In short
Screen Talk (IndieWire) episode covers: (1) Emily Wilson’s viral negative review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and the backlash/defense around her claims that Nolan’s film lacks Homeric depth (time, memory, history, war, family ties, psychological/emotional/political/ethical complexity), has “gimmicky” structure, “abysmal” writing, unconvincing motivations, no sex scenes, and bad-looking food; Anne argues Nolan’s simplified, star-driven approach is meant to reach the widest audience and spark cultural conversation. (2) Spider-Man: Brand New Day: Ryan hasn’t seen it; Anne predicts huge box-office success (opening estimates around $465M) and discusses Tom Holland’s performance and the film’s romance/action appeal. (3) Tony (A24): a breezy coming-of-age about young Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sessa), described as horny/pretentious and redeemed via a crush/Provincetown plot; Amelia Jones is criticized as underdeveloped; Antonia Banderas and Leo Woodall are praised. (4) Comic-Con Marvel casting reveals: Ryan Gosling pitched a Ghost Rider franchise; David Johnson cast for Black Panther 3 (T’Challa II). (5) Warner-Paramount merger antitrust timeline and Golden Globes HFPA/Penske lawsuit update.
Guests
none (hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio; mentions critics/writers Sarah Sachat, Joyce Carol Oates, David Ehrlich).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VODiscussion on Spider-Man and Upcoming Films
0:45 to 1:49
Hosts discuss the latest Spider-Man movie and other upcoming films.
“I'm also going to preview Tony, Matt Johnson's movie about the young Anthony Bourdain, starring Dominic Sessa, and opening August 7th from A24.”
Tribute to Glenn Hansard
1:49 to 4:28
Hosts pay tribute to musician Glenn Hansard and his impact on music and film.
“He used to do like a charity busker thing every Christmas for people in Dublin, and everybody would go.”
Emily Wilson's Review of 'The Odyssey'
4:28 to 6:30
Hosts discuss Emily Wilson's review of Christopher Nolan's adaptation of 'The Odyssey'.
“She believes that Nolan missed making many salient observations about Odysseus in favor of a simplified and modernized view.”
Critique of Nolan's 'The Odyssey'
6:30 to 8:35
Hosts critique the elements that Nolan's film misses according to Wilson's perspective.
“And the point is that movies like this and Obsession make so much noise in the culture, they become such an ongoing conversation that people end up wanting to see the movies everyone is talking about.”
The Broader Impact of 'The Odyssey'
8:35 to 10:50
Discussion on the cultural impact of Nolan's 'The Odyssey' and its audience reception.
“You know, there will be other women who do it, as you say.”
Spider-Man: Brand New Day Review
10:50 to 12:34
Hosts share their thoughts on the Spider-Man film and its narrative.
“because the memory has been wiped out, the Spider-Man, Peter Parker, because the memory has been wiped out to save his beloved friends.”
Final Thoughts and Closing Remarks
12:34 to 14:02
Hosts wrap up their thoughts on the discussed films and return to audience engagement.
“The quality was irrelevant, as we've said, and people are probably tired of us going on about it.”
Spider-Man's Struggles and Character Development
14:02 to 16:40
Explore how Spider-Man's journey is depicted in the movie 'Brand New Day'.
“I don't like it when this happens, but hopefully she'll figure it out.”
Marvel's Comic-Con Revelations
16:40 to 19:22
Discuss the significant Marvel announcements made at Comic-Con, including new casting decisions.
“What were some of those Marvel Hall H reveals that you mentioned coming out of San Diego?”
Review of 'Tony': A Coming-of-Age Story
19:22 to 21:44
A look at the film 'Tony' and its portrayal of a young Anthony Bourdain.
“It's up against this or that or the other.”
Show all 16 chapters
Impact of Paramount-Warner Merger on Hollywood
21:44 to 24:58
An update on the ongoing Paramount-Warner merger and its implications for the industry.
“And also Sam Neill, who we haven't talked about.”
Upcoming Films and Festival Strategies
24:58 to 27:39
Discuss the premiere of 'Behemoth' and the strategic decisions around film festivals.
“to move forward with planning and executing all their creative projects.”
Golden Globe Antitrust Lawsuit Updates
27:39 to 28:01
Review the antitrust suit involving the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and its history.
