Oscar Season Begins: Inside the Venice and TIFF Lineups

0:03Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. I'm David Canfield. I'm Richard Lawson. And I'm Rebecca Ford. It's a busy week for us here on Little Gold Men coming off of a very busy weekend. The Venice Film Festival lineup has finally been revealed, which is like Christmas morning for some of us. The Toronto Film Festival finalized a lot of their lineup this week. So we're going to talk about both of those and make some educated guesses between them of what might be going to Telluride. Because as longtime listeners know, they don't tell us what's going there until this festival actually starts.

0:42And that altogether gives us a really good idea of what fall festival season will look like and awards season thereafter. But first, this weekend, a couple occurrences. One was the premiere, the release of Ari Ester's Eddington, which was not especially successful at the box office, has been very divisive with critics. We're going to take another look at that movie. Richard has a great piece up on VanityFair.com after his second viewing. And we're also going to talk first about the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which kind of dominated headlines, landed like an earthquake here in Hollywood.

1:24The cancellation came as a real shock. The show will end in May 2026, and CBS has been navigating a very, very, very thorny situation given Paramount's pending merger with Skydance, which has led to allegations of everything from bribery to just trying to curry favor with the Trump administration. There was a settlement over the recent 60 Minutes lawsuit that raised many, many eyebrows, including hosts at the network like Stephen Colbert. In CBS's statement, they said, this is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show's performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.

2:11And then, on his show on Monday night, Jon Stewart said, go fuck yourself. what do we make of all this yeah that's a good question i mean um i was sort of tasked with watching both colbert and the daily show with john stewart on monday night of this week just to see how they reacted after a weekend away to think and sort of process it um and my ultimate takeaway was we still don't know and probably will never know 100 if like trump demanded that as part of this settlement in order to grease the wheels for this merger if he demanded that Colbert be canceled. We don't know. That's all speculation at this point.

2:48There is a lot of circumstantial evidence to support that, but again, it's not certain. So I think that what we really can take away, or at least what I sort of am viewing it as, is like the late night shows were already weakened because of the changing landscape of network television. And that does leave them vulnerable to certain kinds of attacks that are being alleged now with this Trump situation. So it's just basically a bleak picture of the world we live in, both beset upon by like changing in cultural norms in terms of like what people are watching and when they're watching them and also political stuff.

3:27Yeah, I think it's just very upsetting. I mean, I think you're right, Richard, we'll never really know. And I don't really want to talk about Trump's social media posts, but he expressed his glee about this ending and then said something about Kimmel being next and you just it's just upsetting to see that happen you know because he is like overjoyed that this has happened you know whether it was a direct ask or just kind of a decision made um on cbs's part but it's really disappointing i think yeah i mean i think it's an ultimate case of both things can be true um we on this podcast of course talk a lot about the emmys and the variety talk series category has been down to three nominees this year because there are fewer submissions, because there are fewer shows, because of budget cuts, and the fact that the economy of late night is not what it was.

4:20And so that's absolutely a fair assessment of why CBS came to this decision. It's also very difficult to ignore everything happening around the economy of late night at Paramount, and therefore it's easy to see how it would be an even easier decision to make. Yeah, I mean, my question about Trump gloating about it and then saying Kimmel's next, it's like at a certain point, he's going to get rid of all the late night guys who make fun of him. He's going to get rid of the New York Times or whatever his ambitions are towards his dominance over the media. And then he won't have anyone to be mad at because all he does is watch TV and pay attention to that stuff.

4:52And so he'll turn on his supposed friends. I mean, he's already doing it with Rupert Murdoch. So I feel like people going along with this are maybe not thinking the long game out. It's worth continuing to watch this fallout on a number of fronts. Jon Stewart is still a host at the network on Comedy Central. He's talked about feeling like his time may be coming. And obviously, he had a very, very strong statement on Monday night. Jimmy Kimmel has talked about his contract expiring, feeling like he may be done soon. it's starting to feel a little bit like the beginning of the end, even beyond what's going on at Paramount or what Trump does or does not have to do with any of this.

