Jimmy Kimmel Suspended, Remembering Robert Redford, & Oscar Buzz for House of Dynamite

0:24Anne Thompson:Welcome to Screen Talk, IndieWire's weekly podcast bringing you up to speed on what's going on in Hollywood. I'm Anne Thompson.

0:31Ryan Lattanzio:And I'm Ryan Latanzio. The big story this week all over the news right now is that ABC has indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel's late night talk show starting on Wednesday night after he made comments saying how, quote, many in MAGA land are working very hard to capitalize on the murder of Charlie Kirk, end quote, which led Nextar Communications group of which operates 23 ABC affiliate television stations to say that they would not air the show and they will instead air some sort of Charlie Kirk memorial presentation. Now we're told this is a temporary suspension and Kimmel's contract is up in May 2026, but ABC statement did not state why the show is preempted.

1:16Ryan Lattanzio:However, if he doesn't come back, they of course have to pay him for his

1:19Anne Thompson:whole contract well that's a good point i'm curious to see how they resolve this i don't i'm not i don't see how um because uh needless to say the president was was delighted and he's basically um uh taking i do think he is taking some advantage of of this situation to go after the left which is what is going on here. ABC caved to his demands once before, paying$15 million to the Trump presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit, as did CBS to the tune of$16 million before the Paramount merger went through. That was a 60 Minutes issue. So this week, as we all mourn the death of liberal activist, movie star, and Sundance founder Robert Redford, I was struck by one of his statements.

2:14Anne Thompson:I'm going to quote him, Robert Redford. Because journalism is what keeps politics straight, is politics telling the truth or not? And very often politics doesn't tell the truth. It just tells a story that's being told by one side or another. But it's journalism that gets to the bottom of it and says, we're hearing this, we're hearing that, but what's the truth? So I'm getting a little emotional because I actually felt very sad at the loss of Robert Redford this week. He represented a side of politics that I totally believe in. Jimmy Kimmel may not be a quote-unquote journalist, but he and Stephen Colbert, who won an Emmy Sunday night while his show is running out the clock until its cancellation next spring, speak truth to power every night, and the First Amendment is supposed to protect them.

3:05Anne Thompson:You'll see how this plays out. Some friends of mine and I usually book a movie to watch when one of the greats dies. Believe it or not, all the president's men, all too relevant right now, hasn't aged that well. So I'd probably go with one of the great romances, Sidney Pollack's Out of Africa. They keep playing the same clips over and over again of Redford washing Meryl Stoops' hair. And it makes me want to see the whole movie.

3:30Ryan Lattanzio:Wait a minute. You think all the president's men hasn't aged well, but Out of Africa has? I would say it's completely the opposite.

3:37Anne Thompson:Have you watched Out of Africa lately?

3:40Ryan Lattanzio:Not in 20 years.

3:43Anne Thompson:All the President's Men is, on the journalism front, you know, on the storytelling side, is a great movie. But what's so fascinating about it is that it is of its period and the 70s, right? And it is, in fact, very, very, it reveals the mystic age that it was made in. And the way they treat women in the movie, it's really kind of an eye-opener to see. That's what I mean. It's a 70s movie, though.

4:14Ryan Lattanzio:Of course, it's going to be of its period. Of course, it's going to be of its period.

4:21Anne Thompson:But it takes you, you know, some movies age better than others for that reason.

4:25Ryan Lattanzio:The Redford that I would pick, I'm a big The Way We Were fan. That movie makes me cry. And I don't cry in a lot of movies these days. I just my heart is too inured or something, I suppose. But this movie always really gets to me. Directed by Sidney Pollack and written by the great screenwriter Arthur Lawrence. And it's based on his college days back at Cornell, his own experiences with the House Un-American Activities Committee, then this relationship he had. And so, of course, you have Barbra Streisand playing a Marxist Jew who's very strongly anti-war. And then you have Robert Redford as this very waspy person who is sort of politically indifferent.

5:07Ryan Lattanzio:And we see their relationship unfold over the years and they cannot seem to make it work. And it's one of those movies that ends on a very bittersweet note. And it is not a traditional Hollywood ending. And I don't know that we were seeing that that often at the time. This movie was from 1973. I'm assuming you're a fan of that one.

