Summer Movie Wins and Emmy Underdogs

0:04Hello and welcome to Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. I'm David Canfield. I'm Richard Lawson. I'm Rebecca Ford. The final round of Emmy voting starts on Monday. So each of us are going to share an underdog nominee that we'd like to highlight that we hope can go all the way, get a little shine, just get them on the Television Academy's radar because there are a lot of big shows out there that are taking up a lot of oxygen. We're also going to answer some more listener questions later on. But first, to start, we wanted to catch up on some summer movie developments.

0:38It was a big week at the box office, particularly for the original movie Weapons, directed by Zach Kreger of Barbarian fame. This movie made$43.5 million at the box office this weekend. it's a huge result for an original horror movie, something that Warner Brothers is getting pretty used to. They had Sinners, of course, earlier this year that similarly outperformed expectations. It stars Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, my personal favorite, Amy Madigan, among others. And it seems to be kind of leading Warner Brothers' successful attempt to inject some originality into the box office, bring some high-profile successes that are not sequels, not remakes.

1:25It's exciting, right, guys? It's nice to have good news this year, I guess. I'm sure Warner Brothers feels the same. They had kind of a rocky start with Mickey 17 and the infamous The Alto Kings, but I feel like they've really... Wasn't it The Alto Knights? Oh, Knights. See, I can't even remember the title. Let me try that again. They were made knights by a king, but it's not about The Alto King. So memorable, I don't even know the title. but yeah I think they've had such a strong streak since Sinners you know Minecraft Superman obviously it's I think they have often or always been one of the best in marketing and I think they've really nailed that this year along with having good movies that you know I mean Sinners held strong for so long that it's just I think it's great and I feel like there's so much discussion about when things fail when it comes to theatrical, but we should be celebrating that it's really working for them this year.

2:23They had a reputation for decades, I feel like, as being like the director's studio. You know, they worked with a lot of auteurs and they would do sort of quote unquote loss leader, you know, sort of prestige projects more than other studios would. And a lot of those loss leaders would actually make a good deal of money. And so, you know, I think when Nolan left the studio, Christopher Nolan left the studio a few years ago after the whole Tenet thing, there was some worry that maybe they'd lost that mojo, but they've built it back, you know, and so they have Michael B. Jordan under, you know, with them.

2:50They have Zach Kragger. They'll have a Paul Thomas Anderson movie next month. Like, yeah, it's exciting to see, and I hope that other studios, to the best of their ability anyway, these days, might follow suit. Even the failure of Mickey 17 is one that you feel, or at least I feel relieved, that a studio like Warner Brothers would get behind. I don't think that movie works either, but it was Bong Joon-ho's follow-up to Parasite. I would imagine, hopefully, in a healthy movie economy, any studio would want that movie. And then, yeah, you have things like Sinners and now Weapons that, you know, they are horror movies, but I just watched Weapons.

3:31We're recording on a Monday. I just watched it yesterday on a Sunday. And I was really struck by how it plays so much like a drama or even a comedy until its final third. And it's very careful in its pacing. It's really focused on the performances. All of the actors get a lot of room to play and create real characters. And if this is the new model for what original filmmaking can be that actually brings people out en masse, it was very hard to get a ticket yesterday, guys. Then I'm thrilled. It seems like there is something that's been unlocked here by Pam Abdi and Michael DeLuca who are running the studio, who at the top of this year were rumored to be on David Zaslav's kill list.

4:13clearly their strategy has worked out. Yeah, and I think maybe one of the lessons there is like, when we say original, it doesn't have to be like, holy, holy original. There are a lot of vampire movies. Sinners just found a really sharp way to be a good vampire movie. I'm not going to spoil what Weapons is ultimately about, and I have some issues with what it is ultimately about, but it's within a known genre, but Kreger is able to kind of stretch himself and do interesting things. He's called this his Magnolia in that it's a lot of different character perspectives. It's kind of this sprawling thing.

