Is This Year's Crop of Contenders the Most Political Ever?

0:29Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, Like, I have this, like, fantasy in my head of, like, Amazon in the background being like, we got to ramp up production. Because that's a wig you can't necessarily find. And then, you know, I did see some Leos in the bathrobe. I thought that was fun. I remember last year seeing the substance costumes popping up. and I was like, okay, like this movie's creeping in now into like national zeitgeisty area. I think because we live in LA, costumes are actually sort of a good litmus test for Oscars because we are around people who vote or are in the industry. I mean, I think Frozen was probably the last time we saw a sensation like we're seeing with K-pop Demon Hunters.

1:17I'm like, just give them the animated award now because no parent has not heard the music or seen the movie by this point. And it's just wild how crazy it was this Halloween, I think. Yes. On social media, I saw a ton of Sinners costumes too. I feel like a lot of couples costumes for Sinners, which I loved. And I think it's sort of similar where that's another movie that I think will sort of stand the test of time culturally. So a lot of good stuff out there.

1:48John, I don't know if you've noticed this, but there are so many overtly political movies this year. One Battle After Another, House of Dynamite, Eddington, Begonia, just to name a few. I have noticed. Yeah, and they're coming to us at a time where politics is very much front of mind. So I think it's also impossible to watch these movies that touch on political themes and not think about current events. Yeah, exactly. And it's not just audiences who are thinking about these messages that these films send. It's also on the top of mind of critics when they write reviews and when actors are interviewed on the carpet.

2:28And sometimes, as we've recently seen, even government officials chime in with their own thoughts on it. So today we're breaking down the public discourse around this year's films that have political undertones. And then we're also going to look back at past examples to see how that might affect their performance at the Oscars this year.

2:55Joining us for today's conversation is Vanity Fair Senior Hollywood editor and our good friend, Hilary Busez. Hilary, welcome back. Oh my God, have I been upgraded from friend of the show to good friend? Am I in your close friend circle now? Next time you're going to be great. Just watch out. Before we get into it, I'll just start out with this disclaimer that there are obviously so many political films. And as John has mentioned, as an audience goer, sometimes you feel a film is political just from your own point of view. So it's impossible to talk about all of them. But we're going to focus on a few of the big ones and specifically on films that are sort of reflecting or commenting on American politics and current events.

3:33I think we have to start with House of Dynamite because they've had quite a response from all sorts of interesting places about this film. So for those who may not know, it's Catherine Bigelow's hyper-realistic, inside-the-room breakdown of these conversations between government officials as a nuclear attack is supposed to happen. And as we know, Bigelow is known for her extremely accurate, realistic portrayals. And that was really the main goal of making this movie. I have an article where I talked to the writer, Noah Oppenheim, about how they made this so realistic. So that was like the whole premise of this movie going in.

4:14And there's been a little bit of pushback already. Who would have thought that a movie that does not depict the American military as being 100 % right, 100 % prepared, 100 % lethal would come under fire from the current administration and the Pentagon? Okay, so Bloomberg posted an internal memo that the Pentagon sent where they argued that the film is not accurate regarding their missile defense capabilities. So there's one scene in the film, spoiler alert, where Jared Harris's character in the movie says that the likelihood of a missile being able to hit a nuclear missile heading to the United States, the accuracy is about 50 to 60 percent.

5:02The Pentagon is claiming that the accuracy is much higher, with the Missile Defense Agency claiming that the accuracy is at 100 percent. Do you want to talk a little bit about Catherine and Noah's response? Yeah, they gave an interview where they were basically like, we just made this as accurate as we could. Like, this is just how it would be. And Noah Oppenheim comes from a journalistic background and really did a ton of reporting to make this film accurate. So they're really standing by the film they made. And there's also this sort of larger issue that people are saying, which is that Trump has invested in this project, the Golden Dome, which is a missile defense system that is like the specific thing that they're referencing in this movie.

5:50And this film sort of doubting how successful that would really be is I think what is the genesis for this internal memo and this response from the Pentagon. Of course it's gold. But when it comes to the politics of the movie itself, so the movie has been, I mean, maybe attacked is too strong of a word. It has been disputed by the actual Pentagon, you know, its accuracy. But the politics of the movie itself are a little murkier. I mean, you don't know who's in power. Kind of the point of the movie is that no matter who's in power, if this happens, it will be bad. And so it's kind of got the simplest message of any of these movies.

