Anyone Can Cook, Pt. 2 — Tony

33:50He wants to be in the world of cuisine and cooking. He wants to be doing amazing things with food. And he wants other people to recognize that. He wants to be able to share it with somebody. He wants to be able to talk to somebody about it. And Tony really doesn't get to that place until the very end of the movie. To some degree, he does over the lobster, Thermidor. But again, we're back to he just wants to get laid. He just wants to impress Nancy. It's two birds with one stone, Tasha. Anyway, yeah, just their character arcs are very different. And I think that it's interesting that we're given this impression that I think that it's interesting that we're given this impression that Remy is just so exceptional, like such a prodigy in his skill with smelling, his skill with tasting, his skill with invention, with instinctively understanding what things go together.

34:43And we don't ever get that with Tony at all. There's nothing that says he is particularly suited for this work. Like even his big innovation, his big like trying to get laid effort comes from a cookbook and from tradition and like leaning on this well-established dish. So I think it's interesting that ultimately Ratatouille is about a character that's good at something finally being allowed to do it and finally being acknowledged for it. Whereas Tony is much more like the world of gourmet cooking needs Remy and doesn't know it. The world of cooking in general in restaurants doesn't need Tony. He's just another guy.

35:31It's about what it brings to him as opposed to what he brings to it. it's about him finding a passion as opposed to having a passion that he's not allowed to express so you know unless you try count uh trying to get with nancy as the passion that he really really wants to express and doesn't get to yeah and i don't even think not to say that to me he didn't feel like he had passion but it felt like a movie to continue your thought tasha about like this man needs to get his ass kicked a movie about like tony getting disciplined in a certain way like facing consequences and facing like you know real effects of his actions and realizing like oh i like this actually like it's probably good that someone and some aspect of the universe is putting me in my place like i feel like there is also an element here you know we haven't really talked about the bear but there is a little bit of an element of like me thinking a lot about like the richie arc while watching this movie like someone who is like an outsider and an asshole and thinks he's a little bit better than everybody else and thinks all this is a little bit beneath him and then realizes like there's something in the routine the pattern talking to people being in a communal space all of that has an effect on him forks it's the forks it's the forks arc and giving people what they want and what they need making them feel special yeah you know as some aspects that aren't just about the food but about about the presentation and the place of food and culture.

37:01Yeah. I mean, you think about these two characters really both have kind of a similar starting space in that they haven't worked in a kitchen before and they're starting from the bottom. And one of them is having to do it in secret because he's a rat. But there is no chance if Remy is given the kind of opportunity that Tony is given that he would not seize upon it in a way that was with a tremendous amount of passion and discipline and drive. And of course, there is that passivity to Tony as a guy whose motives are not, you know, to be a great chef. That's not something he's thinking about. It's something he has to be, you know, as you say, sort of beaten.

37:37It has to be sort of beaten and disciplined into him or he has to have these moments of revelation where it's like, wait a minute, actually, this is something that's exciting and he sort of falls into it that way rather than push it, rather than asserting himself in the way that Remy does. Remy is also a character. I mean, apart from needing to cook, needing to express himself, he needs somebody to talk to. He needs somebody who he can reflect ideas off of. And the fact that he ends up with this like little imaginary gusto in his head, because he can't talk to his family at all, he can't talk to other humans, is kind of low key a tragedy along the lines of the toys in Toy Story being immortal and desperately all desperately hungering for the love and intention of people who grow up.

38:24He has this giant unmet need that even by the end is only kind of partially met. You know, he never learns to speak human. He still can't communicate with his partners except with, you know, thumbs up and whatnot. Whereas Tony pushes people away with his words. He's just, he's a giant cloud of talking and not listening, of lying to get his way that can just kind of like putting everything he can out there to try to make people impressed with him his his constant lying about being out here on a fellowship and you know being selected to write his great novel which he has no interest in and being a writer not a not a chef or not not a cook or not someone who works at a restaurant but they're both very lonely characters they just express it in radically different ways and with radically different results tasha you're kind of i'm stuck on the toy story thing about the about the about the tragic immortality of uh of those uh toys that just uh for some reason not correct she is she is correct i mean and i think i think maybe uh woody's uh you know hairline in uh toy story five has affected my thinking on that but it is it is something it is what what a terrible what a terrible life it is for these poor toys uh who are who have you just not dipped into toy story like i people have been writing about this since the first one i know i recently re-watched all of them after watching five so it's kind of top of mind again is things that people talk about when they're talking about pixar it's very replicant coded to me you wouldn't believe the things I've seen.