4:46And I wonder if in cultivating Kreger a little bit with this movie, and they really gave it the heavy, heavy marketing push, the screening I went to, they were giving out t-shirts, you know, they're showing it in IMAX, all that stuff. You know, maybe they're looking to A24 as they developed Ari Aster, and they're kind of doing the same. And it's like, okay, if you're inching maybe just a little bit, Weapons is still very much a horror movie, but there's other technique and sort of interest in that movie that it's like maybe his third film will be something even further afield of traditional horror and that way you're cultivating a new really interesting auteur director within the confines of a major studio.

5:25While I don't think weapons will be getting off the ground with any kind of Oscar campaign at the level of sinners, I will just throw out there that Amy Madigan is amazing in the movie's last third. I did not know that was Amy Madigan. until the credits rolled because I truly had a total block on this movie and really was not planning on seeing it opening weekend until I just heard all the buzz. So hopefully the chatter around her materializes into something because it's a great story of an actress who was Oscar nominated back in the 80s, who has still been, you know, pretty regularly acting, but certainly not at this profile, coming back and completely stealing a movie in the end.

6:06Yeah, and her longtime partner Ed Harris did Love, Lives, Bleeding a couple years ago, which is another kind of trendy horror-adjacent indie movie. And it's fun to see actors who have had very long careers get a chance to play with these kind of younger, more hip filmmakers. Yes. How do we feel about Warner Brothers going from this into one battle after another? I was struck by the trailer that played at my screening yesterday because it was so different in tone from, I feel like, the earlier trailers, which were much more PTA, arthouse. This felt like a much more commercial sell. There have been, I feel like, endless reports on how much this movie costs and, you know, kind of conflicting reports of budget and panic inside Warner Brothers and what have you.

6:51But at least it feels like it has some sort of cushion based on how the studio's other films have performed this year where it's not going to be, you know, spotlighted as this great failure that's endemic to a studio trying to bank on original films and not succeeding. Clearly they are succeeding even if this one doesn't land as strongly. Yeah, I feel like they're really going to benefit from having had this nice string going to this one because it will be hard to make that amount of money back on this movie. But I think there's still a lot of narratives that can focus on the success of that film if it does well in the way it needs to critically, which I think it will, and sort of pleasing the P.T.

7:30Anderson base. And I think it has that possibility. So I think it could still be a win for them, despite the fact that reporters will have to note how much this movie did cost them. But I think if it plays critically and does fine in the box office, it should be fine. And it feels, it's quite epic in scope, so I feel like it will be another word-of-mouth thing where people are talking about how much they enjoyed it as The Weeknd kicks off and maybe that brings more people out. Yeah, I keep hearing really good things about the movies, so that's encouraging. You know, it's something of a road test for the DiCaprio factor where he's pretty much one of the last reliable, bankable movie stars.

8:11People point to Killers of the Flower Moon as being an example that's like, well, maybe that's kind of stalling out a bit. But I think there was confusion about that movie. Is it on Apple? Am I seeing it in theaters? What's happening? And this one is clearly the way it's been marketed. It's like, no, this is a theatrical event. The trailer is going to play before pretty much every movie because we can tweak it to fit comedy. We can tweak it to fit action. And the word is out there about that movie. And so I think that the DiCaprio of it all, in addition to everything else, P.T. Anderson does have a following to some extent, will help that movie.

8:42And I think the decks are otherwise pretty clear at that point in September. It has a lot of room, I think, to succeed. Barring a pretty spectacular flop, it will also almost assuredly be Paul Thomas Anderson's highest grossing movie ever. He's currently, his record is just over 40 million in this movie. Again, I don't want to curse it, but it should clear that. Even if it does clear that, it could still be labeled a failure. The bar is much higher than that. So there's a headline for box office analysts to write if they're looking for a positive spin. The title's more appealing than Licorice Pizza.

9:14So that's just a little bit. Yeah. Well, coming in second at the box office behind Weapons was Freakier Friday, the sequel starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. Over the course of the weekend, Weapons kept trending upward and Freakier Friday kept trending downward. I think it ended up at just below$29 million. So it's kind of a bummer to not see a big studio release comedy not hit that$30 million benchmark. But still, that's a very good release for a mid-budget live-action comedy that got pretty decent reviews. It's coming off of The Naked Gun, which is holding fairly well and got very good reviews.

