfect way. Yeah. She just never landed the plane in any of these movies. And I just want to do her career over again. So many at best.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  Sin City.

• 32:15Bill Simmons?

  Oh, that is true.

• 32:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:16Bill Simmons?

  But here's the thing. We already had the Crow piece of this that made me understand him is that he gave the money back. He's honest. That's it. That's all we need. Yeah. Honest dude. He's not like these other cops. We're good.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  Drilling in on him as a policeman, that would have been better than any of the family stuff. Or even what was really interesting to me was the pressure from his, his old friends trying to bring him into the criminal life.

• 32:46Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  Like, all of that stuff.

• 32:48Bill Simmons?

  Give me two more scenes with that.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  Two more scenes with that.

• 32:50Bill Simmons?

  Give me him being like, people stink eyeing him again in the police station. Craig, Russell Crowe, Denzel, you grew up with these guys.

• 32:56Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:57Bill Simmons?

  Denzel, obviously bigger. But what's, what's your Russell Crowe relationship?

• 33:01Speaker 06

  Um, I think always seen as a guy who could do like a, a ton of different things. I always, Russell Crowe was one of the best actors in my mind growing up. A Beautiful Mind and Gladiator are probably the two biggest movies that I remember growing up. He was just like a guy who was always in the top five, I think, for me.

• 33:17Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, the cool thing, we talked about this when we did The Insider, the ability to do the Gladiator type of movie.

• 33:23Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:24Bill Simmons?

  But then also be able to just slip into like the insider guy.

• 33:27Speaker 06

  He's just like a brindle star.

• 33:29Speaker 05

  Or an insider, he's kind of.

• 33:31Bill Simmons?

  You don't even know it's him.

• 33:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, he, and he's also kind of the marshmallow man in that movie.

• 33:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 05

  He's the guy being poked around and who doesn't know his thing. Between Three Ten to Yuma and Gladiator, the Three Ten to Yuma character is the most alpha character in a movie ever.

• 33:49Bill Simmons?

  That movie's so good.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  Like, ever. Getting to it, when he, when the, when he, he, he gets the fork, he steals the fork.

• 33:56Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:57Speaker 05

  And then he just wakes up, the guy, he wakes up and he's killing that guy and the whole deal and they pull him off of him and he's laughing. I'm like, this guy is fucking diabolical, but amazingly charming as well.

• 34:08Bill Simmons?

  It's funny, so he hits the 2010s.

• 34:12Speaker 05

  Then it's over.

• 34:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, and he's, I think he parted pretty hard in the, uh.

• 34:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and now I think he's

• 34:20Bill Simmons?

  Kind of moved into like he's a different version of himself.

• 34:22Chris Ryan?

  Kind of, I mean, he's not making exactly like Redbox movies, but he's in like three Exorcism movies a year now. Like

• 34:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he was the, by the way, I've seen all of them.

• 34:32Bill Simmons?

  But at least we didn't have a Mel Gibson moment with him. The other Australian, kind of that part of the world with, you know, hard, hard parting dudes. We didn't have a Russell Why?

• 34:43Chris Ryan?

  Why? Yeah. Did you ever see Land of Bad?

• 34:47Bill Simmons?

  I liked Land of Bad.

• 34:48Chris Ryan?

  Where he's the drone?

• 34:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:49Chris Ryan?

  Drone pilot?

• 34:50Bill Simmons?

  Land of Bad's good.

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 34:52Chris Ryan?

  He's been all right.

• 34:53Speaker 05

  You know what's funny is he ends up playing Jor-El in Man of Steel.

• 34:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  And so, yeah, you know.

• 35:00Bill Simmons?

  I just found this out because I'll never see that movie.

• 35:02Speaker 05

  Well, he played Jor-El in Man of Steel. Actually, the best parts of Man of Steel to me are the beginning parts where they're in Krypton, which is like really good stuff to me. But his career kind of goes in like a Brando-ish, older Brando-ish way.

• 35:14Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Where, you know, Brando physically changes, obviously, and he is bringing more of his reputation as Marlon Brando to movies than actual like real characters.

• 35:25Bill Simmons?

  Certainly did that in the Exorcism movies.

• 35:28Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Bill Simmons?

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• 36:52Bill Simmons?

  That ink on the cue card so you can make sure. We'll take a break. We'll talk about the rest of the big picture stuff here. All right, so we talked about Brolin. Four Oscar winners in this movie. Denzel, Russell Crowe, Common, and Cuba Gooding Jr. And then Josh Brolin, Ruby D, John Hawks. What was he nominated in that Jennifer Lawrence?

• 37:15Chris Ryan?

  The one where he's paraplegic, I think.

• 37:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And Chouette.

• 37:19Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:20Bill Simmons?

  And Twade Ijivor. How do you say his name?

• 37:22Chris Ryan?

  Chouetel. Chouetel.

• 37:23Bill Simmons?

  Chouetel. I knew I was gonna mangle that one. He got nominated too. Loaded cast plus a bunch of that guys.

• 37:31Chris Ryan?

  That's an understatement.

• 37:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 37:33Chris Ryan?

  I mean, it's like a 26 person where you're like, yep, yep, yep, yep.

• 37:38Bill Simmons?

  Including, I think, some CR All-Stars.

• 37:41Chris Ryan?

  Yes. Yeah.

• 37:43Bill Simmons?

  Including.

• 37:44Chris Ryan?

  Richie Koster, John Ortiz. John Ortiz.

• 37:47Bill Simmons?

  Richie Koster.

• 37:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Bill Simmons?

  Who just comes in hot.

• 37:50Chris Ryan?

  Who plays the crazy killer in Black Hat. But in this is Richie's childhood friend who's now in the mafia.

• 37:59Bill Simmons?

  Is it possible Michael Mann and Ridley Scott just shared a Google Doc with actors they liked?

• 38:04Chris Ryan?

  I just think that those guys are like, yeah, I'm ready to go, like, put the camera on.

• 38:07Speaker 05

  New York guys.

• 38:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Speaker 05

  Throw them in a movie. If you need the movie to feel.

• 38:12Chris Ryan?

  Authentic.

• 38:13Speaker 05

  Authentic. You wanna put some texture to the movie, you throw.

• 38:15Chris Ryan?

  Koster's English, I think, or Welsh. Yeah. But, yeah, it's crazy.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  That's how they use it.

• 38:19Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:20Bill Simmons?

  So the story of the movie, we'll get to some of those guys when we do the categories, but. There was a New York Magazine story called Return of the of Superfly in 2000.

• 38:29Chris Ryan?

  Mark Jacobson.

• 38:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, good story. I remember when it came out. It was like, holy shit, what an amazing. And then Universal Imagine purchased the rights. Fincher, we're doing most of the casting ones here, but you kind of have to because it's a feature of the movie. Fincher kicks the tires, couldn't figure out a budget. They start negotiating with De Palma, and the movie's called True Blue at that point, falls through. Antoine Fuqua, Denzel, Benicio del Toro is Richie. That's March 2004, it's happening. Fuqua gets fired over creative differences. Peter Berg almost comes in, right around when he's doing the Friday Night Lights movie.

• 39:06Chris Ryan?

  approves of Peter Berg coming on, if that's what's gonna happen.

• 39:09Bill Simmons?

  Budget's so high, the studio panics, they back out. They cancel production.

• 39:15Bill Simmons?

  Denzel and del Toro have pay or play. Denzel just gets 20 million, del Toro gets five. Sounds amazing. What a great gig.

• 39:22Chris Ryan?

  I have that for big picture episodes, yeah.

• 39:28Bill Simmons?

  Almost gets revived in 05 with Will Smith.

• 39:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 39:32Bill Simmons?

  That movie sucks. I'm just kidding. Like Will Smith trying to be Frank Lucas, that movie's gonna be bad.

• 39:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's not gonna work.

• 39:39Bill Simmons?

  They bring in another screenwriter named Terry George, who plans on downsizing the budget, writes a script, and he's gonna get his guy from Hotel Rwanda, Don Cheadle, fans guy.

• 39:51Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 39:51Bill Simmons?

  Want to text him right now?

• 39:52Chris Ryan?

  I will.

• 39:53Bill Simmons?

  Uh, he was gonna be Frank Lucas. They turned down the screenplay. Steve Zallian, who wrote the original screenplay, now he's back.

• 39:59Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 40:00Bill Simmons?

  And all of a sudden, we have Scott and Denzel and Crow. And I remember that, I'd forgotten until I did the research, but remember they were calling it The Black Godfather, they were filming it.

• 40:08Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Bill Simmons?

  They're like, this is it, this is The Black Godfather.

• 40:11Chris Ryan?

  Also, just to throw in, somewhere in there, there is a Richard Price draft of like either a rewrite of the Terry George script, or there's a draft of Richard Price's script. I couldn't find it. I don't know if it's like actually even in existence. They go back to this huge, like, 170-page Zalien script. But when you look at, like, the names involved with the shepherding slash almost did this, it's one of the great, like, oh, I could sit here all day and think about what the De Palma version would have been.

• 40:41Bill Simmons?

  How about, what the, what is the Fincher version of this?

• 40:44Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I mean, it would have been...

• 40:45Bill Simmons?

  It's just all the process. It probably steers more toward Richie, right?

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Can you imagine Fincher and Denzel Washington working together?

• 40:52Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Fincher asking Denzel for the 71st take.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Do a hundred takes of one scene.

• 40:56Bill Simmons?

  My man, we're done.

• 40:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, can you imagine that? The Foucault version, I learned a lot about the business through the painful production process of this movie. Because the Foucault version was being ballyhooed and people were talking about it. It's Antoine Foucault and Denzel reuniting, doing another movie after Training Day. And it comes out that Denzel has gotten already 20 million dollars. He's, they've paid him. So, and it's pay or play. What does pay or play mean? Meaning that he, they've paid him and he gets the money, no whether they make the movie or not, it doesn't matter. And then, so you're feeling, figuring out, they're going to make this if they pay 20 million dollars to Denzel Washington. The Benicio del Toro part, didn't even know. And then, year after year, the movie's not coming. The movie's not coming, the movie's not coming because you don't understand that it's going through so many different eyes.

• 41:43Speaker 05

  And to me, it still feels like the crux of the creative differences with Antoine Foucault is that he wanted to focus his movie on Frank Lucas and he did not want the Richard Roberts character to be as big of a deal. And maybe that's almost what Denzel thought that he was doing as well. So when you saw the film, when it came out, you go, oh, the movie has been really scotched a little bit, almost like Clockers.

• 42:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 05

  Clockers was when, um...

• 42:10Chris Ryan?

  Scorsese was gonna direct it.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  It was more on Harvey Keitel's character. It was gonna focus, and then...

• 42:16Chris Ryan?

  It was gonna be De Niro, too.

• 42:17Speaker 05

  Right, and then Denzel gets it, excuse me, Spike Lee gets it, and then Spike Lee reorients the movie to be around Mika Fifer's character, and it's a completely different film. It's almost like this movie happens, but in the reverse here.

• 42:29Bill Simmons?

  They're like, Denzel, here's, here's where we are, and he's like, am I still getting my 20 million? Do you want to weigh in on script? Am I still getting my 20 million? I'll be there. What's our first day of filming? I, I just think he was moving from movie to movie at this point. I think that's his process.

• 42:44Chris Ryan?

  Denzel or?

• 42:44Bill Simmons?

  Denzel. I think he wants to work with a director that he likes. And if he likes the story and likes the character, he's in, he's good.

• 42:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Bill Simmons?

  Like, he's cranking out basically a movie every nine months at this point. You know, you're moving on, on, on fast.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  His first $20 million paycheck. It's the first time it ever happened before.

• 43:01Chris Ryan?

  This is a very difficult thing to balance in these kinds of genre movies where you've got the crook and the criminal and they don't, they're not necessarily in contact. I mean, they're, when does Richie figure out it's Frank at the fight, right? That fight is like-

• 43:16Speaker 05

  Oh, no, no. His, the fight, but even then more so with his friend. Remember his friend goes, leave Frank Lucas alone. And Richie goes, huh?

• 43:23Chris Ryan?

  Oh, the mafia guy.

• 43:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. He's like, I'm here to give you a message to leave Frank alone.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:28Chris Ryan?

  That's an hour and a half into the movie.

• 43:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we're-

• 43:32Chris Ryan?

  That's not even like Vincent Hanna being like, this crew is good in the first 10 minutes of heat, even though he doesn't know who he's talking about. So it's a, it's a delicate balance. And then to your point, like with Clockers, like if you read the novel Clockers, like there's, it's 50 50 between Strike and the detective. And like, the detective has all, like all this personal stuff going on and that. And yeah, like the director will orient it and weight it, kind of like where he wants to go.

• 43:59Bill Simmons?

  Sierra likes the new studio.

• 44:03Bill Simmons?

  He's doing his own thing. He's, he's legs crossed, got the hands- Steve Zalian, 93, he writes Searching for Bobby Fischer, which we did the rewatch of. Clear and Present Danger, Schindler's List, Mission Impossible, The Civil Action, Hannibal, Gangs of New York, The Interpreter? What was that one?

• 44:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, that was the Sean Penn, uh, the Paul Kidman movie, Sidney Pollak.

• 44:25Bill Simmons?

  All the Kingsman, American Gangster, Moneyball, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And that's all in less than 20 years.

• 44:32Chris Ryan?

  And he just directed-

• 44:32Bill Simmons?

  That's impressive.

• 44:33Chris Ryan?

  And Ripley on Netflix last year. And he had done The Night Of with Richard Price a couple of years ago.

• 44:39Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. So there you go. Anyway, they finally make the movie and they get-

• 44:42Speaker 05

  Kind of a comeback movie for him a little bit.

• 44:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 44:44Speaker 05

  All the Kingsman, tough.

• 44:46Bill Simmons?

  And then Ridley Scott, who this will be, I think the fifth or sixth one we've done for him.

• 44:51Chris Ryan?

  Is that all?

• 44:52Bill Simmons?

  Every seven years, he just has like an eternal banger. Alien 79, Blade Runner 82.

• 45:03Bill Simmons?

  Black Rain, eighty-nine? For me and CR.

• 45:06Speaker 05

  Heavy.

• 45:06Bill Simmons?

  Oh, I'll send you, I'll send you your e-vite for Black Rain rewatch.

• 45:10Speaker 05

  No, that, that one's one I fuck with heavy, criminally underrated.

• 45:13Bill Simmons?

  Thelma and Louise, ninety-one. G.I. Jane, ninety-seven. Gladiator.

• 45:21Bill Simmons?

  Gangster. Martian in, uh, two thousand fifteen. It's just, he's, oh, you don't go more than seven years without him being heard from, although we have now.

• 45:30Chris Ryan?

  He makes, he's basically making a movie and prepping a movie at the same time, and he's been doing that for basically the last thirty years. And I think he has an incredibly high floor and an increasingly lower and lower ceiling, but every once in a while.

• 45:44Bill Simmons?

  Because he's.

• 45:45Chris Ryan?

  Because he's eighty-two.

• 45:46Bill Simmons?

  Older than Jerry Jones.

• 45:47Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 45:48Bill Simmons?

  Ridley Scott definitely would have traded back a person.

• 45:50Chris Ryan?

  Ridley Scott is like.