6:37Like you can boil it down, I think, pretty easily to, you know, if there is a nuclear attack, we are all kind of screwed. Yeah, I think the point that the president is not really prepped on this issue other than an initial conversation, and he is the one person who gets to decide this without any sort of checks on his decision is a fact, and no one seems to be disputing that fact and how sort of terrifying that is. Especially if you have a president who is maybe known for flying off the handle and impulsive and maybe not so bright. Yeah. So, I mean, Noah Oppenheim said to me, like, we are presenting it with sort of the best case scenario where the president and people around him, like, want to make the right decision and are trying to think about it carefully, even though they have like five minutes to figure it out.

7:23Right. And we don't know if the president is a Republican or Democrat in this. There's no... Yeah, you just see him glad-handing at an event. You don't see him actually making any policy. Yeah, and I think that is very much on purpose. And Noah's given more of a lengthy response to all of this stuff. Catherine Bigelow, in her typical way, was more tight-lipped. And she just said, I just state the truth, which I love about her. You know, sort of a great way to shut people up. But I think that this controversy has sort of died down. I think when you see the movie, it's so blatantly straightforward that this is kind of not taken hold the way some other things have in the past.

8:16Is this a segue? Because that's a good segue. Yeah, we can make it a segue. We can do whatever you want. Give me the codes. Okay. So, yeah, one battle after another, I think, is kind of the opposite in a lot of the things that you just said. I think that it can be interpreted in a lot of different ways and that it is being interpreted in a lot of different ways. And I also think that its kind of immediate status as a frontrunner means that it's going to weather criticisms that it might not otherwise because it's going to be scrutinized just so closely. Yeah, it feels like the discourse hasn't stopped since the movie came out and it's different every week.

8:54Yeah. I think there's so much in the film that people can grab onto, not just because it's almost three hours long, but because it's following this revolutionary group who do acts of political violence and then you jump ahead to Leonardo DiCaprio's character later and he is raising a daughter and sort of has to get back in touch with his revolutionary roots. But you're seeing a lot of political violence from this fictional group, but it clearly inspired by other groups in the past. And I think because of the times we're living in, because of the political violence we've seen and sort of the general feel of the culture right now, it just feels so timely, even though Paul Thomas Anderson has said he's wanted to make this for a long time.

9:44And it was, you know, not because of specifically where we are now, but it just feels so timely in that respect. And the film takes place sort of now. And the only reason we kind of know that is because there are cell phones and there's an iPhone at the end. iPhone's been around a long time now. Exactly. I thought about that. I was like, it could even be 15 years ago. The timeline is intentionally tough to parse because it is based on a Thomas Pynch novel that was, you know, about kind of the curdling of the 60s, 70s political movement into the 80s and 90s. And so that was very specific. And bringing it into the future, I think that Paul Thomas Anderson avoids setting it, you know, nobody ever says who the president is, whatever.

10:33Like, he avoids setting it at a specific time because I think the point that he's making is kind of like it's one battle after another. It's kind of always the same. It's always the revolutionaries sort of fighting the same fight against the same kind of authoritarian villains. But it's not all black and white either because the revolutionaries are kind of selfish and they're kind of bad at what they're doing. Like, Leonardo DiCaprio is not a hero in this movie. Yeah, it's so interesting. So the movie opens up with the French 75, which is the revolutionary group that Leo and Tiana Taylor are a part of.

11:06What the French 75 is fighting for is very amorphous. I mean, it's just sort of like fight the power, but it is interesting because audiences are really grasping onto specifics within the movie that they think are, like, important to their both lives or how they view the world politically, and especially how they view, like, America's current political climate. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think the fact that, you know, Sean Penn's character's whole life goal is to join this white supremacist group called The Christmas Adventurers that is like full of powerful political people also obviously feels very real.

11:56So I think it's just because a lot of these characters and their actions, you can tie to today or the last year or two in a way that feels like he must've just made this yesterday, but he is making it without tying it to exactly a certain time. But it's impossible not to, I think, as a viewer, grab onto one of those at least one of those characters or one of those aspects. Yeah, the criticism that it's getting has come from both right and left, which is not unusual, I guess. But, you know, on the right, there are people who are saying that it is celebrating like Antifa-esque freedom fighters, you know, the kind of boogeyman that they love to accuse of being responsible for all the world's ills.

12:40It happened to come out around the same time that Charlie Kirk was murdered, which kind of leads to a neat comparison between the two, even though obviously they're unrelated. But there are criticisms from the left as well, which are related more to the movie's racial politics. You know, it's made by a white man who's, you know, married to a black woman and has biracial children. And that is kind of a large threat in the movie also, is Leonardo DiCaprio's character's relationship with his daughter, with Tiana Taylor, who's played by Chase Infinity. So there's a lot going on there. There are a lot of things that can be pulled out.

