The Winners and Losers of the Summer Movies Came Roaring Back. Plus: ‘Hope,’ ‘The Uprising,’ and 10 More We Missed.

0:00I'm Sean Fennese. I'm Amanda Dava and this is the Big Picture A Conversation show about the end of summer. Amanda is back in America and today on the show. We're talking about some late summer movies we missed to the winners and losers of an extraordinary season at the box office and the ghastly results of our summer movie preview game. And after that, something cool. Earlier this month, a new program on the Criterion channel launched collecting many of the films from filmmaker Abel Ferrara, the man who made King of New York, Bad Lieutenant Miss 45, and many other classics I helped curate that package. There's an intro on the channel that features me talking about Ferrara's body of work and why it matters. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by filmmaker and friend of the show, Ben David Grobinski, for a deeper dive into Ferrara's work and what makes it so special. So definitely stick around for that. But first, some movie news with Amanda in studio right after this.

1:04This episode is presented by State Farm. You know the feeling, long day, good meal, you finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen. Slasher, romcom, period drama, psychological thriller, but some decisions don't have to be that hard. State Farm is here to help. Like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan, bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Covered options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Okay, dancing queen. How you doing? You're back. I'm back. You feel good? Yeah, I'm glad to be back. Okay. I mean, I just spend a lot of time telling you and Jack and Lucas just how I absolutely, it was at peak powers. I mean, Venice and then on the way, on the way home for Venice. But I got a good night's sleep. I'm excited to see everybody. I'm locked in for fall. Huge fall ahead. So much to discuss. First thing we're going to discuss has nothing to do with the fall. It has to do with Valentine's Day because the Valentine's Day film of 2027 will be Remain,

2:09a new supernatural romance thriller from M. Night Shyamalan co-pend by Nicholas Sparks. I love it. The teaser premiered this week. You say what? Count me in. I mean, here's my only thing. I don't know how this is going to go. And there is, I don't know how much of a balance there will be between M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks, but I don't want a happy ending. Okay. You know, I don't want this. I don't, I don't want to. I'm not sure if that's in the all thing. You think there's going to be a happy ending? I'm concerned. But what if it's like we find a greater peace in love? What if it's like a notebook happy ending? What is the ending of that movie? I don't remember. You don't remember? I'm going to see it once. Well, so he keeps reading her the dementia notebook. And then she wakes up for 20 seconds and she's like, oh, we're like healthy and the kids are healthy. And I still love you. And then they die together in their bed. Have you been keeping a good dimension notebook for me? It's called this podcast. Yeah. There's a good thing. There's a public record of all of my thoughts because they're going every day. Jake Gyllenhaal Phoebe Dynover, other stars of this movie, and it did get punted out

3:12of 2026 to 2027, which I found to be a little worrying. So did Phoebe Dynover's other movie? Yes. A place in hell. No, that's not Phoebe Dynover. That's Daisy Edgar Jones. I'm a show. Oh, it is. Oh, I'm sorry to the very beautiful young girl. It makes it up your white lady. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I apologize. You're both very pretty. So the movie, you know what I remind the trailer reminded me a bit of what lies beneath kind of a ghostly romance. Yeah. With maybe some some shenanigans, some violent ends, perhaps. We shall see. I'm looking forward to that. There's also this week that Paul Figg has attached to a new version of the Italian job. Can I tell you a secret? Yeah. I've never seen the remake of the Italian job. Oh, okay. Well, I was about to say mini-coopers to you, but now I've just boiled a major part of that's in the new Italian job, right? I have also not seen it. Wow. Okay. So no salt. And can I tell you, I really was going to try and watch that on vacation when I heard you shout me out and I miss it. It's not. I'm going to make it happen. I promise. We're results oriented here.

4:12I'm aware. I'm aware. I'm aware. It's coming. No, it's not one of my Heist movies, but I do like all Heist movies. Sure. Recently featured on the Rewatchables. Obviously, a great cast in that Mark Wahlberg, Charlie's there and Ragnorton, so on and so forth. This new one, we need another one of these. Doesn't this kind of fall? Why? Listen, they can make as many horror movies and remakes of other things and you're, you don't complain. So just let me have a Heist movie, okay? Okay. So you want it. It can be good. It can be bad. Yeah. It's that I'm interested in. Okay. So the original Italian job was released in the 1960s starring Michael Cain. Also a artifact of the 1960s, the television series Get Smart. Yes. And there was a movie remake of Get Smart that appeared in the 2000s, much like there was a remake of the Italian job that appeared in the 2000s. The Get Smart remake starred Steve Krillin and Halfway. Right. And then date mate was Steve Krillin, Tina Fey. Correct.

5:13I'm Mark Wahlberg. Mmm. I see. I'm not sure. It's just announced that Warner Brothers is developing a reboot of Get Smart starring John Mulaney. Now, John Mulaney is not starting very many movies. In fact, I would argue his most prominent role is as Spider Pig in the Spider-Verse Stones. Okay. He's good in the bear. Was he in the last season of the bear? Uh, yes. I forgot to download it. Anyhow. Get Smart. You know, Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, two of the greatest comic minds of the 20th century. And the show is very popular. I think I might have actually been spun off from a film originally. Don Adam starred in the TV show version of it. And this feels like a news announcement from 1997. What, what, why, we need, the Italian job in Get Smart or getting reboots. Doesn't this feel kind of counter to a lot of the conversation we're about to have about what happened this summer? Yes. And that anything franchise or old person seeming or even old person adjacent is DOA.

6:13Yeah. It's just about a bunch of new young people from the internet. I mean, I agree. That's weird, right? It's very, very strange. I guess these are, this is cheap IP that's, and probably the rights are expiring. So they're like, is this anything? Is this anything? And every once in a while, is this anything turns into something? Yeah, I guess so. Jack, is Get Smart anything to you? It actually is. It's not like huge, but I vividly remember watching it as a child and enjoying it. The TV show or the film. The film. Steve Correll movie. Yes, that's correct. Gosh, I remember that movie being a dud. I confused it in my head with date night until you said the words in half way because they were, they're all of an era when Steve Correll was the most famous beloved person in the world because of the office. Yes. And I'm also a 40 year old virgin and then made some other movies. What's the one where he's like, he's basically NOAA. Do you remember this? That was the sequel to the Jim Carey movie where he's a newscaster, Bruce Almighty.

7:15That was Evan Almighty? Yes. I think was the name of that one. Yeah. I thought you were going to ask me about the film Dan in real life, which was about a Steve Correll vehicle from that time. Sure. Yeah. A lot of Steve Correll, I mean, obviously a little in the sunshine, a lot of Steve Correll movies that no longer exist, I would say. Get Smart reboot might be one of them. Okay. Would you like to talk about this summer? I mean, you're welcome to share any details from your personal life about this summer if you'd like to, but I do want to mark time. But you're trying to say, but I don't, but I, Sean Fennesy, don't want to hear about them. I've just heard about them a lot already. You know, like you're on the record. Like we're texting. Sort of, but there was a month there. That's true. I mean, we basically have not spent a lot of time together. That's true. Since our birthdays, since the birthday party. That's true. We have not spent a lot of time together. Are you ready for basically six straight months of hanging out with me? Because that's what this is going to be. That's true when you throw in Christmas. Yeah. Yes. I am. Okay. Great. I am too. Feel free to interspers any personal anecdote you need as we go through the events of the

8:15last three months. I don't feel like you actually mean that, but I feel free. I'm an Amanda. We, I can't help myself. I would love it if you would continue to. Yeah. Would you like to share? I think we know enough about your summer. What's to share? Next one. You're still, you're still doing the right. Writing high. Okay. Status up down. Fun team. Okay. But horrible outcome, but great vibes last great. 100% great. No playoffs. Definitely no playoffs. Okay. But weirdly feeling optimistic about next year or maybe as well. Do I have to take on? Do I have to witness any of your jets? I'll get out of the next four to five months. That's an interesting question. I appreciate you asking. I don't really know what I'm doing this year yet in that respect. Great. Okay. My formal prediction is seven and ten. They have way too much talent to be the worst team in the league. I don't believe in their coach. I don't feel as emotionally invested in this year because we all know what the purpose of this year is, which is to find out whether they're going to keep the coach or not and then to choose a quarterback in the draft next year.

9:15That's the whole, that's it. Hopefully the young kids, the young players are good. It's an odd thing for 15 straight years of no playoffs and then to just know we're not making the playoffs again. Right. I mean, the only way to look at it is like there's upside. Maybe they might surprise people. If they're abominable, it's kind of no big deal. Okay. Weirdly stress-free season. Do you think you'll stick to that? I mean, I'll be individually mad during games. Okay. But I don't think I'll be as rageful as I usually am. Also the next thing is kind of even some stuff out, you know, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Even some stuff out. I'm really looking forward to the next season. It's really quite a time. Did they keep everybody? They lost Mitchell Robinson to the Boston Celtics, which was an ideal. Okay. Beautiful. Okay. Let's talk about the summer. This was the highest grossing summer from a dollar perspective in the history of movies. Now obviously that doesn't account for inflation. I imagine if you look at the summer grosses from 1939, probably made more money with regards

10:17to inflation, but $4.76 billion across this summer movie season, which surpasses the record from 2013, which was $4.756. The admissions this summer were 322 million, that's almost 50 million more people went to or more tickets were sold this summer than last summer, which is really saying something. There were four straight, $1 billion plus months at the box office, again, very crazy. This August was the biggest August in movie history. Now that is almost entirely because of Spider-Man brand new day, but nevertheless, you know, yeah, this was a truly historic three months for movies. Did it feel that way for you? Yes and no. I mean, without accounting for inflation, part of it is a major part of this. And I think admissions are certainly up from last year, but I think relative to even 10 years ago, you know, what we are finding is that movies are back

11:18for people who are interested in movies. And that's really fun. And I will say that anecdotally, I do feel like I was talking with friends and family, even in Venice, I had conversations with several people who were like, hey, you know what I saw? Dan White, really good. Like it does feel like things beyond Spider-Man, you know, doing its fan service, are reaching people in a way that certainly five years ago during the pandemic. And you know, as TV still kind of held its chokehold over a popular culture, we didn't have. So I think movies are definitely up over TV. I don't know what TV shows are on. Emmys are this week, I don't care. And that feels nice. And it also does feel like we are continuing to develop like a new generation of fans and movie-going habits. And there's gonna be different than the movie-going habits that we had, but they're real, so that's positive. No, I think that's smartly observed.

12:20And I think the reaching the young people thing, which just came up with respect to the rebooting of old boomer culture and trying to make it into a movie again, is really notable to me. Like I wanna talk through what I perceive to be some of the winners and losers of this stretch of time. Yes. Some of which are gonna be very obvious, but I think we should try to reflect on them a little bit. Spider-Man is the place to start. So Spider-Man brand new day has made $2.4 billion. It's made $923 million in American Canada. And your cut was what? $0. You know, we will talk about the summer movie preview game, but in a million years, I never would have guessed this much more than you worldwide. This is in insane. Now, there are a variety of reasons for this. I ran into somebody at Telly Ride over the weekend, and they were like, you know, it's really cool it's happening with movies. I saw Spider-Man, I thought it was fine. Like I thought it was pretty good, and that was it. And that was the general reception I think I've gotten from a lot of the normal movie going people in my life. They're obviously Spider-Man and Marvel has a stronghold of fandom. So I'm still trying to account maybe for what the reason is for the success of this.

13:23I think we could probably pull like five or six reasons. The number one thing that jumps to mind is the fact that Spider-Man is for everyone. Yes. Toys 3.5 is for kids. The Odyssey is for adults. But Spider-Man brand new day was for every single person who could see a movie. Does that do? I completely agree. I think that's the biggest reason why. Yes, that you would get all generations, but just bringing a lot of kid audience. And there were some really soft kid titles across the summer. True. The Odyssey 3.5, obviously being the exception, but otherwise a lot of the other kid solo oriented movies did not perform. It's true. And this feels like one that grown up, send kids. And even like really little kids. I mean, our children are probably too little, but I'm sure there were lots of five-year-olds who are so psyched about Spider-Man. And this is, I mean, Spider-Man really two-year-olds know what that is, even if they can't see the movies. So some of it just seems like the widest reach possible. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Obviously there is anticipation anytime

14:25there is going to be a new Spider-Man movie. And then I think there's anticipation for Doomsday and what I think a lot of comic book movie fans hope is a rebirth or revival, whatever it's going to be. I'm quite fascinated to see how this impacts Doomsday if at all. I think Doomsday will be huge. Right. I'll ask you straight up. Do you think you will make as much money as brand new day? No, because it's split with Dooms. And so I think even just some of the kind of repeat, I go to the theater four times to see something that I'm at screens for sure. All of this is just that they're just going to have to share some of the market, which again, I do not understand, but I don't make these decisions. Yeah, it is an interesting test of that audience. I think it will be less, maybe just a little bit less, but I do think it will be less. This is an extraordinary outcome for this movie. The second one is obvious. And that's the Odyssey and Christopher Nolan. The Odyssey sits at $1.63 billion. Domestically, it's made $585 million. It's the highest grossing, r-rated film of all time.

15:25It's surpassed at Pooh and Wolverine, speaking of the MCU. It's Christopher Nolan's biggest movie. It overtook the Dark Knight Rises. It's the highest grossing IMAX release of all time. It earned $289 million from IMAX. It better. With the amount of investment and time, everyone spent in making the IMAX camera, the marketing worked. Yes, and just as an addendum to this, IMAX is also, I think, one of the very big winners of the summer with a lot of question marks that we can get to after we talk about the Odyssey. So, again, the Odyssey, I thought would be huge. And I thought, well, if it got past Oppenheimer, that would be an amazing success. And then it made $680 million more than Oppenheimer. What does that tell you? Christopher Nolan is a brand. And to an extent, I think also IMAX is a brand. And that's the other thing where, Brian Kugler did this with sinners last year. And the studios and the directors know that there is a growing young, scentophile audience and that part of going back

16:26to the theaters is also caring about the format. And that hyping that up will engage people and so far is working. And I've had so many conversations with family members, being like, so do I need to go see it in 70 millimeter IMAX? And I was like, no, you can just see it in the best place, but that message, that worked. And I think a lot of that is because Christopher Nolan has worked so hard to be the director who does this stuff and attaches name to it. And he's such a big deal at this point. So he's golden. Congratulations to all of them. Also, fighting in movies is good. And there is an element of this movie for all of its textbook and academic associations. That's just an adventure. It's a war movie. Yeah, absolutely. 300 made a lot of money too, not this much, but it's like people are into this. No, it's true. They haven't been as into this kind of movie in a very long time though, but I do think you're right that the timing was right. It was the fusion of that this filmmaker, this cast,

17:29this story being told in this way, the PLFs that you're describing. And that's something else to note that I think is useful, which is that regarding inflation, I think the average ticket price sale this summer was $14. And a lot of that is attributed to the fact that many of the ticket sales and unusual proportion of the ticket sales were from premium large format screens, which cost more money to go see. So I think in 2019, the average ticket price was $10 because they're just, we're not as many PLFs and obviously inflation has gone up. So something really fascinating for Nolan, God, I'm so interested to hear what movie he makes next. Because now, we'll be talking about him through the Oscar season for a long time, but just from a pure kind of dollars and cents, the absolute centerpiece of the business, the heir to Steven Spielberg as the person who commands commercial cinema stronger than anybody. And maybe honestly, is he a bigger draw than any movie star in the world right now? Probably, I'm trying to think.

18:30I mean, Leo is probably, but not box office wise because one battle last year was not on the level. I think he's the single most powerful draw in the entire, I mean, maybe he could say Spider-Man. I was gonna say, yeah. Like I said, characters aside, like actual living humans. Yeah, that's amazing. For a filmmaker to be that, I don't know if you, even though if you could make the case that Spielberg specifically had that over any key, over like Eddie Murphy or Harrison Ford in the 1980s. Like is this the first time in history than a director has been the biggest draw in the business? I don't know, it's a good thought exercise. Yeah. People can send us a thought figure in that room. One is his next movie dated for? I don't know if it is, but there's a space on the 20, 29 calendar on that July weekend. His favorite July weekend. I think that's probably where, I mean, that's essentially what he does, right? Is every three years on that July weekend, that's where he goes. Do you feel that we need to extend the clock to July 2029?

19:33Are you still holding at June 2028? I don't know, I'm the next main boy, you know? Also, that would be a fitting way to go out. So that's May 2028. So you don't want to hang on for days of Thunder 2? Oh, right, Jason Thunder 2. She is. You want to go to an entire 13 months after that? I mean, is days of Thunder 2 really what we want to go out on? I truly don't care about it. Like I'm kind of not interested. Is that weird to say on a movie podcast? I'm not either except that we like Tom Cruise. And we like it halfway, you know? So much trailer will come out and you'll immediately be locked in. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. And halfway and Tom Cruise, these are literally your guys and girls. Sure. I know, I just don't care about days of Thunder. I really don't care about NASCAR. I don't know. It's just not, not of interest to me. Okay, so May 28. But then want the X-Men set up 45 other X-Men movies? Sure will. But I'll be able to see them. I just wanted to talk to you about them. Okay, that's great. That's very exciting. Yeah, okay. So I know it's probably better for you than it is for me.

20:33Okay. She learned about X-Men from him. It's still the greatest. It's a good poster. I think the next winner is Michael. And the Michael Jackson estate. And the fact that this movie, which received some of the worst pre-release press that you could ever imagine about the way that it was refashioned, re-edited, recut, reshot, it raced to $1 billion worldwide. And it made $375 million here in the States. And it's the Lionsgate's biggest movie ever. Universal had the overseas rights. So they made a trundle of money because it made over $700, $600 million overseas. Michael Part II will come. It sounds like either late next year or early 2028. And I'm sure that that'll be a very chill movie with not a lot of complications around it. You know, I predicted on the show a couple of weeks ago that I think there's a chance that this movie gets the best picture nomination. I predicted that I think that there's a chance. You're already hedging deeply. You got to take a stand.