5:28Anne Thompson:Of course. Of course I am. It's one of the great, another great romance. Sidney Pollack and Redford had a good relationship. They made sounds together. And yeah, they did well. They did well together. Pollack was one of the few directors who could do the quality and commercial dance and make it work. it's very rare that you can get that in in movies and and that's that and that means that he worked really closely with his screen readers to make those screenplays sing um i miss those days i miss movies but we do have plenty of fall movies to catch up with um we both you had already seen house of dynamite and i caught up with house of dynamite and what What was interesting about that, I saw it with a bunch of people over at Netflix.

6:24Anne Thompson:I came out of the movie with my heart pounding. That's how intense it was for me. That is a riveting, suspenseful, intense, it's, it ratchets up the tension at every turn and you know, we're on the verge of nuclear attack. In fact, we are attacked. We are attacked. And what happens after that is, is what the movie is about and how the people behave and and what kind of crazy world we live in. And it's very well written and it's very well directed. What did you think?

6:58Ryan Lattanzio:Oh, I'm crazy about this movie. It was the best thing I saw at Venice. What's interesting about this movie is I can see it playing to both people skeptical of the government and both people within the government because it shows people in the military, you know, from, you know, they're played by Rebecca Ferguson, Then you have or you have Idris Elba as the president who gets this kind of George Bush 9-11 moment where he's pulled out of a photo op with a group of schoolchildren to be told that there's a nuclear missile heading toward the United States. We've got 18 minutes to stop it. It's very detailed in showing their competencies and how we have sort of this all scenarios plan for what to do when we are under a nuclear attack.

7:46Ryan Lattanzio:but none of it matters like it doesn't you can be as prepared as you want you cannot stop what's coming and that's what the movie was about for me and to me i found it profoundly hopeless um but i

8:00Anne Thompson:don't know if others will see it that way i think they will i don't think there's any other way to see it um the house of dynamite in it is a great image right it's the idea that we're all inside this home that's packed with explosives that could go off at any time. And that's basically true. The whole world is susceptible, whether it's going to be rogue agents or Korea or Russia, or look at the world we're in right now and look who's in charge of it. You know, there's a great character in the movie that's sort of fascinating, the soldier in white.

8:39Ryan Lattanzio:This is the guy played by Jonah Hauer King, who basically presents the president with a, see how much this movie impacted me. I remember it really well from the festival a few weeks ago. Everything else kind of deleted from my mind. Who presents, you know, they're in the president's limo and he presents the president with three options for, you know, to respond to a military attack. And it's, he calls them rare, medium rare and well done. so uh it's just funny that the president is looking at this like it's a diner menu but that's how but that's how banal it all is really the movie is not um there's no fireworks and it's not um you know the the drama isn't heightened beyond the way it's a lot of just

9:22Anne Thompson:people talking in rooms i'm curious to see on the oscar front what happens to a movie like this because on some level it's a genre movie it's a thriller that's what it is it's a thriller an elevated thriller. I could see the screenplay getting some recognition. I could see directing. She's won the Oscar before. So she's a she's obviously a possibility there. Picture, right? And on the there's so many different actors, and they have so many short scenes that I don't actually want I don't think any one of those actors is going to make it to in a competitive year to any of the category it is rebecca ferguson is rebecca ferguson is very good but then she goes away

10:10Ryan Lattanzio:the other actor who i really liked it is is tracy let's if we were to pick one for a supporting

10:16Anne Thompson:actor possibility it would be him because he's amazing in this he's really good yeah there's something about tracy let's his eyes they have they're like cold fish you know they look there there's a lot of shots of his eyes looking right at you. And the idea is that at the beginning, Dead inside. About sports. And then he gets a little more serious as time goes on. Yeah. Also, we should point out that this movie has a very unusual sort of rational structure. And we come at it from different points of view. At the beginning, we never see the president. in the beginning. We're not in the situation room with Tracy Lutz, and then we are, and then later we see the president.

11:07Anne Thompson:So it's giving us the same story from different angles, which is really interesting, actually.

11:13Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, I mean, really, all the events of the movie are taking place within 20 minutes, but it's 20 minutes that you see from all different sides. Not to reduce it to talking about awards but i do think that net this is netflix's strongest horse in terms of movies films on their slate that's going to have a cultural impact and have people talking uh i also think a lot of people at home not that this matters for the academy necessarily i think audiences will watch this movie i mean i think it's it's an audience-friendly movie in that way it's very engaging it's topical it's genre like you said obviously it's not science fiction because some So much of it feels so close to our own reality, but it is a little dystopian, and it's a sort of quote-unquote fictional scenario, whereas the last two Bigelow movies that were nominated, Hurt Locker, which won, and Zero Dark Thirty, those were also genre in the sense that those were thriller, but those were true stories.