13:13And we haven't even talked about Benicio del Toro's character, who is, I think, probably the best distillation of, if you were to try to guess what the actual politics of the movie are, I think you should look at that character and the way that he is treated and the work that he's doing, which is, you know, kind of humble and under the radar and quiet. and he's doing good. He's helping these undocumented people, which, you know, in the movie's world is presented as an unallayed act of good. And he is doing it without fanfare and without violence and without all these ridiculous secret code things.

13:47It's not this big elaborate thing. It's just kind of doing the work quietly and well. And that's put into like sharp contrast with what's going on with Leonardo DiCaprio, who is such a mess. And that seems like a very intentional comparison. Yeah, and there's also the first 40 minutes where they really are detailing all the things that French 75 is doing before the movie jumps 16 years ahead. It's very, like, sexualized. It's very, like, heightened. It's meant to be almost farcical in a way. And it's a commentary on, I think, all of our romanticizing about that type of life. Well, the question is, yeah, why are they doing it?

14:32Are they doing it because they think it's fun, because they get a thrill from it? Are they doing it to actually try to change the world in a good way? Right, whereas Benicio del Toro's character is really a community leader. We see him, you know, every scene in the background while Leo is doing some crazy thing, Benicio's character is helping his community. Looking for a phone charger, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's why I think the film is so great is it provokes so many different ways that you can talk about it, and it touches down on our current political climate. But again, there's no direct correlations.

15:14PTA, Paul Thomas Anderson, has been very, very hard to pin down in getting an answer about any of this when you ask him, and we can talk about that later. The Charlie Kirk shooting is actually, I think, really applicable to one of the other films I think we should talk about, which is Begonia, because it does have this tie-in to this sort of violence and conspiracy culture. You know, Jesse Plymouth is not a good guy in this. And I think the way audiences are sort of grappling with how to feel about this movie also speaks to what we're talking about because there are a lot of storylines that can be applicable to the culture we're in today.

15:58How did you guys feel about it? John, I know you saw this at a sort of strange time, right? I saw it like two days after the Charlie Kirk shooting. It's interesting because I really think they went into this movie just trying to tell the story that it is, which is an absurdist comedy about how people can, you know, go down the rabbit hole and really believe what they want to believe, which is Jesse Plemons believing that Emma Stone is an alien. And that she is going to wipe out the world's population. But he is off the grid. There's a moment in the movie where he talks about that he's been a part of everything.

16:41He's been QAnon. He's been, you know, incel. He talks about all the various different online personas you can be. But seeing it two days after the Charlie Kirk assassination, I couldn't help but see the parallels of like how people can just fall into a rabbit hole of believing what they want to believe based on disappearing into this world of the internet. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a movie that believes in horseshoe theory, that, you know, any kind of obsession, It doesn't really matter in the end if it's leaning left or leaning right. If you are too deep in, you're going to meet in the middle and it is not a place that you want to be.

17:35Big spoiler alert. If you care about Begonia, you have not seen the ending. I think that you can't talk about the politics of the movie without knowing it, but the twist is that Jesse Clemens is right and that Emma Stone is an alien and she is ready to destroy all of humanity and then she does. And like, I think that this is the point at which I understand narratively why the movie goes down this route. Because again, if he's wrong, then what? She just escapes and that's the end of the movie. There's kind of not another act after that. But politically, it says if you, you know, believe that ivermectin cures COVID and if you believe that vaccines cause autism and if you believe, you know, these conspiracies that have spread, like you are actually correct.

18:18Like, it is the people who do their own research are right. And I don't know if this movie means to say that everybody who kind of falls down a conspiracy rabbit hole is actually on to something. But that is sort of what the ending says. And I just don't know if I think that that's the message that we need to be sending. That's exactly how I felt, Hillary. Yeah. I mean, it's also an environmentalist movie. Yes. Which we haven't said explicitly. The funniest stuff to me is Emma Stone's character as a girl boss. there's a sequence where, you know, she's like, tell everyone that they can leave at 5.30 p.m., but if they actually have extra work to do, maybe they should stay.

18:58And that scene, like, I think about that scene weekly. I love that scene so much. But I think, you know, the reason I love Yorgos is he makes you feel bad. His films are often bleak, but at the same time when that movie ended, I was like, I need to take better care of the earth. Like, it motivated me in a way I didn't see coming. I mean, when you two talk about the ending in that way, I could see why that would bother people. But for me, I think this had the effect maybe he was hoping for. I don't know. He doesn't speak about his films that way. But where I was like, I got to save the bees, you know?