9:51Obviously, both of those are working off of established IP, but it's nice to see comedy working a little bit better at the box office. You know, it's mid-August, guys. I'm just trying to be optimistic at this time of year. Yeah, I feel like August is not usually an optimistic time for movies. But yeah, I think the other thing that distinguishes Naked Gun and Freakier Friday is that they really are just straight comedies, Naked Gun especially. Naked Gun especially. Yeah, Freaky Friday has an emotional element to it, nostalgia to it, all that. And Naked Gun has its own nostalgia. But we haven't gotten a ton of that kind of comedy in theaters.

10:29I mean, you look to Happy Gilmore 2 performing like crazy on Netflix, and you're like, yeah, comedy has done okay. Comedy films have done pretty well, depending if Adam Sandler's involved on streaming. but theatrically, it's been really quiet minus a few blips, like One of Them Days or something, which is also a pretty funny movie from this year. So yeah, I'm optimistic. Again, originality would be nice, but maybe this is the way to kind of build the foundation to kind of retrain audiences to like, that it's fun to see big action spectaculars in theaters, but it's also fun to be in a movie theater watching a comedy and laughing with people.

11:04I thought that Barbie would have done a little bit more to stoke that appetite, but maybe it needed another round and here it is. I got to say that both these films ran really smart promotional campaigns. Like Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, I felt like were everywhere in the last couple of weeks. And obviously Pamela Anderson, Liam Neeson and their, I don't know, relationship became like - It's on the record. Yes, official relationship. They're like became the center of the universe for like at least 24 hours. So it felt like they really promoted these in a way, because they are beloved actors or actors staging a comeback.

11:42And then having that combined with these familiar IP, I felt like really helped these films do well. Even if you maybe weren't a fan of the original, you might want to come to see these two people who are now in love be in a movie together. So I think there are many ways the promotional part really worked for them. The entirety of the Naked Gun campaign is sort of fascinating to me because it's proven to be a pretty big tent comedy for people who I would imagine have very little familiarity even with, you know, the original films. But the way in which you have Pamela Anderson sort of offering a certain kind of nostalgia factor just in her casting, you have Liam Neeson taking that mantle and then seeing them together and being so funny.

12:29The whole thing feels very geared toward of kind of viewer who recognizes these two and recognizes their respective histories on film and TV, but also it just creates a whole new original blend. And I wonder if that's a kind of model for theatrical comedy going forward because it would be very easy to look at the success of Naked Gun, Freak Your Friday, and even Heavy Gilmore 2 on Netflix and just say, well, remakes, sequels work, and that's it in the comedy realm. But I think Naked Gun offers a more interesting lesson in the same way that Barbie did. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, I was a big fan of the original Naked Gun films when I was a kid.

13:12And I didn't know Leslie Nielsen's past context. I didn't even really know who Priscilla Presley was. Exactly. I just thought they were these funny people in these funny movies. And I think that Liam Neeson and Payment Anderson are really shrewd casting for people who are maybe old enough or pay close attention enough. But otherwise, they're just funny in the movie, you know, and that can work well. I think Freakier Friday relies much more heavily on specific nostalgia. I don't know if that's as reproducible. I don't know what other comedies from 20 something years ago we could really mine and revive.

13:42But the Naked Gun model, which is just cast well, have a great idea of how to execute it and then do that. You know, that movie's not perfect, but it's very, very funny for at least a third. I was almost in awe of the very, very narrowly specific millennial appeal of Freakier Friday. The level of references at times, I was like, there's like a five-year age range that's really going to get this. And I don't know that they care because clearly it landed in a big way with that crowd. And, you know, I'm someone who I guess grew up with that movie in the way that they would hope. And the movie did work for me along those lines.