• 45:51Bill Simmons?

  He's like, we're getting two first round picks?

• 45:53Speaker 05

  And it's, and you, you, like Napoleon, right?

• 45:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 45:58Speaker 05

  You would have thought that there was no way that the movie could miss.

• 46:02Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 05

  Because the last duel, fantastic, right?

• 46:05Bill Simmons?

  Football coaches and directors.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  You, you would have thought that there's no way, and then you go and you watch Napoleon, and it is a mess, and you're like, how is, with all of the talent and Ridley Scott?

• 46:14Chris Ryan?

  How is this boring?

• 46:15Speaker 05

  How, how is this bad?

• 46:15Bill Simmons?

  Did you ever see The Duelists, his first movie?

• 46:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  I've never seen that.

• 46:19Bill Simmons?

  It's fucking amazing.

• 46:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Bill Simmons?

  It's really weird.

• 46:21Speaker 05

  But then he also, he has smaller movies.

• 46:23Bill Simmons?

  It's a Tubi classic.

• 46:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but like Matchstick Men is good.

• 46:25Speaker 05

  Matchstick Men is like a.

• 46:26Chris Ryan?

  He's the, he is the king of, I saw it in the theater and I was so excited, and it wasn't as good as I thought it was gonna be, and then ten years later, you're like, you know what, Robin Hood's okay. You know?

• 46:36Bill Simmons?

  I kind of enjoy costume, seven accents in this movie now.

• 46:39Speaker 05

  Even this, American Gangster is, and like, a lot of the stuff that we've talked about this film, a lot of the people that they threw in this movie is because I think you can, you can feel the pressure of making this movie a huge, huge deal for everybody in it, with the amount of people that's in that comment, T.I., everyone, gotta go see it. So they, they overstuffed the film because after all the rumors and after everything they had put into the production, they needed people to get out to the theaters to go see this. It was a big part of Denzel's career, all of that stuff.

• 47:11Speaker 05

  But also, just in the Ridley Scott, uh, like Denzel Washington, like, portion of this movie, like, these drug dealer biopics, there are not as many of them as you think they are.

• 47:25Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 47:26Speaker 05

  Like the most of the drug dealers.

• 47:28Bill Simmons?

  You're saying we need more?

• 47:29Speaker 05

  Well, I'm saying that they're hard to make.

• 47:30Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 05

  Like, most of the drug dealer movies that we like, that are legendary are about fictional characters. These stories don't turn out well. You got this, you have playful, you have blow. All of those movies end up in profound tragedy. Somebody going to jail, leaving their daughter, whatever, whatever. And so these.

• 47:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, nobody just gets away.

• 47:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:51Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, like also the more nuanced, complicated versions of these stories is moved into television. So like, I mean, Bumpy Johnson is that that's Godfather of the home now.

• 48:00Bill Simmons?

  Narco.

• 48:00Chris Ryan?

  But Narco's in The Wire kind of like created a much higher standard of like, here's the nuances of how this stuff works.

• 48:09Bill Simmons?

  Our new show.

• 48:09Chris Ryan?

  The Task.

• 48:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, and what I'm saying.

• 48:11Bill Simmons?

  Wait, you say Task?

• 48:12Speaker 05

  I saw you guys are getting really excited about it. Like, the movies aren't easy to make, and so.

• 48:19Chris Ryan?

  Did you say big boner?

• 48:19Bill Simmons?

  Big TV boner for Task.

• 48:21Speaker 05

  Is it that good? I saw you guys doing prestige on it.

• 48:25Bill Simmons?

  Craig, what do you think? What's your best one season HBO show ever?

• 48:30Speaker 06

  True Detective?

• 48:32Bill Simmons?

  Okay, I think it's as good as True Detective.

• 48:34Chris Ryan?

  Season one, True Detective?

• 48:35Bill Simmons?

  I do.

• 48:35Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 48:36Bill Simmons?

  I've only seen three episodes, though.

• 48:38Chris Ryan?

  I'm on, I'm wait, I, I watched the first one, but I don't want to watch ahead.

• 48:42Bill Simmons?

  So we, I watched ahead only because we, we banked a couple prestige pods.

• 48:46Speaker 06

  You think it's True Detective, season one, level good?

• 48:48Bill Simmons?

  I do.

• 48:49Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 48:49Bill Simmons?

  I do. And I, as you know, I don't say stuff like that lately. I was blown away.

• 48:54Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 48:55Bill Simmons?

  Also, set in a CR's Pennsylvania. And CR was in a biker gang when he was there.

• 49:02Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 49:02Bill Simmons?

  So it's like, there's a lot of like.

• 49:03Chris Ryan?

  Me and Sir Kristen Cole riding around Philly.

• 49:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, two Oscar nominations for this movie. Art direction and Ruby Dee for supporting actress. Um, I forgot this until I did the research. This was one of the first, uh, sab- sabotage campaigns because they were so loose with the facts. It became a huge story as we headed toward the Oscars.

• 49:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Bill Simmons?

  When this came out, people were like, Denzel's getting nominated. And by the time we got to the Oscars, people were like, they made all that shit up in the movie, no way.

• 49:31Chris Ryan?

  Kind of happened with Gladiator two just recently where it was like, oh, Denzel nailed on, it's gonna happen and.

• 49:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, a hundred million dollar budget made 269 million. How about this van? Biggest opening weekend out of any film for either Denzel or Russell Crowe.

• 49:47Chris Ryan?

  I can see that.

• 49:48Bill Simmons?

  In oh seven.

• 49:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 49:50Bill Simmons?

  Roger Ebert.

• 49:53Bill Simmons?

  He's right to your right. He's looking at you right over there.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  Great.

• 49:56Bill Simmons?

  Two books.

• 49:56Chris Ryan?

  I read this review.

• 49:58Bill Simmons?

  Four stars.

• 49:59Chris Ryan?

  Unbelievable.

• 50:01Bill Simmons?

  An engrossing story told smoothly and well. Russell Crowe's contribution is enormous.

• 50:09Bill Simmons?

  He was really into Crowe, but, uh, and he said, "The film ends not with a Scarface-style shootout, but with Frank and Richie sitting down for a long, intelligent conversation. Written by Zalian and showed two smart men who both know the score. As I hinted above, less Godfather than Wall Street." Blah, blah, blah. Raj.

• 50:29Speaker 05

  Really into it.

• 50:29Bill Simmons?

  Really liked our 400th movie. Uh, all right, let's do the categories. So here's why you know it's a rewatchable. I have like 14 rewatchables.

• 50:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a whole fucking.

• 50:39Bill Simmons?

  Including the opening credits, because this movie starts with Denzel setting a guy on fire and shooting him six times. And we're off.

• 50:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Tonally kinda like, you're like, okay, here we go.

• 50:51Bill Simmons?

  All right, I'll just throw out some, and then if I forgot anything, tell me after. Richie finds $987,000 in her trunk and debates with his partner, John Ortiz, what to do. We'll be fucking pariahs. Cops kill cops they can't trust.

• 51:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 51:05Bill Simmons?

  Is that true, CR?

• 51:07Chris Ryan?

  Uh, in the 1970s, perhaps.

• 51:08Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. We also get Ted Levine.

• 51:12Bill Simmons?

  Didn't mention him in the top.

• 51:13Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 51:14Bill Simmons?

  He's the, uh, the sergeant.

• 51:15Speaker 05

  She big fat person.

• 51:19Speaker 05

  You don't know what prayer is, lady.

• 51:22Chris Ryan?

  Love seeing him.

• 51:23Speaker 05

  I can't unsee him out of that, every time I see it.

• 51:26Bill Simmons?

  I think he, no, he just kinda kept changing hairstyles.

• 51:29Speaker 05

  How his hair is, what he's doing, I see that every time. I can't, I can't, I can't unsee it.

• 51:35Bill Simmons?

  It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again.

• 51:40Bill Simmons?

  Yes, she will, precious.

• 51:44Bill Simmons?

  Small scene, but I like when Richie screams at the park hoodlums when he's arguing with his wife.

• 51:48Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, good times. I just wrote down Denzel goes to Bangkok. I don't even know. There's like four scenes in here.

• 51:55Chris Ryan?

  Chiang Kai-shek's defeated army, man.

• 51:57Bill Simmons?

  When has it ever been bad to go to Bangkok in a movie like this? I'm gonna say never.

• 52:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, it's also like, uh, it is the movie that wasn't there, but you're like, this guy going to Bangkok and the Golden Triangle.

• 52:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Chris Ryan?

  And negotiating with this fallen army for uncut heroin would have been.

• 52:16Bill Simmons?

  That's the more. Ben, you come back from 1970s Bangkok?

• 52:19Speaker 05

  Uh, no, there's one.

• 52:20Bill Simmons?

  Are you in one of those coffins?

• 52:21Speaker 05

  There was, there was one scene where, you know, Denzel calls his connect and the guy's getting a massage and I'm like, that's the life I'm supposed to be living, man.

• 52:31Bill Simmons?

  Just multiple massage people.

• 52:33Speaker 05

  Multiple massage people.

• 52:34Chris Ryan?

  And I don't know about the Bangkok part, but I do know like in Saigon, that was true, that there was like a lot of black GIs had.

• 52:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:41Chris Ryan?

  Clubs and stuff like that. Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 05

  Sure. And they kinda, uh, some of them that, once again, I was about to say that like, that's the more interesting film.

• 52:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 05

  Navigating that. Some of them stayed there, made lives there, had children there, the whole nine. Yeah.

• 52:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:54Bill Simmons?

  All right. More rewatchable scenes. Okay.

• 53:02Bill Simmons?

  We haven't talked about this yet. Jake unravels. John Ortiz.

• 53:08Bill Simmons?

  I had to do it, man.

• 53:12Bill Simmons?

  So John Ortiz, for the people who don't really, he's, he's, he's the guy who jumps out of the car in this movie.

• 53:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 53:19Bill Simmons?

  After he's, they have to, uh, this is the scene where they have to pretend this guy's still alive. They wheel him out even though he obviously killed this drug dude and stole money from him and he's lost his way. Same guy from Miami Vice.

• 53:31Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 53:32Bill Simmons?

  Who played, uh, the one who worked with, with, uh, or who was, what was the name of the bad, the main bad guy?

• 53:38Chris Ryan?

  The cu- the main Cuban drug or the guy who's in the Colombian jungle. Yeah.

• 53:44Bill Simmons?

  And he becomes the villain of the movie and he's amazing in that movie. He was also in a couple other ones that we'll talk about later.

• 53:50Speaker 05

  Carlito's Way, wasn't he in that?

• 53:51Chris Ryan?

  He's in Carlito's Way. Yeah.

• 53:53Bill Simmons?

  I'm a leopard 'cause I listen to you and I gave up a million bucks. He's just on one. I like when people jump out of cars in movies too.

• 54:02Chris Ryan?

  I feel like it just shows desperation.

• 54:04Speaker 05

  Every time when you do that.

• 54:05Chris Ryan?

  There's two really crucial like connections that they make earlier. One is when the John Polito is talking to Frank Lucas or the John Polito character is talking to Denzel's character about they're still stepping on the French Connection dope. Like the cops who got Popeye Doyle's dope from Marseille are stealing it from the evidence room, stepping on it and selling it. And it's like heroin is, it just sucks now.

• 54:33Speaker 05

  Right.

• 54:34Chris Ryan?

  And there's no order anymore and these cops are such bastards. So like the connection to the French Connection, the film and the story. And then also just the idea that if you were a upstanding cop in 1970s New York, you were a pariah. And that like that would drive the John Ortiz character to drug use, you know, like.

• 54:52Speaker 05

  That's one observation, one thing that the movie really gets right is all of the competing cultural narratives in the seventies. The corruption of the cops, Harlem exploding as a center with celebrities and partying, but also this tremendous drug use. And then just sort of Frank Lucas and his criminal connection to the source in Vietnam, to all of the stuff that's happening on the street.

• 55:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and also just like the, an entire generation of men coming back from Vietnam and one in three of them's got a.

• 55:29Speaker 05

  And they have a drug problem, yeah. So that, that part of the movie really gets all of that stuff right.

• 55:33Bill Simmons?

  Craig, out of your two fantasy partners, Danny and Danny, who's more likely to lose it like John Ortiz does in this and jump out of a van?

• 55:41Speaker 06

  I think it's, it's constantly on the verge of jumping out of moving cars because of a bad fantasy.

• 55:49Bill Simmons?

  He's getting paid under the table by, by fantasy sites. Everyone's doing it, man.

• 55:55Speaker 06

  And Jackson Dart flops, Hyvitz will jump out of a moving car.

• 55:58Bill Simmons?

  The Blue Magic drug montage scene? I love the making it, making the drugs montage is always fun, right into Richie in the courtroom, right into the kitchen with his, uh.

• 56:08Chris Ryan?

  With his lawyer.

• 56:09Bill Simmons?

  With his lawyer, which I'm gonna, we rarely get to get this out, the, I used to fuck guys like you in prison award for craziest quote.

• 56:16Chris Ryan?

  It's to Katie Strickland.

• 56:17Bill Simmons?

  Richie fucked me like a cop, not a lawyer.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  Boy.

• 56:21Bill Simmons?

  Was there like a, is there a different way, like a lawyer, he would have been like more gentle, what she trying to get at there, Van?

• 56:26Chris Ryan?

  Richie also low key great stick man and has to answer the phone.

• 56:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 56:31Chris Ryan?

  Post or during sex multiple times in this movie.

• 56:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's got a little sly smile to him.

• 56:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 05

  I think the, I think the cop is probably, you know, I think that's probably like.

• 56:42Bill Simmons?

  More primal?

• 56:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, cuz the cop is authoritative and.

• 56:47Chris Ryan?

  He's working for overtime.

• 56:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, the cop doesn't care about your rights. It's the cop is imposing himself. Meanwhile, the lawyer is probably, you know, caring about your civil rights and asking you questions.

• 56:59Chris Ryan?

  A lot of caveats, a lot of precedents.

• 57:01Speaker 05

  Objections and all of that, a lot of procedures.

• 57:03Chris Ryan?

  Is this hurt?

• 57:03Speaker 05

  Nah, the cop just comes out and plants the dick right on you is probably what she wanted, right?

• 57:08Bill Simmons?

  Katie Strickland, never got close. Never quite made it, but got really close.

• 57:14Speaker 05

  Got close, man. I loved her private practice this, she did a Tyler Perry movie.

• 57:18Bill Simmons?

  I always thought, I always thought.

• 57:19Chris Ryan?

  She did a Tyler Perry movie?

• 57:21Speaker 05

  I think it's called, I think she was in a movie called The Family That Prays.

• 57:24Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 57:24Speaker 05

  Which is the best Tyler Perry movie. She was in it. Like she got, she almost, she almost got there.

• 57:30Bill Simmons?

  Next scene, Ciara's favorite, Frank Kills Tango.

• 57:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. The sugar jar.

• 57:37Chris Ryan?

  Fuck you gonna do, Frank?

• 57:41Chris Ryan?

  It's great. Fuck you gonna do, Frank?

• 57:45Speaker 05

  You to shoot me? That's the scene in this movie that lives on. Every great gangster movie has to have a scene, just one scene that lives on throughout the movie, at least one.

• 57:56Bill Simmons?