40:06Yeah, I like that. I do like the idea of Remy and Tony both being very lonely because I think that feeds nicely into their responding to kitchen culture. I think it's a little bit more linguine that's responding to the feel of being in the kitchen and doing these things and being responsible for something that's part of what everybody else is doing. But those are really my favorite scenes of Tony are like the chaos of everybody working together, like Antonio Banderas yelling out order. It's the chaos of opening the oyster shells and like dropping the fries, all that stuff. I mean, that's the stuff that I loved from the bear like throughout the five seasons, just the process.

40:51And I do think that there is like a very nice focus on process in Tony that is similar to like BlackBerry and how interested Matt Johnson felt in BlackBerry about like how this stuff actually works. I think there's a very nice question of like, how does this actually work in Tony that takes us back to Ratatouille and the explanation of like your station and why you should be proud of it and like what everybody does and how we parcel this all out. Like that sort of organization, I think, is very nicely mirrored between them. Yeah, that's the other one of the other really big connections that we're talking about is kitchen culture and how it's sort of reflected in both films because those spaces are so different.

41:35The expectation that people bring to those spaces, those restaurants is vastly different because, you know, you have, you know, the flagship, which is, you know, I think understood as a mediocrity. It's not, you know, not, you know, kind of the sort of tourist seafood that you get in these types of towns. Right. Not not a place that this is that actually houses a chef who's capable of more. whereas Gusteau's is you know a an institution and and a great deal is expected of it and and it is being of course sold out by the current chef uh and his kind of commercial aspirations but uh what you end up with in these two movies are two vastly different spaces that that nonetheless do have an order uh do you know people do have jobs and and uh and they are kind of doing the same tasks in their stations.

42:28But at the flagship, it's a tight space. So it's really chaotic. Gusteau's is much more a professional operation. It's kind of compromised as it is, so much as they've been leaning on dishes that are maybe getting a little bit dated and needing a bit of inspiration. The process is very exact and professional in what you would expect from a restaurant like that. Obviously, there's no moment in the family friendly Ratatouille where a character has sex with a new bride who is visiting the restaurant, which was such a random moment in Tony, but is from Kitchen Confidential. So I liked that that was in there.

43:10yeah sal sal keeps delivering yeah sal just keeps on going his little door notch thing it's again when when we're talking about like character beats that are not verbally explained you you're just expected to be watching and paying attention and and take it in i i really like that one it's not a notch on the bed post it's a notch on the door frame and then the fact that tony later uses it to kind of a Kilroy-esque, wait, has Sal been here? I need to not mess around in here if Sal's been here. I think it's also just kind of fun, though, that the two restaurants in these movies are moving in opposite directions.

43:49In Ratatouille, we've got a former Michelin star restaurant that's on the decline, and the chef is selling out on the side with all of these fast food sponsorship spinoffs. In Tony, we've got, you know, this former Michelin star chef, who is now making fast food, but by the end of the movie is back on the rise and back to improving his food. And the fact that we've kind of got two different things that are the same arc, but in the opposite direction, I think it's just kind of fun to me, especially given the protagonist part in both of those kind of being like let's push back towards quality in spite of the opposite direction issue.

44:33Tasha do you feel like both movies are saying like rustic food is superior? Oh I don't know if lobster thermidor counts as rustic. I was thinking of the cookout because it feels like the cookout is what inspires Banderas's character to like give it another go. so i'm just saying rustic or local rustic but i'm just saying like it you feel like the emphasis yeah yeah i think that is the emphasis is like getting what is the essence of this space that's being you know evoked in these movies i think uh but i think it's it is interesting that it i think it's almost kind of a a trick in a way or like like an incredible at a feet a feet that remy is pulling by by taking as you say a rustic disc like ratatouille and elevating it or making it something special and something that triggers memories and this sort of thing.