21:34Remember we talked about this? Juliet said that her fall goals are living with intention. My hedging here is not because of lack of confidence. It's because I something that I don't want to happen. Right. You just don't want to deal with it. I don't like the film. I don't like the film. I don't want to talk about the film for six months. But I mean, we don't really have to talk about it that much. We can talk about F1 that much. You're right. You're right about that. But I think that that is a movie that people saw. I know for a fact that if it goes in, it will be pushing a more deserving film out almost certainly. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. 11th place film being worse or low. Yeah. So, but the movie is such a success. It's the first billion dollar biopic. This has never really happened before. And it makes sense because Michael Jackson is such a titanic figure to world culture. Right. And they have the catalog. So they just blast the music. Music's in there. Yeah. And the music and the dancing is in there and Jafar Jackson did. He did his thing, right? He did the thing that that that that needed to happen for the movie to work. Any reflection on this? Does it tell you anything?

22:36I mean, I do wonder how much it is a rejoinder to what we were saying at the beginning of the podcast and what has been kind of the takeaway of the summer. What we're about to discuss, which is like old things out, new, young things end. This is a generational shift. Unless you're making an incredibly traditional to the point of, you know, all societal blinders on film about one of the greatest pop stars to ever do it. So you know, there are, I guess there are always exceptions. And people don't really have morals or I guess two other lessons. But it's not really that surprising. It to me, it just feels like there is, there, I mean, there are always going to be exceptions. Right? Yeah. And you're going to get smart, starring Tom Mulaney. Yeah. I mean, get smart, obviously, does not hold one 1000 cultural power. This is like Michael Jackson does. And it makes sense that Michael Jackson movie would do so well. And it does put, it puts the Beatles quartet of films in an interesting light because

23:40of course, the Beatles got started roughly 15 years before Michael. And they, they were at the peak of their fame 25 years before Michael was the peak of his fame. And so I think it's actually an interesting test of like Gen X millennial culture versus boomer culture that the Beatles are represented or something that we really feel like has, has moved on. And the Beatles are eternal to us. Let me, let's, let's call the booth. You guys care about the Beatles? I do. Okay, Lucas, Lucas, I, that was a shrug. Okay. All right. Well, we'll talk about that later. I, I'm fascinated. I, you know, it's, there's not very many people left for whom this sort of thing can be done. Prince is one of them. I think the late Dalley Parton now is maybe somebody who you might, you may see a life story film. Madonna, but it's not going to happen. That seems like Madonna, but maybe after she's a little older perhaps, you know, I'm sure there's more than that are not coming immediately to mind. We've still not seen the Kurt Cobain movie. That's something that could happen like last days by Gus Fansen, notwithstanding. So you know, there's a, maybe a few more opportunities for this from the 20th century musical

24:43icons, but this one was probably always going to be the biggest than it turns out it was the biggest. Okay. Young filmmakers. Now, obsessions, Curry Barker, and back rooms as Kane Parsons are the two, yeah, your heads of this movement. Obsessions box office going over it is, is shocking to me. It is shocking. That far exceeds the brand new day shock, the Odyssey shock, Michael Jackson shock. It doesn't mean it's as much money as those three movies, but the amount of money that this movie made. This may never happen again in the history of movies. It's made 512 million dollars. Domestically, it's made 263 million dollars. It costs 750,000 dollars. It features zero famous people. It's just a good horror movie. It's a good horror movie. It's got a very memorable, very impressive breakout performance from Indian Everettie.

25:45I think it's a clever script. It's got some good moments. I'm a fan of the movie. I'm not integrating the movie at all. How did this happen? I don't know. You posed this question like, I'm going to be able to answer. I'm trying to figure it out. I also really like the movie. I did go, I went after the first weekend when it was like, it did really well. It was clear that it was going to be a thing. I wanted to be able to talk about back rooms, which was the more cinephile-typed movie in conversation together because they were released so close to each other. I will say, I went and my record with horror is improving, but it's still a spotty. I got it. I think that there is something. It is broad, and I understand that it uses all of the horror tropes and many romantic comedy tropes. It's something that is familiar to the audience. Every once in a while, something just hits the spot of recognizable, what's still a little

26:47surprising, but not too provocative to turn people off, and it just got in the zone. Then it becomes a word of mouth thing and the phenomenon. Everyone seen obsession, I should also go see obsession. Going up weekend over weekend a few times was mind-blowing. There was a very memorable Wednesday on its fourth week of release where it made $7 million in one day. I was like, what the fuck is this? I think it's all the things that you described. I think that it is both satisfying in a traditional way, but also feels like a new voice, feels like it's hitting some of the genre tropes that you expect. Also, I think has some really pretty cleverly crafted contemporary ideas about dating, sex, loneliness, friendship, all of these things that we kind of put in a bundle together when we start to generalize about generations that are younger than us. It does feel like that generation that is younger than us was like, well, yeah, this is getting some things right. It's made by a 26 year old and that 26 year old does seem to have tapped into his own

27:48personal feelings, which are then an extension of a generation of feelings. I also think 50 year olds enjoyed the movie. I heard Tom Pellicero, one of the new NFL, ringer NFL podcast hosts say that on his flight to Australia for today's Rams 49ers game, he watched obsession. If we want to go down that rabbit hole, I think it's fucking stupid, so stupid, so unfair to the players. I mean, but why? I mean, I understand the real story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen, I like I understand how I understand how it all works. I hate it. I think it's totally unfair to the stuff. That seems really silly. Yeah. I'd still like to go to Australia. And nothing against Australia. Have that. No, I would love to go to Australia. I love Australia. I love the idea of Australia, at least. Yeah. I'd like to go in our winter there summer. Yes, same. Maybe we'll make that happen after the X-Men episode. Okay. But that'll be our summer. So then we have to hang on. Okay. So then December, 2028, we'll do our last episode. From. And then we'll go straight to Australia.

28:50You don't want to do the last episode in Australia? Maybe. Maybe so. Okay. Maybe so. If anybody in Australia would like to welcome us, please let us know that it'll be for two years from now. Um, Curry Barker is another movie coming up. I thought this new movie, anything but Ghosts, was going to come out in the spring. And now I'm starting to wonder if they're going to wait a little while to. Oh, trying a distance from the film. And this film I think is more of a pure comedy, pure horror comedy, as opposed to obsession, which is pure horror with some very funny moments. But I am interested. Um, Aaron Paul is in the film, Bryce Dallas Howard's in the film. And as our Korean, his partner, Cooper Tomlinson, um, I'm open. This movie was an acquisition. Focus bought this out of the Toronto International Film Festival. The 15 million. What a box. Obsession. Yeah. No, not anything that goes. Um, yeah. Is that the greatest, the greatest acquisition ever? I mean, probably from a number of cents, I think so.

29:51Unbelievable. God damn. Okay. Back rooms. Yeah. We made $394 million. Mm-hmm. Made almost $200 million here in the States. Yes. Uh, four of the 10 highest grossing A24 movies have been released in the past 16 months. They said they were going to do it and now they're doing it. Pretty crazy. I'm happy for them. Is this repeatable at all for back rooms? Will Cain Parsons be a part of the movie going for a moment for the next 25 years? Well, in some ways, back rooms was IP for a generation that is not us, right? And I think much of the response, and certainly the hype was because there is an entire generation of children who have watched the entire YouTube series and knew all the lore and were living up to it. And I think far be it for me to speak for the youth, but they had mixed feelings about how this installment lived up to their understanding of the lore, which is, you know, being a fan.

30:52Welcome. Welcome, kids. This is how it works. You're going to be disappointed for the rest of your life. But there is also, you know, it is a franchise in its own way. Yep. And I think he obviously has such a built-in audience from YouTube that clearly followed him to this. And I don't think are going to give up on his next. So I don't know if it's going to be a $400 million film the next one, but I think it will be successful. I agree with you. I think arguably even an even bigger winner than Cain Parsons and the makers of back rooms is all of the people who will be rewarded as online creators for trying to make the next back rooms. There are so many deals going around right now in Hollywood from production companies and studios trying to find the next cane or trying to find the next curry that what it feels like to me is the post-grunge alternative music gold rush when all of these bands in the 1990s got signed to major labels and they all were expected to have the next Jeremy or the next smells like teen spirit.

31:53And none of them could conjure it or they could have one hit and then they found themselves in massive debt or part of this kind of buzz-bind nostalgia, you know, remainder. And there's going to be. Yeah, I mean, the movies in the next two years that are going to attempt to recreate this and one or two are going to hit and everything else and some of them might be really good, but they're going to get cast aside. And it's this is I think this is like a generational turnover not just in terms of how old the people are, but in terms of the style of movie, the tone of movie that you're going to get, how many more liminal space films will we get now? What expectations that we have for the audience to kind of encounter and engage with storytelling like this? It's going to be so many after effects of this that I'm so interested to see, but could be like painful or pretty dull for us as movie watchers. Yeah, and I mean, there were smaller but still notable successes this year of YouTube creators kind of even jumping the studio system and going directly some theaters and making a lot of money. And you know, I didn't see most of those because that seems like none of my business, frankly,

32:57but it is enough of a business for some people and for the theaters to, you know, make space and incentivize it a bit. So yeah, I think that I think you're right. I mean, in some ways, that's just the history of art and capital being entwined, which is if you get one hit and then you get 40 copycats. No doubt. We've seen it in every genre across the world, but yeah, I'm going to learn about a lot about YouTube in the next years or maybe I won't. It's arguable that Mark Fishback that Iron Long his film is actually the most astonishing story from this kind of ream of YouTube content creator turned filmmakers because, you know, he's a little older and he's been on YouTube a longer period of time and has a bigger fanbase in that space. However, he independently distributed his movie, he self distributed his movie, which made over $50 million. And was based on a video game, but even still self distribution like that, that's a whole other, that's from the 1960s.

33:57That's something that just does not happen. And the only reason that that happened is because of the demand from his fans who insisted that they put his movie on their screens. So again, like I see all of those things kind of together. There's the amazing digital circus. There's a couple of other examples of this. One of the most interesting ones is that we haven't talked about and I haven't seen yet is the, just the filmed version of Hades Town in the musical, which did gangbusters over the late summer. I'm supposed to be a one week release where they filmed I think three performances of that musical and it did so well that they extended it a second week and then extended it a third week and I think across like $40 million. That's another thing where it's just like fans demanding something and getting it. Coyote versus Acne is the same thing. Fans were just like, Warner Brothers tried to kill this movie. We don't accept that. We're making a loud, noisy online campaign. Ketchup picks up the movie. That movie's going to make $50 million. Maybe more. I mean, it is great news that what fans are demanding is please show it in a movie theater. Yeah. And I grew and think that five years ago in 2021 that we would have expected that at all.

35:00It seemed like it was completely dead. And it does, you know, this transition is a little bit more of, it's a concert model, like a tour model or an amusement park model or something where you're not, you're not seeing this demand for every single of the hundreds of movies that are released every year. But on the other hand, theaters are at least back in the conversation. I agree. And it is kind of limited, limited engagement eventization. Yeah. And it feels a little bit maybe more like the eras tour model where you've got something that has a three or four week window that will appear in theaters and that's the only time you can see it and race out to go and then that will drive box office. But if that's something that can work, they should pursue more of it. Yeah. And then there's also like a plenty of, I guess we could call quote unquote smaller titles that just did like good business, like the invite, the sheep detectives, like those movies just did good business. Like they justified their existence and also made people happy and our memorable movies.

36:01So stuff like that working in addition to a couple more blockbusters that we'll talk about here, I find very encouraging. Two huge Disney movies this year, huge. Both of which I think we would have predicted we're going to be big. And you have predicted that the devil's product too would have made $700 million worldwide. I mean, I don't think I did in the box office game that we predict that we did. And I was protecting my heart a little bit. But once the roll out and the tour started, again, this is another correction to our theory of like, it's only new young people now. You know, they were, they were doing phone calls for two months with that movie. And you know, Merrill in Matti Blasio Chanel, like all over the world. And so it was very, very traditional that movie is filled with easter eggs to the original. It really was reheating something that was big 20 years ago. But because it's such an underserved market and by that, I mean women who like to have fun. It worked out.

37:01I think you couldn't do it. I'm sure they'll try to do devil wears prior three. And I wonder if that will do as well. Well, it's funny because I paired this film with Toy Story 5. And Toy Story 5 did, I would say almost exact. This is one of the few films where I was like, I know what this is. I know this is going to be a billion dollar movie. Toy Story always works. I liked it a lot. You didn't like it so much. But it has, they have a formula in place. And those characters are kind of in the Spider-Man zone of just like, you know, Woody and Buzz and Jesse or those of these are my friends. It was a Jesse movie. Please support women. I think that Pixar has done something really interesting with their sequels or they've taken more time between them than any other studio normally would. And we'll talk about that when we get into some of the losers of the summer. But Toy Story 5, I think is seven years after Toy Story 4. And I think Toy Story 4 is like seven years after Toy Story 3. So there's gaps in time. There are a big gap between Incredibles and Incredibles 2.

38:04Like movies like that that then inside out and inside out too had a huge gap between them. And so you had a generation of fans that came in to fill that space. Devil Wars Part 2 is the same thing. Came out 20 years ago. Two generations of movie fans and a lot of female movie fans claimed that movie. And then they waited just long enough that it was exciting to see these characters together on screen again. And I wonder if rather than going back 80 years or 60 years for Get Smart, maybe the 2000s are the thing that should be pilfered for new IP? Yes, though. I mean, even the 2000s, you sort of, there weren't that many original things. Well, that was when things started to shift, right? Exactly. So it's like, you know, we didn't know how good we had it. But also they're reanimating most of the things from 2002 to 2009 that we are in 2008, I should say when. Yeah, I mean, there have been obviously some examples of this like avatar coming back was an example of bringing back a 2000s era movie and reigniting it.

39:08I mean, they're going to try to bring back pirates of the Caribbean. That's an example of something that hasn't been a new one in a long time. Johnny Depp, I guess, is back. We're going to have to have a whole Johnny Depp conversation when Ebenezer comes out in November. What are some other, I mean, Shrek is coming back. That's a 2000s thing like this. Maybe I put my finger on what I think is like this is actually the new nostalgia that the studios are playing with. And I'm not a rocket scientist or anything, but I'm just putting this together at this exact moment. I mean, Harry Potter is coming back to HBO. That's another 2000s thing. The Da Vinci code is coming back to television. That's another 2000s thing. Well, I Robert Langdon, okay. Yes. They're not remaking Da Vinci code. Right. It's a different Robert Langdon who Tom Hanks plays him in the movies. And I had some Da Vinci code complaints that I wanted to make, but I can't remember what they are now. I'm looking at the highest grossing movies of the 2000s right now. It's Morgan Specter who's going to be Robert Langdon, right? It's Morgan Specter. That's correct. That's great stuff.

40:08Any other thoughts on Toy Story 5? I was not that great, but I'm glad that you liked it. It's the third highest grossing Pixar movie ever behind Incredibles 2 and Inside Outfit. Do you think that Toy Story 5 is bringing in new fans or is it all five-year-olds like Alice would see in Toy Story 1 through 4 ahead of time? New fans like is it their first Toy Story? Yeah. I'm sure it was a lot of kids first movie in the theater or first Toy Story movie in theater, but probably not anybody who's like, I'm going to start with Toy Story 5. That would be kind of confusing. What? I would think that Jesse was the most important character in the entire universe, which, you know, through some people's eyes she is. You know, Lucas reminds me that you did guess almost exactly right for the domestic gross of the Devil Wars product, too. Well, you know. Almost exactly. You guessed 210 million and made 220 million. That's pretty good. Thank you. Sometimes, you know, I have a very specific area of expertise, but I got it.

41:13Yeah, you're like, um... Our thing's a coach. Big losers this summer. Uh-huh. Disney live action. Yeah. And all of us who had to sit in the theater and watch it. I mean, Milano was absolutely terrible. I can't believe how bad it was. And I mean, 350 million dollars worldwide, which for this movie is a tremendous disappointment because this is one of the most valuable properties that the studio has. And Milano 2 was a billion dollar movie less than two years ago. Obviously, this movie came way too soon. If Milano 2, the rock is in a bit of a tailspin as a commercial movie star right now. I hate these movies. I'm so sick of them. I'm so sick of having to think about them. There is a tangled one that doesn't, like, I guess, going into production right now, tangled when I'm one of my daughter's favorite movies, when my little sister graces favorite movies, at least when she was a kid, a movie that I like that I think is very good. Is Mandy more involved in the remake? Well, she's not the star. I don't know if she's going to be participating in it anyway. She's a little too young now to play Rapunzel. Oh, that's right, because it's live action. It's live action Rapunzel.

42:13So Mandy Moore is a mom in her 40s. God bless her. Um, Disney live action. Will they be making these five years from now? Well, haven't they released their schedules for five years from now? I don't think there's more than two on. And also what's left? I think only Alilo and Stitch sequel tangled. I don't even know if there's anything else on the slate at the moment. I mean, also what's left for them to live action. Sort of the stone. Rock Robin Hood. Yeah. Yeah, that we have a million live action Robber hoods and I don't want any of them. I can't wait to talk to you about the uprising. I'm not ready to talk to you at the uprising. We're good. There's quite rest the rescuers. That doesn't the rescuers down under. Isn't that the fox in the hound? Isn't that an animal movie? Yeah, these are all animals. Did you see the new creator movie? Look back. No, I wasn't at the Venice Film Festival. I was there. But they were screening it. No, obviously, you know, you have it. So without the following choice, so this is a live action of an anime as well. Yeah. Yeah. And once again, we just need to stop doing this. Yeah. Like there is this is that movie in particular, really made

43:17very faithful. Yes. And so I think the people who love the anime love it. But I there is just a real energy difference in, you know, the beautiful animation and then putting real people in. Yeah. And to me, it felt like I was watching Alexis commercial when it's just real but it's so sacrient. Wow. And I did not get it at all. So I will be starring in the live action or make a ponio as ponio. I'm pretty excited. Speaking of kids and animation, minions and monsters. Mm hmm. It's a it's a hit in my house. I don't I don't know what else to say. Like it's funny to say this movie made $518 million worldwide and it's a disaster. I mean, it's obviously not a disaster by all accounting standards. It is not a success and it did not do what they want. No, well, but by all accounting standards, it is a success. Except when you put it in the context of the entire franchise. Sure. Like the movie I think costs like $85 million to make, which is not that much. So they made a profit on this movie. It's just that every other despicable movie makes like $900 million.