  I was gonna do this for Apex Mountain, but we can do it here. Better Idris Elba on screen death.

• 58:03Chris Ryan?

  This is stringer?

• 58:03Bill Simmons?

  Stringer with Omar and brother Mazzon.

• 58:06Speaker 05

  It's stringer. It's stringer.

• 58:08Chris Ryan?

  It's it's stringer, but I will say, uh, Denzel pulling the gun and putting it to his head, the facial expression he makes is the hardest thing I've ever seen in my life.

• 58:19Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you hadn't seen this movie before, right?

• 58:21Speaker 06

  No.

• 58:22Bill Simmons?

  What were your, what was your reaction to that moment?

• 58:25Speaker 06

  They never do this. There's never, I can't think of another movie where the guy who's like, what are you gonna do? Shoot me in the street? And he actually shoots him. It never happens. It's amazing.

• 58:32Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it was great.

• 58:33Speaker 05

  Yeah. String, string still gets me though. When I do a wire rewatch, string just kinda.

• 58:38Bill Simmons?

  Get on with it.

• 58:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, like Omar tells him and he's like, you know what? If that's where I'm at, just take me out.

• 58:44Speaker 06

  And you know what I'll say though, is Frank doesn't even get the satisfaction of letting Idris Elba's character know that he did it. You know what I mean? Like you would almost shoot him in the leg first and then like the heart. So he can think about it as he's dying.

• 58:57Speaker 05

  Fucking insane person.

• 58:58Speaker 06

  When you shoot him in the head, he doesn't even know he died.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  I knew it was something behind those eyes there. Like you're like, listen to him.

• 59:03Bill Simmons?

  The Bay Area, dark Bay Area.

• 59:05Speaker 06

  He's like, what are you gonna do? Shoot me? He technically doesn't even know he got shot. You know what I mean?

• 59:10Bill Simmons?

  Are we, are we positive Frank was gonna shoot him before he said that?

• 59:14Speaker 05

  Do you know what I wonder?

• 59:15Chris Ryan?

  I don't think he expected them, him to actually give him the money. I think he was like, look at this motherfucker.

• 59:18Speaker 05

  I wonder if Frank would have shot him if his family wouldn't have been there.

• 59:22Chris Ryan?

  Cause it was to show them.

• 59:24Speaker 05

  I think he was making a fucking statement to these people.

• 59:27Speaker 06

  Cause they had just gotten to New York.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. And so he goes out there. I know Frank was about his shit, but he goes out, he's talking to them. And then he's like, oh, here's an opportunity to show them either this guy's gonna pay me right now, or he's gonna pay the price and Idris asked for it.

• 59:41Speaker 06

  Should have shot him in the heart.

• 59:43Bill Simmons?

  Yes, you need him. Craig wants more suffering.

• 59:45Speaker 05

  Craig wants to. He need, you need him to know. Craig is like, I want the man that I killed to look me in my eyes as he dies. You fucking crazy person, man.

• 59:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, well, now we know.

• 59:56Speaker 05

  Right, exactly.

• 59:58Bill Simmons?

  A pretty, a pretty enticing D. N. Waiters resume from Idris Elba in this movie.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Bill Simmons?

  Lot of swagger. Richie gets his money back from Trupo. Enjoyed that. So this might be my number one.

• 1:00:10Chris Ryan?

  Oh, that's, uh, Trupo that's never come here unannounced.

• 1:00:13Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. This might be my number one. Frank freaks out at his own party.

• 1:00:17Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:00:19Bill Simmons?

  There's a piano assault. Somebody says, come on, man, that's your cousin.

• 1:00:23Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:23Bill Simmons?

  Always enjoy that.

• 1:00:24Chris Ryan?

  I almost wish they would have delved more into Frank's discomfort with the trappings of being a big time drug dealer.

• 1:00:33Bill Simmons?

  That's your 10 extra minutes that you could have had from all the stupid.

• 1:00:36Chris Ryan?

  And he's like constantly like take the sunglasses off, don't do this, don't do that. And then like when he tries to get into it, it blows up in his face. It's just really fascinating.

• 1:00:43Bill Simmons?

  Man, that's $25,000 alpaca.

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:46Bill Simmons?

  You block that shit.

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  You block that shit. The, the most interesting thing about the character is that he is so loyal to his family.

• 1:00:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:56Speaker 05

  He brings them up to make them his organization because he feels like they are the only people that he can trust. Yet they vex him throughout the entire movie.

• 1:01:05Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  They're country, they're stupid.

• 1:01:08Bill Simmons?

  Probably not a great professional move.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  He, he just, he was so untrustworthy for people that he would have had to go into business with, that he had to do this. And then at every turn, they become his undoing. And that scene is kind of the first thing. It's just, he's so flabbergasted. Beats him up, everybody get out. And I love scenes where people get kicked out of a party.

• 1:01:28Chris Ryan?

  The, the part when, uh, Stevie, played by T I, is like, I don't want to play baseball anymore. I want to be you. Is like, it's such a great moment for Denzel because it's like, is he flattered? Or is he disappointed that this is what it's come to, you know?

• 1:01:43Speaker 05

  He brought him up there.

• 1:01:45Chris Ryan?

  To play for the Yankees.

• 1:01:46Speaker 05

  To play for the Yankees.

• 1:01:46Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:47Speaker 05

  So that he did not have to be him.

• 1:01:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Speaker 05

  And everyone is just descending into what Frank is rather than, uh, ascending to something better than what he could be.

• 1:01:57Bill Simmons?

  Got to be honest, this scene could have been two, three more minutes for me.

• 1:02:00Chris Ryan?

  The baseball?

• 1:02:01Bill Simmons?

  The party, just the whole party.

• 1:02:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Bill Simmons?

  This next one too, the Ali Frazier fight with fake Ali and fake Frazier.

• 1:02:09Speaker 05

  One of the worst Ali's that I've seen in film.

• 1:02:11Bill Simmons?

  I had it coming up on what stage the worst.

• 1:02:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Bill Simmons?

  They didn't even.

• 1:02:14Speaker 05

  They tried.

• 1:02:15Bill Simmons?

  They didn't even try. They're like, hey, is it a black guy? All right, cool.

• 1:02:17Chris Ryan?

  Just the, I, the depiction of that's the garden, right? Is that supposed to be the garden? Like, you're like, early Scott, man, make a boxing movie. Like, this is incredible.

• 1:02:26Bill Simmons?

  So I wrote, I wrote down, this could have been three to four more minutes that I would have liked to have seen around.

• 1:02:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:02:32Bill Simmons?

  Like, just, it didn't have to be the 15th round, the famous round. Throw me in the fourth round as somebody's eating a hot dog.

• 1:02:38Speaker 05

  But just to live in that moment, I mean, obviously, it's a formative moment for the lore of Frank Lucas. I mean, that's the one lesson, the enduring lesson in the movie is don't wear the fur.

• 1:02:51Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:51Speaker 05

  You know what I mean? But that is a really important historical moment. We could have stayed there and hung out with Sammy Davis Jr.

• 1:02:58Bill Simmons?

  Frank Sinatra was there. Like, everybody was there.

• 1:03:01Chris Ryan?

  Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.

• 1:03:02Bill Simmons?

  Wow. I have that as a nitpick. I don't think they were dating for another six years.

• 1:03:08Bill Simmons?

  That's where they needed the Ringer consultancy firm. Hey, guys, scrap that. Nobody's doing Diane Keaton. Thank you. And even better than The Godfather.

• 1:03:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Bill Simmons?

  Trupo ruins Frank's wedding day. Brolin's just like, I just like Brolin in this. I like the bro, just, just the Brolin cooking.

• 1:03:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Frank sells Cuba Gooding on Blue Magic. What's interesting here is this is just who Cuba Gooding became in every movie or TV show. This character for the next 20 years. Even he played OJ Simpson like this?

• 1:03:38Chris Ryan?

  I have to say, he's, this is, you're talking about the catch me infringement, insist, that scene?

• 1:03:44Bill Simmons?

  Just like dialing it up, seeming like a little bleary eyed.

• 1:03:46Chris Ryan?

  Pretty good.

• 1:03:47Bill Simmons?

  I.

• 1:03:47Chris Ryan?

  He's good at this movie.

• 1:03:48Speaker 05

  Love that scene. I like, you have Idris as Dion Waiters. I have him as, as.

• 1:03:56Chris Ryan?

  Pretty good drunk acting.

• 1:03:57Speaker 05

  Like, yeah, because, because in the, you forget, because he's one of these actors that his public persona has become bigger than the work, right? But when you watch that scene.

• 1:04:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, he's great.

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  He plays it real cool.

• 1:04:09Chris Ryan?

  I love it. He's going up against Azol. He's like, I've called Red Magic. It's not as good of a fucking name. You know what I mean? Like, he's just, he's really got that guy nailed in that one scene.

• 1:04:18Bill Simmons?

  The plane search is great. Frank's, uh. What's, uh, what's, what's, uh, I'm blanking on Russell Crowe's characters. Richie, he's searching the coffins. Brolin's looking for the dope. Brolin just kills the dog.

• 1:04:33Speaker 05

  That, that sucks.

• 1:04:34Bill Simmons?

  That's when you know Trupo needs to die. But I love that whole part. And then, uh, we get the final police thing shootout. We get naked gunfight. We get Frank coming out to church. 400 cops, Amazing Grace is playing. Um, there's a Crow versus Denzel section that's fun. Fun Normal is to me. I ain't seen Normal since I was six years old. Denzel gets a nice speech and then, uh, Trupo kills himself. Yes. What did I miss?

• 1:05:00Chris Ryan?

  Um, you didn't miss anything. This is a very strangely constructed movie because the scenes are very fast. There's a lot of them. There is a lot of like dense visual information in every one of them. But it's like, this isn't one where I'm like, there are a bunch of scenes. I would probably say like Tango is the most rewatched scene for me. But my favorite scene is the final Richie Frank interview scene.

• 1:05:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Speaker 05

  Um, I think the most important scene in the movie is actually Frank bringing his family from North Carolina and the moment that they see everything.

• 1:05:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And walking through Harlem for the first time or the big house that they fought.

• 1:05:37Speaker 05

  The big house and his mother and all of that because that becomes the, the central struggle of the movie. Like a guy who has all of this trauma, who believes deeply in America, but not in the America that is supposed to work for him and the America that actually does. And that's why everything he does is illicit and he, he listens to Bumpy and all of that. So that's one scene. But then I just like whenever Denzel and Armando Asante are on screen together. Like those two things, your success took a shot at you, like all time great line.

• 1:06:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Bill Simmons?

  What do you have Craig?

• 1:06:10Speaker 06

  Anything in Bangkok.

• 1:06:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:12Speaker 05

  Yeah. I'm, I'm like this. I'm learning about you.

• 1:06:15Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Craig's the dark side coming out. Episode 400.

• 1:06:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Bill Simmons?

  What's the most 2007 thing about this movie? Normally, we have like five, six, seven choices. There's only one answer.

• 1:06:28Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I have one. What's yours?

• 1:06:29Bill Simmons?

  What's yours?

• 1:06:29Chris Ryan?

  Oh, you go. T.I. and Common is up and coming young rap, like actors in this movie.

• 1:06:34Speaker 05

  Yeah. Done.

• 1:06:35Bill Simmons?

  That's fine.

• 1:06:36Chris Ryan?

  Young T.I.

• 1:06:38Bill Simmons?

  That's not what I had.

• 1:06:39Speaker 05

  So that's, that's, I mean, the movie has T.I., Anthony Hamilton, and

• 1:06:44Chris Ryan?

  Common.

• 1:06:45Speaker 05

  And Common in it, like the rappers, like that's

• 1:06:47Bill Simmons?

  It's a good runner up choice.

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Chris Ryan?

  What's yours?

• 1:06:48Speaker 05

  What's yours?

• 1:06:51Bill Simmons?

  They invited Jay-Z to a screening and he was so impressed. He made an album called American Gangster. That's the most 2007 thing ever.

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  Hey, that's a very important moment in hip hop.

• 1:07:00Bill Simmons?

  Well, because it was a little comeback album for him.

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  Well, he had come back with, I think, Kingdom Come and

• 1:07:06Chris Ryan?

  He had done Blueprint already. Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 05

  Well, he had, no, he had done the Blueprint, but what I mean is Jay-Z had retired.

• 1:07:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  And then he had come back with a album that was very controversial. Some people loved it, some people hated it. It's aged really well, but then American Gangster is a theme album. And that's kind of like Hov is still, Hov is very important.

• 1:07:25Bill Simmons?

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• 1:08:10Bill Simmons?

  towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot.

• 1:08:29Speaker 05

  And his career to me.

• 1:08:32Bill Simmons?

  We'll take one more break and then we'll do what's age the best. What's age the best? What do you got, Sierra?

• 1:08:38Chris Ryan?

  A couple of things. Number one, it was nominated, but the art direction and the production design, Arthur Max, who does all of Ridley Scott's stuff. There are shots in the montage of people ODing on Blue Magic, where you see like a bathroom or a bedroom, or you know, even on a street corner, and you're like, holy shit, like, there's more depth to this, like, set dressing and like, what, like, props are in this shot than there are in some, like, entire films or TV series. So it's just always so, like, layered and interesting to look at this movie. I also really think that there's like some good thematic coherence in Zalian's script where it's like, for instance, Bumpy talking about the department store ruining the corner store.

• 1:09:23Chris Ryan?

  And how it's like, well, these guys just buy straight from the manufacturer. And what does Frank do? Buy straight from the manufacturer. Like, he takes different lessons. Like, a lot of the capitalism stuff, it might be a little on the nose, but I think like the script does a really good job and the movie does a really good job of being like, this is more about capitalism than it is about crime, you know? And I also just really enjoy watching topless women pack drugs.

• 1:09:45Bill Simmons?

  Always, always works. So I had that as well as what's age the best. I don't think it's ever not worked in a movie.

• 1:09:50Speaker 06

  Why do they do that? Uh, yeah, it's because they can't steal anything.

• 1:09:54Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 05

  It is.

• 1:09:54Speaker 06

  That's why.

• 1:09:55Bill Simmons?

  Couldn't they wear like, what the actresses wear the tape over their nipples? Like, could they could be like somewhat discreet?

• 1:10:01Speaker 05

  Also, you need them to commit. You need them to say, hey, if you want to handle the dope, you gotta come in here naked. You need to buy in.

• 1:10:08Bill Simmons?

  I'm pretty sure it's an HR violation, but I'm not positive.

• 1:10:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:10:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you have to be completely naked.

• 1:10:13Chris Ryan?

  Do you think Red Top was doing HR as well as a floor manager?

• 1:10:17Bill Simmons?

  I don't know if he had HR. I had, uh, do you have any in what's age the best?

• 1:10:20Speaker 05

  I do. Uh, this movie to me is the beginning of the Denzel era we're in now. This is where it starts. Like, there's the Denzel on his climb.

• 1:10:32Speaker 05

  And then there's Denzel in his solidifying stage. And then this movie begins kind of the era of Denzel as an entity.

• 1:10:42Bill Simmons?

  Denzel Incorporated.

• 1:10:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, as much as an actor, because after this, he just starts. He no longer does any movie that he feels like, he just does stuff that is cool to him. And that's kind of the, we kind of, it kind of starts.