45:25That's another connection I guess we should get into is the creation of special dishes in these movies. They're so pivotal to both stories, the creation of ratatouille as the climactic dish and then the lobster humidor that Tony inspires Chef to try to execute at the restaurant. I think it's fun that both of these movies kind of have a montage moment of we're creating this one special dish for this one person to impress them that immediately metastasizes into, okay, everybody in the restaurant wants that now. Yeah, because then everybody like all the lobster Thermador orders are coming in. It's just like I just felt like lobster Thermador was the downfall, which is why I keep thinking about like the cookout as the rise, like the communal quality of the cookout, the fact that everybody comes back together.

46:20I like your read Tasha on like Tony and Saul because Sal comes back he thinks him and Tony are like doing this all for fake and like ripping everybody off and there's the very nice moment where Tony and Sal stare at each other and Sal realizes like oh Tony was never going to be the kid that would do that and that felt like a very important turning point too maybe it's just because I wanted to eat the cookout food but I just thought the cookout felt like you know you screwed up with the Thermador, you let your ego get in the way, you burn down this restaurant. And we're turning to something like simpler that has like tradition here that people want to eat.

46:59People want to eat it feels like the most important connection point, as you were saying, like people see it and they want to eat it. The ratatouille and just these like basic paper plates of like lobster and corn and all these delicious looking things. That's what people want. That's just the idea of eating lobster off a paper plate on a sandy beach with the lobster on top of a huge pile of other food is so insane you're gonna eat so much sand there's gonna be so much sand in your food it's i kept thinking about that the whole time just like we're supposed to we're supposed to be like eating with our eyes since we can't eat this with our mouths but all my eyes are seeing is like all of that food has like a good tablespoon of sand there's a top chef episode where they had to like cook out i think in hawaii on the beach and there was like one team that built their fire wrong so sand kept getting like in the food and it was exactly what you're discussing tasha where the judges are just like i'm just eating sand there's nothing i can do about it at this point yeah i just i just expect that from like any food any food or activity that's how that happens on the beach and it's portrayed as romantic romantic like don't even get me started on from here to eternity and making out in the spray uh scene i just sand sand all the way down and they all they both taste like salt you want to evoke the sand and surf without actually tasting it and having it in your mouth uh very tricky thing i'm going to trust that they get it right and this clan bank this is a this is but who knows i think that the observation about rural food is is really smart and something that i had overlooked but it's certainly yeah it's it's something that hadn't occurred to me maybe because what i took away from kind of the comparison there was if i see a message in common with the two of these these movies i mean on one level it's uh anyone can cook is that that repeated line is kind of paralleled with banderas telling uh the the Tony character.

49:05You could be anything you want, but what you are right now is nothing, which seems like the most t-shirtable moment in the film. He is saying you could take your skills and do anything with them anywhere. And that just feels a lot like anyone can cook. So I think that is a parallel. But for me, in terms of bigger messaging for the films, it's maybe more about tasting food is something you can only do by yourself. Like nobody else can taste that food for you. And yet in both of these movies, eating with community is so vitally important. Remy, the whole scene where Remy tries to convince his brother Emil to slow down and taste the food and think about it and think about how it combines.

49:51And we get those little abstract squiggles that characterize how Remy tastes food trying to form around Emil as he tries to taste the food. For me, that experience of like, we've put the lobster Thermador on your table and now we're going to watch you try it. We've brought you to the Camp Clan Bank and we're going to eat together as a social community thing. Seeing the restaurant at the end with Anton Ego there surrounded by people who are willing to try something new and forgive the rat in the kitchen. Like it's all about community. It's all about experiencing this very singular solo pleasure with other people.

50:31Even though you can't share the sensation, but at least you can share like the company and the shared experience. So have you all made or had Ratatouille? Because I did the three hour Ratatouille, three or four hours. and it is the perfect choice for this movie as a dish because it would be something that would inspire a restaurant full of people to order it. It fills your home with strong, earthy, herby smells that you cannot miss. It is not a shy dish at all in terms of the way it smells and I think it's very good. But it's perfect that that's the dish that they settled on. And of course, and of course, obviously has the word rat in it, which also works.

51:19But I think it is something that you can make in your kitchen, like I did. And then you can do it in an elevated way, which is done in the movie. And it's kind of like the perfect dish for them to settle on in every possible way. I have no experience with lobster humidor, though. So I don't know. I can't speak to that. All I was going to say is like an addition to Tasha's read is it all just feels to me like intention. Like Tony realizes in this summer that like he is being an asshole because everything he's doing is like reactionary and crappy and there isn't real thought or deliberation behind it.