44:19Yeah. And this made $518 and it was a movie that was clearly made for 40 year old moms who love movie history and not for seven year olds. We love it. We own it. And we watch it all the time. We watch all the despicable music. Oh, you own it. You own you you bought it digitally. Yes. Yeah, not a not a not a 4k. I don't have a 4k player yet. So everyone being like, are you going to get the well, the mary and 20 and also because Knox wants to watch his ET 4k. And he came home and he was like, Mama, we need a new CD player. So I'm going to have a sit down with him. We'll see. I mean, so many ideas going on in ox's that right now. See, you guys would have quite a convention. Yeah, we got it. We got it. We got to catch up really soon. Speaking of kids, the Mandalorian era of Star Wars. I've been thinking about this not just that the Mandalorian and Grogu was not a financial success, which it was not. It was a pretty radical underperformance relative to all Star Wars movies. But I feel like this actually puts a pin in a period in history with Star Wars.

45:24Because in 2019, we had the final JJ Abrams film in the Ray Trilogy. Yes, but you were incredibly normal about. Well, it sucked. Right. It sucked. And also the way that they wrapped it up was offensive. Even I can get it. Everybody knows it was terrible. And there's a variety of reasons why it was terrible. It was rushed. They chose the wrong path for the story. The CGI was bad. There's so many didn't kill Chewie. So many things like, you know, yeah, all. Or what it wasn't. Not never the last she persisted. What was it? Somehow Palpatine returned. Yeah, somehow Palpatine returned. Many terrible things about it. But that same year was the year that the Mandalorian launched on TV in 2019. And those first two seasons of the Mandalorian, I thought were stellar. I thought they were really cool. And they were they were a path forward for Star Wars. And they've since dead ended. I noticed that as I was looking this up last night, that there hasn't been a new Star Wars TV property that has launched since the end of 2024 when Skeleting Crew came out. And this movie comes out.

46:25It's basically four TV episodes clung together. I don't know if we're ever going to have another Mandalorian season. Probably, but maybe not. And now Starfighter comes next year. And that's kind of reset the table. And I'm kind of wondering if after we get a Soca season two, all that stuff is like that's from over there from the past. We're no longer a TV business. Right. Maybe we'll continue with our animated series because they seem to work well. There was a Darth Maul series that did well, I guess. But I didn't watch it. But we're going to get back to eventizing movies. Yes. Starting with Starfighter. And then we're going to go to the next trilogy that's been rumored, which I think will involve past and present figures. Right. I mean, I think just the wild underperformance of Mandalorian and Grogu cemented to everyone. Like the TV shows devalued what we're doing here. And people can tell the difference between TV shows and movies. And movies. Yes. And we're going to accept one in the other space. Unless you're my two year old, who this morning turned on the TV and said,

47:25Mende Grogu. Okay. He's never seen it. We didn't turn it on. Maybe a little scary for him. No screens before school in my house. No screens before. Oh, yeah. Of course. We never turn the TV on the morning. But he tried, you know, yeah, after school sometimes, not usually. Yeah. We're more of a weekend TV household at this point. I mean, listen to the licensing. The figurines worked like I'm still thinking about the two toddler meltdown that occurred in JFK over a Lego Mandel, a Grogu Lego figurine. A Lego. A Lego. Innovating here. I mean, it was like a physical brawl. I was so embarrassed. You can get ready for 10 more years of that as somebody with a younger brother. Yeah, but we're in the airport. Means nothing. The number of times I yelled, do you want to go to airport jail? No. Nothing. Location is irrelevant. Only place worse than airport jail is casino jail. As somebody who's I think I've not been inside the I've not been behind bars in casino jail, but I've been too casino jail.

48:27I mean, I think Eaglesdale is the lowest rock. Oh, yes, well put. Yes. That is that is the final wrong. I have not visited the Eaglesdale or had to bail anyone out of it yet. I would never go to that stadium. Never in my life. Another loser, super girl. Wow, that was so bad. It was really bad. With super girl, I think is tier two superhero movies when you're not on the A team. It's clear that it's going to be a lot harder to find success. This movie only made $126 million worldwide. That's an epic bomb. I mean, it was it was a bomb of an experience. I haven't thought about it. But it really, really stuck. Can I ask you something? Was that Florence Pew Marvel movie this year or last year? No, no, last year. Okay. Because I've just been like, where's Florence? Thunderbolts. Yes. Well, I mean, she's going to she's going to be in June. I know. No, but she's dominating. Doomsday because she's also in the Avengers. Right. Right. Is that going to be the single biggest box office day for any movie star in movie history?

49:29Because she will be in both Doomsday and Avengers Doomsday. And then she's also she's a Lena. She's a big part of that movie, I think. Okay. And then she's also in East of Eden. So any Sevedan on Netflix, which I was good and I would like to watch. I would as well. But I just I couldn't I thought she had disappeared forever. And Thunderbolts is a similar. They you know, they tried to launch Belist Avengers. Avengers Dark Avengers. Dark Avengers. Okay. Avengers. Sure. The new Avengers. New Avengers. New Avengers. Yeah. That was that was a really smart idea to just have two names for a movie with an asterisk. That was kind of fun. Okay. I think Marvel should have more fun. What do you think is what's dark big pick? Maybe that's the third chair episode where it's just all the third chairs fighting and posing with the superpowers. More specifically, Supergirl is emblematic of the major lack of success of Warner Brothers. Last year, I think Warner Brothers accounted for about 25% of the box office on summer 2025. This year, they accounted for 5%. Yeah. Not good. Things are not going well. Yeah.

50:30Mike and Pam writing high. Mike and Pam not having it as great a year. And that's before you take into account everything that's happening to Warner Brothers ownership, which good luck to everyone. I'm not addressing that issue. Yeah. I was going to say like good luck to everyone except the people that we don't wish luck to. Yeah. I think Warner Brothers will be fine because they do have can the hat. They have doing part three. They have some movies coming out this fall. They have digger, of course. We'll see if that performs. They have some movies that have a chance to be bigger, but very bad summer for them. The last thing I wanted to mention to you quickly before we go into the game results, Masters of the Universe obviously was a bomb. It only made $113 million worldwide. We talked about my deep emotional, complex relationship and problems and love for all of that. It's a huge streaming hit. It's one of the biggest streaming movies in the history of Amazon. It debuted to over 1 billion minutes watched, which is one of those fake stats, but I think it's notable because it was basically like putting it at the top of the charts when it came out. Now that does make sense because to your point about Mandalorian and Grogo, I think there's something to this too, which is that Masters of the Universe and He-Man as a TV property, it was a TV show.

51:31But a lot of people have now seen this movie. And that is actually when you get right down to it, what banners the most is who sees the movies. And I'm trying to figure out, is there a world where it makes sense for Masters of the Universe of the Universe to have a sequel that is streaming only and is that coherent in a way that the movie and movie theaters wasn't, which is kind of a rejection of everything that we normally say about movies. You know what I mean? Sort of, but I don't know if people have seen it is the only thing that matters if it's not making money. Right? It's keeping people engaged on the prime video service. Sure, which works for Amazon, which is also, but you know, for Amazon, for Apple, and I guess for Netflix. And for Netflix, sort of, these are just lost leaders. And that's okay, but that's not true for Universal and Warner Brothers and all of, and A24 and all of the people who make the movies that need theaters and need people going to theaters. So I guess that's great for Amazon, but if Amazon just then makes direct keeps, and mostly keeps

52:34making direct to prime streaming videos of poor quality that people do their laundry to, that's a type of movie that's definitely a lane, but it's, I don't know if that's great for certainly the quality of movies and maybe not for the health of the business and everything else that we were talking about long-term. I know. I think I'm speaking just specifically about this franchise. Like, is there a world where, and we've talked about this many times over the years, were films that get proper marketing budgets always perform better at home? Films that get theatrical release because they get stronger marketing and commercial representation. And then there's just more awareness of them and they feel more real. So Masters of the Universe, even though nobody went, it's the classic example of all way for streaming and then people did and then they watched the bad streaming. But then does that set up a franchise that doesn't need theatrical anymore because they already got that marketing push and now this is like a revived IP that has value to the service. I'm just going to say yes, I think it is, which is unusual.

53:35There's not a lot of examples of this where you could be like, if they can get Nicholas Galatin and Camilla Mendez and Idris Elba back together again, like they could just make another one of these movies. I bet they can. If it's meant enough money, but they can. I just thought that was interesting as it take away from a movie that would otherwise be discarded as a total failure. Yeah, well, I mean, they're just the rules for Amazon Apple and Netflix and the companies that make movies as an add-on to what their actual business is. Yes. Are very different than the movies for movie studios. No doubt about it. And the rules for movies. Did you read about the Apple fold phone? Yeah, I read text about it. We should have those. I know, but I didn't see a demo, but maybe I'm interested. Am I interested? Well, it'll be smaller. Also, what movie recently was someone using it's set in the future and someone's using a fold? No, it's a fold phone, but it seems to have all of the optionality of a smartphone.

54:35I don't know when movie you're talking about. Disclosure day? No, I don't think so. That's just the segue with the alien. I can't remember. I'm not opposed to it. Are you opposed to it? No, I thought it was interesting. Okay. And I was like, Applee, you got me again. You mentioned something that seems obvious. You developed it, you built it. And now I'm like $2,000 seems reasonable. So then, just fucking crazy. Oh, it's $2,000. Yeah, that's right. That is the MSRP. Oh, okay. So then what does it matter, though, what their movie strategy is for the next time? It doesn't. They can do whatever they want. Yeah, my advice would be to make good films. Same. Okay, the movie game. We predict the box office and Metacritic scores. And we have a very elaborate point system. Lucas Kavanaugh has healthfully tallyed them. A couple of quick highlights for you. Okay. We hit on a couple of films. We missed on a couple of films. Our misses were pretty bad. Obsession is the most interesting one to me because I guessed 42 million. And I thought that that was like a pretty generous guess.

55:37Yeah. And you guessed 15 million, which is the price of acquisition for the film out of TIFF. And it made 263. Backroes, we guessed 67 and 16 respectively. It made 198. The Odyssey, we guessed 412 and 350 respectively. It made 589. Toy Story 5, we guessed 401 and 503. It made 480. That was pretty good. Spider-Man brand new day. I guessed 527, you guessed 580. It made 923. Yeah. Honkers, you want to hear your misses? I'm aware of them, but go ahead. Billy Eilish hit me hard and soft. The tour, parentheses live in 3D. Yeah. I guessed 42 million, you guessed 160 million. Well, listen, we were just talking about the Ares tour and the Taylor Swift of it all. And all I hear about Billy Eilish, so important, Billy Eilish, she deserves that all the Oscars overdual leap by Billy Eilish, Billy Eilish. Okay, where were they? We'll get to do a leap a little later in this podcast. This movie made 9.9 million dollars.

56:39We've said, as a rule on this show that big Jim does not miss, as the co-director of this film, Big Jim missed. He really did. He missed for the first time ever he missed. Where were the young people? I don't know. I don't know. Power ballad. I guess 26 million, you guessed 16 million. Yeah. It made 2.6 million. I mean, I was being nice. That's 60 million. Yeah. That's dark. Mandalorian Grogu, I guessed 275 million, because I was nervous about how things were going. You guessed 421, and I made 178. Well, I was wrong. You were wrong. Minions and monsters. So are you. I was. So is Disney. They were. Minions and monsters. I guess 352, you guessed 350. Mm-hmm. We were so close. And it made about half that $183 million. That's okay. Supergirl, I guessed 159, you guessed 190, it made 72. Jack asked best in the last heartbreaking here. I guess 81 million dollars. Way, way overshot. I didn't mean that. Yeah, it was a clip reel. What a clip reel. You guessed 60 million. It made 18 million dollars. And Moana,

57:39this is probably the most dramatic miss of the whole thing. I guessed 412, you guessed 410. We were so close in our guesses. It made 126. I don't know if this is just an anomaly or if it augurs something new about the Disney live action thing. It's very interesting to me. One night only. I guess 76 million, you guessed 38 million. Yes. It only made 11.5 million. I'll share my thoughts on one night only shortly. Yeah. I also had this in my movie fantasy league. Yeah. And it really fucked me. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, it's tough. Supertroopers 3, I guessed 48 million. Okay. You guessed 22 million. It made 7 million. Okay. Tough one. Fun fact. For disclosure day. Yes. I guessed a 74 metacritic score. Yeah. And $121 million for the gross. Okay. It had a 74 metacritic score and $117 million for the gross. Okay. That's just fucking perfect. Come on. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, it's so good. It's so good for our brand. To nail that movie,

58:40the way that I nailed that movie and I nailed that movie. The way that I nailed it. Mm-hmm. I have to have to have you for you. Yeah. So then let's go to the final one and then I'd like to do just like a little bit of reflection. Okay. The final score. Yeah. I had 166 points total. You had 153 points. Yes. So do you win? I'm the victor. Congratulations. Thank you. This was a tough summer to predict. Do you do you feel a sense of accomplishment? No. That you won. Do you feel a sense of accomplishment that you got? I love the games with my friends. Okay. That's nice. Yeah. What accomplishment? What do I get? I don't know. You make such a big deal about it. You talk so much about box office. I'm just like, you know, will you, you won't leave this studio with a spring in your step? Well, it's one of the only, art forms where there's a public accounting of success, which is something I find interesting. Yes. And we can trust it because it is correlated to the stock price and the industry that is contingent upon it in movie theaters. So I do talk about it a lot because I think it speaks specifically to what is working and what is not working in the business and art form that we care so much about.

59:41Right. So the game is just really a sign that I'm by no means a box office expert nor are you. I'm just somebody who's really interested in how it works in the history of it. The disclosure today thing is too funny. That's good. It's incredible. Let me ask you a question. If there were stakes, if we brought back the previously discussed Amanda reorganizes your physical media, I know. I never did the screening of a movie that I don't want to watch. Yeah. We can do both of those things in 2029 when the show wraps. Okay. From Australia. Yeah. Did we say that the reorganization needs to happen on camera? We didn't say that, right? Yeah. I'm saying it. I'm saying it. Yeah. What's the fun that do anybody? I don't want to eat cameras in my house. Well, I'll just wear a GoPro. I don't want any cameras in my house. And then marry it again. You'll find that it's the ADO. Well, that's a part of my house. Is it not a part of my house? It's a garage. Okay, let's talk about some new movies. Okay. Well, this was pretty quickly. Yeah.

1:00:41It's all the uprising last night. Okay. You haven't seen it, right? No, I haven't. New film from Paul Greengrass, who is really one of the most successful directors of the 21st century. Directed to born movies. He directed United 93, Captain Phillips, Sunday bloody Sunday, a number of very, very good films. This new movie stars Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Delaney and Tom Holland are Cosmo Jarvis, Thomas and Mackenzie, Johnny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Catherine Waterston, Big cast, really good cast. It is about the peasant revolt of 1831, where after the plague sweeps across Europe, kills half the population, King Richard II and the Olegarchs, they impose this tax on the common people. What he was in the 20s. 1820 plague European. No, it's not 18s. It's 1380s. Okay. All right. That's a typo. Okay, great. 1381. Excuse me. Not a... No, there was no plague in the 1820s. After this taxes imposed upon the people there, there's an uprising in a revolt among commoners who storm the gates in England.

1:01:46The first hour of this movie was electric. Electric. And I thought I was going to have to rebuild the episode to be like, we have to start with the uprising. Okay. Because it was Paul Greengrass doing shaky cam, digital photography, born-style action, but in the 1300s, with Andrew Garfield and Cosmo Jarvis destroying people. And I was so into it and so locked in. And Garfield was doing the action sequences. And he is this movie super power because he's such a brilliant actor and I just believe everything he does. I just think he's the best. And I thought he was great in this. He plays a character named Plowman because he is the common person and he is just, he's bought a plowman. Much like yourself. That's right. Exactly. I'm an avatar for the peasants. And... I really was really, really enjoying it. And I found it very credible and very fast-moving. The pace, the moment from like, okay, something terrible. Like this poor person has encountered attacks in this big huddle of people.

1:02:48And they are just rejecting it instantaneously. And that is leading to various groups from around England finding each other from various townships and connecting and storming England. Two things happen. Once the bigger groups start to come together, a tremendous amount of one of your least favorite things. CGI overhead shots of big crowds and castles that looked so bad. In a movie that looked so good, it was like, it was like so up close and with great production design and they fucking ruined it by doing that. The crowd thing is a true epidemic. I have not seen one example of a CGI crowd that works. It's so bad. Get it out of your movie. If it's in your treatment, write another scene. I don't think they made it. There is no company that has mastered the digital crowd. It doesn't exist. It's so bad because I understand why they did it because they're trying to call back to these films from the 60s and 70s where they could have put 3000, 5000 extras in a scene. And they can't afford to do it anymore. It's too expensive. It's too hard.

1:03:49Structurally, I understand why it happened. But because of the way that Greengrass makes movies, he's so good at everything being right in your face. We don't even need the scale to feel the effect of the story. So I felt that was a huge... Huge error in the movie. And it really pulled me right out of a movie I was loving. And then secondarily, I think there were some just huge third-act problems with how they communicated into mid results. The Robinhood thing I think is overstated. There is... You can certainly read it that way without spoiling anything. But he doesn't say... My name is Robin. He does not say I'm a cartoon fox and I'm here to romance the main man. He doesn't do Robinhood and Little John. Welcome to the forest. There's no prior talk. There's no made-marion. Is she stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Not exactly. Okay. It's not really like that. Because Robin is... Robin is not a real person. Right? He's a legend. But there are components of this story that have some reflections of Robinhood. Okay. Man, there were some good stuff in it. You know, Greengrass is super talented and he's singular. He has a real style that is his own style that I really respect.