14:19But I was like, is this even good? I genuinely don't know. I mean, if you had told me even a few years ago that I would be sitting at a critic screening in 2025 and watching Chad Michael Murray get a slow-mo hero shot. And then he was really funny in the movie. I'd have been like, you're insane. But that is a very, very small window of millennial nostalgia indeed. But he's good in the movie. I think Lindsay Lohan's really good in the movie too. This is a bit above the sort of Netflix holiday comedy she's been doing. And it's nice to see that she can find ways to be a little bit more natural than those Netflix films have asked of her.

14:57I would say substantially. I mean, this feels like a real turning point for her, hopefully, and one that she can use to maybe just level up a little bit in the kinds of projects that she gets to work on, getting to show her range a little bit. Lindsay Lohan, you know, is a very good actor. And at one point in time was somebody who I was sure would be an Oscar nominee by like age 35. Like that's kind of what her trajectory felt like to me. And then obviously things did not go that way, but hopefully this reminds people that she is pretty dynamic on screen when she gets the chance to be. Oh my God, I would die if she gets like a gritty, arty, Oscar-y role next.

15:36Can we make that happen? The canyon? Sorry. Yeah, we've got to make that happen. Well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we'll shift our focus to television as Emmy voting kicks off and pick some under-the-radar contenders worth going all the way. So stay with us.

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17:29Welcome back to Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair. We are right around the corner from Phase 2 Emmy voting, and we've each picked some perhaps lesser-known, less obvious nominees, less likely to win that we'd like to advocate for and go all the way in their respective categories. There are a lot of them, so obviously this is just skimming the surface, but I think we each picked pretty worthy people. Richard, would you like to start for us? Yeah, of course I cheated and picked two things. Sorry. One of them is Desi Lydic, who is one of the anchors on The Daily Show. And she's nominated in the short form performance category, which is mostly comedies.

18:09I don't think there's a lot of short form drama. And so she does like a web series that's tied to The Daily Show. And I want to just highlight her because there was a lot of understandable ballyhoo about Jon Stewart returning for one day a week. He's the Monday night guy. I guess they've kind of extended that a little bit. He's done more than one day a week in recent months. But anyway, so I think the other Daily Show people get a little overshadowed with all of the Stewart attention. And I think Desi Lydic is my favorite of the other bunch. I think she's really funny and sharp and has her own sort of tone that she brings to the show.

18:39She's not just kind of copying what people have done in the past. So I think she would be a worthy winner in that category. Although I did for a second, Natalie Emanuel is nominated for that Die Hard, the Kevin Hart thing. Oh, wow. And I was like, oh, it would be... I mean, I'm glad she got a nomination, but it would be nice for her to get a win just to maybe wash off the Megalopolis stinks. It's not her fault. You know, I felt watching that movie, I was like, I feel bad for a lot of people involved in this, but like Natalie Emanuel as one of the lesser known people in the movie, I was just like, oh, it's really bad for her.

19:10So, but no, I'm going with Lydic there. So that was that one pick. and then the other briefly, in the unstructured reality competition, we tend to focus on structured, which would be your survivors, your traders, all that. The unstructured is not competition, basically. I would love to see America's Sweethearts, the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader show from Netflix win. Its second season aired a couple months ago. It's a really great show. Yes, it's made in cozy conjunction with the Dallas Cowboys franchise, and maybe there's some icky kind of corporate compromise there. But the women they profile are fascinating.

19:45The second season deals partly with them not unionizing exactly, but advocating for more pay. Famously, not very well paid, despite the franchise being very, very wealthy. Some great people, I guess I could call them characters, kind of passed through the series. And I was just riveted for all eight episodes or whatever it is. So I think that would be a worthy win in that category. These are both good. I like that you've picked categories we don't talk about very much because there's so many categories. I honestly didn't even look at the short form nominees and I am still stuck on the Natalie Emanuella situation because I'm kind of pulling for that to happen because it was a pretty brutal time for her with Megalopolis.

20:26The reviews, from what I recall, were especially unkind to her. So I'm glad she's nominated. Rebecca, would you like to go next? Well, since Richard picked two, I'm going to pick two too. I'm going to go off the cuff here. My first one is a little obvious and I wouldn't say under the radar. but Britt Lauer I think is probably not going to win, unfortunately, in drama actress because she's up against the beloved Kathy Bates. But I wish she would and maybe, I don't know, you know, surprises always happen, but I think the odds have Kathy Bates pretty locked in here for this. But I'm also worried that like none of the actors from Severance are going to win, which is a real possibility and would be a big bummer.