51:57And I feel like that's part of this too. Like you're doing things to a certain degree instinctively, like you're tasting things and you're deciding what it needs on the fly, But everything is like a thought process that you are working through. And I really like that aspect of it with Tony and with him sort of like settling into the kitchen and becoming more confident, putting more thought into his actions. I think, again, like we do see that. I do want to give Matt Johnson credit for that. And of course we see it in Ratatouille, but so much of the time we're seeing it from like inside the toque.

52:38And so it's just, it's an interesting way to think about like perspective as well. And what these two movies are doing differently in terms of like, they're both being deliberate. They're both thinking things through, but you're getting very different, like visual perspectives in an interesting way. to speak to the recipe for ratatouille i did go home and look it up immediately after watching this movie for the first time i took one look at it and said oh here's something i'm never gonna make and i'm never gonna understand why somebody would appreciate this um i don't much care for stewed vegetables like yes as a stew per se yeah i pulled up one right here and it just says at the top like it's a dish of stewed vegetables i don't care for like squash or egg plant cooked until they're soft um i only really like like cooked tomatoes cooked tomatoes make a a really excellent like broth or thickener or like element in a stew or chili but like as a main part of the dish their texture not a fan of what about time tasha do you like time i wish i had more of it it's good stuff no it's just i don't know that that flavor of roasted vegetables at a time.

53:54I don't really think about it as, even though it does, you do get yourself into soft eggplant. That is part of it. But oh boy, the time. So it's roasted for, and you're roasting it for hours and hours, Tasha. I also hate cooked bell pepper. I think fresh raw bell pepper is amazing, and I will eat them like apples, but cooked bell pepper is slimy, and any dish with it just tastes like that. Iranian food is very stew based. So all of these like cook vegetables, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's familiar. I really like Iranian food as long as it isn't like too eggplant. Yeah. And we do have some words too much eggplant.

54:36But yeah, I feel you. But the God, the spice profile of Iranian food is chef's kiss. I like it better than I like the spice profile of French food. Sorry, Paris, which makes the best food in the world as far as ratatouille is concerned. Take that time, Scott. Even roasted time. Pro time. Yeah, and Middle Eastern food and Asian food are 100 % my go-to faves. So almost all European cooking by comparison kind of tastes bland to me. Sorry. Are we drifting into talking about food? Yeah, we're doing the... did we feel hungry while watching these movies and now we're just listing foods we would eat so yes i literally put that on our connections i like it because there are there are a couple more connections i do want to get to so i i don't want to consider this the the exit thing but roxana did say something like early on about i think in in this uh the half of conversation about just the conversation making her hungry and like i'm also not a big seafood fan so and i'm definitely not an oysters fan.

55:47So everything going on in Tony did not tempt me from like a palate perspective. It tempted me just from a passion and interest perspective. The food in Ratatouille for the most part, like I love the visualization of the Ratatouille itself and how we get to see what it looks like in its natural state versus what it looks like in its heightened chef state. I think the presentation and getting to see how they got to it is really fun and a really cool visual. But it did make me hungry. Like maybe the only thing in the movie that really made me feel like, ooh, I'd like some of that is the point where Colette is talking about bread and the perfect bread sound.

56:30Oh, yeah. So I'm curious if either of these movies did make you hungry. I generally am hungry most of the time. so yes you're not a character actor is what you're saying no well i guess i would be a character actor because we could eat all the food they did but i do think there's something interesting to your point i think ratatouille is more interested in making the food look good and in convincing us that like remy is on to something and like his guidance of linguine is taking the food to an elevated level. I think that there is like a focus on when they're doing the Grattan style ratatouille, just like how beautiful everything looks, the steam, the plating, all of that.

57:15And yeah, what we're talking about with Tony is like, I don't think food necessarily is the draw for Tony, the character. So it becomes less of a draw for us. And I don't think there is as much focus on making it look like super appetizing so much as reflecting the skill and effort it required all of that being said i i still yes i still would i still want the food i still was is this something like is it kind of almost like the big night scale like what yeah you know it's like or just something like there are certain movies where it's like yeah okay the food is definitely it's you know there's a pornographic quality to this food that's coming out uh that isn't quite i mean you don't get in either film a big night level of like oh my god this ridiculous meal that's being made and consumed here and that everybody's umming and eyeing over that that experience is a little bit more limited obviously anton ego's reaction to the ratatouille is critically important to the film and and certainly speaks to the to the flavor and you do at least get a little bit of an impression that the lobster is going over well before the kitchen starts to burn down.

