Old Movies vs. New Movies: How ‘Avengers: Endgame Encore’ Beat Brad Pitt, Robert Pattinson, and an Awesome Weekend Movie Lineup

20:05Sean Fennessey:I did. I shed a tear. You did? I did. And then I put that tear in a jar and then I sent that jar to the White House and I said, believe women, please. How many people were in your screening? You were at like a 10 a.m. on a Friday? I went to an 11 a.m. on a Friday and it was sold out. It was sold out. And I will say, you know, the cap catches the hammer moment, which was so beloved when the movie first came out. Kind of tepid applause. Like people felt like they had to applaud. It was not the same rapturous experience that we had. Can I just ask you, what is the demo of 11 on a Friday morning at the Burbank AMC?

20:44Sean Fennessey:It's a lot of unemployed losers. Movie nerd heaven. A lot of virgins. Okay. No, honestly, like a lot of the screenings I go to, A lot of like dates, a lot of like, you know, small groups of friends together. It was younger. I was one of the older people in the screening room. And I think also this movie being reissued, it does something that a lot of movies that have been reissued over the years does, which is it's like nostalgia for your youth moment. If you were 14 when this movie came out and you're 21 now, you can think back on like this being a very formative movie going experience. And you can also drive yourself.

21:15Sean Fennessey:You can drive yourself. You're all grown up. Yeah. You have your college degree. Congratulations. the movie is also in addition to the Infinity Vision thing there's additional content in the film that ostensibly helps people out before they go to see Avengers Doomsday now the trailer for Avengers Doomsday played before the movie and then we got a one minute introduction to the film from Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. that I would say one of the saddest things I've ever seen in a movie just two men who are just like I just really wanted the money and so I've decided to do this and the movie itself.

21:52Well, one guy who wanted the money and one guy who just can't make anything else work.

21:59Sean Fennessey:In RDJ? Oh, Chris Evans. Yeah. I think if he had picked a few better projects, we'd be in a different spot. I just think he wrong-footed a couple times and now he's back in the cap uniform. But again, I was watching the movie and I was like, this guy just is Captain America. He's just a terrific Captain America. Like I don't even care about Captain America. He was never one of my characters. It never mattered to me. But he really, those two guys hold those movies together, which is why it's kind of sad because when you get to the end of that movie, you're like, they did right by these characters.

22:29Sean Fennessey:The ending of the movie, whether you like comic book movies or not, you can be like, well, they handled Cap really well. They handled Iron Man really well. These chapters are closed. Yeah. Let's go forward. Okay. And then they're like, wait a minute. Hold on. Well, in the case of RDJ, do you think that like Dr. Doom is going to become, is that who he's being? is he gonna be Iron Man at some point are they gonna well I'll tell you about the new stuff you wanna hear about the new stuff you don't but I'm gonna tell you anyway because the listeners at home wanna hear about it do they they definitely do Doomsday is gonna be fucking huge I know that huge if you didn't think so 26 million dollars for this movie that just came out 7 years ago that is on Disney Plus right now that everyone has seen tells you how big that movie's gonna be the four new things that they added to the movie all of which arrive at the end of the movie, really undo the Cap and Iron Man conclusions.

23:24So lame.

23:25Sean Fennessey:So if you don't want to hear what those four things were in this screening, I think this movie is going to be on Disney Plus in a few weeks so that people can prepare. So you mean this version? This version of the movie, yeah. You know, and I couldn't log the movie separately on Letterboxd, which I thought was an interesting choice because it's a different movie. The movie literally ends differently, which is, as you may recall or not, Cap goes back in time to go be with Peggy. Yeah, and they dance. And they dance. It's very nice. And at the end of this film, their dance is interrupted by someone at the door.

23:54Sean Fennessey:Someone rings the doorbell. Okay. And Cap hides. Peggy answers the door. Yes. Because he doesn't want to be discovered because he's in the wrong timeline. Sure. And it's Loki. Tom Hiddleston's Loki. And Loki's there. And Peggy says, can I help you? And he says, no, but I can help you. And then cut. Okay. And we indicate, I think that suggests that there's some issue with the branching timelines from all the time travel. How many seasons of Loki did they make? I think only two. Okay. But at the end of season two, he sacrifices himself. So it's like, which Loki even is this? That Loki's dead. Right.

24:34He sacrifices himself to align the timelines?