1:04:49And I will always go see a movie like this over whatever IP garbage, like 10 to 10 times. I think there's a lot to recommend about the movie. But it bummed me out when it kind of lost the thread. Okay. I just want to get that off my chest. Let's talk about Hope. Yes. So this is the second biggest movie of the weekend, I would say, behind the movie we'll talk about on Monday, Practical Magic 2. Hope is the new South Korean sci-fi action extravagance from Nahongjin. It's Nahongjin's first movie in like 10 years. It has a fascinating cast, Wang Junmin, Zohin Song, who I just saw in Possible Love, Zheng Ho-Yan, and then Taylor Russell, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fastbender. And very interesting parts. Now, we did talk about this movie when we saw it at the Cannes Film Festival. Yes, we were at the premiere. We were at the premiere. The log line of the movie is a police chief and a police woman in a group of hunters try to track down and kill a mysterious creature that's laying ways to a Korean village. Now, the film takes place in what looks like already a post-apocalyptic

1:05:51South Korean village. It looks like we have, there's already been pestilence or some sort of plague or just a general kind of degradation of society. And the first hour of the movie, we spend a lot of time in this world and we just follow along with a handful of characters who are, we know something is wrong but we don't know what it is. And that sequence of the movie is some of the best stuff I've seen in a movie this year. It is, it's almost an hour. Chase sequence where you can't see what is, you know, what they're running from. Yes. And then as you said, it kind of, it shows you the whole world and how this world has broken down and you're just following a group of survivors who are trying to use the rules of the world that they know very well do not be caught by this thing. And it's, you know, it's very implied. You don't see the monster. It's, and it goes on for like an hour. When we saw it at the premiere,

1:06:53when the sequence finally ended, the entire theater broke into a plot. Because it really is so, it announces itself so in such an exciting way. And the power of suggestion is very effective. And then, and then something really terrible happens. And it really changes, I think, a lot of people's relationships with the movie and mine as well. I will generally recommend this movie because I think it's a lot of fun. Yeah. However, the creatures that the characters are trying to escape from start to appear in the movie, one in particular in that, the end of that first act. Mm-hmm. And the CGI is terrible. And this is the most expensive South Korean movie ever made. Yeah. And it's the biggest scale movie ever made. And it's a movie that aspires to Spielberg, Cameron, Michael Bay, Peter Jackson. It's in that lineage of, you know, a rag-tag group of people fighting a big bad that requires CGI. But the CGI is so bad that the movie, at times, feels laughable after feeling so profoundly exciting.

1:07:57Do you agree with me about this? Yes. It's incredibly silly to the point that one we saw it and can, everyone walked and said, okay, so the CGI is unfinished. Like that they're still working on us. The other twist in that CGI. And there are mild spoilers here. But, you know, you watch this first 45-50 minutes. It's so thrilling. And you do also know that at some point, Alicia, Vikander and Michael Fastbender and Taylor Russell are going to show up in the movie. And so you're like very much, it's not quite first person shooter vibes, but you're very much on the ride with these people. And in that, back of your head, you're thinking, okay, and then the world's going to expand. And we're going to see what's going on. You know, how are you going to see Vikander? And Michael Fastbender and Taylor Russell into this? Are they like scientists? What's going on? And it sets up like the expectation of this sweetening, really exciting, you know, action drama. And again, spoiler alert, they're the aliens.

1:09:00So, and they're just an intervals CGI. And if you like squint really hard, once you realize it, you're like, oh, that is Mike, those are Michael Fastbender's eyes, sort of. I get it. Yes. And so it's the crushing realization, both that these are the silly bugs are all you're going to get. And also that that's all you're going to get from the movie, that it's not going any further than this world. Right. And or this particular village. Now, I'll say I found the CGI and the utilization of those characters to be not very strong. I do think it sort of redeems itself at the end of the film, because there is another chase sequence on a highway that is again, that features a car and a horse and the creatures. Yeah. It is again like mind blowing, practical filmmaking, with what is happening on the car and the horse. Like I genuinely, as somebody who really admires those like big train set kinds of movies, and what it takes to accomplish that stuff, I think it is like world class action.

1:10:02It's just that the frame of the story is so dumb at this point, and you're so taken out of it by the CGI, by the utilization of those actors, that this movie is such a crazy mixed bag. Like it's totally worth going to the movies to see it with a little bit of lowered expectations. And then you'll have a fun time. I mean, that's the other thing is that we did see it. And it was in competition at Cannes. We got dressed up. You were in your tux again for the world premiere. And we were sort of jockeying for these tickets because there was buzz the week before. Like, oh, maybe that's the point. Paul Winner, yeah, exactly. Not very respected. He's made like serial killer movies and some supernatural dramas. Right. And so on the one hand, it's hilarious and amazing and a great pick that this was in competition. It can. It was a fun time. I love it. It's very fun. But we were expecting something very different. And I think for the person who's just going to the movies on the weekend in September, and you want like a very fun creature movie,

1:11:02you'll really like it. I agree. I think it's pretty much effective as that. It is two hours and 40 minutes. That's true. It's really. That's long. It's really long. It's really long. And and and it's also just setting up the next one. You know, I hear just like, oh, yeah. And it seems like it's done well overseas, but maybe not has not been. I actually don't I don't want to comment on the box. I'm just I'm not totally sure what it is. But a fascinating experiment. And I think it's cool that Neon is putting it like on 1500 screens or something and encouraging. To me, this is like completely the product of the incredible success of a movie like Parasite that a film like this can and should play in the US at scale. Yeah. Even though it has some flaws, I do think it's a lot of fun. Yeah. Did you watch Mayday? I sure did. I watched it on the plane. Okay. So I'm actually really glad you did because I need you to help me with this one. I so let's be honest, I watched it on the plane on the way home. Okay. 24 hour travel day. Did I sleep through part of it? I did. Okay. But I was back up. I saw the ending. I like I I you know, I checked through the boxes, but I have to be very honest. This is again, this is a street to apple film

1:12:05starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh that is somehow like an even more gingoistic parody of Top Gun. You just you nailed it. I don't understand. So it's from John Francis, Daily and Jonathan Goldstein, who had a game night and the most recent hundreds of dragons film movies I like. Game might one of the great unrated comedies. Incredible movie of the last 25 years. This one, I don't really get it. So when a US Navy pilot on a top secret mission during a Cold War gets trappy hunt enemy lines, his only chance of survival is to form an alliance with an eccentric XKGB agent. So Reynolds is the pilot. Branagh is the XKGB agent. Nobody loves doing a bizarre European Russian accent like Kenneth Branagh. The key here is that the Branagh character is obsessed with American culture. Yeah. And has also has some regrets about his time spent in the KGB. So he is willing to help this pilot who has crash landed. What? Like why? Really, really tough. Why? Well, I noted that one of the company's

1:13:06production companies is Skydance. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and planes Top Gun. And Top Gun is like, it's literally in the movie. Yeah, it's not just, oh, this is a lot like Top Gun. Like they do actually make call back to the movie and that and Kenneth Branagh's character loves the movie. And, you know, there are lots of goose references. So I'm sure that has something to do with it. I was quite taken aback by the mismatch of tone between like earnest American exceptionalism. And Ryan Gosling, excuse me, and I'm sorry, Ryan, though the watch is, you know, I know where my gospel is at that you would ever consider. And Ryan Reynolds is joky, sarcastic, quirky, but he's also trying to be a C.I. I'm sorry, he's a Navy seal, I guess. He's in the Navy. He's in the Navy pilot. He's a Navy pilot. Yeah. And so, he's both trying to be sarcastic

1:14:09but also communicate to you that he believes in America, which like he says a lot. It's an eye, I kept being like, wait, so is this earnest? I couldn't figure out what the hell the point of this movie was. Like, why did anybody want to make this movie? I don't know. I mean, I tried to not do that with movies, but like I genuinely was like, so we're like glossing, like glazing, 80s top gun culture. And there's a little bit of, you know, listen, I like hunt for red October. I like 2010s salt on like Jack and Lucas over there. But people like spy thrillers. Yeah. And so maybe you want to make a spy thriller that's a little lighter. But I mean, maybe if it was a different actor, I'd have a slightly different perspective on it. But in a very confusing way. Everything with Reynolds is inherently kind of joky. Yeah. Because his acting tone is very joky. His character isn't very dangerous circumstances here. But there's always that kind of slight smarm that comes with a lot of his roles. Brana is having fun.

1:15:09And like, whatever he's doing in the action sequences and the fight sequences is pretty fun. It's not an unwatchable movie or anything, but I think the actual like, there's a big scale expensive film that went straight to streaming with one of the 10 biggest movie stars in the world. Like what? What is this? I don't know. Once again, I do not know. And I don't know why Apple needs to do this because they're going to get $4,000 of our dollars for their little flip phones. That's true. Yeah. But I mean, Dan, I got to start saving. So your top break for me. To your point, I don't know if you need a flip phone. It seems like the phone you have is working just fine. Why isn't this movie movie theaters then? It's got big actions. It's got notable people. Because they don't need it. What does they don't need it? I don't know. I don't know why Apple and Amazon are making movies. Like I really don't. Well, I welcome more movies. I just do. But not these. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, let's talk about another movie that I'm completely mystified by. Yeah. Sure. I caught up with one night only. Now you and Juliet did a great episode of the show. I did not listen to the one night only section of that episode because I didn't want any of the movie spoiled for me. I knew I would watch it at some point.

1:16:11As I said, I had this in my movie fantasy league. I had some interest in it. When it came out, I was at a town. So I watched it on VOD last night. Started by Will Glock, best known probably for anyone but you at this point. Yeah. And an easy A screenplay by Travis Braun, stars Monica Barbaro, Calum Turner, Maya Hawk, Molly Ringwald of our burden. And as many people know, it's a, this is the romcom about the one night only that you can have premarital sex. Yeah, it's the sex purge. The sex purge. I thought this was horrible. I really horrible. Did you laugh? Not even a little bit. Not even a little bit. So that's the thing is that Juliet and I both laughed a lot. I think that this movie just like does not work. I think it's an insurmountable premise that and it does not surmanate. Okay. Here's my major issue. And I thought about it in terms of respect to the episode that you guys did. This is a sex comedy, not a romcom, but it's pretending like it's a romcom. Yes. There is a huge difference between those two kinds of movies. Correct. But it's also a sex movie without sex.

1:17:12And they took all the sex out. That's my point. I mean, you saw Will Glock gave interviews afterwards and being like, well, the tests and the children don't want sex. Hey, boys. The most overblown thing of all time. So fucking annoying. You don't want that your generation doesn't want to. The people like to fuck. Yeah. I mean, there's sex scenes in anyone but you. Everyone be safe, but good job. Like anyone but you Will Glock made it as a huge hit. There's a shower scene in the fucking movie. I don't remember. How was the takeaway in the sex comedy, not to have any sex? I have absolutely no idea. It's just mystifying. This is straight up like absolute malpractice at every level. I mean, can we just go into this? So this is a movie about how people can't have sex because the federal government has outlawed sex and implemented- Premerital sex. Premerital sex and implanted chips into everybody's bodies. Yes. And then they're just like, yeah, let's go. You know, let's make some jokes about where to get a condom. Yeah. I was kind of like, I, you know. I agree. The premise is completely unexplored. It's pure science fiction.

1:18:14I don't need that movie to be like us, you know, a chilling- I don't want it. A brutal of fascism. Like that's not- I don't want it to be the hand-made tale. Yeah, exactly. And I stopped watching the hands-made tale because, you know, I don't watch five seasons of anything, but also not a great hang. But there just is something about it. I mean, the sex purge is a great elevator pitch and it's like a funny thing. Yes. And you would have thought that they would have been able to market more with it. But I don't know if there's a good version of this movie. Like I don't know if it actually is a possible premise that you can carry out. I think you might be right. I think I was also distracted by just the like wave of Gen Z young millennial signifiers to the audience to tell you like how cool this movie is. It's like multiple King Princess songs. King Princess plays one of the friends in the movie. You've got Julia Fox. You've got Maya Hawk. You've got Daniel Craig's daughter at one point. Yeah. You've got Zway and S.D. Hyam as the downstairs of the club.

1:19:16Like you've got all like all the Nicholas Braun is there for five seconds. Like take vacation drops. Like everything in the movie is so like, hey, you know about this young person. Hey, hey, hey, hey, the needle drops right least better than it. Normally the needle drops in these movies are just the most terrible. I just thought they sounded like not even Sarah Burrell. They sounded like all the needle drops in the dating shows on Netflix that I lean my watch. For I'm just like the most banal like light, fizzy pop. Only you as a great song. Take it back. Well, that's an old song. That's the old song. I know. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Monica Burrell, wonderful singer. I would throw it all the way for her today. So of course she's stunning. She's so stunning and a good actor. And you know, the other thing I thought a lot about when Harry and Matt Sally was watching this movie because I was like when Harry and Matt Sally, obviously one of the probably the single greatest movie of this kind ever made. The great movie looks so good. The way it's shot. The production design, the costumes, the vibe of that movie is magical. The score. The music. Yeah.

1:20:17Everything about that movie, you've got that great North Ephraim Scorripe. You've got Rob Reiner right in his zone and perfect performances from those two leads. Now it's unfair to hold a movie like this to the absolute platinum standard of a certain kind of genre. But it's not as though it's accomplished in when Harry and Matt Sally is impossible. It just requires more time, effort, money, and thought. Sean, I say this on every single episode, every single time we talk about romantic comedies, they just they won't spend the time and money. This looks like a shitty streaming service service show. I don't understand it. The other thing, at least they filmed in New York. Listen, yeah, this is important. Yeah. This is really important. Yeah. Calm Turner, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. You saw the running, right? Sure. The running. I don't think so, Amanda. Listen, he's not going to get bond. It sounds like, which is tough. He's got dual Epa. So that's good for him. Listen, he, one thing that Juliet and I identified, which I do think is true, is that he has the really good rom-com reaction face. Why is she singing and they caught him and he's smiling at her?

1:21:17Yeah. And, you know, I found myself in that moment being like, you know, so and that's something that you just can't replicate. Okay. And it does, they have chemistry. I disagree. So when he has chemistry with a telephone phone. She's so great. Yeah. She's wonderful and he is pretty cute. I, I listen, had notes on the accent, which was pretty tough. Another issue. The running is not bond worthy. Uh-huh. And, you know, why isn't he just British? I mean, then they have to get into like immigration status and the biochips and all sorts of stuff, which is again, you don't want to get it. Listen, you should listen. We really got, I have a lot of questions about how it's all worked. Okay. I'll go back and listen to it. Yeah. It's like, how are they tracking that you're using a condom, you know, which is a point? Your point. Like, what is that sensor about? Like, there's just nothing going, no information on masturbation and no information on hand jobs. Is masturbation allowed? We don't know. When they're at the, um, when they're at the police office, which I thought was the single worst, uh, scene in the movie.

1:22:18Pretty rough. And like, you know, clearly noted and people being like, you do, you need to acknowledge this, which like, you do, but it, it just feels added on to the script. Anyway, on the background, there's a sign of, you know, illustrations of acts that are allowed. So oral sex is depicted. That's out. Nothing about hand jobs. Okay. I don't know. You would just be given handies every day. Well, I mean, it's just like, are people doing that? You know, why is everyone not getting married immediately? We don't like explore what's going on with the worst. Just going to say it overrated. Um, I think, I think that that's true, but it's, listen, like, don't, aren't you trying to survive? I'm not 14, you know, like, come on. It's be real. Calum Turner, getting a hand job every day. Well, sure, but, but also like, thinking about the reverse verse, I mean, you're just, you're cutting out like a whole, that's true. So, but they don't specify that people are not ready at 7 p.m. when the alarm goes off. You know, they're still hanging out. And I'm like, why aren't you just at home counting down, trying to maximize the amount

1:23:19of time? A great good note. Very good note. Again, like, why aren't we marrying and then getting divorced? Well, one question ahead, maybe you brought this up. Yeah. If you get married, can you cheat with other people? Again, we talked about that. It's not specified, but that seems like a, right? Exactly. Because you've got your marriage certificate. Sure, but, you know, the, because then you just get married friend and then just go galvan. Totally. Yeah. And so the, the, the conum things suggest that there is like the bio sensor element has like some DNA elements to it, which again, it's just really upsetting. Very morning. It's practically blade runner. Right. And so nothing is explored that I like want to know about. This is like, you know how Bill has said for years there should be like the sports consulting firm that he has for, for Hollywood. Yeah. This is our business, you know, like, 1000%. You want to integrate romcoms and science fiction into a movie. This is the duo that can help you. Like we should have gotten a phone call to walk through some of these ideas. I, what a misfire. Crazy. Yeah.

1:24:20It really, really doesn't work. I didn't have a bad time watching it. I'm happy. I love these movies. I like it. You know, they're, they're cute also. So both of them idiots. I can't believe you watched idiots. How about you? Do you watch on the plane? I did. Okay. So this is the new movie from Megan Blair. Wrote and directed. It stars Dave Franco O'Shea Jackson Mason. Is it Tim's or teams? I believe it's Tames. I believe it. I believe it. Curen and Shipka Nicholas Braun recurring and Peter Dinklidge. It's about two rock bottom drivers transporting a wealthy teen to rehab, but their simple jobs spirals into a chaotic journey of drugs, danger and crime as their passenger derails their plans. What do you think of this one? I wanted it to be funnier. Me too. I thought it was, I expected it to be less of a movie and more of a comedy given the people involved specifically. I had a contract in junior and Dave Franco. Did you see the trailer? It was very funny trailer. So I think it sold me hard on it being able to describe it. And also like once you're doing midnight run, you know, that's, those are big shoes to fill. So it wasn't as funny.

1:25:21And I didn't think like the performances of those two people who are think are hilarious were as funny. I agree. It was more of a movie than I think. You know, it's not that it doesn't work. It's just trying to be something different than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. I think it's really actually ultimately more of the last detail than it is. Yeah. Midnight run because of the like transporting someone against their will to some extent. And yeah, I really wanted this to be a little bit better too. It's got a couple of really funny moments. There's some funny reveals. But it didn't, it didn't totally click. This was a Sundance movie. There was originally called the shitheads and they renamed it. I had a question for you. Yeah. Do you think that movies should have, it should be okay for movies to have explodives in the title? I'm okay with it. But then you can't even curse on Instagram still. So what are we doing? What do you mean you can't curse on Instagram? Right. Don't you have to bleep it out? I have to but typically that algorithm takes it. Yeah. Take it down more. I have no idea.