58:31But I think in terms of food itself being kind of in itself an alluring aspect of both of these films, like in the same way it would be in a film like Big Night or Babette's Feast or something like that. Not quite as much. Tempo Po, right. Not quite as much in either. It's just not quite on the agenda in either one of these movies. you know what movie kind of took me out of the the film because i wanted the food on screen so badly uh crazy rich asians there's a scene where they're at a street market kind of place yeah and i've just ordered a table full of food and i don't think i heard a single word anybody said in that scene they're just like you know blah blah blah i'm like get back to the food where are the dumplings give me the interiors amazing yeah in that sequence yes okay i i found I figure out the bottom of the scale.

59:20I've done it. Okay. Okay. It's the cook, the thief, his wife. Okay, yes. It would be at the bottom of the scale. I would also put in that. Which is the one weird. The crispy crust on the dish served at the end in Cook, Thief, Wife, Lover. Still pretty tempting, not going to lie. Well, yeah. To, you know, proceed with caution. One thing about these movies that is honestly a very small thing, but stuck with me with both of them because I just feel like it's unusual storytelling and is interesting in its accuracy is that both of them kind of portray the kitchen as an itinerant place in a way that I think is really true to actual kitchen culture.

1:00:04At the end of the movie, Ratatouille, the whole staff walks out. They're just like, we're not going to deal with this rat or we're not going to deal with your delusions. It's unclear which of those is the response, But either way, they're out of there and they don't come back. We only get this. I went back and rewatched this a couple of times because I wanted to be sure. We only get the slightest hint of who's actually working the kitchen in the new Ratatouille restaurant. And Linguini is waiting tables, Colette's in the kitchen, Remy's in the kitchen. That's all we see. There's no indication that any of those chefs came back.

1:00:39in tony sal sal like walks out after punching chef after after being you know offered a pretty lenient punishment compared with being fired he has his blow up and he leaves and he never comes back instead he tries to rob and defraud the guy and just the idea of kitchens being a place where very rarely do people stay long you know there's a lot of movement between kitchens and the industry. Something that Bourdain called out in Kitchen Confidential. There's just, there's a lot of fluidity between the places that people work. And seeing that reflected in different ways in both of these movies, in ways that kind of set you up for a classic, and here's the big feel good moment where everybody comes back and like the group that we saw working together earlier is reunited happily for Happily Ever After.

1:01:36Like that doesn't happen in either of these movies. The people who leave, leave. And the people who stay, like get on with their lives. Because it's not about the specifics of the people nearly as much as it is about the continuity of the food. Well, and also the focus is on individuals though too. I mean like it's much more important for us to know. The arc we're following is that of Remy's and that of Tony. Not so much the fate of the restaurant itself. yeah but i i do feel like there is something very realistic about reflecting that turnover like we have a casual friend who is a sue and i think in the past two years he's worked at like three places including like helping open a place that eventually went under and now i think it's like his third place in this period of time and like on the one hand like you helped open a place You developed a menu, like you obviously spent a ton of time doing it.

1:02:33And then when it was time to go, you went and you found something else. So there is sort of that transferability of skills that I think is like on display here. Maybe less so with Sal, because we see that he's like working on the docks with his heroin connect. And that's very concerning to me, actually. But that also, I mean, that also was talked about in Kitchen Confidential. But like, you know, the rampant drug use in kitchens at that time, like sometimes people left and you knew that they weren't coming back because they passed away. And I do think that there is I don't think Tony is like super explicit with what's going to happen with Cell.

1:03:10But I do think, again, like lingering on the heroine, introducing this character now being at the point where he wants to, you know, like rob chef. I think there are indications there of like a reality in this industry. Ratatouille obviously is not going to go there. But I appreciated that Tony was not like super romanticizing what the job is either. Yes. The likelihood that Sal dies of a heroin overdose in the next five years seems relatively high. But so does the idea that he may just continue to, I was going to say fail upward, but he doesn't fail. That's why Tony is so drawn to him. It's kind of effortless for him wherever he goes.