5:35And that makes me a little sad. I still think there's a real value for this kind of format. And the quality of interviews that Colbert particularly conducts pretty regularly, it's something that we'll feel the absence of. Yeah, I mean, we've already been wondering, like how do movies and TV shows get promotion? You know, like late night guest spots are a big way, a traditional way to do that. I don't know how much they move the needle at this point. We'd have to then reflexively look at ourselves and be like, how much does magazine coverage get you? Or a New York Times interview or whatever. And I just don't really know how you keep the economy of Hollywood going when the ways that you use to promote it are sort of vanishing.

6:19Yeah, so this show is, of course, up for the Emmy this year and at the risk of being too cynical, Hollywood does love to make its political statements at award shows. So Rebecca, should we suddenly expect this show to finally win the top Emmy? That's an interesting idea. Yeah, if this came at the exact perfect time ahead of voting for it to really have a chance. I don't know. I'm curious if that would be a really amazing moment for them to be able to get on the stage like that. But I wonder if this moves the needle enough with such a large group of voters for that to happen. But I wonder if there will be a moment, whether or not they win, where this is obviously brought up in some form on the show.

7:03I'd have to imagine people will just see it on the ballot and be like, oh, right, that embattled show. But yes, I have to vote for it. It feels like, you know, they will get a big boost that way. And it's an easy way during an Emmy ceremony to kind of force the issue to have that moment where they can address politics. but safely through a winner. You know, it's not like a member up on stage saying anything. Yes. And while Emmy ratings are significantly down from pre-COVID, it's still a moment for Colpere to get on that stage in front of many millions of people and say some stuff. So I, for one, am looking forward to that, if it happens.

7:38It's interesting to talk about this and Eddington in the same segment, if only because it's a real moment for discussing entertainment and the nuances of discussing entertainment and making entertainment in this second Trump era. Eddington premiered at Cannes. This is the film starring Joaquin Phoenix and Peter Pascal, directed by Ari Aster, set in the height of the COVID pandemic. It was not received especially well, including by, I think it's safe to say, those of us on this podcast who were at Cannes. One of us, however, has since rewatched the movie It Is Not Me, and wrote about it. And Richard, I would first encourage everyone to read your piece.

8:23I think it's, first of all, just a really nice reminder of what can come of a second viewing of anything, but particularly of a movie that was such a lightning rod, is such a lightning rod, and says a lot about these times. Yeah, I mean, I think that it's important for someone, especially in my role, to remember that first impressions are not everything and that especially at a festival where you're tired and stressed, sometimes you're kind of seeing things in one particular way and you're kind of failing to take a step back and look at it in a bigger picture. And I think Eddington is one of those examples where, look, I still don't think it's a perfect film.

9:04I think it's too long. I think there are certain plot points, mostly the one involving Emma Stone, that really could almost be entirely excised and you wouldn't lose anything. I still take some issue with the way that Ari Aster frames, you know, screaming woke kids protesting in their small town. But I did see it on second viewing as more of like less a condemnation of those kids or at least less of an equivocation between those kids and Trumpism, like saying that both sides are just as bad or annoying. And more just a reaction, a really visceral reaction to what it is to have the whole of the internet kind of rushing at you seemingly at once.

9:37at the Q &A for the film at Alamo Drafthouse last week. You know, Ari Aster described his time spent during the early pandemic just doing the Twitter doom scrolling that so many of us were doing and just feeling the, quote, screaming pain of the world. And I think that's what's kind of manifested effectively on screen in Eddington. It's at times really grating, but I think to sit in sort of that sensation of just all of this noise, all of this yelling, all of this panic and dread kind of coming at you at once, I think in that way, the film works, even if as a whole, it still has some frustrating aspects.

10:11It did make me rethink my relationship to the movie. I found it mostly very unpleasant. It does take you to a place you don't want to go to. And that's not a commentary on the film's quality at all, but it is undeniably uncomfortable and maybe not the way you choose to spend your time. And I do still have a lot of issues with it that I don't think would go away. You mentioned the way that the Emma Stone character is written, and some actors feel wasted in it. But there is something to this movie that's obviously struck a chord, and one that I still think about. That said, the movie, unfortunately, really flatlined at the box office.