1:26:21Yeah. We live in Mayday's America, you know. Mayday's America. You're absolutely right. And I won't argue with you. Okay. Did I talk at you about Buddy? I don't think so. I don't remember it. You know what it is? Well I know that people have taken their children to it thinking it's a children's movie. Uh-huh. And it's huge mistake. Yeah. I've read that they were mad. Well, it's a testimony to the very successful marketing campaign of this movie. This movie is now turning out to be I think in that conversation, not at the same box office level, but in that same conversation with back rooms, with obsession, with, uh, with the market plier movie, like where independent horror with a really strong hook can do really, really well. I guess you could say terrifier kind of laid some of the groundwork for this. Buddy is basically what if a Barney the dinosaur asked children's giant puppet host was actually

1:27:23deranged, malevolent, etc. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. We did talk about this a little bit because I we talked about the Barney movie that Daniel Kluia is like allegedly going to make at some point, which seems to me would be the same thing. I'm just going to bring this movie up again to you because I mentioned Casper Kelly who made too many cooks and made the adults swim you will log movies, which were both really, really funny and really clever and these kind of postmodern explorations of old, you know, 80s and 90s pop culture. This is the same thing. This is like in his wheelhouse. He didn't I guess it didn't originally write this movie, but rewrote it. Kristen Melotti is in the movie. Delaney Quinn, the young actresses in the movie. Then there's a lot of famous people who do voices, Pat Noswald, Michael Shannon, Tofer Grace, Keegan Michael Key. The first half of the movie where it's just where inside the world of buddy, we're like inside the show. They basically recreated the show as buddy, this orange unicorn.

1:28:24It's becoming it's one kid doesn't want to do the things that buddy wants to do. Okay. And this kid right on is he's an outsider. He's a he's a rebel and he's like, I don't want to read today, buddy. I don't want to go do this activity today, buddy. He keeps going off to the side and this sort of breaks something in buddy's psychology. And it's a great idea. It's a great idea. And the first 40 minutes when he loses it, when it kind of shatters everything and he kills this kid. Oh, okay. Yeah. We don't see the murder, but it's very clear what's happened. Okay. All of that stuff inside of the show. Fantastic. Perfectly executed. We're creating a show that from 1994, like when we were kids when the stuff was on TV. Every time we're in the world of the puppets and the movie is not just Barney, it has a lot of P.W.s playhouse in it, which is a movie that I TV show that I really love. I thought all that stuff was really smart. The movie's success though is really cool because they never released a full trailer. They only released a series of teasers. The teasers are these like very unnerving little segments from the show.

1:29:26And so much so that I was looking at YouTube on my phone and my daughter came over and looked over my shoulder as she often does when I'm looking at my phone. And she saw me flip past the body, one of the buddy teasers. And she said, I want to watch that. And we did watch it. Oh, no. Now, it was 30 seconds. Nothing actually bad happened in it. But what it had was ambient, malevolent terror, sound design. Okay. An insinuation of violence, nothing depicted. But it was almost like this was her first exposure to hardcore, real scary shit. And was she terrified? Had didn't clock it at all. Yeah. Nothing. I think Naxx would be the same way. The clock's nothing. Nothing was wrong. Like she owned like, they don't have a language. Yeah. I remember this the first year that we took the kids took her treating. And we went back, we went by all the houses that have like all the gory setups and like the plastic, you know, claws coming out of the grave and all these sorts of things.

1:30:29And they didn't know that it was scary. And so they just, and so they didn't know there. I think Naxx was like, oh, look at that red, you know, because he was learning colors. But it's so interesting what we think is scary versus what they respond to. And haven't learned the language of like grown up terror. It's like you have to get old enough to be scared of something. Yeah. And I just thought it wasn't notable because this movie is using a five year old sensibility to make something scary, but five year olds don't quite know that this should be scary. Yeah. Anyway, it's like what the rivals of Amzaya King. Okay. One of the craziest movies of the year. It's all I knew that Matthew McCann Hay was, that's all I knew about the movie. Yes. So this is the new movie from Andrew Patterson, his first since the Vast of Night, which we've talked about a bunch on the show recently. And I think I mentioned it during the Twilight Zone episode. And it stars McCann Hay and Angelina looking glass got shepherd, Rob Morgan, Tony Rob Allory, Kurt Russell. The log line of the movie if you haven't seen it because it came out last month, deep within

1:31:31the backwards of rural Oklahoma charismatic and musically gifted Amzaya King. Heard's a bluegrass band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey making operation in town when his estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns. Amzaya leaps at the possibility to reconnect and create a family business. What did you think of this? Because you texted me when you saw it. I don't even know if I responded because I knew we would eventually discuss it on the show. Yeah. I think you said that you were kind of into it for the first half. Loved the first half. I think I did too. Though again, I did not know that I was going to a film in which Matthew McCann Hay makes tens to bees. Is it keeps bees? Is it be keeper in the non-stathom sense and plays in a like praise band? Which is really what's going on and that's all he does. The movie stops three different times to just basically do a bluegrass music video in

1:32:32which Matthew McCann Hay performs with a series of actors, Owen Tigg and many other people. It's a choice. It's aggressive. I enjoyed it. I was intrigued by it and really for an hour, it is just honey and him doing his accent and like being, you know, I think kind of like slapstick gross out humor a little bit that isn't it. The opening sequence is very funny. There's also a sequence when they have to get rid of bees at a school which was incredibly funny and he's very engaging and then it turns into a completely different revenge movie. Yeah. The second half of the movie, something dramatic happens and it turns into more of a thriller revenge movie where the film sort of refocuses to the angeline looking glass character who is McCann Hay is foster daughter and I don't know that I've ever really seen this a choice like that to basically just topple the movie and turn it into a completely different kind

1:33:33of a movie. And for me, the second half of the movie is just not successful and it starts to really drag. You start to wonder why you're there. You don't feel invested in the revenge plot and it really just dropped the rope. What's that? I was bummed out. Yeah. The first half is set pieces and it goes beyond goofy but there is kind of like a joyous slapstick as you said anarchy to what's going on paired with like real sincerity in the performances and in the things that they're talking about. But once it has to take on capitalism, I didn't really know what's going on. Also, we have bees in the wall again. I've keep meaning to tell you that there are more bees in the wall. What's so hot? Yeah. Well, they've been there for a long time and it's sort of zack. So there's a room in our house where bees took up residents and they were swarming

1:34:33more outside that time. So first, zack had to be an amateur beekeeper. Then we had to come have the hive removed. This time they're staying inside. Also do you remember the time when we had bees in a different part of the house but then they just died and disappeared? I don't remember the second time now. They were coming into our room and then dying and by the time the beekeeper could come, they had moved on. So something's going on with bees in my house. It's a sensitive subject right now. Do you think you are being haunted? Amityville Horror Style? No, I don't... Like bees, swarms of bees do freak me out. I never watched the video of that the beekeeper sent us of the hives that they were moved from our house. We sent it to Chris and Phoebe. You're afraid of bees? Well, there's something about the visual aspect of the hive and all of them together. What's the phobia of too many small things that kind of underlines a lot of horror design? Actually, it's fairly common. I definitely have that so I don't like looking at it. Too many small like a...

1:35:35Trypophobia. Trypophobia. Okay, like an army of ants. Yes, don't like that but it can also be like a lot of the skin. It's good for me to remember. Yeah. Yeah. It's for Halloween season. Yeah. Like a lot of the gross out stuff. Okay. I think speaks to... But I think that's half of people find that very scary and I'm one of them. So I don't like that. Okay. I don't want to be stung by a bee or a swarm of bees. No, I don't. I don't think I'm a generation migraile but I don't think I'm being haunted. No, it doesn't feel like a supernatural element. It just seems like they... Now I got these bees I got to deal with. Instead I just don't go in the room of the house which is not really useful because that's where my desk is. Oh, you don't work so it's okay. That's tough about the bees. Sorry about that. I like that. I can hear it as Nick Cage screaming the bees. So I was like a little uncomfortable during the second half of it because I was like, Oh God, now I got these bees I got to deal with. You know? Well, you're a regular old anxiety king with all these bees.

1:36:36Did you see the wrong girls? No. Okay, then we don't need to talk about it. We'll talk about it after you've seen it. This is the new movie from Dylan Meyer. Stars Kristen Stewart. Yes. Worth discussing. Not sure if it's worth recommending. Any other closing thoughts. Except you've asked me to see it so I will. Well. And Dylan Meyer is Kristen's or it's wife. That's correct. Yeah, so I mean, I love stories like this. Yes. And there's there's much to discuss. Yes, that's cool. I'll see it. I just, I don't know if you heard, but I've been in Italy. I have heard, you know, I feel like I'm really good at going to see a lot of movies. It's one of my skills. And there's still a ton of movies that I haven't seen. Like for this episode, I was hoping to have seen in cities out of the further, which was actually also a pretty solid hit at the end of the summer. I was hoping that you were going to see Finding Emily, which I don't think you've seen yet, right? I was even at the, at Century City, seeing a not very good movie while one of the Emily screenings was happening for Finding Emily, where they did a stunt where only Emily was there as well. Yes. What movie did we see?

1:37:37I don't remember. Okay. In August film of some of some remember. Sure we podcasted about it. Fall to dead point. Did you ever see fall? Fall one. The first fall. I had a time, the pull and then can you climb Jacob a laurdy and yeah, they got it. So no, I never saw it, but it lives on in my mind. I like the original fall. By any means, the Mark Warren, yeah, yeah, I'm doing a teen film from the Harry Mellon of coming Oscar nominated original song by any means. I haven't seen that. I'd like to see it. I meant to watch the two angel studios films. Sure. Young Washington and the brink of war. I have famously seen Young Washington. You have. The brink of war. Should we bring the war? The Reagan Gorbachev like a whole podcast. Oh, oh, that one. I was kind of you're interested. Jeff Daniels. I mean, it looked terrible. It's probably terrible, you know, and it probably, I mean, it's probably made a core, but yeah, but like with no action. Yeah. So Daniels is Reagan. Jared Harris is Gorbachev. JK Simmons is George Schultz back in the news after the Elizabeth Holmes recurrent.

1:38:42Don't tell me anymore. Guys, I like I said. You don't miss Nancy Reagan. Tell me. Hope Davis. I did know that because I saw the trailer. Listen, I'm glad people are getting work. Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm going to watch the brink of war and I'm going to watch it. I still need to see the angel studios film drummer boy. That's not out yet. Or the drummer, which is, you know, has the drummer boy soundtrack. Isn't that a Christmas celebration movie? Well, it's really, it's just about someone who drums like in the regiment. In the revolutionary. Yeah. I don't know whether this particular battle was fun. Because you see your son in that character noted drummer, your son. It's because they did the Grease Anatomy version of the drummer boy for the, for the trailer. Oh, yeah, just so it was I laughed out like a mournful pop cover of little drummer boy. Yes. Okay. Interesting. Great. Great. Great chat. Great to have you back. Everything good? Thanks so much. Yeah. Doing great. Can we also add a way to Stone Look Back and Inger to it?

1:39:45Yeah. Yes. Because yeah, it's probably on the episode. Yeah. And I'm seeing it tomorrow. Okay. So it's very exciting that we will do all, we will do practical magic to, we'll talk about Sandy. I want to talk about Sandy. I want to talk about Sandra Bullock. Yes. It's like Hurricane Sandy. No, no, Sandra Bullock. I want to talk about, because I don't, I wanted to do a whole fame and then I was looking at the filmography and I'm like, whole fame. Yeah. I don't know if we can get that. It's, yeah. But what I want to do is try to revive movie star playbook. Because what I want is Sandy's 60's to be amazing. Yeah. But we haven't seen practical magic too. So maybe they already are. Okay. Let's go now to my conversation with Ben David Grubinsky about Abel Farrah. Okay. Ben David Grubinsky is back on the show, not promoting a film. I'm not. You're here when I hear to talk about Whalefall. Well, if you'd like to. No, I haven't seen it yet. I just, I just think we should talk about the science of it. So Brian can hear this later and text me and go, what the fuck? There's, there's a lot of time for us to talk about the science of Whalefall. And we will on this podcast, I promise you.

1:40:47We're talking about a different kind of science today. A different kind of scientist. So by this time when this is airing, folks will be able to see the Abel Farrah collection that helped to co-curate on the criterion channel, which is of course one of the, I say the very best streaming service in my opinion. And I pitched them over a year ago an idea to show as many of the films of Abel Farrah as we possibly can and to talk about why his work is special and why it's meaningful to me. And in recent months, I learned that you like me are an Abel Superfan. And you've seen a great many of his films. Have you seen every film? No. I did watch 19 of them in the last two weeks without having a criterion curation thing. So now it's like my end of your stats on Letterbox, during my little fuck towards like your number one actor is some obscure guy who's in like 12 Abel movies. Yeah. James Russo, Chris Walken. No, the guy who played who's in who's like the police chief in King of New York and

1:41:47Bad Lieutenant. Co-victor Argo. Yeah. He right now is my number one actor of 21, 2026. Yeah. Yeah. And I can't be the only one. But you know, now it probably would have been easier if they'd been on there. I mean, the thing we'll probably get into is there's a few of them that really need a good physical release. And then there's some that have incredible ones already. Yeah. I mean, I can talk about my experience of seeing Abel movies through that perspective, maybe, because I tried to acquire a physical copy of as many of his movies as I possibly could to do this project. And the first movie that I saw was King of New York. I tell this story in the criterion channel video that I made. But in 1994, I got obsessed with Biggie and Ready to Die and on the what with Method Man, he calls himself the Black Frank White. And I thought to myself, who is the White Frank White? What does this mean? And so when seeking that out, I hadn't seen King of New York. I probably had heard Quentin Tarantino referencing Abel and referencing those string of late 80s and early 90s movies that he had made. But I was 12 years old.

1:42:48So it was not super easy to track down some of this stuff. But I did track down King of New York and I saw Bad Lieutenant surely thereafter. And I got very interested in his movies as a big gangster movie fan and as a New Yorker. And as a hip hop fan and as somebody who is interested in New York cinematic history. So fell in love with those movies. And I've had like an up and down experience with him. I think like so many other people have where he is a bit of a shapeshifter and is constantly evolving his style. The last 25 years, he's gone through some really interesting evolutions and transgressive moves. His earliest work is the really like at the absolute outer edge of exploitation. His first movie is a porno. He makes a proper slasher inspired by Texas chainsaw massacre. He makes a rape revenge movie. And then he kind of slowly starts to pivot into more mainstream fare. What about for you? When did you get exposed to him and what makes you connected to him? You know, there's like the guys who you grew up with. I like my favorite New York filmmakers and favorite crime filmmakers that I was obsessed with.

1:43:49And I somehow had just missed most of his things. I was aware of King of New York because you'd hear other directors. You like talking about it. And you know, you kind of, I knew who he was, but I didn't really get into any of them. And he's one of the rare people of like one of my favorite directors who I got into like as an adult. Like most of the stuff that really I'm passionate about, you know, it was like your 15, 16, 17 and you you rented that thing and it changed your life. This is like when Draft House films put out Miss 45 more than 10 years ago, I'd seen the trailer like Jason Eisner had cut in it. I'm like, that looks really interesting. So I cold-bought the Blu-ray and it just melted my brain and then you just start going down a rabbit hole. And if you watch his movies out of order, it's insane because there's very clear kind of eras or sections of his filmography where like he's doing a certain type of thing.

1:44:53John Ruiz or certain budget level or has the same department heads where the style evolves and everything changes where when I went back this way, I was kind of watching in order. I started trying to pick up some of the later ones I'd missed because like I saw zeroes and ones in theaters and I'm like a huge fan of that, but also just because I think it's the closest we've gotten to like middle gear solid too in a movie. I got it on iTunes and then saw that I was playing in a small theater on Beverly. So I went with some friends, including Joe Begas, so I'm going to mention because some of his movies feel very able. So I saw it in the theater because I'm like, well, I need to see it with a crowd. I need to see it on a big screen. No one was there. And you know, and zeroes and ones has like three out of 10 on IMDB or something and a lot of people act like it's bad. And I watched it again this morning and I'm like, I don't know man, I think every movie should be like this. But you know, I think he's so interesting as a personality, he's so interesting from

1:45:57like a craft perspective and a thematic perspective and because there's not a lot of directors who like from beginning to end, like if you watch Driller Killer and then zeroes and ones back to back or a Tomaso and you know, Miss 45 just drastically different stuff. Also he has his New York era and then he has that classic New York move of like they move out in New York and then they're no longer making New York movies, which is still odd. I mean, we'll probably get into it. But when you watch stuff like the blackout, you're like, why are you a Miami? What is going on here? Well, like this feels like this is almost disconcerting to not have that environment. It feels like it is so much part of his storytelling. Yeah, and those are the movies that I first fell in love with. Was those New York movies and I saw stuff as I got a little older in college like China Girl or like the addiction where it's still seen like he was working in the New York Register. And those movies have a very specific feel, a very specific vibe.

1:46:59They're melancholy movies or kind of doom laden movies. They feel operatic. They're often quite beautifully photographed. They're not that stylistically transgressive, but the content feels very dangerous. His move to Europe, I think dramatically changes maybe not like his internal register of what makes a good story, but it does change the look and feel of the movies a lot. And it's also he did it. But I think at the same time he got sober after you know, spending decades on all kinds of stuff as we both listen to his book. Yes. I'm not even a big audiobook guy, but I've listened to his book 1.5 times now. I don't mean 1.5 times speed. I mean, I listened to the whole thing and then went back and listened to a bunch of the chapters because it is like being at 1.30 a.m. at a bar and a guy telling you a story where you're like, I was going to leave, but just please keep talking. This is riveting and hearing it in his own voice, it just feels insane.