1:03:54And I feel like the only reason he isn't in a higher position is that he just doesn't care enough. You know, as long as he's got drug money and food money, which he might get by, you know, via petty theft or fraud or whatever, he feels like he's doing fine. He's got what he needs. And seeing that as a model, I guess, goes up against the you could be anything you want to be, but you're nothing. You know, he he is what he wants to be. He's the handsome guy who's welcome everywhere he goes. and gets laid and gets paid. That seems to be the limit of what he wants. So putting that up against Tony's kind of wanting to be respected maybe more than anything else and Remy's very specific, very passionate desires.

1:04:40It's just kind of interesting. Yeah. Well, first of all, Tasha, to reference a previous point about Sal and Tony's relationship with Sal, I do think the film is interesting with regard to what we know about Bourdain that he wasn't done, you know, abusing drugs and wasn't out of trouble. But I think there is a moment, a thing where he at least recognizes the demon that he's going to be facing with regard to Sal, you know, where Sal goes. And I think there is this, there is at least this acknowledgement of Sal as a cautionary tale and as a road that he maybe should be wary of, even though he follows that road a bit later on in his life.

1:05:26So that's something I think that's just an example, I guess, of the film that playing with our understanding of the person that Bourdain would become. I think when he sees the injectable heroin use and just stands there and watches and then walks away, very clearly leaving Sal behind, I think in that moment he is, shall we say, a rat deserting a sinking ship. Like he recognizes for the first time that this ship is going down and does not want to be on it. And then he would board the chip at some point. Yeah, because he teams up with him again for the fundraiser. But I do think that it is sort of like an alliance of necessity at that point.

1:06:07Yeah, but I'm just saying later in life he would board that. Like some pretty rough drug use would definitely be something in his future. I guess one other thing I have down here, I guess I have to mention it because I put it down and now I don't know what I was thinking but maybe we can make sense of it which is human-like rat behavior and rat-like human behavior I think I was thinking that Reby as our human demonstrates human-like behavior and that Tony can be rat-like at times but do I have anything else to say beyond that? What was I thinking here? I don't 100 % know what you were thinking but I loved this point to the point where I really pushed for you to bring it up.

1:06:52I do think that, I mean, very early on we get Emil asking Remy why he walks around in his back legs. And to my utter delight, dad's not going to like it, you know, because it's human behavior. And like the whole explanation of like, I don't want my food to taste like everywhere my paws have been. And I'm tired of washing my paws. So therefore, I walk around bipedally. I think that's a really fun little lampshading of a thing that he does both so you don't have to constantly think about where his paws have been every time he touches food. And a way of visually distinguishing him in a movie packed with rats.

1:07:34He's a blue color that none of the rest of them are, but he's still often in a crowd of rats. and having a visual like distinctiveness to him, I think is a really good idea. It also anthropomorphizes him more. So I think that's fun. Well, let me do. I can do that second half part. I can do the rat like human behavior because now that we're into this, I think that Tony, one thing that humans tend to have when they make their way into the world are resources to live on. And that's something that Tony runs out of pretty quickly when all the money he's purloined from his father's wallet runs out and he has to figure out you know he gets kicked out of the bar and he's got no cash and he has to kind of sort his way through then then I think that that they that rat-like resourcefulness comes into play and he he does what's necessary to survive and he does he sleeps ends up sleeping in places in a way that a person generally does not want to sleep.

1:08:41You know, a hammock. Not to say that rats like to sleep in hammocks, but it is certainly not something that a human is going to want to do for too long a period of time. And I just think generally, you know, there's an unkemptness, maybe not a great hygienically speaking, maybe not a lot going on with the Tony character. There's skittering, maybe he does some skittering. Oh my God. I don't know. Does he do any skittering? They each find their clan, right? Like they each find their clan. They each surround themselves with like creatures who they realize are aligned with them mentally. What could the skittering be, Scott?