24:37Sean Fennessey:That sounds right. Well, because that's what they do in that world with all the retro TVs up on the screen is that they enforce the timelines, right? That's exactly right. The TVA. Sure. And the third mid-credit sequence is actually set in the TVA. Owen Wilson is there. Kiwi Kwan is there. And we learn that the timelines are all at war with each other and they're collapsing. So we see two timelines like headed straight for each other. One of them is like Earth 1000. I've never heard of it. The other one is the X-Men Earth timeline. Okay. From the Fox films. So obviously we know they're going to play a part in Doomsday.

25:16Sean Fennessey:The second post-credit sequence features Mark Ruffalo, who has locked himself in some sort of underground prison after the events, I guess, of the previous Spider-Man film. Yeah. To keep Hulk at bay. Yes. And he gets a visitor. We only hear the visitor's voice from off screen. It's very clearly Doctor Doom. Okay. Dr. Doom has come to unleash Hulk or something. Maybe he takes his powers from Hulk. We don't know. And then we see Mark Ruffalo disappears. And then there's just a sigil engraved on the floor in a green glowing light. Dr. Doom's sigil. That happened. Okay. And then you don't know this and you don't care.

25:54But at the end of the original endgame, when we get to the absolute end credits,

25:59Sean Fennessey:all you can hear is Tony forging something in metal. And that's meant to be the sound of him making the Iron Man mask for the first time. Okay. And in this one, it's Dr. Doom forging his, presumably his mask in metal. Okay. And those are the four new things. So are you, I understand how they've undone some of the Cap stuff. How did they undo Iron Man according to what you've just told me? I think what they're going to do is they're going to show us Robert Downey Jr. as multiple different characters throughout different timelines. Okay. So he is Tony Stark in one timeline. he becomes Victor Von, he's Victor Von Doom in one timeline.

26:36Sean Fennessey:I think if they're feeling really antic, he'll be the Hulk. He'll be Captain America. He'll be Black Widow. He'll be, you know, like I think if they wanted to have fun with it and you know those Russo brothers, they love to have fun. They do. You know, they have their roots in sketch comedy and shows like Community. So I... Lights herself on fire. Yeah.

26:59I, uh... Okay, you're psyched. Are you excited?

27:02Sean Fennessey:are you excited no no no you're sad well the cap thing is one of the best things they've ever done I agree I really I enjoyed it old Chris Evans sitting on the bench and he's like no I don't think I will and that became a great meme and that whole thing that's just to me that's good popcorn movie stuff it was like really ended this popcorn movie really really well seven years ago it'd be like if we were like let's go back to the end of Back to the Future and change it so that the events of Back to the Future 2 don't happen in the same way I agree with you but I've felt that way since the beginning of this.

27:33Yeah. They also do all this stuff with how he has a cute butt in it, right? And then like one of the last shots is his like old cute butt, right? No? Or is it?

27:43Sean Fennessey:I don't know if we see his old cute butt. Oh, okay. But there's a lot about Steve Rodgers. That's America's ass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah. I mean, the reason they did this clearly is because like we just haven't seen Doctor Doom in any movies and there's no anticipation for Doctor Doom. Like we don't, we saw him for like one second, I guess at the end of was it New Avengers or Fantastic Four? It must have been Fantastic Four. I thought he should have just been a part of Fantastic Four. It probably would have gotten people more psyched about all this stuff but seems to have not mattered.

28:09Sean Fennessey:Everyone's very excited and there was cheering and you had the thing where you had people walking out of the movie when the end credits when the credits hit and then standing at the entrance because they didn't realize there was a bunch of new stuff in it. So then you had like big crowds of people just standing there standing through the entire credits because it's been a little bit unclear like whether there is or is not new material in the movie. As someone who has left before the end credits several times just because I'm not I'm not schooled in this. Well, sure. But that is not a Marvel movie.

28:42So, you know. Marvel filmmaker. Yeah. Ryan Coogler is more than a Marvel filmmaker. Okay. Where do you learn

28:48Sean Fennessey:the trick from, you know? Yeah. But you would think that the people who bought the ticket to the screening of the re-release of Infinity, Endgame, whatever. Yes. would know to stay through the end credits. End game. Encore. Sure. Infinity. They didn't stay. Some of them stayed. Okay. And it was, you know, I had a hot ticket immediately afterwards to join you to see a film. Sure, yeah. And I was 10 minutes late to that film because I stayed through everything. You were honestly like 15 minutes late. Was I? Yeah, but it's fine. You know, you saw most of the important stuff. Oh, I was, I was watched the first, the five minutes when I got there in the wings.