• 1:10:54Bill Simmons?

  Unstoppable, being on a train.

• 1:10:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, and then when he decides, like, in the spot that he's in now, when he decides that he goes, okay, well, I feel like the art is not being elevated. I'll do fences, I'll do some Shakespeare stuff, I'll elevate the art through movies that I'm actually in.

• 1:11:10Bill Simmons?

  I like it. I had, uh, what's age the best, anytime a movie has a character named Bumpy.

• 1:11:16Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:11:16Bill Simmons?

  I'm probably feeling good about where we're going.

• 1:11:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Bill Simmons?

  If the first person we're hearing from is named Bumpy.

• 1:11:23Bill Simmons?

  I'm probably gonna see this movie nine times.

• 1:11:24Chris Ryan?

  Clarence Williams, yeah.

• 1:11:26Bill Simmons?

  I was trying to think of what athlete could change their name to Bumpy. Like, could this save Kyle Pitts?

• 1:11:31Chris Ryan?

  Lawrence Markkinen?

• 1:11:32Bill Simmons?

  I'm not Kyle Pitts anymore, I'm Bumpy Pitts.

• 1:11:33Speaker 05

  Bumpy Pitts is a hard ass name.

• 1:11:35Bill Simmons?

  Bumpy Pitts, like, shit, I think Bumpy Pitts is coming back this year.

• 1:11:38Chris Ryan?

  Bumpy Markkinen? And it was just like, oh, you don't, you don't want to test him.

• 1:11:42Bill Simmons?

  Bumpy Markkinen.

• 1:11:43Speaker 05

  Bumpy Markkinen.

• 1:11:44Bill Simmons?

  Sam Hauser becomes Bumpy Hauser? Oh shit, Bumpy.

• 1:11:48Chris Ryan?

  What about Bumpy Wembenyama? That's kind of like where it maybe goes the other way.

• 1:11:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's gotta be a cook one.

• 1:11:55Speaker 05

  How many, Bumpy's been portrayed on film a lot.

• 1:11:59Bill Simmons?

  Bumpy seemed great, gave away turkeys.

• 1:12:01Speaker 05

  I think tw-.

• 1:12:03Chris Ryan?

  Well, now he's Forest Whitaker, right?

• 1:12:04Speaker 05

  Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, uh, Laurence Fishburne twice, maybe.

• 1:12:08Chris Ryan?

  Did he?

• 1:12:09Speaker 05

  Because I think maybe he did it in The Cotton Club, too, maybe a young.

• 1:12:11Bill Simmons?

  Oh, well, he had some big picture thoughts about life.

• 1:12:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:14Bill Simmons?

  And you also couldn't fuck with them.

• 1:12:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:12:17Bill Simmons?

  I had, uh. Vietnam's whole, they'd had that news story about Vietnam and all the heroin, opium addiction with the soldiers, and I was like. Could spend another like eight minutes on this, I'm really interested in this.

• 1:12:29Chris Ryan?

  Yes, me too.

• 1:12:30Bill Simmons?

  Has that been in the mo- in a movie in the right way? Because I was racking my brain.

• 1:12:33Chris Ryan?

  It's, uh, so there's a.

• 1:12:35Bill Simmons?

  What the fuck else were you doing in Vietnam?

• 1:12:37Chris Ryan?

  Called Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone that got made into Who'll Stop the Rain, the Nick Nolte movie.

• 1:12:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:12:42Chris Ryan?

  And that's about bringing drugs back from Vietnam, um. There's a, there's, there's a lot of writing about it, there hasn't been as many.

• 1:12:50Bill Simmons?

  Nobody's landed it.

• 1:12:51Chris Ryan?

  As many films, yeah.

• 1:12:53Bill Simmons?

  Van, 360 scenes filmed in 180 locations.

• 1:12:57Speaker 05

  Really is, I'm crazy.

• 1:12:58Bill Simmons?

  That is just the what stage the best for. Holy fucking shit.

• 1:13:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:13:02Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I put, we talked about him earlier, any movie with Ted Levine. I just like seeing him.

• 1:13:07Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:13:08Speaker 05

  He's awesome.

• 1:13:09Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I have one.

• 1:13:12Speaker 05

  She Big Bad Lady?

• 1:13:18Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Brolin's face when he gets his car blown up?

• 1:13:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. Which is like, the car itself.

• 1:13:24Chris Ryan?

  The car is, was it, what kind of car is that?

• 1:13:26Speaker 05

  It's a Shelby. Like, those cars came back, like, John Wick brought those cars back.

• 1:13:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, the car itself, beautiful fucking car.

• 1:13:33Chris Ryan?

  And then I love the exchange between, uh, Trupo and Frank when he's just like, how about I like, throw you and your brother in the fucking river? He's like, how about next time I blow up your fucking house?

• 1:13:42Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:13:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Speaker 05

  Frank got some balls on him. They did call Frank with a couple kilos of raw.

• 1:13:49Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Speaker 05

  In the fucking trunk. And Frank still, like, the cop is a full-on criminal. They're just doing criminal talk.

• 1:13:56Bill Simmons?

  So, there's a little thing in here, when Frank starts pouring a lot of sugar in his coffee, that means his bodyguard has to be officially monitoring the situation? I'm gonna start doing that.

• 1:14:09Speaker 05

  Who's your bodyguard?

• 1:14:09Bill Simmons?

  Just for, for all, for all podcasts.

• 1:14:12Chris Ryan?

  It just means that that's when Kyle has to come over.

• 1:14:13Bill Simmons?

  Certain way and all of a sudden I'm just pouring sugar. Craig's like, oh shit, something's going wrong with Bill, like, he'll know.

• 1:14:18Speaker 05

  So, you're the bodyguard?

• 1:14:20Bill Simmons?

  Not the bodyguard, but just to-

• 1:14:21Speaker 05

  Actually, to be honest with you, now, I feel like you could fucking do it.

• 1:14:23Chris Ryan?

  I'm going right for the heart.

• 1:14:24Speaker 05

  Going right for the heart. You're gonna know that whole bag killed you. Bang, cock, Craig, or a bag.

• 1:14:32Bill Simmons?

  Naked ladies cutting cocaine. John Ortiz, in the span of two and a half years? Miami Vice, American Gangster, Fast and Furious, and Public Enemies. God bless that fucking dude.

• 1:14:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Bill Simmons?

  I love him.

• 1:14:47Bill Simmons?

  I have a quick Tao of American Gangster, I wanted to put as what stage the best. These five quotes.

• 1:14:52Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:54Bill Simmons?

  You can be successful and have enemies, or you could be unsuccessful and have friends.

• 1:14:59Chris Ryan?

  You think that's true?

• 1:15:00Bill Simmons?

  I just think great yearbook quote.

• 1:15:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:02Bill Simmons?

  Put that throw, I'm gonna tell Ben when he's senior year. Heaven throw that in there. The loudest one in the room is the weakest one in the room. Not untrue.

• 1:15:12Chris Ryan?

  Doesn't work for podcasting, but yeah.

• 1:15:15Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:15:16Speaker 05

  Or maybe it does.

• 1:15:16Bill Simmons?

  It works for ESPN.

• 1:15:18Speaker 05

  Oh shit, Jesus.

• 1:15:21Bill Simmons?

  Was that a shots fired? It's not what works at ESPN.

• 1:15:24Speaker 05

  It was the shots fired, but hey, get your shit off. I'm fucking with it.

• 1:15:29Bill Simmons?

  You are what, you are what you are in this world. That's either one of two things. Either you're somebody or you ain't nobody.

• 1:15:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Bill Simmons?

  The number one fear of people isn't dying, it's public speaking. That's in there. And then quitting while you're ahead is not the same as quitting.

• 1:15:47Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 1:15:47Bill Simmons?

  What a great quote.

• 1:15:49Speaker 05

  You know what? I think this, this is how you know I was never cut out for the street. Cause I think you up 60, they, they seize 250 million.

• 1:15:59Chris Ryan?

  But do you feel that way in Vegas?

• 1:16:01Speaker 05

  I don't gamble though.

• 1:16:02Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:03Speaker 05

  So, so I'm saying is like, that's probably the, the, the probably reason why. I'm like, hey, if I'm Frank, I'm like, hey, bro, you up 100 million, man. Wash that 75, you got it after you washed it, right? Take that, put it in the S and P 500. Like you, you're good, it's over. But they can't stop because it's never actually about the money.

• 1:16:22Bill Simmons?

  It was like Craig and the Dany's in New Orleans.

• 1:16:24Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Bill Simmons?

  The craps table. You quit, you quit where you're at.

• 1:16:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, you could have paid for your night, but nope.

• 1:16:30Bill Simmons?

  I'm there playing blackjack with people vacuuming under my legs.

• 1:16:33Speaker 05

  If I could tell the story of all of the Ringer people huddled around the, that was an eye opening scene.

• 1:16:41Chris Ryan?

  That was some blue magic right there.

• 1:16:42Speaker 05

  That was some blue magic watching everybody that you work with.

• 1:16:46Bill Simmons?

  I'll be honest, I'll just admit this now, it's the 400th episode. I'll never fully forgive Rahim for betting on the don't come line in craps.

• 1:16:57Bill Simmons?

  It has been a while. Maybe like 10 years from now, forgive it. Yeah. I just thought it was completely unacceptable. So eight people he works with and his friends. Craps is abandoned together.

• 1:17:07Speaker 06

  Craps is hunkering down together.

• 1:17:09Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's, uh, craps is all about community and togetherness. Yeah.

• 1:17:14Chris Ryan?

  Do you remember, uh, at Vegas Summer League when we had that weird Caesar's suite?

• 1:17:18Bill Simmons?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:17:19Chris Ryan?

  That you guys filmed that?

• 1:17:20Bill Simmons?

  Weird, it was extravagant.

• 1:17:21Chris Ryan?

  I don't know if you were working with us yet.

• 1:17:22Bill Simmons?

  No, he was not. It was 2018.

• 1:17:24Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there was, I was sitting in this suite and it was him, House and Chang. And House and Chang, I think had been up all night and then gotten off strip gumbo somewhere.

• 1:17:36Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Chris Ryan?

  And then come back to the hotel room to talk about the previous evening's gambling.

• 1:17:43Bill Simmons?

  We did like a basically morning show, morning post-game wrap-up show.

• 1:17:47Chris Ryan?

  Chang winning a bone white chip that he needed to have like his social security number to cash out or something like that. And these guys like betting not just the table, but like different people at the table. Like they're betting against like, how, how deep did it go? Like the layers of how?

• 1:18:04Bill Simmons?

  We were basically in Bangkok, even though it was Las Vegas.

• 1:18:07Chris Ryan?

  And I was sitting there watching and I'm like, this is probably what it was like to watch like Miles Davis and John Coltrane on stage together, except for being a degenerate, not playing jazz.

• 1:18:17Speaker 05

  I, I loved it. I remember, um, we're, we're in New Orleans and it's Super Bowl and like people are walking by and they're going, Joe, is that Bill Simmons right there?

• 1:18:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:26Speaker 05

  Bill is locked.

• 1:18:28Bill Simmons?

  Why is he yelling over here?

• 1:18:30Speaker 05

  Locked in, like Bill is locked in, like super locked in. And then Craig, cause Craig, you went on a little run that night.

• 1:18:38Bill Simmons?

  We did.

• 1:18:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:39Speaker 06

  I kept the night alive.

• 1:18:40Bill Simmons?

  The Dannys were hugging like they won the game seven of the World Series.

• 1:18:43Speaker 05

  We, it was the most community I've felt maybe at the Ringer. Everybody was together. It was fantastic.

• 1:18:49Chris Ryan?

  Can I throw one more What's Age The Best out there?

• 1:18:51Bill Simmons?

  So are you saying we should do a Vegas Ringer trip?

• 1:18:53Speaker 05

  I think we definitely should.

• 1:18:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, we should do it. All right.

• 1:18:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:18:56Chris Ryan?

  Um, right after Trupo and Richie meet for the first time, when he's like, don't ever come here unannounced, one of Trupo's guys goes, let's go hit some balls.

• 1:19:08Chris Ryan?

  I didn't remember that.

• 1:19:11Speaker 05

  He's like, I got a tea time. He's like, the guy's getting in the car behind the troupe. Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:17Chris Ryan?

  But it's like, is he driving to the beach? Like, where is he going?

• 1:19:21Speaker 05

  And it one of those guys Eugene Eugene from The Sopranos, right?

• 1:19:25Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:19:27Bill Simmons?

  Hey, here's a category. We don't get to give out that often. The Sean fantasy where it's sadly not here for stealth homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. So the very last scene is an homage to the very first thriller. When the robber looked at the audience and pointed a gunfire and the screen went blank. The Great Train Robbery in 1903.

• 1:19:47Chris Ryan?

  Same.

• 1:19:48Bill Simmons?

  Sean would have Sean would have caught that.

• 1:19:49Chris Ryan?

  Joe Pesci, straight to this camera.

• 1:19:51Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Big Coon and Burger were best use of food or drink. I think it's pouring all the sugar in the coffee, right?

• 1:19:56Chris Ryan?

  It's definitely the sugar jar.

• 1:19:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:19:59Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for great shot, Gordo?

• 1:20:01Chris Ryan?

  Uh, there is a shot when Frank brings his brothers to the apartment building where Red Top has all the ladies for the first time as they're walking up the stairs. It cuts into the apartment and there's a shot of a naked lady wearing a shower cap with her feet up on the table, reading a magazine that says like, it's like for Jamaican rum. It's an ad and she's smoking and the news is on TV. And if you put that picture, if you freeze that and put it would be like Life magazine. It is unreal how deep, like every prop makes sense. And it's just this awesome, like languid shot in the middle of this like crime thriller. I love that shot. Also, the um, the slow kind of reveal of Richie standing in front of Frank at church.

• 1:20:46Bill Simmons?

  Hmm. Yeah, it's good. Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happyness were best needle drop. Um, that 110th Street song is good in this, but the amazing grace for the mass arrest is pretty good, too. I don't know what we do would have.

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  At the end, the public enemy, when Frank like, it's my favorite public enemy record. Can't trust it. When Frank like leaves and he's back out on the street now and he's like a man without a country. And everything's kind of changed, but everything kind of is the same. That's mine.

• 1:21:13Bill Simmons?

  Do you think they should, cause American Gangster came out after this movie? Do you think they should? Retroactive, we go back and cut like two of the songs into this movie since he basically was inspired by the movie.

• 1:21:24Speaker 05

  What are you talking about? Oh, you're talking about Jay-Z?

• 1:21:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:26Speaker 05

  Oh, and like, and put them, like, uh...

• 1:21:27Bill Simmons?

  Almost like a director's cut re-edit or no?

• 1:21:29Chris Ryan?

  Like with that music in it? I think it takes you out of the time period, though.

• 1:21:33Speaker 05

  Probably so, yeah, you want to stay in it.

• 1:21:34Bill Simmons?

  Uh, the chess Rockwell Brock Laners Award for best character name is obviously Ice Pick Paul.

• 1:21:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I had Moses Jones Riz's character, but...

• 1:21:42Speaker 05

  I also like anytime there's a character named Bruiser.

• 1:21:45Bill Simmons?

  Bruiser?