“And what's the latest on the Golden Globe saga?”
The Controversy Surrounding Penske and HFPA
28:01 to 29:24
Discussion about the accusations against Jay Penske and the HFPA's mismanagement.
“They are accusing our boss of misleading them and taking them down the road to lose everything that they built over many, many years.”
Corruption and Consequences of the HFPA
29:24 to 31:28
Exploration of the HFPA's corruption and the impact on members and critics.
“his journalists into not covering the globes.”
The Future of the HFPA and Its Members
31:28 to 32:08
Discussion on the new structure of the HFPA and efforts to move forward.
“They're not always going to be in the group.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:05Anne Thompson:Welcome to Screen Talk, IndieWire's weekly podcast, bringing you up to speed on the latest goings on in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson in Los Angeles.
0:15Ryan Lattanzio:And this is Ryan Lattanzio in New York. This week, Anne's going to respond to the 11th standalone Spider-Man movie, Brand New Day, which predictably I didn't see. You've never seen one, right? No, and it's done. The window's shut.
0:30Anne Thompson:You skipped them all.
0:31Ryan Lattanzio:No, no, I've seen the Sam Raimi ones, and I enjoy those immensely. Oh, okay. We can talk about why. Let's be clear. Okay. And this is another collaboration with Sony and Marvel, which also broke two surprising MCU casting announcements at Comic-Con over the weekend. I'm also going to preview Tony, Matt Johnson's movie about the young Anthony Bourdain, starring Dominic Sessa, and opening August 7th from A24. four. We'll also do another update on the Warner Paramount merger and the antitrust case against the Golden Globes.
1:02Anne Thompson:And the Odyssey just keeps on chugging along. And I mean, every day there's more money in the till. So it's something like$730 million worldwide, and it's expected to pass a billion. And what that means is that when you have something like that, it happens every time, It's clickbait. Anybody can weigh in. Joyce Carol Oates can defend the movie against Emily Wilson. You know, everybody's weighing in. And our own Sarah Sachat wrote a good piece about the Emily Wilson review, negative review. She's the translator. We'll talk about this later. But that's part of what we're going to discuss. But it's just it's fascinating how many people are weighing in on this and how viral it really is.
1:48Anne Thompson:But first, I want to say a reluctant farewell to musician and actor Glenn Hansard of The Frames, who starred memorably in the Dublin musical Romance once. He started out as a busker. He used to do like a charity busker thing every Christmas for people in Dublin, and everybody would go. He was just a real national treasure in Ireland and in the music world. And I've been watching him constantly ever since he died, which was a tragic motorcycle crash. He won the Oscar with Marketa Irglova for writing the song Falling Slowly, which I'm sure everybody knows. But KCRW played a 2012 live recording of Bird of Sorrow on Wednesday.
2:35Anne Thompson:And I just burst into tears. I cried. He had a very emotional way of singing and sang about love and loss in a way that very few people did. And I'm so sorry that he's gone. I'm enjoying watching all the videos, I have to say.
2:50Ryan Lattanzio:Once was a cultural phenomenon in 2007. Grossed about$10 million in the U.S. at that time.
2:57Anne Thompson:It was a sleeper, quote-unquote. Sleeper. It was a surprise.
3:00Ryan Lattanzio:That's sizable for a movie like this. That's Searchlight released, directed by John Carney, out of Sundance. And this is one of those bittersweet brief encounter romances. And I remember good.
3:12Anne Thompson:It is really good.
3:13Ryan Lattanzio:And I was 17 and it was not necessarily the kind of movie I was into. But this became one of the most memorable movie going experiences of my life. I saw it very late. I remember on a weeknight with a friend that I'm not really in touch with anymore. Not out of any acrimony, but just the way things happen, which is kind of appropriate for the movie. And I didn't listen to the music yesterday. I did today and I cried. And even better than Falling Slowly, I love the songs When Your Mind's Made Up and Say It To Me Now, which are also from the Once soundtrack.
3:44Anne Thompson:It makes sense that he was a good actor. He really makes you feel when he's singing. That's what got me yesterday.
3:51Ryan Lattanzio:I knew I liked him and everything.
3:53Anne Thompson:It's not that I didn't, but I was surprised at the impact his music had on me. It really got me yesterday.