1:09:22What could it possibly be? I don't know. I mean, he's on hardwood sometimes. I mean, you can see it's hard not to skitter. Sure. He does seem very hunched and rat-like a lot of the time. One of the aspects of Sal showing up and being just so conventionally handsome, you know, so symmetrical and like all American with his, you know, vivid eyes and his blonde hair and whatever. Every time he and Dominic Sessa are in the same frame, it looks like Sessa is like deliberately stooping and hunching at his shoulders, both to appear shorter and to some degree to appear more like thinner and more angular.

1:10:01More feral. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But Scott, you hit upon a point that I completely had not thought about. That's actually pretty brilliant. Both of these films, very definitely considering stealing and what it means. Ratatouille hitting the point over and over. Are we thieves? No, we're not thieves. We're taking stuff nobody wants. Now you're taking food that people want. Now you're thieves. I've earned this. I'm not a thief. Or maybe I am a thief and I don't care. Maybe this is what a rat is, is to be a thief. Versus, you know, basically the moral debate in Ratatouille centers around taking things that aren't yours.

1:10:41Whereas there's just there's no moral debate in Tony. He just rips off his father and Sal turns around and rips him off. And then kind of the big turning point for him is deciding not to steal. And Sal, maybe like reluctantly, but maybe just with a touch of admiration, acknowledging that, no, you're not going to like steal all of this money from this person who needs it to fix the restaurant that you personally destroyed. So, yeah, the moral and ethical boundaries of theft and what they mean, kind of a theme in both these movies. Congratulations. Yeah, I stumbled on that, Tash. I appreciate the word brilliant to describe anything I do, but that was a pure...

1:11:27That was me just like Inspector Clouseau, like just stumbling into it. So Ratatouille is currently streaming on Disney Plus and is rentable in the usual places. It's also available on DVD and Blu-ray. Tony is in select theaters now. We'll be right back with your next picture show.

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1:12:57Plus, check out our weekly flyer on Menards.com for all the great deals happening now. Save big money at Menards. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us.

1:13:38Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel.

1:14:16I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what, are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Well, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:14:42Finally, it's time to recommend a film or a film-related item that complements this set of episodes. We call it Your Next Picture Show in the hopes that it'll put something interesting on your radar. Roxanna, we've seen some Matt Johnson films. He's scorching hot right now. One of which is pretty relevant to the one we're talking about because he does have some experience with fact-based storytelling. what blackberry what do you think of blackberry i really like blackberry i mean i think to me it is sort of like one of the platonic ideals of a process-based disaster and that it really does track with a lot of like i i would maybe even call it like succession style jesse armstrong style verve visually you know the rise of blackberry this technology that like investors didn't understand.

1:15:37Nobody grasped, completely changed the way that we live. And then, you know, catastrophically failed because they made all the mistakes that like expanding companies with investors who want to like make as much money as they can make. They outsourced, you know, how the phones were made. They like cut corners, they skimped, they replaced like the most valuable people and their company and i think that there is like a real i i think like a real like visceral anger about you know about this story that animates the film um and yeah it is very like fact-based it is obviously like taken from real life but i think there is like an interesting relationship with time and that the movie feels very much like a powder keg although it is spanning years.

1:16:31So I really like the tonality and pacing of it. And Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton play very oppositional characters. Glenn Howerton is basically the deranged sort of businessman that first bankrolled BlackBerry and then basically ruined it. And Jay Baruchel is the CEO who was a genius and was so focused on the science and was innovating everything and then just eventually didn't realize that other competitors were copying what they were doing to more massive scale essentially the iphone so i i would say like if you if you're sort of interested i think in tony's like bros being dudes and how that can both be really good and really destructive i do think blackberry is worth checking out totally agree i mean the glenn the glenn howard in performance in particular is so electric and so funny again both films tony and blackberry benefit so much from matt johnson's skill as a director of comedy um and and i think you get that element too of just you know working independently i think there's there's something kind of uh uh you know jay baruchel plays somebody who is this genius and is starting from the the the bottom in this sort of scrappy way, but he doesn't have the necessary skill or you wouldn't think that necessary to, he has to attach himself to this guy who has supposedly the business sense to take his idea to the next level to make this into a real company.

1:18:10And of course, it's planting the seeds for the company's ruination, but just a fascinating kind of rise and fall story, but told, you know, as you said, very entertaining film for sure. So I think as a related movie, it's kind of a supplemental viewing for Tony. Blackberry is a great choice. And I also would, of course, use this opportunity to just throw in another recommendation for anyone who's not seen Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, which was a film that was released earlier this year, even though I think it premiered last year at Toronto, I think. Just an unbelievably hilarious film that references and plays off of Back to the Future that, like Blackberry, is extremely Canadian.