• 1:21:46Speaker 05

  I love a character named...

• 1:21:47Bill Simmons?

  How about Bangkok Craig?

• 1:21:48Speaker 05

  Bangkok Craig? Shoot him in the hard...

• 1:21:51Bill Simmons?

  Maniac.

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Shoot him in the hard...

• 1:21:53Bill Simmons?

  I thought Bangkok Craig was buried.

• 1:21:55Chris Ryan?

  Hardshot Horobek.

• 1:21:56Speaker 05

  Hardshot Horobek.

• 1:21:59Bill Simmons?

  Uh, CR, you have a flex category.

• 1:22:01Speaker 05

  Sick bastard.

• 1:22:02Chris Ryan?

  I brought two with me today. Uh, Sean Penn, the Sean Penn I brought my own pack award for excellence in on-screen smoking. John Hawks is smoking all the time. It's just cameras happen to be on.

• 1:22:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:12Chris Ryan?

  And he is getting really, really down to the filter. Like, that's, that's when you know it's real, is when guys are down around the stub because that's where they keep the good stuff.

• 1:22:21Bill Simmons?

  Good one.

• 1:22:22Chris Ryan?

  Uh, Ed Norton, reverse dunk award, did this movie need a random sports scene? A little bit of a, a variation on this. Are you telling me Harry Dean Stanton couldn't play Billy Martin and come watch Stevie Lucas pitch a little bit?

• 1:22:34Bill Simmons?

  Uh, yeah. It's sitting right there. He's the perfect age.

• 1:22:37Speaker 05

  That, that was my flex. I wanted to see, I wanted to see that scene. I wanted to see T.I. How about? Rip it at 95 miles an hour.

• 1:22:45Chris Ryan?

  He obviously, I don't think he could because, right? Where he's like, "I'm about to throw it." They would cut away.

• 1:22:49Speaker 05

  They cut away, yeah.

• 1:22:50Bill Simmons?

  I would have, I would have added that, I would have wanted an Ollie Fraser round.

• 1:22:54Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:56Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girl...

• 1:22:57Chris Ryan?

  It is kind of wild, though, also, that we don't get any, like, pickup poops. We don't, you know, we can't go to the golf course with the cops.

• 1:23:03Speaker 05

  Everybody talks about sports, but there's no sports in the movie.

• 1:23:06Bill Simmons?

  Butch's girlfriend award for weak link of the film we mentioned earlier, but all the accuracy issues. It, it feels like Lucas was fabricated. He wasn't nearly like as sophisticated as they make him in this movie and it wasn't a... Just wasn't like this. Everyone's like, he wasn't like this. And then Richie, um, never had a child. They just made up basically this whole character story with him because it's based on a true story.

• 1:23:34Chris Ryan?

  Yes, this is pretty much right around when people, I mean, I think people-

• 1:23:41Bill Simmons?

  Since the internet, people started getting offended by this.

• 1:23:42Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, people started being, you started getting the Slate article where it's like, all the inaccuracies in this movie. And it starts to kinda, it kinda got to you a little bit, you know?

• 1:23:50Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. Uh, a federal judge who, uh, assisted in the arrest and trial of Lucas, Sterling Johnson, Jr. He said the film was 1% reality and 99% Hollywood.

• 1:24:03Bill Simmons?

  There's a whole bunch of other stuff about, uh, him being the, him rising above the mafia and be the mastermind of the gold, golden triangle that he, Frank Lucas's biographer is like, not true.

• 1:24:15Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:16Bill Simmons?

  Didn't happen. Um, but hey, I enjoyed the movie.

• 1:24:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, like a lot of people say the cadaver connection never actually even existed. Yeah.

• 1:24:24Bill Simmons?

  What's age the worst? We mentioned fake Ali and fake Frasier. We didn't mention fake Will Chamberlain. I mean Ridley Scott just gave, could give a shit if these guys left even 10% like, like three of the most famous athletes of the seventies.

• 1:24:39Chris Ryan?

  Oh my god.

• 1:24:40Bill Simmons?

  Oh for three. Like just go and get like Greg Oden to be Will Chamberlain.

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  They did that in the movie Rebound. Remember they had Will Chamberlain in the movie? He was played by Kevin Garnett. They're like, oh, okay, it's Kevin Garnett.

• 1:24:52Bill Simmons?

  Right.

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  In Rebound, they, they planned at the Rucker, yeah.

• 1:24:55Bill Simmons?

  Joe Mooney's mustache in this movie? I don't know what the fuck is going on.

• 1:25:00Speaker 05

  They were trying to make him a dandy. He was a dandy. Joe Morton, yeah.

• 1:25:02Chris Ryan?

  Joe Morton? Joe Morton.

• 1:25:04Bill Simmons?

  Joe Morton?

• 1:25:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:25:04Bill Simmons?

  Why'd I call him Joe Mooney? Who's Joe Mooney?

• 1:25:06Chris Ryan?

  I don't know.

• 1:25:07Bill Simmons?

  Joe Morton, our guy from Terminator 2?

• 1:25:08Speaker 05

  Paul Mooney? Yeah, yeah, it was a Paul Mooney. But you know, Joe, everybody knows Joe Morton.

• 1:25:12Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's always nice to see him in movies.

• 1:25:15Chris Ryan?

  And I think he's like, on his story, like that's a real character. He was like a gambler and-

• 1:25:19Bill Simmons?

  But I don't know, the mustache, just like, I would have gone back to the, you, you have this intricate, early seventies Harlem set designs. You're getting every detail right. And you're like, hey, just throw that mustache on Joe.

• 1:25:29Speaker 05

  Well, we gotta find out, cause I don't know the guy he's portraying. Maybe the guy, Charlie, was it, was it his name?

• 1:25:33Chris Ryan?

  I think it's Charlie Williams.

• 1:25:34Speaker 05

  Maybe Charlie Williams really had that mustache.

• 1:25:37Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I think he was probably like-

• 1:25:39Bill Simmons?

  Ben, you're not gonna like my next What's Age the Worst.

• 1:25:41Speaker 05

  Let's hear it.

• 1:25:42Bill Simmons?

  Arman Asante is a mafia boss. He's fucking French. What are we doing?

• 1:25:46Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:25:46Bill Simmons?

  So many Italian actors. Fuck you. How about that Ridley Scott, you dick? Remember, you know, when people get banana shape when somebody doesn't play a character?

• 1:25:55Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:25:56Bill Simmons?

  This is more offensive than anything. It's a fucking French guy.

• 1:25:59Speaker 05

  So you-

• 1:26:00Bill Simmons?

  Italians hate the French.

• 1:26:01Speaker 05

  You've never seen Gotti? HBO original movie Gotti?

• 1:26:05Bill Simmons?

  He's French.

• 1:26:06Speaker 05

  He's fucking awesome in that.

• 1:26:08Chris Ryan?

  What's up with you and HBO movies now?

• 1:26:09Speaker 05

  Oh, my God. The HBO original movie, man. I want to do a whole rewatchable situation of just-

• 1:26:15Chris Ryan?

  Of HBO movies?

• 1:26:16Speaker 05

  I love them. Gotti is one I forgot when I made my list, but he's in there.

• 1:26:20Chris Ryan?

  What was I watching the other time, like a couple of weeks ago? Oh, the one about, uh, Too Big to Fail.

• 1:26:25Speaker 05

  Too Big to Fail?

• 1:26:26Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  My brains at the gate and the blunt played on, rebound, Rat Pack, all of that. He played Gotti in one of the movies.

• 1:26:33Bill Simmons?

  By the way, I just looked this up and it says he's of Italian and Irish descent.

• 1:26:38Chris Ryan?

  So he's you.

• 1:26:41Chris Ryan?

  He's you.

• 1:26:41Speaker 05

  Bill hates himself.

• 1:26:43Bill Simmons?

  My bad. I thought he was French. I wanted to make sure.

• 1:26:47Chris Ryan?

  I do like that-

• 1:26:49Bill Simmons?

  I could Google that before.

• 1:26:50Chris Ryan?

  I do like the, uh, basically like, um, what about your fellow dairy farmers scene? That conversation between the two of them?

• 1:26:59Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Chris Ryan?

  And it's just like about price fixing and stuff?

• 1:27:02Bill Simmons?

  I have a better idea for that, uh, that actor when we get to a later category.

• 1:27:07Chris Ryan?

  What do you think of the central romance of this film? Of Frank's relationship?

• 1:27:14Bill Simmons?

  It's all right.

• 1:27:15Speaker 05

  Craig, you want to go ahead and get to it now?

• 1:27:18Speaker 06

  Hmm.

• 1:27:19Speaker 05

  The, what, we watched part of this movie in the Spotify screening room yesterday and Craig had some, because you know, I-

• 1:27:27Bill Simmons?

  Some thoughts on Frank's wife?

• 1:27:29Speaker 05

  On Frank's wife?

• 1:27:30Speaker 06

  I thought she was a great actress. Lovely woman.

• 1:27:34Bill Simmons?

  Okay. Yeah.

• 1:27:35Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:27:36Speaker 06

  Seems like a great hang.

• 1:27:37Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:27:38Chris Ryan?

  Do you think it was a good character?

• 1:27:39Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:27:40Chris Ryan?

  And a thoughtful, deep, human relationship?

• 1:27:43Speaker 06

  You know what I didn't really get? Well, what I wanted that we didn't get is we didn't really get the crash out. You know, like the Ray Liotta with, uh, I'm blanking.

• 1:27:52Chris Ryan?

  With Lauren Bracco.

• 1:27:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, like there's no like flush the coke down the toilet scene with, with Frank.

• 1:27:56Bill Simmons?

  Karen!

• 1:27:57Speaker 06

  There's no Karen scene.

• 1:27:58Chris Ryan?

  There's no Karen scene.

• 1:27:59Speaker 06

  You, you, you had the ups and you didn't have the downs with, with her.

• 1:28:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Speaker 06

  But I gotta say, we watched that movie in a Spotify theater with like seven people. Every single one of them was like, she's got it.

• 1:28:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's got it. And we have, we looked up her IMDb. Craig doesn't want to cop to what it was that he said yesterday. That's cool, Craig.

• 1:28:15Bill Simmons?

  Craig didn't look it up.

• 1:28:16Speaker 06

  What did I say?

• 1:28:17Bill Simmons?

  Craig didn't look it up. Bangkok Craig.

• 1:28:19Speaker 05

  Bangkok Craig looked it up.

• 1:28:21Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:22Speaker 05

  Heart, should have been a hard horror back. Hard shot horror back.

• 1:28:25Bill Simmons?

  Uh, I have another What's Age the Worst. I don't think this movie had the right title.

• 1:28:31Chris Ryan?

  Uh, which one do you like?

• 1:28:33Bill Simmons?

  So they called it True Blue, which I don't like either. Why is this movie called Blue Magic? The whole movie is about blue magic. Great name for a title.

• 1:28:42Speaker 06

  Doesn't sound like a gangster movie.

• 1:28:43Bill Simmons?

  Doesn't sound like a gangster movie. Blue Magic? Not really. Doesn't sound like a gangster movie. American gangster feels like AI just like spat it out.

• 1:28:52Chris Ryan?

  I think it's just kinda like with Ridley, it's like, what, what is this movie about? It's about gladiators, then we'll call it Gladiator. Is it a movie about American gangsters? Then let's call it American gangster.

• 1:29:00Speaker 05

  Movie about comedy.

• 1:29:02Chris Ryan?

  Is, is Matt Damon on Mars? It's called The Martian.

• 1:29:04Speaker 05

  Martian, yeah.

• 1:29:05Bill Simmons?

  So this is a Ridley Scott thing. The duelist, they're two guys dueling.

• 1:29:08Speaker 05

  Two guys dueling.

• 1:29:10Bill Simmons?

  He does. Thomin Louise.

• 1:29:11Chris Ryan?

  What's Alien about?

• 1:29:12Speaker 06

  An alien.

• 1:29:15Chris Ryan?

  He doesn't fucking, he doesn't hide the movie in the title.

• 1:29:18Bill Simmons?

  They bring Ridley like 12 titles. Like fuck it, just call it Alien.

• 1:29:21Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. It's not like Bonaparte. It's not Waterloo. It's Napoleon.

• 1:29:25Bill Simmons?

  Blade Runner is a good title.

• 1:29:26Chris Ryan?

  Blade Runner is also not, you know, like, that's also William, you know, like, uh, Philip K. Dick, like it's in there, you know?

• 1:29:32Bill Simmons?

  Any other What's Age the Worst for you guys?

• 1:29:34Speaker 05

  Um, so, you know, there's a couple of things. Obviously they come in with a no knock warrant, that Age the Worst, but there's a scene in,

• 1:29:42Speaker 05

  I was just saying, that's, that's, that's a terrible thing. But there's a scene in the movie that is, is, is not great. There's a scene in the movie, you know, at the end where, uh, they're, They're executing the search on the plane.

• 1:29:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:58Speaker 05

  And Rich Roberts wants to go through and look at all the coffins and they don't want him to.

• 1:30:03Bill Simmons?

  They get Roger Bart.

• 1:30:04Chris Ryan?

  The US Attorney.

• 1:30:05Speaker 05

  US Attorney comes in and they have to make sure that they make the US Attorney, the bad guy in this scene.

• 1:30:11Chris Ryan?

  The most fucking racist guy.

• 1:30:12Speaker 05

  The most racist guy you can. So he goes for a double that you don't ever really see. He drops an N word.

• 1:30:19Chris Ryan?

  N and K.

• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  K word.

• 1:30:20Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, N and K.

• 1:30:21Speaker 05

  And you can't do that. Like you gotta, like he drops, even me, like, I was like, oh, that, that's a little saucy right there. Like he comes in.

• 1:30:31Chris Ryan?

  It's also tough because Roger Bart is a wonderful actor and Broadway stage guy, but like his job in American Gangster is to be the most racist person in New York City in the 1970s. That's incredibly difficult.

• 1:30:46Bill Simmons?

  His racist PR was like Jokic in the 23 playoffs.

• 1:30:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. They don't even really explain who he is. He's just like, stop what you're doing, N and K.

• 1:30:55Speaker 05

  Right. And he, and he goes, I'm like, okay, well, you know, you, then he goes, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, chill, man. It's wrong.

• 1:31:04Bill Simmons?

  The rough Lohanna Rubenek Partridge over acting where it sadly, I think I had to give this star girl Carla. You're going to the same house the crooked cops you can't stand.

• 1:31:14Chris Ryan?

  Oh my God, this is Denzel.

• 1:31:15Speaker 05

  It's Denzel Washington.

• 1:31:16Speaker 06

  They tried to kill my wife.

• 1:31:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's Denzel.

• 1:31:21Bill Simmons?

  I didn't, I, I wasn't going to give anything, anything like this to Denzel.

• 1:31:25Speaker 05

  Like Denzel.

• 1:31:25Bill Simmons?

  You guys are all going to hell.

• 1:31:27Speaker 05

  Denzel is going so hard in this movie at, at certain times. He is getting it all out in this film. Smapping people around, knocking shit over.

• 1:31:38Bill Simmons?

  Gave this to Denzel.

• 1:31:40Chris Ryan?

  I mean, we were also going to probably give him the movie, so it's okay.

• 1:31:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:31:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, it's fine.