3:59Ryan Lattanzio:It really did. So we were going to talk about Emily Wilson. This is the translation that was used by Nolan, and she reviewed, if you will, the Odyssey in the London Review of Books. She already kind of spoke out about it in 92Y in a viral conversation, and apparently the London Review of Books website crashed as people were reading this review. What did you think of the piece?
4:22Anne Thompson:It was great fun to read. I mean, nobody knows this material better than she does, and she's a terrific writer. She believes that Nolan missed making many salient observations about Odysseus in favor of a simplified and modernized view. Hello, it's the movies. Nolan's Odyssey, I'm quoting her now, I'm going to read this quote. Nolan's Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior's glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends, and neighbors.
5:03Anne Thompson:It lacks psychological, emotional, political, and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible. This was particularly damning.
5:22Ryan Lattanzio:This sounds like something I would say on this podcast as a review that would get me into trouble. No sex and bad food. I know.
5:31Anne Thompson:And the food that Cersei serves those guys that she turns into pigs is especially disgusting.
5:38Ryan Lattanzio:I thought that looks like pretty good broth.
5:40Anne Thompson:No, no, no. It looked gross. I knew what was going on. But I disagree with her, of course. She wanted Nolan to make a different movie. This is his interpretation. and it's calculated to play, as James Cameron's movies do, to as wide an audience as possible. That's why he cast the world's biggest movie stars and made the English colloquial and simple and American. And no, Telemachus should not have said dad. I hated that. But I've heard others dismiss the dialogue, mostly sophisticated, educated people, erudite people. This isn't targeted at them. Emily Wilson is probably the most erudite, educated, smart person you could come up with, right?
6:21Anne Thompson:Intimidatingly so. Better than anyone. But this isn't targeted at that group. It's reaching the widest global audience of any recent movie. It's the fourth highest grossing movie of the year so far, or it's going to be soon. And the point is that movies like this and Obsession make so much noise in the culture, they become such an ongoing conversation that people end up wanting to see the movies everyone is talking about. It's a snowball effect. And the good news about that, it gives people a reason to remember that they like going to the movies and to go back to the movies. And that's the most important thing.
6:55Ryan Lattanzio:I did get tickets to see it again in IMAX 70 in Rochester, New York on a Tuesday afternoon.
7:01Anne Thompson:They have IMAX 70 in Rochester?
7:04Ryan Lattanzio:They do. They do at the Tinseltown Cinemark. Why? Because of Eastman Kodak? It wasn't 70, but that's the last I was there to see a movie at this particular venue was Fury Road. So that was more than that was 10 years ago. It was even hard to get tickets on that day. But the Emily Wilson review is definitely this classic case of I didn't see the movie that I wanted to see. So therefore, I'm going to take it down. We've all done that, sometimes ruefully. So, you know, I did kind of this at Sundance with the Josephine Decker movie called Chasing Summer. You did.
7:32Anne Thompson:I called you on that.
7:33Ryan Lattanzio:I know. I feel bad about that. But anyway, so it just doesn't seem like Wilson really engaged with what Nolan's project is here, which was to take the gods and the demigods and immortalize them and hold up a mirror to our own society and how early civilization paved the way for the present day ruin. And there's definitely no correct version of Homer because we don't really know who he is. It's an oral poem told through an oral tradition. There's no correct version of it. And Wilson has made that caveat. But this is also someone who also made the language very colloquial through her own translation of the poem.
8:12Ryan Lattanzio:And people had criticisms of that. And kind of echoing what Joyce Carol Oates said, Wilson has definitely benefited from this movie, regardless of her feelings about it.
8:20Anne Thompson:She's famous now. She is.
8:21Ryan Lattanzio:She's a celebrity. And so to attack Nolan like this.
8:24Anne Thompson:With her tattoos and everything.
8:26Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah. There will be other translations of the Odyssey in text and probably on screen. And Nolan's is just one of them.
8:33Anne Thompson:I agree with her complaint that she shouldn't be remembered as the first woman or the only woman to have done this kind of translation. I think that's absurd. You know, there will be other women who do it, as you say. The other interesting thing is that you talked about going to see the 70 millimeter. I had a screening of it. I booked a screening of it, but I couldn't make it. I'm going to book another one.