21:06But I think that season of Severance doesn't work without her performance. the little ways she can change her face to change a character, that finale. Like, she is giving a performance that I think so few actors could have pulled off. And it's the only reason that season works, in my opinion, is what she was able to do. And, you know, she's really out there. Like, I think she was on a trade cover recently. Like, she's not under the radar here, but I do think, you know, in another year when there wasn't a Kathy Bates, this would have been an easy win for her. And I think she definitely deserves it.

21:39So she's my big pick, even though it's a little bit of a cop-out since I think she's very much in the running. We'll talk about this more when we get into predicting, but the severance actors question is a big one. Obviously, it's the most nominated show of the year. But you're right, Rebecca, that there is a scenario in which none of them win. You've got Noah Wiley in Best Actor up against Adam Scott. Supporting actor and actress are both, you know, such white lotus-led bloodbaths. But the Brit Lauer one, I think she actually does have a chance. I think the fact that Kathy Bates is the only nominee for Matlock stands in pretty sharp contrast to Brit Lauer being such a breakout star of a show that the Emmys love so much.

22:19So I wouldn't lose hope there just yet. All right. You would both rank Brit higher. Get it? Clicker listening. That's not how you pronounce it, Richard. I know. I realized as I was saying it, I was like, I'd have to come up with a new way to say hi, but I figured it out. And you had one more, Rebecca? Oh, yeah. I have Dying for Sex on the Mind because I recently talked to Michelle Williams for this podcast, but I would really love it to win in writing. It's the pilot episode, the first episode that got the nomination, which I think is called Good Value Diet Soda. But I think the writing on that show is so strong because it really has to manage tone in a way that could have been disastrous if they didn't get it right, you know, because it is so funny, but it's so sad.

23:04And I thought the way Elizabeth Merriweather and Kim Rosenstock were able to walk that tightrope was just so incredible. I think the writing is so strong throughout the series, but I think it's pretty competitive there. And the show, while it did get quite a few nominations, I feel like it's just not a front runner. And when you're looking at something like adolescence, it just feels like there's no stopping that show. So I would love to see that show win something. and I feel like writing especially stood out to me. I agree. I would love to see that happen. But just ask those who went up against Baby Reindeer.

23:39When you've got a juggernaut, it is very easy to just see them win everything. So I'm also going to pick two. I'm going to go with the same category just for simplicity's sake. And that's Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. I suspect Harrison Ford is going to win this race and he really is wonderful and shrinking. So I have no complaint about that. but there's some really exciting new blood here. The first person I will mention is actually Harrison Ford's co-star, Michael Urie, who is such a sneaky highlight of that show and somebody who has been doing such good work on TV for such a long time.

24:17I got to talk to him for a longer story back when the first season aired and his journey just from Ugly Betty to doing a bunch of recurring work on shows like The Good Wife and Younger and The Good Fight. He's always great. And a lot of theater. And a lot of theater. A lot of theater. He's currently in O'Meary, right? Yes. He's somebody who has never really gotten this level of attention for his work, as great as he's always been. And just seeing him nominated is very exciting. He won the Critics' Choice Award earlier this year for his performance on the show. And I don't know. It would be a nice acknowledgement of somebody who's given so much to the medium for, I would say, so little recognition, frankly.

25:02And he's, to me, the kind of sneaky heart of that show in a way. And then the other one is my true passion pick and one I've talked about at length on this podcast, and that's Jeff Hiller for Somebody Somewhere. I would not say Jeff Hiller has had as vibrant a career in TV as Michael Urie, but he's somebody who is, you know, you watch something and he might pop up for five seconds. He might pop up, say, in 30 Rock in two different roles over the course of that show's run. He's that kind of actor. He's a real journeyman. And somebody somewhere from the beginning kind of positioned him as a true star in a way he'd never gotten the opportunity before.