• 1:31:44Bill Simmons?

  Ben, you have a flex, so you already did it.

• 1:31:46Speaker 05

  I already did it, yeah.

• 1:31:47Bill Simmons?

  All right, let's do the CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. What do you guys here?

• 1:31:52Chris Ryan?

  Josh Brolin has had the best post-American gangster career of anyone in American gangster.

• 1:31:57Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 1:31:58Chris Ryan?

  Denzel Washington's highlights after this are Unstoppable Flight, Tragedy of Macbeth, and Gladiator 2. I'm not saying he doesn't have good movies other than those. I'm just saying like, those generally are like, people are like, damn, that was really a great Denzel performance. Crow, it's almost negligible. It's this Body of Lies and the Nice Guys. Josh Brolin did W. Milk, True Grit, Inherent Vice, Sicario, Hail Caesar, Dune 1 and 2, and is in Weapons. Like, he clearly just catapults out of this movie and is, I think, just got better material. Obviously, he's doing different kinds of roles. He's doing supporting roles. But, it's kinda wild.

• 1:32:33Speaker 05

  He also was, he also was still, it's, yeah, it's perfect. He also was still ascending. So he could be a little bit more like...

• 1:32:41Chris Ryan?

  What do you have?

• 1:32:44Speaker 05

  Ridley Scott ruined what could have been a classic, overwhelmingly classic movie.

• 1:32:51Chris Ryan?

  This ties into my take.

• 1:32:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. If...

• 1:32:54Chris Ryan?

  I think you're right. I think he might have been the wrong director.

• 1:32:56Speaker 05

  I think some of the other directors that were thrown around for this movie would have made this into not a great rewatchable movie that we love, because this movie serves you so well when you're watching it at home, because there's so much in it. But, I think the story, the godfather-esque crime epic, like timeless story, I think it's in there, but I don't think Ridley Scott was the right guy to do it.

• 1:33:18Chris Ryan?

  Who do you think was, of the directors that were up for it?

• 1:33:21Speaker 05

  I'm interested in Fuqua's version. But if you're looking at like, maybe even Fincher, maybe Fincher takes this movie too seriously, but he takes it so seriously that you get somebody who focuses on one of the ideas that could have made it a more...

• 1:33:37Chris Ryan?

  I would do Fincher for the Bangkok Golden Triangle story.

• 1:33:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:33:41Chris Ryan?

  I would do De Palma for the New York City crime story.

• 1:33:46Speaker 05

  You feel like De Palma had lost it by this point, though?

• 1:33:47Chris Ryan?

  Well, I don't know. I mean, Carlito's is, is why I still work at The Ringer is to do Carlito's Way one day. It's like, I'm just, no, I'm just waiting.

• 1:33:56Bill Simmons?

  Not to work with Bangkok craze?

• 1:33:59Chris Ryan?

  No, it's to do Sean Penn's hair in Carlito's Way. Um, yeah, and then Fuqua, like...

• 1:34:07Bill Simmons?

  Well, can we lead this into my hottest take?

• 1:34:08Chris Ryan?

  Please.

• 1:34:10Bill Simmons?

  This would have been Michael Mann's second greatest movie behind Heat. I just think he crushes this movie. It's it's all the stuff he likes. It's weird characters and people just coming in and out and all these different locations. The Golden Triangle, which he did in season one Miami Vice. And he never worked with Denzel. He did work with Russell Crowe. A lot of the people that were in his movies anyway are in this movie.

• 1:34:36Chris Ryan?

  Some of the ideas in the film are ideas that really interest him.

• 1:34:38Bill Simmons?

  He goes backwards. He loves going backwards. The Ali Frazier fight, he absolutely would have fucking filmed, at least rounded that.

• 1:34:44Chris Ryan?

  For sure.

• 1:34:44Bill Simmons?

  I just think he would have crushed this movie.

• 1:34:46Speaker 05

  What's Michael Mann's best period piece?

• 1:34:49Chris Ryan?

  Last of the Mohicans.

• 1:34:50Bill Simmons?

  Public Enemies? Or Last of the Mohicans.

• 1:34:52Chris Ryan?

  I think Last of the Mohicans.

• 1:34:53Speaker 05

  Last of the Mohicans is fucking fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:34:55Bill Simmons?

  Public Enemies. Ciara and I.

• 1:34:58Speaker 05

  You guys are in on Public Enemies.

• 1:35:00Bill Simmons?

  There's been some text.

• 1:35:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we've, there's been some revival. We're interested in a revival.

• 1:35:04Bill Simmons?

  When was the last time you watched it?

• 1:35:06Speaker 05

  When I saw it in the theaters.

• 1:35:07Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's it's on this, it'll be in the 400s somewhere.

• 1:35:11Speaker 05

  Yeah. It it does feel like Last of the Mohicans is the obvious answer now that I think about it. But that feels like even different Michael Mann. But he, that's a fucking amazing movie.

• 1:35:19Chris Ryan?

  Perfect movie.

• 1:35:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. Stay alive. I will find you.

• 1:35:22Bill Simmons?

  Find you. Casting what ifs?

• 1:35:26Bill Simmons?

  We did most of them, but uh,

• 1:35:29Bill Simmons?

  this one kind of broke my brain.

• 1:35:32Bill Simmons?

  Somebody turned down the role of Trupo before Brolin.

• 1:35:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Bill Simmons?

  James Gandolfini.

• 1:35:37Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 1:35:38Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, it's tough. I love Brolin in this movie, but man.

• 1:35:42Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:35:43Bill Simmons?

  Gandolfini as Trupo.

• 1:35:47Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:35:48Speaker 05

  It is pretty awesome.

• 1:35:49Bill Simmons?

  It's pretty good. It's right after Soprano and I just think he didn't want to play another bad guy, probably. But man.

• 1:35:56Chris Ryan?

  There was some around the time of the sort of first iteration of this movie conversation about Ray Liotta as Richie.

• 1:36:04Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have him in another spot. Um, Brad Pitt lingered in this for a second. There was a Eddie Murphy was involved at one point as maybe somebody, but no.

• 1:36:17Bill Simmons?

  Best That Guy Award. Can we graduate John Ortiz?

• 1:36:21Chris Ryan?

  To the John Ortiz Award?

• 1:36:23Bill Simmons?

  No, just John Ortiz.

• 1:36:24Speaker 05

  There's not a That Guy anymore?

• 1:36:25Chris Ryan?

  I'm fine with that.

• 1:36:26Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:36:27Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:27Bill Simmons?

  So who do you have as That Guy?

• 1:36:28Chris Ryan?

  Roger Guinevere Smith as Nate, the Bangkok Nate. Uh, Roger Bart as the racist US Attorney. Or John Polito as Rossi, although John Polito.

• 1:36:38Bill Simmons?

  I'd like to throw in Katie Strickland, too, because I'm not positive people know who she is.

• 1:36:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:41Speaker 05

  Guinevere Smith is one of the most underrated amazing actors.

• 1:36:45Chris Ryan?

  Great and so much Spike Lee stuff.

• 1:36:46Bill Simmons?

  Dionne Waiters, yeah, he's multiple Spike movies. I always like seeing him.

• 1:36:50Speaker 05

  I always liked seeing him. He's so cool in that scene where he's getting the massage that I want to get.

• 1:36:55Bill Simmons?

  I mean, they could have remade The Warriors.

• 1:36:59Speaker 05

  That looked like a good scene. I don't know. That was, that was nice.

• 1:37:03Bill Simmons?

  They could have remade The Warriors, early 2000s, just to have him play Cyrus.

• 1:37:10Bill Simmons?

  Thought I was gonna get more of a reaction.

• 1:37:13Speaker 05

  I wanted to let him.

• 1:37:14Speaker 06

  Fancy about the massage, though.

• 1:37:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:37:18Speaker 05

  Oh, for my Bad Guys, like, just his whole crew, his whole crew of cops. Those are different.

• 1:37:22Chris Ryan?

  Oh, John Hawks, Abruzzo.

• 1:37:24Speaker 05

  Not RZA.

• 1:37:25Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, Yul Vasquez and RZA, yeah.

• 1:37:27Bill Simmons?

  Dionne Waiters Award. It's a long list that includes John Ortiz, Idris Elba, Cuba Gooding Jr., Richie Koster, Katie Strickland, racist DA, or Nate, the troops connection.

• 1:37:41Chris Ryan?

  Can I also throw in Rick Young as Kunsah, the, the general?

• 1:37:46Speaker 05

  Yep. Yep.

• 1:37:48Bill Simmons?

  What's the answer?

• 1:37:51Chris Ryan?

  It's Cuba Gooding Jr.

• 1:37:52Speaker 05

  It is. It's Cuba Gooding Jr. He's got two scenes. First scene, you kind of see him a little.

• 1:37:58Bill Simmons?

  Great in this movie, though.

• 1:37:59Speaker 05

  He is.

• 1:38:00Bill Simmons?

  It's like, he can't believe he's not winning that.

• 1:38:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:03Speaker 05

  He is. It's gotta be, like, that might be the defining portrayal of Nicky Barnes, who's like, who's a.

• 1:38:09Bill Simmons?

  Cuba's in his own movie, but in a good way, and we just could have easily just made another movie with him at the same time. Yeah. Recasting Couch Director City. I'll offer you Ray Liotta. Ray Liotta as, uh, over the Armand DeSantis character.

• 1:38:25Chris Ryan?

  Ray Liotta as the mafia boss?

• 1:38:27Bill Simmons?

  Ray Liotta as the mafia boss.

• 1:38:29Chris Ryan?

  Uh, I would rather have Ray Liotta cop land Ray Liotta as Trupo or Richie.

• 1:38:34Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:38:34Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:35Bill Simmons?

  Can I offer you Eva Mendes as Frank's wife?

• 1:38:37Chris Ryan?

  You may.

• 1:38:38Speaker 05

  Ooh, you definitely can, for sure.

• 1:38:43Chris Ryan?

  Thank you, Jerry Jones.

• 1:38:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:44Chris Ryan?

  I will take that deal.

• 1:38:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:38:47Bill Simmons?

  Craig, you have flex category.

• 1:38:49Speaker 06

  I always hate it when you guys kind of already get to mine, unfortunately. I did have Armon Asante as the Judd Nelson.

• 1:38:55Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:55Speaker 06

  I don't care if he's Italian. I don't care if he's like Lucky Luciano's son in real life. He was, he's like a human cannoli in this movie. This, he was way over the top.

• 1:39:03Bill Simmons?

  I thought he sucked too. I didn't think he was good in this.

• 1:39:06Speaker 06

  The only other thing I had was the Katie Strickland was killing it, but kind of the George LRB two weeks of pay award character should have definitely been fired. As Richie's divorce attorney, I mean, she doesn't say a word in court. She gets dressed down by Carla Gugino. She has sex with her client. And he does not have any shot of winning custody. Kind of just all time bad divorce.

• 1:39:26Bill Simmons?

  And finds out that he's had sex with strippers and.

• 1:39:30Chris Ryan?

  And she's just more turned on by it.

• 1:39:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:33Speaker 05

  Richie is really putting in work, man. That's what, that's one thing. He's a stick man.

• 1:39:38Bill Simmons?

  Half assed in research, um, they had to pay back $3 million, Brian Grazer and Ridley Scott, cause they ran so far over budget. Barely happens. Um, the BETV series, American Gangster with Ving Rhames.

• 1:39:56Speaker 05

  A lawsuit or something, right?

• 1:39:57Bill Simmons?

  It existed before this movie. Russell Crowe gave RZA mint condition 1961 Gretsch guitar.

• 1:40:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Bill Simmons?

  Cause he really liked him.

• 1:40:09Speaker 05

  They've been friends since. They hang out.

• 1:40:12Bill Simmons?

  So Frank Lucas's driver. In real life.

• 1:40:18Chris Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 1:40:19Bill Simmons?

  Melvin Combs, father of Puff, Puffy Combs.

• 1:40:23Chris Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:40:25Bill Simmons?

  Shot to death, uh, at age 33, when, uh, Puffy was two years old. And then, uh, the location stuff was really hard trying to find parts of New York that they could turn into. They basically went into the 110s in that range.

• 1:40:40Chris Ryan?

  I would wonder, I would be really curious to know whether they could shoot this today.

• 1:40:46Bill Simmons?

  In Harlem?

• 1:40:47Chris Ryan?

  And have it not cost a billion dollars because it's like.

• 1:40:49Bill Simmons?

  I think they're CGI-ing all of them.

• 1:40:51Chris Ryan?

  Well, it's just, it's so interesting because like when you read about like Tarantino making Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and him like, how he was able to set dress Hollywood Boulevard or Sunset Boulevard or something. And still it'd be like, this frame is still what it would have looked like in the late 60s, you know? And New York, I feel like in 2007 or whatever, when they made this, you could still get some 1970s New York in like, in shots, but now I wonder whether or not there's just too many.

• 1:41:20Bill Simmons?

  Corporate stuff.

• 1:41:21Chris Ryan?

  Joybirds.

• 1:41:22Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:22Chris Ryan?

  You know, like or whatever.

• 1:41:23Speaker 06

  Did you, wait, you said Frank Lucas's driver is Diddy's father?

• 1:41:28Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:29Chris Ryan?

  In real life.

• 1:41:30Speaker 06

  In real life.

• 1:41:31Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:31Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:32Speaker 06

  Wow.

• 1:41:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Uh, did you come across the bit that Coppola reportedly considered making a Frank Lucas or Frank Lucas type character a big part of Godfather 3?

• 1:41:48Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:48Chris Ryan?

  It's pretty fascinating.

• 1:41:49Bill Simmons?

  I had that in here somewhere in my weird notes.

• 1:41:51Speaker 05

  International Mobiley?

• 1:41:52Chris Ryan?

  No, I think it was like, I think as they were like, what would we make Godfather Part 3 about?

• 1:41:56Speaker 05

  International Mobiley!

• 1:41:58Speaker 06

  International Mobiley!

• 1:42:03Bill Simmons?

  Um, Apex Mountain?

• 1:42:06Bill Simmons?

  Denzel, no. Russell Crowe, no.

• 1:42:10Bill Simmons?

  Disjointed gangster movies, I'm gonna say yes. Dope, big, sprawling.

• 1:42:15Chris Ryan?

  What's it up against?

• 1:42:19Bill Simmons?

  I don't know.

• 1:42:23Bill Simmons?

  It's not that many of these. Like, Once Upon a.

• 1:42:25Chris Ryan?

  It's so high up the apex that you can't see anything else.

• 1:42:28Bill Simmons?

  Once Upon a Time in America?

• 1:42:29Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:42:31Bill Simmons?

  That movie goes on for five years.

• 1:42:33Chris Ryan?

  Like, considering, uh, I don't know, like, Triple Nine? Like, are, like, how, how, how low down are we going for Disjointed Gangster?

• 1:42:43Bill Simmons?

  Here's my answer.

• 1:42:44Speaker 06

  Is a Bronx Tale a disjointed gangster movie?

• 1:42:46Bill Simmons?

  Carlyle's Way.

• 1:42:47Chris Ryan?

  Disjointed.

• 1:42:48Bill Simmons?

  Not disjointed. Carlyle's Way and Disjointed. I didn't put a lot of thought into that one.

• 1:42:51Chris Ryan?