8:55Ryan Lattanzio:So, Anne, as I said, I did not see Spider-Man Brand New Day, though I don't honestly, I don't know that listeners really need to hear from me on that. I'm going to hate every second of it. I know you saw it, and our critic David Ehrlich eviscerated it, but he appears to stand alone. A lot of people actually are really happy with this one.
9:13Anne Thompson:Well, I can tell you now, and it's not news to anyone who pays attention to the commercial box office, that this will be huge, and it will break records, and it'll be the biggest thing. The last one, the last Spider-Man, was bigger than the one before it. And you know that they come in sections, The three Tobey Maguire movies, the two Adriever Garfield movies, and then the 19-year-old Tom Holland started the MCU series of four films. And Spider-Man No Way Home, the last one, grossed$1.9 billion worldwide. So this one's going to do great. And one of the reasons that I think that's true, there's also the Lord and Miller animated Spider-Verse movies, which also are huge and do really well.
10:02Anne Thompson:And this movie is expected to outperform the Odyssey. It's going to be like a$465 million worldwide opening. The two of them together could break records this weekend or be the biggest weekend in a long time or since before the pandemic. So this is great. And there are enormous movie stars involved because Tom Holland and Zendaya have been growing their stardom through the whole thing. and they're married now and they're great in the movie, both of them. Holland has grown up and he's absolutely, this is the best performance he's given. I had some young women sitting next to me. I mean, one of the reasons these movies are so successful is that they're romances as well as action films.
10:44Anne Thompson:They're like Titanic in that way. And so you have, there were these moments where the poor Tom Holland character, because the memory has been wiped out, the Spider-Man, Peter Parker, because the memory has been wiped out to save his beloved friends. So no one knows, they don't remember him. And it's really sad for him to be this lonely guy trying to function alone. And they don't even know who he is. This is the love of his life, MJ, love of his life. And so there's a moment where she turns to him and she says, I don't know you. I don't know who you are. I mean, you love me. I get that. But I don't know you.
11:23Anne Thompson:And all this girls next to me? Seriously, in chorus. They all went, oh.
11:30Ryan Lattanzio:Well, that's encouraging because I found Tom Holland to be the weak sister in the Odyssey, I have to say.
Read the full transcript
11:37Anne Thompson:No, they play him that way. He's written that way.
11:40Ryan Lattanzio:Of course, but on a performance level beyond who he is.
11:44Anne Thompson:I think he did a perfect job with it, but because he's not strong, because he's not fighting, because he's not a hero, He's a weak sister. He is. I mean, you can't help it. All right. Both Holland and Zendaya are in the Odyssey. And then I think she's the weak link in the Odyssey, honestly.
11:59Ryan Lattanzio:She's the weak link in a lot of these things, I have to say.
12:02Anne Thompson:She's very good in Spider-Man. And she's very good in Dune. Love her in Dune. I haven't seen the new Dune yet, obviously.
12:09Ryan Lattanzio:She's very good when she's doing an externalized performance. I don't know that she has honed yet the ability to really internalize something. Maybe on Euphoria.
12:20Anne Thompson:I think she's great in Euphoria. But the thing about the drama, which neither of us like, and I didn't think she was very good in it. The issue there, though, she made that movie a hit. She and Pattinson. It wasn't a great movie. It was a huge hit for what it was.
12:37Ryan Lattanzio:The quality was irrelevant, as we've said, and people are probably tired of us going on about it.
12:42Anne Thompson:Anyway, Amy Pascal is having a good year, and she also produced Project Hail Mary. And I would argue that she helps to make these Spidey films, the Sony Spidey films, better than Marvel has been doing of late with its own films. But Kevin Feige is also a producer. They do these together on the Sony Spidey films. They figured out that they needed to work together. And they brought on Wonder Man director Dustin Daniel Cretton, who I've admired for a long time, ever since Short Term 12, right?
13:11Ryan Lattanzio:You remember? We were there when that was happening. Absolutely.
13:15Anne Thompson:We wrote about it. I remember interviewing him.
13:17Ryan Lattanzio:I remember we were at a dinner with him and Brie Larson. And I said to her, like, I think you're going to be really big. And she was like, maybe we'll see. And now what I don't really know what she's doing now. She went through the Marvel apparatus and now she does car commercials as far as I can tell.