10:53It made$4.25 million over its opening weekend. that per screen average was actually lower than for Boaz Afraid, which was a sort of notorious flop for Ari Aster and A24. I don't want to say I was surprised, but I was bummed to see that because it's a movie that had stirred so much conversation, that had, again, such a big star in Joaquin Phoenix as Boaz Afraid did. Why do we think that this movie did not perform? Is it just that the appetite for a movie taking us there is simply not there? I was wondering if a fall release, while it would have had a lot of competition then as well, would have been better.

11:35Because when you're releasing in the middle of blockbuster season, when people are going to these big movies that, you know, are escapism or make you feel good or you follow superheroes saving the world. this feels like a tough sell when you have all those other choices to go to a movie that's going to make you feel bad about a very hard time we all just lived through so I wonder if the feel bad season of the fall would have been a better place for it I get that maybe it was going for counter programming for the arthouse fans but I think it's a really tough time to debut and after the very tepid reception at Cannes And it's sort of a one-two punch there.

12:17I'm not surprised that it had a really tough opening. Yeah, I think it's sort of an accidental shame that it came out so soon after Superman did. And there was an absolutely viable reality or scenario in which Superman came out, everyone rolled their eyes, it was yet another superhero movie, we're done with those. But then people really liked Superman and its politics are largely in the right place. It's really fun. its feel-good without kind of glossing over the bad realities of the present day. And so then a week later, it's like, well, do we really need this movie that's so grating and pleasant to watch and frustrating?

12:56And, you know, it's salient. It's definitely, you know, reactive to what we're going through in a weird way as a Superman. But yeah, the timing just unfortunately was off. I also think that there's sort of a long tradition of political satire, if that's what you want to call Eddington, or even just not even satire, just movies that are addressing contemporary politics, it's hard for them to get traction. I think back to, and it's a very different situation, but 20-something years ago when a spate of movies about 9-11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars came out and those were largely rejected by audiences.

13:30None of them really did very well. I spoke with Ari Aster after Bo is Afraid also similarly did not perform well at the box office. And he had expressed to me a disappointment that a film that was as divisive and conversation-starting as Beau's Afraid was, at least in our circles, that translated to indifference when it came to actual theatrical numbers. And a similar dynamic is at play here where you had at Cannes a lot of discourse. I witnessed a literal screaming match between two people I know about this movie. and then to go from that and yes, mixed reviews and I don't think the mixed reviews help the movie at the box office especially for an arthouse crowd but still to go from that to well, it'll kind of scrape by but it's not a movie generating a lot of interest at the box office in either direction yeah, that's something you hope for from a theatrical release you hope for something to spark a sense of community however, may be divided.

14:40And unfortunately, for this type of movie for Astor, I just don't think that that seems to be clicking. No, I think it's a bad title too. It is a bad title. And yeah, definitely needed better reviews because presumably the core audience that would go see this are people vaguely paying attention to how the film was reacted to in Cannes. And they didn't have a ton to go from off that. I do wonder, you know, in terms of Ari Astor, this is his fourth film. He had two big hits with horror films in Hereditary and Midsommar. and then went a different direction with Bo is Afraid and now this. I do wonder where he goes next.

15:13Will there have to be a pivoting back to something that's a little bit more reliable, or will he keep pressing on? But the question is, will people keep financing that? I was going to say, I mean, he would need someone to step up with financing. I think Eddington was budgeted at at least$20 million. Bo is Afraid was over$30 million. Given the performance of these two movies, I don't know that that will happen again. Well, from the unfortunate box office news of Eddington to the excitement of the upcoming Fall Film Festival lineups, we're going to talk a little bit about Venice and Toronto after a quick break.

15:46So stay with us.

16:00Welcome back to Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair. Over the last few days, the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals have announced their full lineups. Toronto typically adds many titles right until it starts. But for Venice, which takes place over Labor Day weekend, starts just before, there's a lot of good stuff. And we know what we're working with. I think, for me, the headline is the dominance of Netflix in the competition. they have three movies, which is kind of a huge number given how small the Venice competition is. Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly is premiering there. That stars George Clooney and Adam Sandler.