1:19:00It's the most Canadian thing you've ever seen. So the city of Toronto plays such an important role. It comments on time and time travel in genius ways. um there's a lot of interesting incorporates uh you know real there's a there's a stunt involving the CN tower that's uh incredible and funny and and uh and uh so so there's a lot of love of the city in that as well um so uh i really just uh it's a it's a good you know now it's been a really kind of good coming out uh party for uh matt johnson as a as a as a as a talented uh person and I think all three of these movies, Tony, Blackberry, and Durban and the Band, show the movie are worth your time.

1:19:49That's it for this edition of The Next Picture Show. Tasha, can you tell us about our next pairing? The End of Oak Street is a radical switch-up for writer-director David Robert Mitchell. The latest from the man behind the gnarly horror movie It Follows, the dreamy L.A. noir Under the Silver Lake, and the suburban teen drama The Myth of the American Sleepover, is an Amblin Entertainment-style throwback adventure movie, complete with dinosaurs and time travel. Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway star as a troubled suburban couple raising a pair of teenagers in 1982 in Flowerville, Michigan, when an inexplicable event inundates their neighborhood with prehistoric plants and predators.

1:20:25The couple have to survive and keep their kids alive, mostly through a series of chases, battles, and stalking sequences, as a series of hungry dinos try to make them into lunch. The dark adventure tone, the character dynamics, and the focus on a sudden, incomprehensible invasion, making life difficult and possibly very short for a strained family, all reminded us a lot of Steven Spielberg's 2005 take on War of the Worlds, in which Tom Cruise plays a Brooklyn blue-collar worker trying to shepherd his two kids through an alien invasion and reunite them with their mom, his estranged wife. So in our next pairing, we'll compare two different neighborhoods that fall apart in a science fiction crisis and two different families that come together during one.

1:21:04For now, we welcome your feedback on Tony, Ratatouille, or anything else film-related you'd like to talk about. Email us at comments at nextpictureshow.net or leave us a voicemail at 773-234-9730. Before we close out this week's episode, where can we find everyone these days at Tasha Robinson? You can still find me recapping Dropout's Game Changer over at Vulture. Otherwise, I've taken a little bit of a break. You can find me on Blue Sky occasionally at Tasha Robinson. Roxanna, how about you? You can find me at Vulture and you can find me at Blue Sky. It is R-O-X-A-N-A-D-A-D-I, Roxanna Haddadi.

1:21:42And I am still on X. Scott, what about you? yeah you can find me a lot of the time at the reveal the newsletter I write with Keith Phipps that's the reveal.film I just filed today it would be certainly up be up by now a very long piece about one of my favorite August movies Ricky and the Flash by Jonathan Demme so that's there among a bunch of other things you can also find me at the New York Times Vulture Guardian and other other fine publications i'm on blue sky at scott tobias our absent co-host keith of course is is also at the reveal uh and other publications he uh is on blue sky at kphips 3000 our absent co-host jv koski is a senior tv editor at vulture uh she is almost ever on social media but you can find her at jv koski on blue sky and she does uh posts um some uh dog and garden photos and videos on Instagram sometimes.

1:22:47So that's very entertaining. Roxanna, thank you again for joining us. It was such a pleasure. Thank you guys. Thank you. You're such a great guest. So we'll do it again sometime soon. You can stay updated on The Next Picture Show at nextpictureshow.net and on Blue Sky at The Next Picture Show. Get bonus content and open discussion at patreon.com slash nextpictureshow. And as always, we appreciate your ratings and reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks to Dan the Big Jakes for his assistance in producing this podcast. The Next Picture Show is proud to be part of the Film Spotting family of podcasts.

1:23:23Please tune in next time.

1:23:36That was a good movie. Yeah, seen here before once. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel. I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what, are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Well, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh, no way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:24:11On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:25:02us for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Turturro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins, what are you doing with my belt to bill burr i don't think i've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as i am and now we even have more great guests coming up including the great john tuturo it's called happiness delivering happiness and many many more open your free high heart radio app search delivering happiness with nick tuturo and listen now