13:33Anne Thompson:The first one, the first Marvel. What's the name of the one she did? You would not know this. Captain Marvel. Thank you. Captain Marvel. That's right. That one was a hit. And then the follow up was not. That was an interesting. That was an interesting thing. But she was very good in that TV series, Last Things in Chemistry.
13:51Ryan Lattanzio:She was really good in United States of Terror, but that was pre-Short Term 12 when she was more of an indie actor. And Room was the movie that put her over the top. And Room. She won an Oscar and then just kind of went off a cliff.
14:02Anne Thompson:I don't like it when this happens, but hopefully she'll figure it out. Hopefully she'll figure it out. I'm worried about the other news that we got. Well, all right, we'll get there. We'll get there. I'm sorry I'm going on so long. I found Brand New Day riveting, exhausting, confusing. And because what happens is that the lonely and isolated Spider-Man is having trouble managing his abilities. It's almost like he's going through some kind of maturation as a spider that's messing up his hormones or something. And he loses his skills. So you have these things where he's racing around the city on tall buildings and he could be falling down any minute.
14:40Anne Thompson:And it's scary. It's actually quite scary. And he's carrying MJ around, and you're worried that he's not going to be able to keep her safe. But all of them are great. Jon Bernthal as the Punisher gives the bro stuff. You know, they cover every single base. And I think it's a very clever movie. And I liked Sadie Sink.
15:01Ryan Lattanzio:First of all, it's funny that I'm somewhat detached from this movie, but I saw that a lot of people speculated that she was going to be Jean Grey of X-Men and being folded into this world. And songwriter Steve Lacey, who has a song in Brand New Day on the red carpet, he was asked about his favorite part of the movie. And he said, Jean Grey. So he's probably trying to keep it secret. Probably being interrogated by Marvel brass at this point in a locked room with a light like a soul light bulb. Well, the movie will be open when this runs.
15:32Anne Thompson:That's right.
15:32Ryan Lattanzio:That's right. So, yes. So Sadie Sink was really good in this Broadway show called John Proctor is the Villain, which was a modern kind of Gen Z version of The Crucible. Very good.
15:43Anne Thompson:She's actually American, which is sort of shocking. Yeah.
15:46Ryan Lattanzio:She's in Stranger Things, which that became unwatchable, even though I barely watched it. And then she was also in The Whale as Brendan Fraser's estranged daughter. And she was very kind of strident in that movie. But honestly, that's the worst movie of Darren Aronofsky's career. and I think one of the worst movies of the past five years. Everyone is really overacting in that one. So, yeah, hopefully this is not another case of an actor who signs their soul away to the franchise.
16:13Anne Thompson:They're actually very good, and she makes you feel sympathy for her, and you realize this is sort of the X-Men franchise origin story, so for one of them anyway. It's good. It's good.
16:23Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, and I guess we have Doom's Day.
16:25Anne Thompson:And she's really, really scary and powerful.
16:28Ryan Lattanzio:Well, supposedly she's going to be in Doomsday, and that's out in December, which I guess I'll have to pull myself together and see that one. But this is a good seg into what happened at Comic-Con over the weekend. What were some of those Marvel Hall H reveals that you mentioned coming out of San Diego?
16:44Anne Thompson:The Ryan Gosling thing is similar to the Rie Larson thing, which is like he seems to be choosing big commercial movies, you know. He apparently pitched Kevin Feige his take on one of the Marvel movies that hasn't been done yet, which is the Ghost Rider franchise. Now, that's the flaming guy on the motorcycle and everything. And it was played by Nick Cage, right? Obviously, he's already done the Star Wars movie with Sean Levy, Starfighter, it's called. I want him to go, you know, please give us a little more La La Land, Ryan. But the other one is this guy, David Johnson, who was announced by Ryan Coogler, who's obviously going to do Black Panther 3.
17:31Anne Thompson:He's going to be T 'Challa 2, the son of the Chadwick Boseman character. And he's a great young British actor.
17:40Ryan Lattanzio:Yes, he's West End trained and I watch Industry and he broke out big in that show as one of the upshot investment bankers in the first two seasons. He's not on the show anymore. He was really good last year in Lionsgate Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, where he really brought some emotion and groundedness and gravitas to, you know, this horrible scenario where people are basically walking to the death to escape a dystopian world. And so I do think in casting him, casting Ryan Gosling, Marvel is trying to, working on regaining some integrity. I think it was a patchy phase five and a phase six so far.