16:41Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is premiering there. That's with Jacob Lurdy and Oscar Isaac. And we have House of Dynamite, the Catherine Bigelow film that seems to be coming on very strong at the 11th hour. We knew very little about it, and suddenly it's a Venice premiere. That's a lot for one studio, especially because I've heard good things about all of those movies. Yeah, we have heard good things. We don't know necessarily. One never knows. If those whispers are coming from compromised sources, let's say. But yeah, it is crazy that Netflix has three films in the competition, given that they had nothing there last year.

17:19They've had big years at Venice in the past, you know, the Marriage Story year, they had a few things. So they're no strangers to the festival, but they did take a year off. And I thought at the time, like, well, maybe that shows us that, like, the company is kind of veering away from these auteur-y awards movies. But now they're back with these three big titles that I'm excited for all of them. And yes, I too, David, have heard good things about, well, at least two of them. I know. Are we all hearing the same things from the same people and just creating? I've heard different things from different people.

17:51but yes obviously there's a degree of hype that we are all familiar with and that tends to trail movies that then flatline particularly at Venice it's it's a storied tradition of this progression but I remain hopeful for each of these I love the filmmakers the casts are great and again it's just a signal of confidence to go straight to Venice in the competition. Rebecca, what's your highlight on this lineup? First of all, I love this time of year, Christmas morning for us. I think it looks really strong. I'm very, very excited for After the Hunt. They released a trailer that I, or is it a teaser?

18:31I don't know. They released something that felt very promising to me. And this is Luca Guadagnino's next film. Of course, he loves Venice, so we're not surprised to see it on the lineup there. Julia Roberts' first time at Venice somehow. That's crazy. I know. I think it's you know, in general, it's going to be very star-studded carpet, but I think to have her there is really exciting and I am very optimistic for the film and I've heard mostly good things from a few people who've seen it. So, that's definitely one of my most anticipated. You're telling me Mary Riley or Michael Collins, none of those forgotten Julia Roberts movies premiered at Venice.

19:06I find that shocking. No, that one I feel like will be, a lot of eyes will be on that. It is out of competition, which is interesting. so Julia will not be up for the Volk B Cup, sadly. But yeah, that one drums out to me. I'm also, you know, last year there was a musical kind of making the way through the festivals called The End. Oh, I thought you were going to say Amelia Perez. No, no, no, The End. Most people didn't like, but I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I ended up putting it on my best of the year list. This year there's a musical from Mona Fastfold, who is the creative and life partner of Brady Corbet.

19:43She has a writing credit on The Brutalist. She has her own directorial effort this year called The Testament of Anne Lee, and it's a musical about the Shakers, the short-lived religious sect in the U.S., starring Amanda Seyfried. I'm really curious about the musical aspect. I'm curious about the Shaker aspect. Fastfold made a film called The World to Come a few years ago that had some great performances in it from Vanessa Kirby and Katherine Waterston. The movie as a whole didn't quite hang together for me, but there was enough there that was interesting, and it was set in a similar time period as presumably a story about the Shakers would be.

20:15So I'm very curious about what could be, you know, a Vox Lux kind of thing, which Brady Corbet had at Venice years ago, or be something bigger. I don't know. I cannot wait for this movie. The still that was released sort of screams Best Actress campaign. Not that I choose to read too much into these things. But yeah, Brady Corbet is the producer on this film and co-wrote it. So it's sort of a flip from the dynamic on The Brutalist. But it's also pretty much seemingly exactly the same strategy. They have a movie with a ton of anticipation around it and a lot of uncertainty around it. The Brutalist, it had been widely reported that The Brutalist was over three hours, and Corbet had not really been in the awards conversation yet.

21:00So will this land? Similarly, a musical about the Shakers, Will This Land? And it's got to be one of the hottest sales titles going to the fall festivals. And because the Best Actress race is a bit thinner at this point, in the same way that Adrienne Brody really shook up Best Actor, it could really change the dynamics of that category. So a lot of eyes are already on that one. And it's also going to Toronto. I would put money down that that is one of those films that is going to have a splashy sales deal, like the second day of Venice, where it's really happened before the festival, but they announced it during the festival, because I think you're right, this is the one.