19:30You're going to start using metal straws? Yeah, I really, truly hate paper straws. But I will do whatever it takes because there is something this movie is saying about this is it. This is our Earth. We have to take care of it. Aliens or no aliens. And so... Well, yeah, the original title of the movie that it's based on is Save the Green Planet, right? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, that is. Which kind of shows where it's going. Okay, and before we wrap this up, really quick question. Do you believe in aliens? Me? Yes. And I also believe that aliens are potentially walking around us and that, like, maybe, like, we meet an alien once a month.

20:04Oh, okay. As a human. Keep going. Just keep going. Keep going. I'm never going into your basement. Well, don't worry. I don't have. That's what you want me to think. This is Los Angeles. We don't have basements. All right, guys. I think we're going to wrap this part of the conversation here and let Hillary off the hook. Because I ask the tough questions. You too. You too. Well, we'll be keeping a close eye on how this discourse continues around these films and other films during awards season. There's always a lot of drama as the films continue to be discussed and we'll see what kind of effect that may or may not have on the voters.

20:41In the meantime, we're going to definitely look back at how political films and speeches have shown up at the Oscars stage in the past. That's after the break.

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22:27Welcome back to Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair. While there may be more overtly political films than usual this time around, social commentary has been part of Oscars nights from the beginning. The most obvious ways this shows up is usually in acceptance speeches on stage, but we can also see the way it affects campaigning and how these films do in the Oscar race in general. Yeah, I mean, the Academy is supposed to consider all of these films as standalone projects, but we live in the world that we live in, and voters don't live in a bubble. So I think we can look back at these past wins and acceptance speeches as data points for a blueprint for how this year's films that have political undertones might fare.

23:12Undertones, overtones. Yeah, exactly. In between tones. Hillary, are there any previous Academy moments that stand out to you? This is an obvious answer, but it is just always shocking to me to look back at Michael Moore's speech when he won for Bowling for Columbine in 2003 to look at what he said, the fact that he was booed for saying it, and then kind of compare that to the current moment. So, you know, flashback, Bowling for Columbine is a movie about the Columbine shooting. It's a movie arguing for gun control. It was a documentary that became incredibly successful. He won an Oscar for it.

23:53Michael Moore obviously is not the kind of guy who takes a platform and does not use it to spread his beliefs. So he took the Oscar stage. He said, we live in a time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. whether it's the fictition of duct tape or the fictitious of orange alerts. We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you. And anytime you've got the Pope in 66 against... I don't know if it even really mattered that a lot of the people in the room agreed with him.

24:39I think that they just kind of thought this was not the place to be talking about politics in such an overt way. But if you look at that and compare it to especially some of the speeches that were given in Trump's first term, when there was a real backlash, and especially when it coincided with the Me Too movement. Like, that was a moment where people really didn't hold back talking about politics in their acceptance speeches on whether the projects that they were being awarded for were, you know, overtly political or not. You know, think about, like, Meryl Streep at the Golden Globes when she was accepting her Lifetime Achievement Award and she really went after Trump without directly saying, you know, his name in her speech, but like it was enough that it got a tweet from him and, you know, a standing ovation in the room.

25:23And like, I feel like it's going to be very interesting to see if this season kind of is more of like the Meryl Streep year or more of like the Michael Moore year because I think that people in Hollywood are not as outspoken as they were in Trump's first term, even if the nation feels more divided now than it did even then. Yeah, you're right, Hillary. Because you remember in Trump's first term, it felt like every award show someone said something political. Yeah, like David Harbour at the SAGs. There were so many. When you're talking about booing or backlash, I think of the zone of interest speech that Jonathan Glazer gave, you know, bringing up Gaza.

25:56And there was such a crazy backlash to that moment. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the...

26:15Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all are victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist? And I don't know why people were surprised when you saw that film that he was going to say something on stage. Maybe because it is still relatively unusual to speak out on that stage? Because I think no one else really said anything. Yeah, I think that actually the Oscars go through phases where they like dip into political speeches during certain years, and then they'll dip right back out. I think we can all agree, we're currently in a moment where we're dipping right back out.

27:03Even though what I think will be interesting this year is that there are so many films that are overtly more political. My hunch is it'll be more muted, especially after watching this year's Emmys, where I was pretty surprised that in adolescence they didn't talk at all about what the show was about in any of their acceptance speeches. About how boys get radicalized by being online. Yeah, you know, they avoided that, which is fine. You know, it's your time to do whatever you want on that stage. I look back at some other things. I mean, I think when Parasite won, that was a statement not just about globalization in the film community, and then also the film is, you know, about class.