18:21Ryan Lattanzio:I'm not talking about money. I'm just talking about reception.
18:24Anne Thompson:Actors are what they need. And so I think these are big, big, big, big choices. And getting Coogler to come back is an enormous win for them.
18:32Ryan Lattanzio:Having Gosling in the double bill of Star Wars and Marvel does suggest that he's not doing any more La La Land. like we've lost him. He's going to do it. He will. He will. He will.
18:43Anne Thompson:But he did so well with Project Hail Mary. He's been rewarded for that. So unfortunately, he may stick to the plan. All right. Apparently, he wants to make movies that his children can see. Okay, fine. He did sort of do the indie thing for a very long time. He may have felt that he paid his dues, who's half Nelson and all of those films that he did that didn't do that well.
19:09Ryan Lattanzio:Well, you see people like Elizabeth Olsen. Now they're retreating back into Indy and trying to do more sort of thoughtful, personal work. But I think he's - He'll get there. He'll get there.
19:20Anne Thompson:He's a talented man. So what did you think of Tony? I have still not seen it. I keep missing screenings. It's up against this or that or the other. I want to see it. Ehrlich liked it.
19:30Ryan Lattanzio:This is the latest movie from the director of Blackberry and Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, which I watched on a plane recently. Not necessarily for me, but his name is Matt Johnson. And so he's having a very good year with Nirvana being a kind of hugely popular cult hit and did sizably well for Neon. So this movie, Tony, is a very much a breezy coming of age movie with Dominic Sessa as an 18 year old Anthony Bourdain, who is cocksure, insufferable, horny, pretentious. He has ambitions of being a writer, but he doesn't know how to write. He has an artistic sensibility, but he is not an artist yet.
20:12Ryan Lattanzio:That really becomes the thrust of the story. And he's kind of the type of person that I think a lot of our older esteemed film critics can relate to in their younger years. and he ends up having a crush on Amelia Jones, who is, again, severely underdeveloped here, unfortunately, as a plot device, even though she plays a woman who became Anthony Bourdain's wife. He follows her to Provincetown, where he ends up getting rejected by her and he gets a job working with Antonia Banderas and Leo Woodall in a kitchen, who Leo Woodall, after Tuner and this movie, is having a really strong year.
20:45Anne Thompson:He's a movie star. He's going to be a big movie star.
20:48Ryan Lattanzio:I think he's even better in this movie, to be honest. And the movie works best when Sessa is playing the young Bourdain as an utter asshole, to the point where I almost thought maybe we were going to do an urchin or a naked, a Mike Lee's naked, unlikable male protagonist kind of story. But alas, this is not that. This is a breezy, province down coming of age where he is redeemed. And it's a movie that I don't know how it's going to play theatrically, but I do see it during while on streaming. But the August release date here does feel like there is a lack of confidence in it as an award. contender.
21:21Anne Thompson:Yeah, why is A24 releasing it in August? That means it's not an Oscar contender. And it definitely isn't. And it doesn't sound like one from what you're saying. I still want to see it really a lot because I love Anthony Bourdain. And when he died, I completely lost it. I didn't realize how much I cared about him. No, totally.
21:42Ryan Lattanzio:He was up there with David Lynch dying or Diane Keaton. Is that one being really devastating?
21:47Anne Thompson:And also Sam Neill, who we haven't talked about. Sam Neill was really lovely. And I interviewed him. I interviewed Sam Neill for Jurassic Park when I was working at EW when I was very young. Okay. Okay. I was young.
22:01Ryan Lattanzio:We know you were young doing the math. You were definitely young. No one's saying you weren't.
22:07Anne Thompson:But I had a lot of interviews with him over the years and I loved him. And he was just, all those videos he did during the pandemic were so lovely and funny. And he would play the ukulele on Graham Norton's show. You know, he was great.
22:22Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, and now one of his films that really gained a cult appeal in the last decade, Possession by Andrei Zulofsky, is being remade by Parker Finn with Callum Turner in the Sam Neill role. There's a lot of paparazzi photos of the shoot, including Margaret Qualley, going around. And fans of that movie are very unhappy, but I'm not holding my breath for it being great. No one can replace. A breakup?