  That's okay.

• 1:42:51Bill Simmons?

  Um, Ridley Scott, no.

• 1:42:53Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:42:54Bill Simmons?

  Ridley Scott, no. John Ortiz?

• 1:42:57Chris Ryan?

  One of my favorite performances by him.

• 1:42:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like he's just coming off Miami Vice.

• 1:43:01Bill Simmons?

  Uh, Hawks?

• 1:43:04Speaker 06

  Not yet. Coming.

• 1:43:05Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:08Bill Simmons?

  Harlem movies?

• 1:43:10Speaker 05

  Not to me.

• 1:43:11Bill Simmons?

  What do you have?

• 1:43:13Speaker 05

  Um, so, I mean.

• 1:43:15Bill Simmons?

  Harlem Nights?

• 1:43:16Speaker 05

  Harlem Nights, one of my.

• 1:43:18Bill Simmons?

  Harlem Nights is not a great movie. It's just, it's got great people in it.

• 1:43:22Speaker 05

  Just be, just be careful.

• 1:43:23Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, you're coming off a little bit like a US attorney right now.

• 1:43:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, you like the.

• 1:43:28Bill Simmons?

  Eddie Murphy never directed again after that movie.

• 1:43:30Speaker 05

  The reality is that you're, the inroads that you've made after the Sinners pod, like, we can't even really talk about, like, the, what you did, but you could, you could give it all back right now. You don't want to do that.

• 1:43:42Bill Simmons?

  Right? I didn't say it wasn't an entertaining movie. I wouldn't say it was like a, it's not a better made movie than this.

• 1:43:48Speaker 05

  My favorite movie of all time takes place in Harlem. That's Mo' Better Blues. And so I would say that Mo' Better Blues is better than American Gangster.

• 1:43:57Bill Simmons?

  The golden triangle in a movie or TV show. The answer is the two-part episode of Miami Vice with Edward James Olmos being reunited with his wife.

• 1:44:10Bill Simmons?

  One of my favorite, do you remember that?

• 1:44:11Speaker 05

  Of course I did, yeah.

• 1:44:13Bill Simmons?

  They're at a, they're at an outdoor bar, Tubbs and Castillo, played by Edward James Olmos. And he talks to Thai and the waiter and Tubbs goes, Captain, I didn't know you spoke Thai. Castillo's like the least fun friend the guy ever.

• 1:44:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, you've given all of the Sinners goodwill back.

• 1:44:31Bill Simmons?

  With golden triangle?

• 1:44:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, with that, that, oh, you, was that, did you do Tubbs or Croc? You just did Tubbs, yeah.

• 1:44:37Bill Simmons?

  I did Tubbs.

• 1:44:38Speaker 05

  So you're back at zero.

• 1:44:40Bill Simmons?

  That's how Tubbs talks. He was bad, a lot of energy. Is it?

• 1:44:47Bill Simmons?

  Watch the scene, I bet I nailed it.

• 1:44:49Speaker 05

  Okay, I will.

• 1:44:50Bill Simmons?

  Captain, I didn't know you spoke Thai.

• 1:44:51Speaker 05

  And you did it again, yeah.

• 1:44:54Bill Simmons?

  Watch it. It's a social media clip, I nailed it.

• 1:44:58Bill Simmons?

  Josh Burrell?

• 1:45:00Speaker 05

  No. Fuck no. No way.

• 1:45:02Chris Ryan?

  Although 2007 is

• 1:45:04Speaker 05

  2007.

• 1:45:04Chris Ryan?

  Perhaps his apex mountain year. He's no country in this.

• 1:45:07Bill Simmons?

  The lady who played Denzel's wife, I'm gonna say yes.

• 1:45:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's definitely hers, yeah.

• 1:45:12Chris Ryan?

  You think this is? No, it's not.

• 1:45:14Bill Simmons?

  Um, horrible impersonations of Ali Frazier or Will Chamberlain?

• 1:45:18Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, 1960s and 70s athletes being terribly portrayed.

• 1:45:22Bill Simmons?

  All right. Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:45:23Speaker 05

  Oh, no, I got, I got, I got another apex mountain. I gotta ask you guys where.

• 1:45:26Bill Simmons?

  What is it?

• 1:45:26Speaker 05

  Dope kingpin biopics. When I looked at it, it's not as mean as you think.

• 1:45:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:30Speaker 05

  It's really like Blow, right?

• 1:45:34Bill Simmons?

  Tony Montana.

• 1:45:36Speaker 05

  That he wasn't real.

• 1:45:38Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:45:39Speaker 05

  So like Blow, Paid in Full.

• 1:45:42Chris Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:43Speaker 05

  And then this are the three that stand out. I, I looked around for other ones, like actually like drug kingpin biopics.

• 1:45:49Chris Ryan?

  So much of it is TV now.

• 1:45:50Speaker 05

  So, yeah, the guy actually existed.

• 1:45:52Bill Simmons?

  That would've been a good Hattas take. We needed more drug kingpins to make biopics of.

• 1:45:57Speaker 05

  There were so many of them.

• 1:45:58Bill Simmons?

  Too light.

• 1:45:59Speaker 05

  And like, a lot of the guys, they show up in this movie and we've talked about them. We've talked about Nicky Barnes. We've talked about all of these other people. They pop up in different things, but then they're kind of hard to make. They all end up the same way. The guy fucking goes to jail.

• 1:46:11Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:11Speaker 05

  Like, they all end up in the same fucking way.

• 1:46:13Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Bill Simmons?

  Captain, I didn't know you spoke Thai.

• 1:46:17Speaker 05

  There you go.

• 1:46:17Bill Simmons?

  So you wanted Van?

• 1:46:18Speaker 05

  There you go, right there.

• 1:46:19Bill Simmons?

  Is that Santa Tassin, okay?

• 1:46:21Speaker 05

  Hey, Captain, I didn't know you spoke Thai.

• 1:46:24Bill Simmons?

  Captain, you speak Thai? Cruise or Hanks?

• 1:46:27Chris Ryan?

  I have Cruise as Richie.

• 1:46:30Bill Simmons?

  Really?

• 1:46:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:31Bill Simmons?

  I thought this was such an obvious Hanks part.

• 1:46:33Chris Ryan?

  I, I think Cruise would be like, I am trying to get through night school. And he would go to night school in real life to try, you know, like, and I could see him being like, I'm a fake nervous about public speaking. And then at the end gives like his great summation. I wish we had a little bit more in court stuff with Richie. It was pretty cool. No?

• 1:46:55Bill Simmons?

  I don't see, I don't see Cruise as a 1971 New York detective. I don't know. I just would feel like it was Tom Cruise the whole time.

• 1:47:02Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:02Bill Simmons?

  Like he was playing house. Woody, you're the tiebreaker, Van.

• 1:47:04Speaker 05

  I have Cruise as Frank. I wanna see it.

• 1:47:11Speaker 05

  I want to see Cruz.

• 1:47:12Speaker 06

  That's Al Paca.

• 1:47:14Speaker 05

  I want to see Cruz.

• 1:47:15Speaker 06

  Don't plot that, plot that.

• 1:47:18Speaker 05

  I want to see Cruz play Frank. And I was, I don't want to, I don't want to, I just want him to make the movie and not even address it. Like, and the thing, you know that Frank will, whatever.

• 1:47:28Chris Ryan?

  So who's winning here, Hanks?

• 1:47:29Speaker 05

  It's, it's fucking.

• 1:47:30Chris Ryan?

  Hanks has Richie we're talking about.

• 1:47:31Bill Simmons?

  Did you pick Hanks?

• 1:47:32Speaker 05

  Hanks has Richie, yeah.

• 1:47:33Chris Ryan?

  Okay, okay.

• 1:47:34Bill Simmons?

  So Hanks. I have Hanks as Richie as well. Scorsese or Spielberg?

• 1:47:37Speaker 05

  Scorsese. Scorsese, yeah.

• 1:47:39Bill Simmons?

  What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Trupo?

• 1:47:42Chris Ryan?

  I think Trupo.

• 1:47:43Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:43Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Although, you know what? Philip Seymour Hoffman as Richie is an interesting.

• 1:47:48Bill Simmons?

  That's actually really interesting.

• 1:47:49Chris Ryan?

  Pretty interesting.

• 1:47:51Bill Simmons?

  The stick man part would have been tough.

• 1:47:53Chris Ryan?

  Kind of, I would have, I would have paid to see it. You know? Philip Seymour Hoffman, having sex like a cop, I would have paid to see it.

• 1:47:59Speaker 05

  He got down in, was it, when the devil knows you're dead?

• 1:48:02Bill Simmons?

  Oh, he got down, all right.

• 1:48:03Speaker 05

  He was getting busy.

• 1:48:04Bill Simmons?

  Marisa Tomei.

• 1:48:06Speaker 05

  Another one.

• 1:48:07Bill Simmons?

  Jesus.

• 1:48:07Speaker 05

  Hall of Fame.

• 1:48:09Bill Simmons?

  All right, picking it's Frank has this golden triangle connection.

• 1:48:14Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:14Bill Simmons?

  How does he have any competition in Harlem?

• 1:48:17Chris Ryan?

  What do you mean?

• 1:48:18Bill Simmons?

  He's just got by far the best stuff. He's like, he's like in the NBA with a $900 million salary cap and everyone else has a 40 million cap.

• 1:48:27Chris Ryan?

  How does he have anybody coming at us?

• 1:48:28Bill Simmons?

  He's just be blowing everyone away. He's getting all this crazy drugs that's the best drugs that he can suffer.

• 1:48:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that is what happened, but every, but you know.

• 1:48:34Bill Simmons?

  He shouldn't have any competition.

• 1:48:35Chris Ryan?

  But the competition isn't necessarily in the product, the competition is in the territory.

• 1:48:40Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, that's what I mean. He should have all the territories.

• 1:48:42Speaker 06

  Well, he was selling to the people who would distribute into those territories.

• 1:48:45Speaker 05

  He's gonna have to go to war.

• 1:48:46Bill Simmons?

  He should be like Vince McMahon in WWE.

• 1:48:48Speaker 05

  He started wholesaling now.

• 1:48:49Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:50Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but that's when the mafia comes in, because he goes, I have 110th to like, whatever, 150th, river to river.

• 1:48:55Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:55Chris Ryan?

  I run Harlem. And then they're like, but we can go to Detroit.

• 1:48:58Bill Simmons?

  I think it could have gone national. It would have been like, like Vince McMahon in 1982 with wrestling.

• 1:49:02Speaker 05

  That's legitimately what Armando Asante's character said. He said, let's start going to California. He didn't want to do it.

• 1:49:06Bill Simmons?

  Should have happened in five seconds.

• 1:49:08Speaker 05

  This is what you would have done if you were Frank.

• 1:49:10Bill Simmons?

  I would have done the Vince McMahon. Let's go national. Cable's coming. No repercussions at all for Frank shooting Tango in the middle of the street?

• 1:49:21Chris Ryan?

  Harlem had his back.

• 1:49:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, he did right by Harlem. So Harlem was gonna do right by him.

• 1:49:26Bill Simmons?

  Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, not only were they not dating in 1971, nobody knew who the fuck she was. We mentioned that earlier. I have one more, but what do you have for picking this?

• 1:49:33Chris Ryan?

  It's kind of goes along with what you're saying is I could stand a couple of more. What year is it up on screen? Or what time of year is it?

• 1:49:42Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I have no idea what.

• 1:49:43Chris Ryan?

  And so sometimes you're like, is this two weeks later or is this seven years later? You know, that the time stuff gets a little bit murky in this.

• 1:49:52Speaker 05

  My nig is like, mama, you know, I'm selling dope.

• 1:49:56Chris Ryan?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, there's.

• 1:49:57Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, mom knows.

• 1:49:58Speaker 05

  Mama, you know, I'm selling dope.

• 1:50:00Chris Ryan?

  Great scene.

• 1:50:01Speaker 05

  Great scene.

• 1:50:02Chris Ryan?

  Disconnected from the reality of the movie.

• 1:50:03Speaker 05

  You know, you know, I'm selling dope. You know what's going on.

• 1:50:06Chris Ryan?

  But it is cool when she's like, no, everybody knows you don't shoot cops.

• 1:50:10Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. All right. My last one is a big one. So we do these based on a true story things, which basically means this was a guy who existed. Now we're just gonna make up shit. And then they go to another level in the closing credits where they're like, Frank served 75 years. It's like, no, he didn't. None of this happened. It's all, I just think they should have done, Frank went to prison and became a centaur.

• 1:50:35Bill Simmons?

  Richie Roberts left the force to coach the Lakers to five NBA titles. Like just fucking go nuts.

• 1:50:43Bill Simmons?

  Triplo came back to life and became a vampire.

• 1:50:46Chris Ryan?

  Richie Roberts and Princess Di are living in the Cayman Islands under assumed identities.

• 1:50:51Bill Simmons?

  Just go nuts. You've already made up everything. Have fun with it. Sequel, prequel, prestige, TV, all black cast or untouchable?

• 1:50:59Chris Ryan?

  Should we switch this to?

• 1:51:00Bill Simmons?

  Rusty?

• 1:51:01Chris Ryan?

  Based on Van's suggestion, all white cast?

• 1:51:03Bill Simmons?

  All white cast.

• 1:51:05Speaker 05

  Best.

• 1:51:06Bill Simmons?

  New category.

• 1:51:07Speaker 05

  All white cast.

• 1:51:09Chris Ryan?

  Ruffalo, uh, you know, Adam Scott.

• 1:51:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:13Chris Ryan?

  Adam Scott as Nicky Barnes.

• 1:51:15Speaker 05

  Adam Scott as Nicky Barnes works.

• 1:51:17Bill Simmons?

  That works. Rob McElhenney is as, uh.

• 1:51:21Speaker 05

  Cruz. Cruz as Frank.

• 1:51:25Speaker 05

  So who plays, who plays Frank's mom, Sally Field?

• 1:51:28Bill Simmons?

  Do you realize how funny it would be if in, in the current America we're in, if somebody's like, I'm just doing an all white American gangster.

• 1:51:35Chris Ryan?

  And J D Vance was like, this is great.

• 1:51:37Bill Simmons?

  J D Vance is like, I'm invested in this.

• 1:51:39Speaker 05

  I'm telling you, I love this fucking.

• 1:51:41Chris Ryan?

  God, God.

• 1:51:42Speaker 05

  The essence of America.

• 1:51:43Chris Ryan?

  This is so cool.

• 1:51:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, the story, we, what, what we wanted to do is we wanted to take the story and just tweak it a little bit, make it more American.

• 1:51:50Chris Ryan?

  And introducing J J Reddick.

• 1:51:54Bill Simmons?

  Just going all white dudes.

• 1:51:56Speaker 05

  Trying to think white people.

• 1:52:01Chris Ryan?

  J J could play Stevie, the athlete, yeah.

• 1:52:04Speaker 05

  J J could play Stevie the athlete and you change it to basketball.

• 1:52:06Chris Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:52:07Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better?

• 1:52:08Speaker 05

  I got you a trial with the Knicks.

• 1:52:10Bill Simmons?

  Is this movie better than Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Mad Dog Russo, I added him. Doris Burke, just tragically, uh, got pulled off, off the A team. Sam Jackson, no, Byron Mayo, Tony Romo, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, Bangkok Craig, or Wilford Grimley in the.