12:09Anne Thompson:And one was a war film out out front, which is obviously an Oscar friendly genre. And Zero Dark 30 was more of a CIA thriller, which is also friendly, Oscar friendly. It's an interesting question of, of, I think you're right. I think Netflix will do well with this in every way. I think they're going to get a lot of Kraft nominations for Frankenstein. I think that will do well in the Oscar universe. And I think many people will enjoy that movie and enjoy watching it. The one I have questions about, while I enjoyed it and it moved me, Jay Kelly, I guess what I'm questioning is how well that will sustain itself over the long haul.

12:52Anne Thompson:It needs critics loving George Clooney, loving Adam Sandler. I do think Adam Sandler will go the distance on that one, but I don't see it being a big Oscar contender in the end. Those are their movies.

13:07Ryan Lattanzio:You can see George Clooney not making it in because I don't see all these critics groups that come up front. I don't see them going for him. I don't really see critics supporting this movie at all.

13:20Anne Thompson:No, they won't. And I understand why. It's a beautiful, I think Noah Baumbach did a really good job. It's very entertaining. It's fun to watch, but it's not elevated in the way that you would need it to be. It's effective. It works. It does everything it's supposed to do. But it's somehow his most accessible movie to date, I would argue, perhaps. I don't want to fault the movie. I just don't think it's going to last. And you're right. The critics are not going to go for it. The actor race is extremely crowded. And that's another reason why George, he might have made it in another year, but maybe won't make it this year.

13:58Ryan Lattanzio:Yeah, now especially because Leo is in this year for sure.

14:03Anne Thompson:Leo is in and the three movies, Michael B. Jordan and then Paul Neskel. So the three of them are right at the top of all the Oscar races. I mean, they're at the top of the best actor race but those three films are at the top of the best picture and director and all of it.

14:24Ryan Lattanzio:That's right.

14:24Anne Thompson:And that's continuing to be the case. There's no arguing with that. That's happening. So the other movie I saw was Nuremberg. This is a Sony Pictures classic movie that is very, it's written, directed by a guy named James Vanderbilt. Are you familiar with him?

14:45Ryan Lattanzio:I do know James Vanderbilt. Actually, he wrote Zodiac, the David Fincher movie. So I know him as more of a screenwriter. But tell us about it.

14:54Anne Thompson:It's a very well-constructed movie that is a surprisingly entertaining movie, given its subject matter. And it is a showcase for the two actors at its center. Russell Crowe as Herman Goring is as charming and cruel and scary as you would want. he is incredible in this role, I have to say. It reminds us that Russell Crowe is a great actor. He always was, but we forget, you know, back in the heyday of gladiator and master and commander and, you know, what was it called?

15:42Ryan Lattanzio:Cinderella Man.

15:43Anne Thompson:You know, these are great Cinderella. That That was where he started to falter. But yeah, this is an inside man. He's a great actor. It's great to see him run with the ball in this situation, I have to say. I don't like Russell Crowe personally. I've had too many accounts with him that were unpleasant. But I have to say, this is a great performance. And then the other character of the psychiatrist, if you look at the movie it's about it's basically the idea is that this soldier who's a psychiatrist played by Rami Malek goes into the prison and gets to talk to Goring basically and he's going to write a book about him in the end but the idea is that they get along and they talk about a lot of things and challenge each other and it's very entertaining actually even if it's somewhat unbelievable that this would have happened um and then of course the courtroom stuff where we get michael shannon as the justice who is is running this trial is pretty exciting so it's it works it works as a movie not a great movie but a great performance by russell crowe you're not really

16:57Ryan Lattanzio:selling it to me i gotta be honest i have zero interest in this movie i just how many more movies do we need that tell us what world war ii was bad like apparently apparently actually we

17:06Anne Thompson:need a lot of them because some people do need to know that they show some footage in it they make you look at it and it's pretty horrifying i would argue that we need to be reminded honestly give

17:18Ryan Lattanzio:me the documentary then i'll just watch i'd rather watch the documentary of that footage