22:47Anne Thompson:A notable breakup?
22:49Ryan Lattanzio:Margaret Qualley broke up with Jack Antonoff. Yes, her husband, who is a huge main character in the Lena Dunham memoir. In the Lena Dunham book. Right, so now you're connecting all the dots in your head of like, where does Lena Dunham fit in this whole scenario?
23:03Anne Thompson:And she was really close with Taylor Swift and went to the wedding and everything.
23:07Ryan Lattanzio:Yes, and Taylor Swift. Jack Antonoff produced her music. Jack Antonoff also produced Lorde's music. who Lorde is an unnamed character in the book as someone who's putting a wedge between her relationship with Jack Antonov. There's a lot of connections that are not even six degrees of separation, but direct, direct one degree.
23:25Anne Thompson:That book is hugely popular and she deserves a lot of credit because she's, A, she lived this extraordinary life, which is hard to believe in some ways. And she went through some horrible things health-wise. But B, she's such a good writer. She is such an entertaining writer. This woman is very, very gifted.
23:43Ryan Lattanzio:She makes the health issues and the debasement, a lot of which is self-induced. Very funny. Self-loathing. Self-loathing. Very funny and relatable. Anyway, moving on. And my eyes and ears are starting to glaze over about the Paramount Warner merger, but you got to update us.
24:00Anne Thompson:Well, I can't keep up with it is the problem. I mean, our podcast last week was out of date when it ran because there was this whole development where Paramount skipped, decided they wanted to skip the injunction phase and move straight to trial, that somehow that would be an advantage for them. But there's this timeline stretching out, and it's just hard to believe that any of it is in Paramount's favor. And the leverage seems to be with the 12 attorneys general. What will happen is that on August 3rd, the timeline will be defined, and they will find out when the court trial is. The attorneys general's interest is to delay that trial.
24:42Anne Thompson:They have leverage as Paramount loses$750 million a quarter, and Paramount will want to try to start as soon as possible. and the tide has turned in Hollywood as many folks, including those who work at Warner's, are hoping the deal falls through. It's tough on the people working at the studios to move forward with planning and executing all their creative projects. It puts everyone in limbo and it could be a long time before this is resolved. So it's a real thing. It's something people are upset about.
25:13Ryan Lattanzio:Searchlight pictures, which could definitely use a win after last year, But actually, the critically excoriated Andrew Stanton live action sci-fi movie, In the Blink of an Eye, got an Emmy nomination. So that was their big win against a year of Rental Family and Ann Lee striking out. Anyway, their new film, Behemoth, from writer-director Tony Gilroy, who you love from Andor, I love from Michael Clayton. This is going to premiere at New York Film Festival, which means that we are not going to see this Pedro Pascal starring film, which is about music scores in movies.
25:48Anne Thompson:We're not going to see it in Venice or Telluride, which is where each of us is going. So we're going to have to wait for New York.
25:53Ryan Lattanzio:They could screen it at the David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Phil, which is where New York Film Festival did Maestro in 2023.
26:01Anne Thompson:I mean, to get the centerpiece platform is very prestigious and it makes it a big deal. It'll play well in New York. Everybody who works at these companies makes these decisions about what is the right festival to go to. It's an art. It's a science. It's a thing that they figure out. And this is a very, very prestigious place for the movie to debut. And they have confidence clearly that it will play well and get all the media that are in New York. That is the advantage about New York. You get everybody to weigh in.
26:34Ryan Lattanzio:I don't know why I thought it was a hometown film. It just has an urbane quality to it, I suppose. It'll play.
26:41Anne Thompson:It'll play. It's an L.A. film. It's very much. No, you're right. People compare it to Tar, but I don't think it's like Tar. I haven't seen it, but it's not going to be like Tar. First of all, I interviewed Tony, and he loves to play to the rafters. He wants everyone to like the movie. He's not one of those. He isn't at all like Todd Field, who makes the movie that he wants to make for himself.
27:03Ryan Lattanzio:Well, there's nothing like Tar, which is one of the great films of all time. I'm excited to see Behemoth in New York. There was a kind of trend with Venice of we're mostly seeing international movies. It is an international film festival. It's in the name, but more and more these quote-unquote awards-launching festivals maybe are less of a priority.