• 1:52:27Chris Ryan?

  Bangkok Craig.

• 1:52:31Bill Simmons?

  What is it?

• 1:52:32Chris Ryan?

  We gotta do one more for D B.

• 1:52:33Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:34Chris Ryan?

  We see you, Mr. Lucas, taking the lessons of your mentor, Bumpy Johnson, as you take the ball straight into the heart of Chiang Kai-shek's defeated army and buy opium straight from the manufacturer, long before there was Magic Johnson, there was Blue Magic and you, Mr. Lucas, are the wizard. Au revoir, D B. I actually, I feel bad, yeah.

• 1:53:00Speaker 05

  I like her.

• 1:53:00Bill Simmons?

  I think you should have said something in, uh, in Vietnamese at the end there.

• 1:53:12Bill Simmons?

  Just want to ask her, who gets it?

• 1:53:14Chris Ryan?

  I'm gonna, this is not the answer you want. It's either Harris Savvides for cinematography or Arthur Max for direction. But I think they did get art direction, right? Or they got nominated.

• 1:53:24Bill Simmons?

  I would say art direction, just because that got nominated.

• 1:53:28Bill Simmons?

  Probably an answerable questions.

• 1:53:32Bill Simmons?

  How is Mark Ruffalo not in this movie? What was he doing?

• 1:53:37Bill Simmons?

  Was he not in this?

• 1:53:37Chris Ryan?

  Well, he's in our all white version.

• 1:53:39Bill Simmons?

  But he should have been in there. We could, there was 19 parts he could have played for two scenes.

• 1:53:44Chris Ryan?

  What years? What year's collateral?

• 1:53:48Bill Simmons?

  A couple of years before 2000.

• 1:53:49Chris Ryan?

  Oh, so he could have just gone right.

• 1:53:50Bill Simmons?

  He's right in the zone of when he would just pop in the shit.

• 1:53:53Chris Ryan?

  Because of tax.

• 1:53:54Bill Simmons?

  I do. But like, he could have been nine parts in this.

• 1:53:59Bill Simmons?

  Was this the Denzel performance that created the Jay Pharoah impersonation?

• 1:54:04Speaker 05

  Where he just goes over the top as Denzel?

• 1:54:06Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 1:54:07Speaker 05

  This is the beginning of Denzel's.

• 1:54:08Bill Simmons?

  My man.

• 1:54:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, it is.

• 1:54:10Bill Simmons?

  Was this the movie? Or was it like Training Day plus this? Like, I wonder.

• 1:54:15Speaker 05

  I feel like this is the beginning of the.

• 1:54:18Bill Simmons?

  Denzel as a character.

• 1:54:19Speaker 05

  Denzel as a character, like I said before.

• 1:54:22Bill Simmons?

  Do you have any other unanswerables?

• 1:54:24Chris Ryan?

  How long would this movie have to be for it to be too long?

• 1:54:28Bill Simmons?

  I, I mean, I could have got another hour.

• 1:54:30Chris Ryan?

  Like, if I was like a three night special event, six hours of American Gangster, including like an hour in Vietnam and Bangkok, an hour of Rivera's fall from being a cop to a junkie to jumping out of an ambulance, like a good 45 minutes.

• 1:54:47Bill Simmons?

  Way better for prestige.

• 1:54:48Chris Ryan?

  On Stevie Lucas trying to make the Yankees.

• 1:54:51Speaker 05

  He failed, that, that, that right there would be a fucking awesome subplot to investigate.

• 1:54:56Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:56Speaker 05

  That character, like trying to be like his uncle, blowing it with the Yankees, Billy Martin, all of that stuff. But like, even Frank's fall, it happens pretty abruptly.

• 1:55:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:07Speaker 05

  I would have wanted to like dive into it more. My unanswerable question.

• 1:55:11Chris Ryan?

  What's Trupo's home life like?

• 1:55:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, what, what happens to Trupo? Trupo's so one note.

• 1:55:15Chris Ryan?

  He has a, a housekeeper?

• 1:55:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:55:17Chris Ryan?

  What golf club are they members of?

• 1:55:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Where are they going? What are they doing? Um, did Frank's wife set him up?

• 1:55:25Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 1:55:26Bill Simmons?

  Oh.

• 1:55:26Speaker 05

  She might have. She made him wear the jacket. I've always thought this. I don't trust her. Anyway, we can move on.

• 1:55:33Chris Ryan?

  I don't know. I'm not defending her like.

• 1:55:35Speaker 05

  I don't trust her.

• 1:55:35Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:55:36Speaker 05

  She made him wear the jacket. He goes there. He's wearing the thing. I think another thing that I would like to, I think they got to her. I think the government got to her.

• 1:55:46Bill Simmons?

  That's pretty interesting because there's a couple of scenes that are kind of missing. Like there's that one scene, he goes to the bathroom and he's wearing like the fake beard that he takes off.

• 1:55:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:55Bill Simmons?

  But we don't know why he has a fake beard on.

• 1:55:58Chris Ryan?

  I think because he's going to look at Tango's like operation.

• 1:56:03Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, I feel like there's, there's some choppiness that maybe there was like a scene where they.

• 1:56:08Speaker 05

  They Richie got to her. Richie got to the wife. Richie the stick man.

• 1:56:12Bill Simmons?

  What piece of memorabilia?

• 1:56:13Chris Ryan?

  Oh, I have one more unanswerable question just related to the sports stuff, but could you go from like the street to the Yankees in 1974? Like, or was he on Keith Law's top one hundred?

• 1:56:25Bill Simmons?

  I think you could do in the NBA back then.

• 1:56:26Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:56:27Bill Simmons?

  Like the NBA guys would show up. Nobody even knew where they went to college.

• 1:56:30Chris Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:56:31Bill Simmons?

  Baseball, I don't know.

• 1:56:33Speaker 05

  But.

• 1:56:34Bill Simmons?

  Because they had the minors and it was pretty hard for somebody to just show up and make the major.

• 1:56:37Chris Ryan?

  And get a meeting with Billy Martin. Yeah.

• 1:56:39Speaker 05

  So a drug dealer is gonna.

• 1:56:41Bill Simmons?

  Well, Frank Lucas would have arranged that though.

• 1:56:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, but like that's, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:56:45Bill Simmons?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:45Speaker 05

  So a reputed drug dealer is gonna call the New York Yankees organization and say, hey, I want a trial for my nephew. And then they're gonna go like, yeah.

• 1:56:52Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, because they don't want to die.

• 1:56:54Chris Ryan?

  Or they'll, he'll give them a million dollars and like.

• 1:56:56Speaker 05

  Or maybe so, maybe so.

• 1:56:58Bill Simmons?

  Piece of memorabilia you'd want or not want from this movie? I'll offer you the piano. Game used, heads slammed into the piano, piano. Frank's suitcase was cool, that old school, big brown suitcase. Frank's entire outfit from the Ali fight.

• 1:57:15Speaker 05

  The jacket, yeah.

• 1:57:16Bill Simmons?

  Yeah. What else do you have?

• 1:57:17Chris Ryan?

  Trupo's leather duster.

• 1:57:20Chris Ryan?

  Very cool. Trupo's car. We, you know, we kind of usually.

• 1:57:24Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, cars are.

• 1:57:24Chris Ryan?

  Don't do cars, but.

• 1:57:27Speaker 05

  The jacket, the outfit, that's the most iconic piece of memory.

• 1:57:31Bill Simmons?

  At least the hat.

• 1:57:32Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:32Bill Simmons?

  If you have the hat, I think that's a move. Uh, Coach Finstock or for best life lesson, quitting while your head is not the same as quitting.

• 1:57:38Chris Ryan?

  I had the same one.

• 1:57:38Bill Simmons?

  Yep. Best double feature choice?

• 1:57:41Chris Ryan?

  French Connection. French Connection.

• 1:57:42Bill Simmons?

  Oh, you're going drug and drug.

• 1:57:44Chris Ryan?

  It's the prequel. French Connection is, is, is they, they get the, the Marseille drugs off the streets, but then they go pumped it back.

• 1:57:51Bill Simmons?

  You wouldn't do virtuosity so we can get Crow and Denzel 12 years apart?

• 1:57:54Chris Ryan?

  I would do the French Connection.

• 1:57:57Bill Simmons?

  Not a virtuosity guy, CR?

• 1:57:58Chris Ryan?

  I like virtuosity. We haven't done the French Connection on this pod either.

• 1:58:02Bill Simmons?

  Is that, what's the movie where they give Denzel VD? Is that John Lithgow?

• 1:58:06Speaker 05

  That is Ricochet.

• 1:58:07Chris Ryan?

  Ricochet.

• 1:58:08Speaker 05

  That is.

• 1:58:08Bill Simmons?

  That movie's fucking crazy.

• 1:58:10Speaker 05

  That's an insane movie.

• 1:58:12Chris Ryan?

  That's like, I can't believe this was in theaters and I saw it when I was a kid.

• 1:58:16Bill Simmons?

  I gotta revisit that. That's gotta be on Tubi.

• 1:58:18Speaker 05

  That's a crazy movie. That's, that's to me is a huge rewatchable. Huge, so much ridiculous shit happens in John Lithgow.

• 1:58:27Bill Simmons?

  He's out of his mind in that movie.

• 1:58:29Speaker 05

  Uh, the, the, the armor and fights the Aryan Brotherhood.

• 1:58:33Chris Ryan?

  Honestly, it's one of those movies that made me like suspicious of John Lithgow as a person for, for a swell long time after that.

• 1:58:40Bill Simmons?

  I agree with that.

• 1:58:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:41Bill Simmons?

  What do you have for who won the movie?

• 1:58:43Speaker 05

  I have Blow as best double feature choice, by the way.

• 1:58:45Bill Simmons?

  Oh, Blow?

• 1:58:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:58:46Bill Simmons?

  Who won the movie?

• 1:58:48Chris Ryan?

  Denzel.

• 1:58:50Speaker 05

  Denzel Washington.

• 1:58:50Bill Simmons?

  I wanted to say Crow, but it's Denzel. Who do you have, Craig?

• 1:58:53Speaker 06

  It's Denzel, I think.

• 1:58:54Bill Simmons?

  Craig, what was your take?

• 1:58:56Speaker 06

  Never seen it, really enjoyed it.

• 1:58:58Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:58Speaker 06

  I didn't have a problem with the length at all. It's, I mean, it's so ambitious and it's so jam packed, but man, it's moving. Like there's so much going on. I think it's really smooth, really well paced. Um, I think it's probably like, I think the reason why it doesn't get to that next level, like it's a perfect rewatchables. It's like a pro bowler, but not an all pro. I just think the character arcs don't officially get there.

• 1:59:18Chris Ryan?

  Very well put.

• 1:59:19Speaker 06

  You know?

• 1:59:19Chris Ryan?

  Pro bowler, not an all pro.

• 1:59:20Speaker 06

  Yeah, cause the, the just, the characters, you don't, you don't really feel for anybody too, too much in this movie, I would say. Um, Richie or Frank, you don't quite get there all the way, but I thought this was great. Super fun. This is a movie you can jump in at any time. It's almost like you don't even know where the movie starts or ends.

• 1:59:36Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, that was like my more recent relationship with it really is typing in American gangster scene into YouTube and then watching it out of order.

• 1:59:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:59:44Chris Ryan?

  And then you're just like, oh, that was awesome.

• 1:59:47Speaker 05

  And every scene that Denzel is in, he's giving something crazy.

• 1:59:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:52Speaker 05

  And not very many scenes where he's in the scene and he's not making some type of grand point about something.

• 1:59:59Chris Ryan?

  I mean, there's a that first time Tango goes up to him in the diner, but the first scene when he's just like, now you owe me 20% at the jar's empty and before he gets killed. Denzel like cleaning his hands from his toast with jam. You're just like, this, this whole thing, he has thought, he's like, you're gonna kill him one day. Yeah, like you know that now.

• 2:00:20Speaker 06

  I don't know why this movie hasn't persisted, though. And, and I mean, sometimes.

• 2:00:24Bill Simmons?

  I feel like it has.

• 2:00:25Speaker 06

  Oh.

• 2:00:25Bill Simmons?

  Just not like, like in the heat.

• 2:00:27Speaker 06

  I don't think this movie is.

• 2:00:28Chris Ryan?

  It was just, I think it was like did well on the Netflix.

• 2:00:31Bill Simmons?

  I think on Netflix it had a resurgence.

• 2:00:33Chris Ryan?

  Which is now it's coming off Netflix.

• 2:00:34Bill Simmons?

  Yeah, ironically coming off fun.

• 2:00:35Speaker 06

  It's just crazy. I always forget that Goodfellas made 45 million dollars and this made 230 million dollars.

• 2:00:41Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:41Speaker 06

  I mean.

• 2:00:42Speaker 05

  I think things had changed a little bit.

• 2:00:44Chris Ryan?

  People fucking love Denzel Washington.

• 2:00:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, and Denzel was like a gigantic star.

• 2:00:47Speaker 06

  But I don't know if culturally, if like, people talk about scenes from this movie, moments, it hasn't really lived on in that way compared to a lot of other famous gangster films.

• 2:00:55Chris Ryan?

  I know, I think, I feel like I hear the Tango scene referenced a lot.

• 2:00:59Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:00:59Chris Ryan?

  You hear like some of the.

• 2:01:00Bill Simmons?

  We just started it.

• 2:01:01Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, we did it.

• 2:01:02Bill Simmons?

  We watched, we got the ball rolling. Now American gangster's back.

• 2:01:04Speaker 06

  My life lesson is, is shoot the guy in the heart.

• 2:01:07Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:01:09Speaker 05

  So he can see your face as he dies.

• 2:01:11Speaker 06

  You want him to know what you did.

• 2:01:12Chris Ryan?

  Bill, I didn't know you spoke Thai. I didn't know you spoke Thai.

• 2:01:16Speaker 05

  I didn't know you spoke Thai.

• 2:01:17Chris Ryan?

  You speak Thai, really?

• 2:01:18Speaker 05

  You, you, you were more like, I didn't know you spoke Thai, Jai, Turkey, get back, Jack. That's kind of how you, like, that's, well, I'm just saying.

• 2:01:29Speaker 06

  Did you see Tubbs in the mid eighties?

• 2:01:31Speaker 05

  You know, you know what I mean? So fuck with it.

• 2:01:34Bill Simmons?

  YouTube will back me up.

• 2:01:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, I'm sure they will.

• 2:01:36Bill Simmons?

  CR, happy 400.

• 2:01:38Chris Ryan?

  Great to be back.

• 2:01:39Bill Simmons?

  Fan, great to see you as always. Thanks to Greg and Kahaw as well.

• 2:01:43Speaker 06

  And Eduardo.

• 2:01:45Bill Simmons?

  And Eduardo. Uh, I'm not sure what's happening for 401. Oh, and Ronic, too.

• 2:01:50Speaker 06

  Got a whole team.

• 2:01:51Bill Simmons?

  Whole team for the rewatchables.

• 2:01:52Speaker 06

  That's right.

• 2:01:53Bill Simmons?

  Uh, and you can check us out on the Ring of Movies YouTube channel as well. Great to see you guys.

• 2:02:02Speaker 05

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