1:47:59I mean, the fact that that came out the same time as like your collection and curated thing. I think it's really great if someone gets into him now because you can both get access to like the wide range of his movies, but also get his mostly seemingly uncensored hot take on his entire life. But also, I highly recommend his audio commentaries too, which are a little bit, they're a lot. Well, he's also not, he's clearly very proud of his career and his work, but he, when he feels something isn't up to his standard or he didn't enjoy an experience, he's very frank about that. And some of the movies that we might revere a lot, he maybe doesn't hold in his highest team. It was kind of interesting to try to navigate. It's kind of like what is the proper able canon, you know, like what is the best way to highlight what he's so great at and then contrast that to how he thinks about it because in the book, which is called scene, and I think if you've watched five or six movies in the collection, it's worth just listening to it all the way through or reading it, of

1:48:59course. But listening to it, you can hear his voice. He turned 75 this year. He is, he lived pretty hard. He speaks very openly about not just his drinking and casual drug use, but being addicted to heroin for years. And the many people around him and their use of heroin and the fact that he's working for decades through this addiction, he made a movie called The Addiction about vampires that is a very thinly veiled allegory for becoming addicted to a substance. And it's amazing how much work he did given the way that he was living. It's kind of extraordinary. And sometimes when it feels like a movie is right on the brink of falling apart, maybe you have more empathy or at least more understanding of why like a movie like the blackout, which feels so emotionally chaotic and so like my life is falling apart and I don't know what to do, doesn't it feel like it's ripped completely from the headlines of his own life? I mean, the blackout I would say, you know, going back through all these and watching

1:50:01some for the first time, that is one of the darkest movies I've ever seen. And I, you know, I love a lot of movies that are like, you know, just pure misery, but that movie is so bleak in the level of like guilt and shame that is like put into that character as like the worst case scenario version of finding out who you were in those like lost times from your life feels very pointed. And there's just a level of it that it's because he can put you in the point of you of a character so well. And you feel like you're on the journey with that guy who is having the worst time more than almost any movie character as ever. I mean, like, do we care about spoilers? No, I think we should just talk open about the men's work. You know, it's, you know, it's a movie about a guy who is now sober. And if he had just stayed in New York and stayed sober, he'd be fine.

1:51:02But he just, he just can't let it go. And he wants to know what happened. And he wants to know some things and then finds out that he did unforgivable stuff. And he could have spent the rest of his life like the, like the end of Old Boy with the guy who's like erased all the things and he can just live at peace. But this guy chose to find out. And then he gets yelled at by Dennis Hopper in full Frank Booth mode for like 10 minutes. Literally shows him what he's done. Yes. And he's almost like you fucking idiot. You could have just made peace with this. But now I'm showing you on camera what you did. That was, that movie is such a bad hang in a way that I both loved, but also, you know, I think Abel must have been having a hard time. I think you can say that about almost every movie. Yeah. You know, it's three different times he made films about filmmakers. Dangerous game is a scene from the perspective of a filmmaker play by Harvey Kytel, the blackout, Matthew Modine plays the filmmaker and Tomasso is also about a filmmaker.

1:52:03And, you know, I think it's safe to say there's a lot of auto biography in those movies. But I think there's a lot of auto biography in things like King of New York and Badloo, Tenon and should probably say the name of Nicholas St. John who's just co-writer or co-writer on 10 different movies. Probably the most significant collaborator of what's seen as like his glory. A very different script and so many of them are like truly brilliant. And an incredible writer, an amazing characterization, incredible dialogue writer. And, you know, I think many of Abel's best known and best love movies are written by St. John. And he's also somebody who really shod from the spotlight and was an interview very often. And so a lot of these ideas, these themes, these kinds of figures who recur, we like, I ascribe to Abel. But I think a lot of them are just as much St. John. One of the themes that I kept circling back to when I was writing about this and thinking about it for the curation was just the trapped man, you know, which is a very kind of like noir-ish 40s and 50s concept. But in all of Ferraris movies, the trapped men are trapped because of circumstances that they put

1:53:05themselves in. Like they're aspiring to a certain kind of power or success. And in doing so, they keep building all these booby traps around them and they fall into them. And you can see that in Badloo, Tenon. You can see that in King of New York. You just described a version of it in the blackout. It goes on and on and on. The funeral is defined by this. Sometimes the lead is a woman. And in that case, that power dynamic shifts a little bit. If it's Miss 45 or if it's the addiction, it feels like more like something has been put upon. The woman, when it's a man, there's a lot of like, this is all your fault that feels very personally subjective. Not to be too glimmer choky, but how much do you think Tomaso was inspired by this as 40? Because it's very much like, okay, the husband is me, but then I'm going to put in my wife and kids and make something very personal. I think that would be one of the oddest double features ever.

1:54:07Like someone say Paul Redis me and the other guy's like, Willem DeFoe was me. And there's a different level of energy to that. But it is this same cinematic approach to telling a personal movie. I, you know, it's just kind of a coincidence. But also knowing the personal relationship between able and Willem makes that even more complicated. But he has a lot of recurring collaborations with actors that really pay off. And their performances are very different. Like multiple walk-ins, multiple Willem DeFoe. And then there's guys who he's worked with a million times. And that, just another way that his stuff feels varied. And also repetition of themes is working with the same people and kind of working through the same demons and stuff. Yeah, Kitelle too. Kitelle recurring another actor who feels like he could be volcanic at any moment. And there's a lot going on underneath the surface. You know, he's a like Stanley Kubrick and Kairos one.

1:55:10He's a product of the Bronx. And his father was a bookie and seemed to spend a lot of time in bars. And he talks about this a bit in the book about being surrounded by a life of crime not necessarily participating in it, but being proximate to it. And then in that proximity trying to raise money and live a life in the arts. While still retaining the hard edge that he's grown up around. And you can feel that. And so there's this interesting tension in the early part of his career. I don't know how much of the early stuff you looked at. But once you get past the exploitation movies, when he starts kind of getting like Hollywood training, where he makes, he makes catch chaser, which really doesn't go well for him. It's an Elmore Leonard adaptation that he's not really happy with, starting Peter Weller. And that film doesn't really work or come together. And then he makes China Girl and the Gladiator, which is a TV movie. And he works on the, you know, two episode premiere of Crime Story. And he directs that TV pilot. And you can see that shift that you're talking about where like,

1:56:12the movies get a lot shinier. There's a lot more neon and chrome in the frame. There's a lot more money on screen. Doesn't feel like a bunch of guys who just got together and made something a little bit depraved. And it's funny that he kind of picks up all those tools and gets kind of drawn into the system a bit. But then doesn't get like addicted to that over time. Like eventually he dispenses with a lot of the vagaries of like Michael Mann style filmmaking, which I think is so interesting. Because a lot of times once you get exposed to that level of work, it's hard to discover a new path. I don't know how much you think about his style. That's mean I, I'm pretty, pretty obsessed with it because I think there's a real like, there's two kind of sliding doors moments with his career and you look at. So after badly tenant, he gets brought to Warner Brothers to make body snatchers, which I think is maybe the most underrated genre movie of the 90s. I think it is fucking beautiful. Because like his career for a little bit is tied to the same thing with Boy on Bazzelli.

1:57:17So that's a guy who shot China girl, King of New York, and body snatchers, which I think are all gorgeous movies. But body snatchers is such, to me it's one of the most interesting scale ups from a director ever going from like his auteur, smaller stuff. He's doing like five six million dollar movies to making a gigantic undertaking. It's the thing I love about body snatchers is you get to seem like blow shit up and have huge sets and scale and tons of extras. And it is so well executed. But because as he gets into in his book, it tested like a 46 set of 100 and the studio hated it. I think he just got so burned by the experience. And also, he said in the book, there's like a memo saying that Warner Brothers had like no more New York out tours. But you look at that movie and it's like Boy on shoots it and it is

1:58:18one of the most beautiful movies in the 90s in my opinion. And he clearly was comfortable in that large scale world. Whereas Able is not the kind of guy who wants to go to a test screening and get feedback and he wants to take everybody's notes. And either you can function in that world or you can't. And I think because you go and it's like something like the addiction, he makes a bunch of movies as cheaply as possible so he can have as much control as possible. Where it's clear that control matters more to him. But as a fan of his work, I really wish we got a couple more body snatchers. Even though he clearly was, I think it seems like almost that process made him more miserable than any of his other real life misery in a way. I've always wondered why he didn't try to get, for lack of a better phrase, why he wasn't able to get his goodfellas made. But Carlitos were. Like, he was going to do. That's the thing.

1:59:19Those are the two things to me as like what if he hadn't been fired from Carlitos way? And what if body snatchers had done well? Like body snatchers, you kind of understand too because one, he's never made a movie of that scope before. It's a third time remake. And so he's got some kind of misgivings about getting into this, what we didn't know would be called IP world. It's a relentlessly bleak franchise and story idea. So it was never going to test well regardless. If the Kaufman film or the Don Siegel film tested in the 70s and 50s, those films were not going to test well because they end so brutally. But it being on a military base in Texas, he's just so fish out of water. Like he's just, he's doing the kind of thing he's never done before. He's working with a lot of great artists and he's got great perspective. But it's clear that there's some discomfort. And I wonder if he was able to make something like Carlitos way in the early 90s if that trajectory really goes in a different direction because he then kind of pretty quickly pivots back to New York by doing the addiction and the funeral after that. So he's still like, hasn't gotten that out of his system. And you think a movie studio

2:00:24would know in the aftermath of Scorsese were kind of roaring come back in the 90s that. And you know, 1990 that very famous year of King of New York, Miller's Crossing, Goodfellas, and the Godfather Part III all coming out in the same year. And this kind of gangster revival that's happening in the American cinema. And he doesn't really get to take advantage of it. Like he doesn't get his $25 million movie starring, you know, I don't know Chris Walken and Billy Baldwin or something. But like that feels like that should have happened. Yeah, but he also, you know, he says in his book that he got fired from Carlitos way because he thought he stole a bottle of wine from a table at can that belonged to the studio head. And he tells a bunch of stories without trying to make himself look better where it sort of feels like in that system, I don't really know if anyone would know what to do with him. Yeah. You know, it sounds like he was just uncomfortable even staying at the shadow more morn like and being living like the life of luxury while making a large-scale movie.

2:01:26Just feels like it was not good for his temperament. And the interesting thing is also as he gets older, he sort of has less incident and less violence in his movies and less of kind of he doesn't gravitate as much to things that are like the fun pulp side of these things. Like in the the alive doc, alive in France, which is a doc that I think is going to be on your collection where he did showing his films in Europe and then also did a concert of a bunch of music and at a Q&A, someone says, are you ever going to make him be like King of New York again? And he basically said he's over making movies about killers. And that's cool. And as an artist, I totally respect that, but you know, not wanting to make movies that have a little bit more of a propulsive energy and an edge and like a thrill to them is kind of makes his stuff even smaller. But I do think Zeroism 1's is very thrilling and that's about soldiers and people dying and terrorism and all this

2:02:31stuff, but he does get way more internal. Yeah, I mean, all of his movies are so personal and passionate. So it's inevitable that he's at a certain point not when he's not especially when he's not living in New York, not thinking about that way of life. And he's getting further and further away from his youth and things he met here. Remember seeing these kind of plunging into the movies. But all the movies I find to be completely anguished. There's just like, you know, one of the, I think one of his most challenging movies is Welcome to New York. Man, I am, I just need to vent about that one for a minute is that on iTunes, it says Welcome New York two hours and five minutes. I buy it. I hit play. About an hour into what I realized the running time is an hour and 48. And then mid movie, I realized I was watching the edited version of Welcome to New York, which I think you can provide some context where people don't know what this movie is. You know, it's a movie about a very terrible incident involving a very rich person who came to America and went on trial and basically

2:03:38got away with it because of money. Yes. I'm not allegedly. I don't want to get fired by, though, it is not a docu drama of an incident involving Dominique Strauss-Con who is the head of the International Monetary Fund, a very wealthy man who reportedly had some intense habits. And the film portrays this character played by Gerard Depardieu raping a woman who works in a hotel where he's staying in New York and he goes on trial and he eventually gets off. And it's a movie about how power operates and vengloriousness. And it's a hard tough movie. But the two hour and five minute version is not the one that you saw. And the one that I saw, there's some ambiguity. And they didn't just remove the rap scene. There's like 17 minutes shorter or something like that. And they removed just a lot of dialogue scenes because it was the result of that guy suing the financier. So they got rid of all kinds of like I was basically going through a list of everything

2:04:43that was there. And I was like, this is a completely different movie when you remove this stuff where it seems like it doesn't have a strong POV on this person. Whereas the original cut feels like an indictment. It's just like look at evil. And the cut now that's supposed to be more palatable is actually like, yeah, he's a bad guy. But is he that bad or did this really happen? Or is it this? I mean, it's a gross mis-treatment of Ferrar's perspective on the story. So the good news is the uncut version is in the collection. So you can watch the two hour and five minute version, which has I think some meaningful context to what you're describing. But you know, it's interesting that that's a movie that is not about a killer per se, but it is about a similar kind of power hungry devil may care literally figure. And it's like the kind of person that keeps getting drawn back to and back to some of his characters. There's like an interesting moral relativism that happened across a lot of his movies in King of New York, which is his best movie. I still it's still

2:05:47my absolute favorite. I just think it's a masterpiece completely agree. You know, it's kind of a Robin Hood movie. It's a movie that is told from the perspective of a crime kingpin who's come out of prison and is reclaiming his corner, so to speak. And you know, it's unclear how actually generous or change making he is in New York City in his attempts to kind of funnel some of this elicit money to hospitals for children in the South Bronx. Frank did nothing wrong. Yeah. I mean, he's a great guy. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, great guy. I think the cops suck. Yeah. If you hate cops, you should definitely watch Able for our movies. There are a lot of very unpleasant police officers in these movies. But like, it's interesting that the way that he can kind of shift the perspective on who the bad guy is in the movie pretty seamlessly. That movie is so singular and fucking incredible in the book. If someone takes a shot every time I say in the book on this, they're going to die. But in his book, Able says he got the idea from he saw the Terminator and then sat down.

2:06:48It's like, well, I'm going to make my version of the Terminator. Any rogue King of New York? How perfect is that? And but it makes sense because it's a relentless machine. But so I watched King of New York and I had a couple like skating hot takes. I know this isn't rewantables, but I had some really strong opinions. And I was like, you know what? I'm going to listen to the King of New York rewantables. So I don't like repeat stuff. And somehow almost everything Quentin said about it was like what I was like my I have a few very strong takes on the movie, which is I think it's perfect, but also like an hour too short. And then you got into that. And that I think it's really Lawrence Fishburn's movie. And it was just like I was getting like, okay, well, of course, Quentin had said everything that I want to say about this. People haven't heard that episode. We did an episode with Quentin Tarantino in 2019, one of three episodes actually. And he chose this movie, which was extraordinary. I could not have been more pumped. How was that to do that? Can we just take a moment to talk about what was it like doing a rewantables of Quentin talking about King of New York? For me, it was wonderful. You know, Bill and I had never talked about that movie and Bill's on that episode. And, but Bill loves Fishburn. And I knew that he liked the movie. That's

2:07:53all that I knew. I knew he had seen it and he liked it. And he wanted to be on that episode with us. And the way that we did it was like I was on one with Chris and Quentin, Chris and Bill were on one with Quentin. And I was on one with Bill with Quentin. So, you know, we didn't really strategize our talk very much. But you if you've ever met Quentin, you know, he's like one of the great talkers about movies in the history of time. And so he came in locked and loaded. He shared with us one of the more incredible Lawrence Fishburn lore drops you'll ever hear. Oh man. I mean, we should talk about James Russo though. Yeah. It's like these are sort of the same discussion. So James Russo played the Frank's Stallone part in Beverly Hills Cop. Like so Beverly Hills Cop was a Stallone movie. I'm sure everyone already knows this. And it was cast around him. And when he dropped out, the only other part that had to be recast was Mikey, whose his friend who gets murdered and gets the plot going. And that was supposed to be Frank's Stallone. And then that was amazing. And then James, like James Russo's like big thing. He's gigantic.

2:08:54Like he can't even know he shows up. He's the heart of the movie and he's gone. Then he's in China girl, which he's really, really good. Yes, he plays the older brother Albee. And he was supposed to be the Lawrence Fishburn part. King of New York, I think is 60% is good that way. And I mean, no disrespect to James Russo. It's that what Lawrence Fishburn is doing in that movie, the entire movie almost like he's like gravity. The movie just gets pulled around him in the specificity of his performance. And I think the first scene with him in walkin in King of New York is maybe my favorite scene in any movie. When walkin has just come out of prison. And he's in the hotel is in the Plaza Hotel. Plaza Hotel. Plaza Hotel. We met Lawrence Fishburn where he shows up to place and he kills a bunch of drug dealers and seems very scary. We don't know if he's the antagonist of the movie. We don't know his relationship to Frank and he arrives in his hotel room. And they have a they have a simmering 25 seconds where it feels like there's going to be

2:09:54an all a shootout and all out in every line in the scene is gold. It's just like it feels like a western and are these guys going to shoot each other. And then it leads to dancing and then just everyone being like so kind of fun and funny and joyous. And then like one of the best lines of movie history where he's like why didn't you visit me when I was on inside and you're like oh, the rest of this movie there's going to be this unspoken tension between them. And then the third act, you know, you're going to realize he's been mad at him this whole time. And then he just has a one sentence explanation for why he didn't go, which is like profound, which is he's like like what does he say? Who wants to who wants to see you in a cage, man? I'm blowing it by doing all this building, getting the line wrong. He that's it. It's like he's like he just didn't want to see him in a cage. You didn't want to see someone who he admired and thought was like this larger than life personality in that environment. But the movie doesn't want you to either. It's like the movie skips just to his comeback. Like you don't have to live in all of that misery.