27:23Anne Thompson:Venice has gotten a lot of the good films. It's just that this isn't a year when the studios want to share their big films with the festivals. It just isn't. They're too frightened. They're too scared. They're too nervous. But I look forward to seeing it there. I'll be there. You and I will be there.
27:41Ryan Lattanzio:And what's the latest on the Golden Globe saga?
27:43Anne Thompson:So basically, there's another antitrust suit. That's what's going on. And the disaffected, unhappy, miserable Hollywood Foreign Press Association, HFPA, that used to be about 80 people. I don't know how many of them are left. They're suing. They feel like they were missed. They were really foolish. They let Penske. We work for all disclosure here. We work for PMC. We work for Jay Penske. He is our boss. He pays our bills. They are accusing our boss of misleading them and taking them down the road to lose everything that they built over many, many years. They built up this system where they had these notorious press conferences.
28:30Anne Thompson:They were panels, and they would get everybody from every movie, because everybody wanted to win Golden Globes, to come and talk to them. And they were all often really foolish and stupid and ill-informed, and many of them were embarrassing. The actors hated doing it. There was a big, it was almost like a mutiny among all the press agents just to get rid of this situation. There was a campaign against them. They're accusing Penske and his people of orchestrating that campaign. I'm really curious to see how this plays out. They're arguing that this is an antitrust situation because Penske and his empire, his media empire, is a monopoly on all the trade press and that they shouldn't be allowed to have so much power over the awards and awards apparatus.
29:23Ryan Lattanzio:Well, these erstwhile HFPA members who Robin Wright once called a gaggle of characters when she won for House of Cards or something and their attorneys, they're also alleging that it was almost like Jay Penske tried to influence his journalists into not covering the globes. But honestly, I don't think that's true. We would know. Listen, we were on the ground for the whole thing. We were resistant to covering because it was scuzzy and bad shit was coming out. Yeah.
29:51Anne Thompson:Well, what happened was the LA Times did this amazing expose where they basically showed how racist the organization was. They had no people of color in their organization. I didn't want to cover it.
30:06Ryan Lattanzio:And I remember being upset that I was like, we're really still going to do this? Do you remember the awards were released? The winners, they came out as like a written list, almost like a press release during COVID.
30:16Anne Thompson:This was during the period. Yeah, during COVID. But I have very little sympathy for the HFPA because I think they let this whole thing get out of hand and they didn't monitor themselves and they didn't understand what they were and what they had done wrong and they didn't understand how to fix it. I understand how all of this happened. They were corrupt. They were completely corrupt. And they allowed that to happen. And obviously, some of them were more intelligent and more legitimate than others. I knew a lot of the members, and there are some people in there who are actually friends of mine.
30:48Anne Thompson:But the issue is that they were unaware of their own malfeasance. But on the other hand, they did build this thing up, and they all accrued an enormous amount of wealth. And the way that it all played out with PMC and Todd Bowley and Jay Penske, the way it played out, they were stripped of everything. And for a while they made$75 ,000 a year, but then that ended as well. And now there's a group of about 400 people who are recruited from all over the world who are real film critics. Some of them aren't real film critics, but they're film fans. And they've been vetted and they're temporary. They're not always going to be in the group.
31:35Anne Thompson:It's like a year-by-year thing that you have to reestablish your bona fides. They're trying to, PMC is trying to erase the taint of the old group. And so this is the last thing that they want to have happen. Their response is very strong. This is all baseless. But what the Hollywood Foreign Press did was let their lawyers represent them. And that was very foolish. And now they've seen the error of their ways. They want to restore some of what they had. I can see why they would want to. they've been stripped of everything
32:11Ryan Lattanzio:all right so that'll wrap up our show this week just wanted to say to listeners out there we appreciate you very much and if you're enjoying the podcast we would love if you would give us a rating on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or any of your preferred podcast platforms it always helps it gets more listeners onto the show
32:31Anne Thompson:I concur thank you
32:34Ryan Lattanzio:talk to you next week
32:38you
From the publisher
Hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio unpack why Emily Wilson is so pubically upset at Nolan's "The Odyssey," while reacting to the film's continued Box Office domination and predicting if Spiderman can challenge the epic. They review the newest from the friendly neighborhood web-slinger as well as the Anthony Bourdain biopic "Tony."
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