21:35that a lot of people are looking at to buy. Yeah. And then they retitle it Anne Lee and the Shakers to fool people into thinking it's a biopic about a 60s girl group. Just as many thought that The Brutalist was a biopic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so you mentioned, Richard, that after The Hun was out of competition, we're hearing that that was at the request of Amazon MGM, who's distributing that film. It doesn't usually mean anything. Guadagnino won Best Director, just a few years ago with Bones and All at the festival. Queer, just last year, had a quieter debut, I think it's safe to say, but it doesn't mean anything in terms of the movie's quality.

22:15We see this kind of decision-making happen all the time, including with Spike Lee just a few months ago at Cannes and his movie Highest to Lowest. One other movie out of competition that I'm really curious about is Dead Man's Wire. This is directed by Gus Van Sant. It's another sales title. It stars Bill Skarsgård as a man who's kidnapped, held hostage. Gus Van Santis had a bit of a rough go of it lately. On the feature film side, he did direct the majority of Feud, Capote vs. the Swans. He did a really beautiful job, I thought, with that show. Got an Emmy nomination. I would love to see him back in the conversation in a big way.

22:55And I think that Bill Skarsgård is not playing some kind of monster. I think he's playing a human being in this movie. He's playing the victim. It's the opposite. That's interesting. He's like, how much time in the makeup chair? And they're like, I don't know, 10 minutes? And he's like, what? This is great. Yeah, no, I'm curious about that. I mean, I think that a kidnapping thriller from Gus Van Sant, that sounds really interesting. I don't know what the tone or the tempo of that is going to be because he doesn't really work in that vein very often, if ever. And this title is for sale? This is a sales title, correct.

23:27Okay, yeah, because I hadn't heard much about this film to show up in the lineup. So I love a surprise like that, but I'm curious if it works. It could be picked up for the fall, I think. So that'd be exciting. It's his first movie in eight years, which I think is the longest gap for him ever. Yeah. Well, it can't be worse than Sea of Trees. I'm hoping that Dead Man's Wire premieres early, or at least that it and many other films on this list premiere before a film called Rose of Nevada, which is a sci-fi movie about a missing fishing boat. It stars George Mackay and Callum Turner, and so I just don't think I'll survive that, so I have to see that last.

24:06The high cheekbone jawlines in that movie are just going to be overwhelming. The problem, though, Richard, is that if you get 95-degree heat again and you're having Aperols all day, you seeing Rose of Nevada at the end of that festival will kill you. I know. It's just, it's really, I need to, again, it needs to be my last movie. So this is end-of-life planning. I got it. And that is what Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is about, right? It's about me seeing this movie. Can I point out one more highly anticipated? Oh, yeah, let's keep going. Begonia, which we haven't talked about. I'm a Yorgo stan, and I'm really excited to see one that really works for me again.

24:45Obviously, he won the Golden Lion before with Poor Thing, so for him to be back there is not a surprise. But there's a lot of attention, I think, for Emma Stone being in this movie, but we've heard that Jesse Plemons is incredible in it. Have we ever? There's no better recipe for me than that combination. So I'm really, really excited for it. Yeah, this is perhaps an indication of a more accessible Yorgos Lanthimos kinds of kindness. His last movie went to Cannes and then alienated the world. Poor things before that was at Venice and obviously was a huge hit both commercially and critically. Won a bunch of Oscars, the top prize at Venice.

25:26It is one of a few films that Focus is handling. I think, unlike Netflix, they're in more of a divide-and-conquer kind of mood. We'll talk about TIFF a little bit more in a minute, but it sounds like Hamnet, directed by Chloe Zhao, will start in Telluride, which is the same path that Conclave took for the festival last year before going to Toronto, because its Toronto premiere is listed as a Canadian premiere. And so one can infer from that that it has a premiere before that in another place in North America. Yeah, Begonia is interesting. I guess I don't really know much about it, but it is based on a 2003 film from South Korea called Save the Green Planet.