2:10:56He's just like a bullet train when he gets out. He's just like I gotta be king again. You know, and I think they have some of the most amazing chemistry in any movie of this type. And it's just so specific. Part of what's so good about the movie. And I honestly can't recall if we even discuss this with Quentin is, you know, it's a it's a movie about Frank and it's a movie about ambition and desire and New York at a very specific moment in time. There's that amazing moment early in the film when he's walking through the restaurant and being greeted and having his ring kissed by the Holy Palloy and also this sort of like elevated class of New York. But it's really a movie I think about brotherhood on two sides. You know, it is about Frank and his gang and it is about the cops and that he spends a lot of time. We go to one of the cops weddings and we see toast given we see Coruso and Snipes and their bond and we see these kind of like again, a kind of a mimic of China girl that it is like jets and sharks. You know, it's these kind of two warring gangs that are at each other's throats and won't stop until we reach a kind of doom

2:11:58that is, you know, a story structure is all this time, but he has a kind of poetry to it that makes it so wonderful. It's so beautifully shot like Boy on's lighting and that movie is it is stunning. It is I think I don't think there's a better looking crime movie of the 90s at all. I think it is in the 4k of it is awesome, but it is just everything about that movie. There's so much mood. The lighting is just it's just such a phenomenally executed movie, but also there's a playfulness to walk in in Lawrence Fishburn and that makes all of the darkness. It offsets it more that a lot of his movies don't have that because if you compare walk in in this versus walk in in the funeral or the addiction, I mean, this in the most complimentary way possible, very bad hang those people like you would never want to be in the same room as them. No, Frank is a charisma machine. Yeah, and he's

2:13:03just likable. And it's a thing that he doesn't usually do. You know, it's like it's somehow it's just very interesting to me is because it has all of his normal things, but also the casting is so key. And I think because it's going back to the thing of Rousseau passing and Fishburn coming in is so much of movies and so much of careers is casting because that movie was almost James Remar. It was almost some other people also think about how walk in almost a bad lieutenant completely different movies. And so much of your career is based on if an actor says yes or no, or if your gut says an actor's right and you find out if you're right or wrong, how much it changes tone, how much it changes how palatable your movie is like because there's a lot of movies he made that if they had something like that walk in performance and Fishburn performance in it, it just makes it more accessible because like Chris Penn and the funeral is one of the toughest

2:14:05performances I've ever seen. I somehow I watched the funeral last week of the week before I had just seen Henry Portrait of a serial killer at Lincoln Center and I think Chris Penn and the funeral freaks me out more than Rooker does in that movie. There is there is a darkness to that performance in that character that is both brilliant but also is misery, you know. And that's so interesting to me is like weirdly I think it's two movies that have more kind of an upbeat energy to them and this is going to sound insane is like Miss 45. As I think Miss 45 is once you get past the initial things which are really fucked up, it's kind of a pretty upbeat thing of like an exultant romp about getting revenge and it's fun. It's very playful and he's not usually a playful guy and it's very interesting when he goes into that mode because his his usual operating principle is like paranoia and guilt and shame which is part of why body

2:15:11snatchers work so well to me because it is a paranoid thriller and he is so good at tapping into that and conveying that with performances but when you watch you know 19 of his movies in a couple weeks you really notice how much different the energy of King of New York is even though it is all kinds of fucked up stuff happens but it has just there's like a level of fun to it that is just really interesting is a counterpoint to all the violence and all the fucked up stuff you know. Yeah I think a state of contradiction is something that defines all of his work as like he's a director who's in touch with street culture, artistic movements, hip hop, opera, religious history, gangster movies, he's a high low artist that's he turns B movies into an asthete paradise like that's his whole thing and even as he like kind of degrades and erodes a lot of his stylistic greatness in a latter half of his career he's still kind of like breaking the form and rebuilding it

2:16:13like we talked about the blackout which is a movie that seems to be taking place like 35% on VHS. Oh like DV years. I don't even know just like the late 90s video it almost feels like someone's dad's home video camera shooting and then hopper calls people Videots. Yes. Yes. And a theater which I know we both love and gives big speeches about how video is the future and I don't think that stuff looks great but I think that he was on to something because he uses it more in later movies and it is very aesthetically interesting. Yes. And beautiful like just hitting a broken record on zeros and ones but that's um uh Sean Price Williams. And I wish they did more movies like that because it has like a half inland empire half collateral view. Yeah. But the ugly beautiful DV. Yeah. Yeah. And then uh not to jump around too much but in Tommaso he is um uh giving a speech at a meeting and it's a heartbreaking emotional scene where he's

2:17:18talking about the first time he went to rehab. Yeah. He's going to a meeting and he's talking he's talking about making a movie Miami and I'm just like is this about the blackout and then he talks about the movie and it's not really but it does line up a little bit but the uh it's interesting that to me it feels like he makes a bunch of scrappy movies to try to get more resources to make bigger movies and then reaches a level where he has all kinds of resources and decides he doesn't care about that at all anymore and he starts to care less and care less and care less um because it feels like he he wanted to prove himself that he could be like this visually accomplished filmmaker and then it just feels like he just wants to hang out with like uh uh Kelsch his like favorite DP the guy he's known forever and just you know just get just make sure they capture the performance he's in the bottom. Raise enough money to make a movie you know I mean there's something really so 23 feature films eight documentaries a TV movie a TV pilot episodes of series television short

2:18:21films music videos he makes nine lives of a wet pussycat his his first film which is a a porno and one of the great one of the reasons why I wanted to do this and I was excited the criterion wanted to do it is because you know as you said so many of these movies because they're all made independently give or take four or five of them are hard to find or hard to watch or maybe you can rent them but you can't own them or they're only available on DVD or they're you know like movies like Mary like Mary is not a part of the collection that movie is hard to find yeah I mean I had a few that I literally could not find um uh and at the last second some people like hey I have a copy and I'm like well that's a little late uh but that's the it's fascinating how much his stuff is either very available in the best transfer possible yes or impossible to get it's like there's almost an excessive level of care put into some of the releases of his movies and then it's like

2:19:23why isn't there even a decent blu ray of the funeral like a China girl 4k would be incredible I mean that that was movie I watched for the first time during this that blew me away the most I I have a French blu ray of China girl I watched it on I think it just bought it on iTunes and I know that some people have been trying to get it and and put it out and had some problems and that's one it's like clearly it's like the production designer of like eternal sunshine and like all these crazy things and then it's the it's like the costume designer of like the Cohen brothers and natural born killers and stuff and it just feels like that movie people I didn't even see how good it could look um but the bad lieutenant 4k is beautiful like I could not believe how good that look because I got all the ones that were mis 45 looks incredible body snatchers the releases lights out it's the one I still don't have uh well at least you have something to look forward to I do I do how rare in life um yeah it's interesting because I think this is pretty common amongst a

2:20:27lot of filmmakers who toggled between independent and studio work in the 80s and 90s which is it feels like their filmography is sort of incomplete in terms of scholarship because some things are harder to find than others are you're not able to see it in the way that it had hoped to be seen and for able you know like we said before he's he's got mixed feelings about his work too you know and there's some things that he's confused what people would want to even see the movies and there's other things where he feels like a brighter light should be shine upon certain films but you know I like I was trying to think about him in relationship to his peers and it's like on the one hand you know there's a very clear scores sazy spike Sydney Lumet you know New York City filmmaker parallel right where there movies made on the streets of New York about the kind of hard-bitten soul of New York about the kind of fun and vivacity and the you know his movies are very diverse especially in the New York films like they're very um show a lot of different parts of the different

2:21:29communities of the city but then there's also a part of his movies that are like Paul Schrader or Michael Hanukkah or Catherine Bria like that are just like tough dark movies about how people are ultimately bad and it's an interesting thing for a person who's like kind of had a lot of transformation spiritually too you know raised uh raised Catholic and then pivots to to Buddhism in the second half of his life and you can see like in Tomaso I feel like we're watching a guy literally wrestle with God you know like that's the whole T of the movie is him trying to come to grip with his demons which feel like they're encroaching upon him in real time and it's a fascinating thing for somebody to be so frank about their own worldview yeah it's you know as someone who's not Catholic I may be wrong about this but I would think to me the badly tenet is like one of the most Catholic movies ever made yeah it really the fact that that guy in his own weird way

2:22:32his like journey to forgiveness and you know the like his Catholic upbringing is when he first he's so dismissive of it at first and by the end that's almost more important than living you know and uh it is it's a really really fascinating movie that is really brilliant and also somehow based on a song that Abel did you know when you get to the end it's a little bit like because I think he sings a song in the end credits it's a little bit like the end of big trouble little China when suddenly it's like it's a very specific thing where the director sings at the end actually it's funny because I just watched the insidious the Patrick Wilson director and with him singing a song tour yeah yeah and I had watched both of those like close to each other and it was just one of those things where it's like more movies should have a director singing a song at the end it'd be something for you to look into you know I think I don't think I want to do that but I do think I also like at the end of RRR were suddenly like just the directors dancing like pointing at the

2:23:33audience at the end he's doing like his victory lap that that's another thing I think is important most movies should have a director dancing the end but not me uh someone else should I always think of Badlute tenant is like a companion to last temptation of Christ and they feel like very similar kinds of movies to me where you can you really can't tell well here I'll tell you what I wrote down about Badlute tenant when I was preparing for this because I am a frequently devastated Metz fan with a cop father and so Badlute tenant really holds a special place in my heart that no one could make a man as insane as Kitell's character is in the movie like the New York Metz and the film opens with iconic WFN radio host Chris Meddogger is so arguing with a caller about the Metz before cutting to Kitell stumbling out of his Queens home to drive his two sons to school this is immensely relatable content to me um it's funny because my concept of New York sports is because I've been living in New York for almost two years now I'd say being a panwagon nicks fan has been one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me and uh I the idea that my real king of New York

2:24:38jail and Brunson t-shirt today well my concept of New York sports is that strangers on the street basically want to high five you and we'll just say nicks and five all the time and sports only brings people happiness and I'm like it is but my concept of sports is being a son's fan for 30 years and just thinking that life is pain and it's never gonna work out and I wish that they never almost got it because now every time they don't do well I get mad you know I had to you know get air dropped into a fandom and like uh everyone being so excited uh for how all that went it's funny because I you know I listened to the episode where you were talking about it and like you know you could feel the catharsis for everybody but for me it was just like it feels like I got to do that and then spend you know a million days in a row watching world cup games and I'm just like I'm like New York's a city where sports are just great yeah yeah that I tell you what that is not in the case for at least a certain strain of us right but that's

2:25:38but my concept is New York sports from movies is you know this yeah I mean there's the there's the Yankees and the New York Jetside of New York sports fandom and the Metside the one of the things that I always thought was really funny about this movie is um it's apparently set during a dramatic Mets playoff comeback and in real life in 1992 the Mets finished 70 to a 90 they're one of the most disappointing Mets teams in franchise history and they're in the midst of a real dry spell after having some success in the 80s and so the whole movie kind of already feels like this abject fever dream this kind of like power Fantasia that collapses into this doom rot in this guy's life and the idea of matching like the lie of Mets success against that is so fascinating and it and it cutting out of him um we've talked about a bunch of deep cuts already I wonder if there's any movies we haven't mentioned that you really like and want to give some time to we have talked about new rose hotel I mean don't talk about that I mean you know do we have enough hours to talk about your new rose hotel that movie this comes immediately after the blackout 1998 it's so it's a really

2:26:45interesting movie because it's a movie made right after a lot of his collaborators it's sort of gone away from him to point where it's even like because it's not Nikki uh schooledys doing the score instead of his normal guy and uh which we got again too but and that movie is very it's fascinating because it's one of those things where pressmen have the rights to it and they try to make it like a Schwarzenegger like an Arnold action movie for a while and had no luck and then finally it was one of those things where like he had just has to make a movie it was like a seven page William Gibson short story and that movie is just all mood it's all vibes it is a just like on the um he did an intro for the the recent release um the vinegar syndrome uh simmett syndrome cinematograph I hope Justin's not listening I can't pronounce your uh your boutique label name but

2:27:47he he starts it out by saying movies are a 90 minute dream and that is the energy of that movie it it is not really a narrative although it is um there's like there's a plot but it's sort of unrealized in a lot of ways very purposely because he's stretching out a seven page story idea about these kind of cyber extraction terrorist style figures attempting to remove a Japanese guy from the center of power and bring him to another center of power and it's Willem Dafoe or him working with Willem Dafoe for the first time and I think it's the last time with walking I believe it's the last time with walking it's also got a lot of pulse rate or energy with Willem Dafoe writing in no pads uh but it also feels like it has that notorious thing too or mission possible too well you know falling in love with someone who is also you're using them to seduce or romance or whatever a target and that's right it's a lot of kind of azir gento is the yes uh with

2:28:52a doctor in the book he really gets into there's a lot going on in the real life of the making of that yes and because it's like a real life tortured love triangle uh which is it just in I mean it's just insane and it's so interesting how frank he is about a lot of those facts that it made them even better friends for it also that able thought you could fly to Japan out of LaGuardia uh I was like buddy that that really shows how much how many drugs you're on at the time when someone said oh yeah I'm going to LaGuardia because I'm flying to Joe pan can't do that um be like flying to Japan out of Burbank really you just you know the the little gullible yeah yeah just like the least but that movie I think it was under the influence of this time too you know there's and there's something that very under the influence about new rose hotel it's another movie that feels like it's made entirely with surveillance cameras like it doesn't even really feel like it's a movie once you get past the kind of opening passages when they're in the club everything else that you're seeing feels kind of elicit and behind closed doors and there's also kind of a looseness between

2:29:55to foe and walk in and circumspect about what they're talking about and how they're talking about it and you can see that they have this real bond between them and I'm watching the movie and I'm like oh in this scene it feels like to foe is representing for our and then in this scene it feels like walk in is representing for our and is he talking to Nicholas St John is he talking to Joe Delia is he talking all these longtime collabries also doing like the dramatic version of Nirvana the band the show when you recie scenes but they're different when you cut to a flashback yes not done is like a comedic setup and payoff it's like you'll see a scene between to foe and walk in and then they'll flash back to it and it's a different take and in the first time you saw the scene there's like resentment and then the second time there isn't and it's played completely differently yes which makes the whole thing it makes because it's non-linear and also when you cut back to things it's like wait did I remember that wrong like there's a different energy to this but also just like the school-eating music is really good and I was watching like a feature

2:30:57out about that where he was talking about like it was like his concept of the future but then um our ex-mus great music in that original songs but when I was watching our ex-mus I started it really distracted because I somehow had not realized even though I like school-eating a lot that he did the aquatine hunger force main theme absolutely and then now every time I was hearing a school-eating song as I was watching more of these movies I'm just like that's the aquatine guy like there yeah well there's that extraordinary scene in King of New York oh my god neon lit song and my black enough for you which is one of those great songs is a gangster rep high in air school-eating and um you know you can just see the able has like an emotional connectivity to his music but he's in in alive in France school he's supposed to be there and he kind of slips through the cracks and doesn't show up and isn't there to perform and like it seems like

2:31:58that's pretty consistent with his relationship with him over the years we're like he thinks he's gonna get him on something and then he doesn't and he's working with this kind of loose confederation of complicated artists all the time trying to get them to go together one of the most interesting things about music in his movies is uh in a way that I I don't think there's a comp is he has so many movies where he clearly just didn't have money for music or he has money to get one big song and then the rest they have to write like when you watch China girl it's like they have walked this way and you're like holy shit that is a big song and it's like yeah but we are now out of money so any of my collaborators to make sound alike songs and he has so many movies where he clearly had a song in there and then they had nothing in the budget later so then he has one of his collaborators do a song like it so but he'll have a movie that has like a gigantic song you know but then every other song in it is like a little bit more low rent and the balance of that because like China girl when walked this way kicked in I was like whoa how the fuck did they get

2:32:58this song but then it's it's frustrating because it's clear they weren't playing that on set because the dancing they're doing is not in rhythm to that song yes but it's a perfect song for like that time period but when you listen interviews with him or like read stuff it's always like him complaining saying yeah we ran out of money for music so at the last minute we had to do blah blah blah because a schooly D didn't want his songs in King of New York and he said no a bunch and then he finished the movie with those songs in there without his permission and then screened it for him and apparently told him hey if you want me to remove these it's gonna be a huge pain in the ass and that was the start of their collaboration was him being like fine you can put my songs in your movie and then he had several movies where he was writing music for Joe Delia while Joe Delia was the composer and then when they had the you know we're putting heads then he did the score for a couple of them well I mean part of the reason why walk this way is in that film is because Russell Simmons is a figure

2:34:03who keeps dumping money and able for our movies you know like the addiction yeah and they have this longstanding relationship and Russell Simmons at the time was like a revered New York entrepreneur and now his reputation has pretty dramatically changed after some rough accusations over recent years but like he's another one of those people that Abel would go to and say can you get me a quarter of a million dollars to dump into a movie like the addiction and there's a real like by hooker by crook quality to the making of so many of these movies that is really fascinating that I like the Joe Delia schooly D balance because to me they're like the kind of competing sounds of New York too there's sort of like the blues rock and synthesizer new wave you know no way of post punk energy that he brings to movies and then school these like really classical NYC East Coast hip-hop and not a lot of the New York filmmakers at that time could do both like you think of Scorsese and you think of the Rolling Stones you think of Spike and you think of Public Enemy very rarely do the tween meat and I love him as this kind of meeting point of these two ethics of New York but it's the same

2:35:07way that his movies are so different is he has a wide sort of his his taste is complicated and covers multiple genres you know because like the music for Miss 45 I think is one of my favorite scores ever especially like the music in the final party is just lights out and it is so different from the music in King of New York just drastically which is so different from the music and body snatchers but he clearly has these things he's passionate about that are kind of idiosyncratic because like the addiction has so much hip-hop in it in King of New York does and then he has other movies that are so far in the other direction and then like you watch Badloo Tenet and it has like all more vintage tracks and it ends with his song and the end credits which is a completely different energy yes and somehow it all mixes together because it is I think this is either interesting or the most obvious thing I could ever say is like the best movies are like a reflection of like the passion

2:36:12and interest of the director and it's like you can feel he's like I fucking love this song man and this feels right and I fucking love this song and this feels right even though like I can't imagine how the director mixing those together but they work because you can tell he's like energized by it we talk about this with you picking songs for your movie when you were on the show last time and you were just like this is something that just matters to me and you can sense that it's specificity right and it's like you you're understanding someone's point of view and the specificity of the choice but this to circle back to the previous thing I think the difference between me and able is like I really like scale and it's really important to me to get money for music and that to him is clearly very secondary like I because I maybe spent 11 months trying to get all the music for my first movie because I didn't have a lot of money and then even on my last one you know you're doing your best and I have compromises but I have to start from a point of you know I like scale and I like blowing shit up and I like production value like to me that is

2:37:13enjoyable and it makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth watching a movie but with able it's like the further he got into his movies he becomes clear that it's like what he has to say is more important than formalism you know it's like and he's still like the addiction is a beautiful movie but it's not like when it's not like China girl that has like you know a lot of lighting of these New York streets and stuff it's very scrappy but beautiful but it also gives it like an energy you know where the kind of scaled down thing also feels like actors must enjoy it and he talks about like he's like Clint Eastwood where like a lot of things he only wants to do want to do one or two takes which is crazy when you see some of these performances you're like that was just right out of the gate that wasn't like take 12 he talks about that I think the take in the addiction when Chris walk in first meets Lily Taylor's character is one take and he gives that long speech and he's a very dramatic gestural performance that's top five vampire movies of all time for me the addiction it's it's it's fucking so good dude yeah and it's interesting too

2:38:16because you talked a lot about boy on Bazzelli and the beauty that he brings to a lot of the movies and these like complicated lighting rigs and they're clearly much more kind of upscale productions but Ken Kelsch is basically shooting handheld black and white in the addiction and it's among his most beautiful films I mean I think the the boy on stuff to me is like my personal preference but the Kelsch on Badloo tenant and the addiction is undeniable especially like Arrow has released of both of those and they just look crazy good nice saw the addiction at midnight at night Hawk a couple months ago and it is such a good midnight movie yeah um the movies have nothing and common but I think two of my favorite midnight movies are near dark in that which are wildly different vampire movies yeah but there's something about vampire movies and that kind of thing where it's like being kind of sleepy while watching it makes you feel it just it's like the right energy you know there's something about like the addiction you should sort of be watching a little

2:39:18bit later than you plan on staying up and you know also he has so many movies that are like under 90 minutes yes which is crazy but that going back again that was wonderful for doing all the catchup though you know it's just kind of plow through a lot of these movies and be able to like really dig in to as many of them as possible it's interesting because almost every movie he's made feels like it is the right length or maybe just overstays it's welcome a little bit except King of New York I can't get over the fact that it does I think there could have easily been a three hour version of that movie that would have been incredible because it does feel a little bit like it's at speedrun because it's like you meet the cops well now the cops are going dark because they've had it with him but you're almost like why I want all the steps in between like I want to see him scale up his structure I want to see like more power he gains I want to see like conflict in the organization it's like the movie is both perfect and also I greedily want more I think some of that is that we

2:40:19are conditioned to expect that Coppola has the godfather it's of course he has good fellas Lumet has Prince of the city these kind of like expansive extensive magisterial New York crime operas and it's a movie that feels like it's operating on the same level but it's whatever an hour and 58 minutes you know it's not it's just not as long and it but it it has maybe the most propulsive pacing of any movie I've ever seen I'm not saying like editorially like it is rapidly cut it's just the movie just moves from scene he's like I'm out I'm going to do this thing but that also reflects like his drive character wise because he's like impatient to get to the top again but it's you know it's interesting because like he gets all of his movies end up being sort of that length the one movie that I don't know if he was ever going to figure out in that regard where like I think it is amazing like I gave like five stars or whatever but dangerous game also is clearly like both too long and way too short and very shaggy but you know it is what it is

2:41:24it's like you know the rumors are as you know I think we talked before about this is like that at both at one point he just was like I think I've shot enough and hadn't shot everything but just like wrapped and then also in post apparently like just lopped off like a 20 minute section just randomly well you know it's a film that was written around Madonna it's it's supposed to be framed around Madonna's character and you can see that he does not have a ton of interest in that character and he pivots the story pretty dramatically to Harvey Kitell's character as a filmmaker and it's you know that's a recurring interest as well about this kind of guy whose life is falling apart around him and it makes sense you know it makes sense and it seemed like Madonna did not have the best time and did not enjoy the movie it's never been one of my favorites of his it does feel it feels like it's been revised in real time and it does not have any of the propulsion of the movies from this era it is purposefully kind of like a little sullen and a little a dank but it does kind of lead the way I think to the blackout and new Rosso Tell era where it feels like formally he's a little bit less

2:42:26interested in he's more interested in mood than he is in style the performance that I really want to talk about from one of his movies is so watch Fear City and we haven't talked about that yet so it is it's an interesting movie because it's both awesome but it also sort of feels like several other people could have directed it which I don't feel like with his other movies but when Billy D. Williams shows up in that movie it is like one of the biggest injections of energy to a movie I've ever seen and I'm like okay now we're great yeah and then he'll just leave for a long time and then come back and I think I'd misunderstood the premise as I thought the premise was going to be Billy D and it's bear injury right on there I thought that the two of them were going to like kind of team up to solve this I was like in my head back seat directing I'm like this is the best premise ever the cop who wants to stop these people like there's would be a buddy thing and they hate each other but they need each other and the two of them are going to find this serial killer and then it didn't become that and then I found it afterwards I think Billy D. was only in it because like a studio obligation it's like he had to do

2:43:27it's like Ed Norton an Italian job or the score or whatever the fuck one of these movies like you can actually have to be and he's like I will show up and be a movie star for like these four scenes but I the interesting thing when you do this with a filmmaker is being like what actors didn't come back when they were like cooking like I really wish there's more Dennis Farina and able like also just because I realized recently like someone's asking like like who my five favorite actors were and I realized I think Dennis Farina is probably up there and in terms of there's very rare that there's an actor who somehow is in so many important movies and so fucking great because it's like the fact that he's like you know and wildly different performances but you mean you out of sight like you just screened out of sight two of the my favorite performances in movie history are Don Chitle and him in that movie I think every second they're on screen they are just like I'm gonna steal this movie and then you can let everyone else do their thing and he's

2:44:29so it's small but he's just one of the most underrated actors ever even though he's it's not that he's underrated but I just wish he was in more of these movies. I mean he's an all-time great character actor I think in those 90s films and get shorty in snatch in in crime story like which basically plays like a movie now the first two episodes in thief even in the moment brief moments that he's in there he seems like a real person you know and he has a ton of charisma but I've always said this like how growing up around a lot of cops he just seemed like a cop and he was a cop and it was always funny when he'd play villains in movies versus playing playing the cop but yeah I agree that they could have made some more beautiful music together that's you know it's like I wish Billy Deid come back I wish he had more civil warrants fishburn like that's that's one of those things where you get kind of greedy when you're decided like to go deep dive on a filmmaker is when you're like oh man I wish there was more movies these guys did yeah the other thing I want to

2:45:32talk about was to one of the comparable filmmakers to me especially in early days was Larry Cohen mm-hmm I'm a huge fan of and I was having like a weird epiphany that like his earlier like a lot of his stuff feels like it's sort of like half Larry Cohen half safties and like they have kind of picked up the mantle in a lot of ways which is why he was so exciting to have him show up in Marty supreme I mean what how did you feel when you're watching that movie and he just showed up wasn't that like it's like it was like I felt like someone just did that for me well you may recall he's in daddy long legs yes feel like a hot minute but being in this movie and that significant of a part also I watched that movie twice before I realized that that was Penn like the pendulum yeah yeah yeah yeah the the angry house owner yeah but there's something really I like that passing the torch sort of thing totally I mean you know criteria asked me to talk about Abel's influence and how it lives on it obviously lives on in in Josh and Benny's movies

2:46:34especially Josh um and I asked Josh just to like tell me a little bit off the record about what he thinks about Abel's work you know and the the one thing he did say is he's one of the most romantic people I've ever met which I thought was an interesting way to frame him you know no he's somebody who kind of like falls in love and is very passionate you were saying his his passions are kind of if suffused through the movies and on screen or in interviews or even in his own book he's has you know he can be a little grouchy he's very frank he's lived hard but he makes these movies about these people in deep emotional throws you know like that is the whole premise like if you look at Tomasso or Pasalini or um even in Fear City they're like which I think is a very flawed movie but it's an interesting movie you're right that it never sets up that dip tick between him and Billy Dee it focuses more on Tom Barron just character who is this kind of set a little punch drunk boxer who's got PTSD from killing someone in the ring and he's trying to solve this serial killer

2:47:39story or a kung fu serial killer who is murdering strippers and it's very like Reffin origins at times totally yeah and it's it's a grimy exploitation movie in a lot of ways and barren jerseys like okay a little miscast but it's again another movie that's about a person who's just like haunted by the past can't get away and thinks if he pulls off one final act of good and he can free himself from his pain and he comes back to that over and over again the thing that we need to talk about from Fear City though that's more important to me is there's a song in it called method to your badness uh that's fucking so sick yeah just yeah the you know there's nothing better than that um and uh so was it I watched so many of these in quick succession another thing I wanted to bring up just about music was that I uh the lead singer of New York dolls um maybe do I answer yeah did I think it was China girl there's a couple songs that he's saying

2:48:41and I was like looking up the songs because I was you know doing my own dumb obsession stuff to figure out like who was performing and which ones are written by his composer and which ones are songs they licensed and I saw that and I looked him up and I never knew what he looked like and I have never felt dumber than realizing that the guy from Scrooge is the singer of New York dolls and I'd always and buster point Dexter I hot hot hot hot guy yeah he's also that guy I'd always been like who was that guy in Scrooge that had such an idiosyncratic performance that is never really been in anything else and I never once bothered to google it and like that was the weirdest thing for watching China girls realizing that the ghost of Christmas past or present whichever one he is uh I think it's past uh yes is him and have you seen personality crisis the documentary that um sort of a performance documentary that's of course as you made about him I think if I had I would have known he was the guy from Scrooge it's a relatively recently came out in 2022 this is pretty interesting because I've listened to them forever but I've never seen an introvotage and then I started

2:49:45going down a rabbit hole in that stuff and that's also a really interesting thing is when um uh musicians get repurposed as performers based on their large than life personality either on talk shows or on just you know going to dinner parties with all these people and them knowing each other um like uh the oh thing I wanted to say earlier it's that uh I'm kind of fascinated by movies that all Stewart Gordon almost did okay because Stewart Gordon was the director of body snatchers and then was replaced and he was the director of honey ashrunk the kids and there's that sliding doors thing of like that's like what it was like with him on carlitos way which is like there's these in between stages of these large scale studio movies where that were almost the movie by like these smaller scale out tours and is the story there that patino's manager pursued for our after seeing king of New York is that patino had seen king of New York and wanted to meet him in fishburn and uh then they put him on there and then David kept got brought on to do a rewrite

2:50:51not involving uh able or patino just involving the studio then bad lieutenant came out uh able sort of made a few poor choices and was replaced and it's funny too because as much as I'd really like to see that I am weirdly very very right or die in like carlitos way I used to think that carlitos way was merely good and I've reached a point where I it's one of my favorite de paulmas and he's one of my favorite directors I think it is even though people like it I think it's genuinely a great movie uh and I'm really fascinated by that I'd love to see Abel's version but you know that worked out yeah I wish it was more like both it's more like what would have happened to Abel's career if he was able to make that movie maybe nothing maybe nothing I wish that it took he made like two or three big movies before he got burned out instead of just making one big one but he clearly was never going to reach a point where he was that comfortable in that world you know um give me your five favorites you know I I so I'd say king of New York is like by far

2:51:58is my favorite I think it's fucking just one of the great movies um but when I was going back and rewatching these miss 45 is pretty close to the top like I if you catch me on a certain day I might say it's my favorite like king of New York is a better movie but I think miss 45 is like one of the most interesting exciting specific movies of that type I've ever seen her performance in that movie so I can't wait to talk about this whole time without talking about her yeah is I will never forget the experience of seeing that and being like who is this person this is like a silent movie star this is one of the best performances I've ever seen whatever happened to her googling her and going oh okay shit she Abel writes beautifully about her and about the struggles that she had she's list she you know she's um idea is the co-writer of bad lieutenant and and appears in that film it's the only other film of his that she appeared in yeah and she was also an allergic Cohen movie and

2:53:00special advice think that the combination of her performance the specificity of that movie the score how tight it is it is one of the great it's like I like the death wish movies uh especially three um but this is like so much better than every death wish movie ever made I think that it is like the most pure distilled like terrible thing happens to a person now this person is just becoming a vigilante and the fact that she doesn't speak and then until when she screams at the end I mean the movie is also it is such a level up in execution from driller killer which which is I think a really really interesting movie uh you know because it's like his dirt bag era and it's also part of that legacy of a lot of people being like oh horror movies make money I will make a horror movie he literally watched sexist Janssen mask her was like how can I do one of these and kind of elevate myself out of the inability to make a movie but he it's funny because I think a lot of times

2:54:04like execs view almost porn and horror is interchangeable because they view it as a profitable thing that they don't respect and he went through that cycle of making a porn film because well that's the only thing I can make that I can get money for okay well horror I can make and that evolution through that but I think just driller killer is so interesting and scrappy and awesome but mis 45 is like a tour shit like it's just got such a vision such an interesting tone uh and I just think it's one of the great performances so like I'd say those are those top two I have mis 45 in kong New York on my list as well body snatchers you're not gonna meet someone who is more but more going to bat like if I have anything I can say in this podcast is that everyone has to give body snatchers a shot um and then the other one which is not on my top five but I think everyone should watch China girl I thought it was so interesting and the fact that it is really about having a shitty boss

2:55:06more than it's anything else like the entire movie is about the pain of middle management where it's like two different warring gangs because it's his version of west side story or uh Romeo and Juliet I think it's an incredible movie and but it also it is really about how all of our conflict all of our personal issues and our anger can really just be that our boss doesn't give a fuck about us they don't care about what we want and we will never profit in the same way like it's like there's something so interesting about how that was the way into that movie because he's like there was something he just threw out as a lark saying I want to make my Romeo and Juliet with like you know little Italy and Chinatown but it ends up just being about the frustration of these guys who'd like are just like why the fuck at our boss does not pay attention to us we don't get invited to his dinner parties like what's going on here the fact that that is the point of view of that movie I thought was so interesting but okay so I will go uh came to York uh miss 45 body snatchers uh the

2:56:10addiction I we've gone over it I think is just it's just such a great fucking movie man like it is it's so interesting I think I wish that every artsy director made one horror movie or more but there's something about someone who has a strong point of view and a specificity of vision working in that genre that almost always pays off like I've said it a million times but like I wish PT made a full on horror movie so bad like when he's doing his shining stuff and there'll be blood it just feels like I want just make a haunted house movie man just like spend six months doing that like I you know I wish Quentin would make just make a slasher movie like he always talks about even though death proof is one but when he's doing genre like body snatchers in the addiction are both like working at such a high level because he cares so much like I'm a big horror guy but there's a lot of horror directors we've made horror movies I love that don't really feel like they are really all about cinema you know like they are just about horror and I think when you have someone

2:57:14who's like that making a vampire movie it's just fucking the best so that's four I just do I only do four four is good I you know I can my number five would be zero's a month all right okay that's great I would throw throw Tomaso on my list as well as kind of that to me is like a late period masterpiece I think Pasolini is really interesting and welcome to New York as a hugely accomplished and powerful but Tomaso is the one that I like the most that feels the most personal that feels the most complex unresolved really scary upsetting ending um new rose hotel would also be on my list as with Badlute tenant so you know Badlute tenant would be my five I can't I can't be too much of a stinker I love zero's and ones but Badlute tenant and what you're saying is like that 90's period is so unmatched but he's still I mean he's still working still form breaking I think he's trying to get a movie made right now um I mean you know I I will go to bat for a lot of his you know movies past like the legacy era I and I think a lot of them are super interesting and absolutely should be

2:58:15watched there's just like you know it's like um the it's like you know you have a band where they have their really interesting albums that you love and you could talk about for hours but you're also like on a desert island I would bring the other one uh huh and that's sort of how I feel about those totally totally agree with you hey thank you for doing this with me uh hey man it was uh it was a really good time it's like it's a very um there's nothing like I was already reading his book and going down a rabbit hole of these things so I was really glad you gave me an excuse to be obsessive and then have people write weird comments on my litter box reviews being like why are you watching all these movies are you going on big picture picture when yeah that uh you know I assumed I would come back to talk about beekeeper to the be cool like you know we could do three hours open uh did I tell you that I saw the trailer for it in April I mean I mean I'm pretty fucking good when I saw the beekeeper and I talked about it on hitmakers podcast uh I saw it opening night me to bunch of my friends went to berbeng 16 and we had such a good time that when it ended I was in

2:59:17the lobby and someone walked up to me and said hey congratulations and I said what do you mean they're like that's your movie right and I was like no they're like the what what was going on with you guys why are you talking about this you know we were having such a good time watching you know uping night that it's that LA thing where you're like oh those people must have worked on it why would they like this movie so much uh but I I walked out of it and my only complaint was why didn't he unleash bees why didn't he use bees and uh I've heard a rumor that he uses bees this time no spoilers no spoilers hey I just wanted to say thank you to uh Alisa and Curtis and Kim and all of the fine folks at the criterion channel who helped this project get out into the world I hope people are watching it and interested in it it's like some of it is the least is like the easiest cell of all time king of New York is such an easy movie to sell if you haven't seen it it's so magical and some of the movies are a little bit more challenging but absolutely worth your time and thank you to able for for just having such a profound deep and interesting body work that gave us a chance to chat it was definitely worth it even though it was difficult for me to watch them

3:00:19so the fact that they have the ease of use that they can just log into the criterion channel and they're all just sitting there and you can click on them they would probably have even better time than I did so yeah and I'm sorry for those that's short number of movies you know the funeral is not in this package Mary is not in this package I watched the funeral on YouTube I have a I have an old DVD of the funeral which is one of the only ways to watch an unphysical media I mean go-go tails is a movie we didn't talk about but is not in this package I cannot track that one down the single hardest movie of his defined right now hopefully one day somebody will excavate it but there's a whole host of movies that you can check out right now thank you okay thanks to Ben David thank you to the god able Farara thanks to Jack Sanders our producer for his work on today's episode thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support as I said practical magic to Oasis don't look back and anger yes Yasi Solic on the podcast again what else what do you bring what do you bring in this table come on hit me we'll get some great news over the weekend something dinoites to talk about

3:01:22I hope so I hope so too we'll see you then you