29:28Sean Fennessey:So you just didn't see me. Oh, okay, got it. So it was probably about 10 minutes. Yeah, I was trying to not. It was also very dark and I couldn't see at the very beginning of the film. We'll get there. Yeah. What takeaways do I have from this? Your remark for this stuff, even though you don't like it? And many people will be too, and thus it will be very successful? Well, I wouldn't say I really cared about any of the changes. I'm not like, well, this changes everything. I can't wait. Yeah. You know, I've obviously already been way down on the Marvel stuff. And this feels like them kind of just trying to hammer something in between before having to tell this big story.

30:06Sean Fennessey:Seeing the Doomsday trailer on the big screen, I was like, I don't think this looks that great. It just doesn't seem that appealing to me. But I know a lot of people feel differently and a lot of people are excited about it.

30:19I don't know.

30:19Sean Fennessey:The whole enterprise is a little bit sweaty, but there's obviously still an audience for it. And I'm not sure. I guess this is something that can probably continue to happen for all franchises if there's an anticipated movie coming up. You know, they've been reissuing the Lord of the Rings films pretty frequently. There's a new Lord of the Rings movie next year and we have a similar situation to what we have this year. Did you know this? I was looking at this last night. So you know we have Dune Part 3 and Doomsday on the same day and you've been mystified by that. Next year, we have Avengers Secret Wars and the Lord of the Rings The Hunt for Gollum on the same day.

30:56I truly don't understand.

30:58Sean Fennessey:You know what else is on that day? Tell me. The Housemaid's Secret. The sequel to The Housemaid. Well, that is at least counter-programming. And it doesn't rely on a premium format for its box office. Because we don't care. We just want to get drunk and see Kiki get after it. Some of us do. That just seems strange. Yeah. But you know what? If it works this year, I'll tell you what. If it doesn't work this year, if Dune gets its doors blown off or Doomsday underperforms, something's going to move. are they just trying to do Barbenheimer? Is that what it is? I don't explain it to me The housemaid hunt for Gollum colon secret wars that's what we're calling a day Sure, okay But is that the strategy?

31:34Do you think the housemaid

31:35Sean Fennessey:and Gollum would have chemistry? The housemaid doesn't have she has fake chemistry right? So yes because that's her job her job is to show up and have chemistry with anyone Do you think there will be and get Gollum out of there you know? Do you think there will be a sex scene with Gollum in The Hunt for Gollum. Who's playing Gollum this time? Are there any other... Is it Sidney Sweeney? Are there any other Gollums? I think he's just one. He stands alone. He's like Madonna. One Gollum. But Madonna had plenty of sex. Well, we don't know about Gollum's sex life. That's not exploring the text. Well, that's what I was asking.

32:13Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and I don't know why I'm being so speciesist. He could have sex with whoever he wants. But he has not yet had... We don't know of any romantic or sexual inclinations. Well, he's Smeagol, you know? So maybe in a time before he was really just annihilated by his love, his lust for the ring, maybe he had a form that was more attractive. Okay. So then he could, maybe he, you know, maybe he got it in back then pre-ring. Right. And also he wasn't like, he wasn't. Kind of like most marriages, right? He wasn't fixated on the ring. Yeah. Okay. We'll explore this when we hunt for Gollum in one year.

32:48Does he have, like, what's his anatomy?

32:51Sean Fennessey:Like, is he hanging dong? Yes. Is that what you're asking? Listen, I mean, I just, I'm just more like, are there... I don't, you know, I don't know the answer to that. All right. Well, lots to discuss, lots to learn, especially for me. This really is one of the most prestigious shows. Do the tree people have sex? The Ents? The Ents. I don't think so. Okay. Because they're born of the earth, right? They don't give birth to trees. There's not a reproductive system inside of a tree. Right. there's just the seeds and a different okay well that's sad they do spread their seed though yeah hmm all right well anyhow back to Avengers Endgame Encore no sex scenes added to the new edition I would have been thrilled if Cap and Peggy just ripped each other's clothes off at the end yes me too instead of like Loki showing up that would have been really actually really exciting for me the only time any MC people have had sex is Eternals right and then that just where they show the sex scene and that was a disaster on all fronts so they never did it was it Gemma Chan yeah and is it Keith is it Kit Harington was he in Eternals he is in Eternals but I think it was the other fellow wasn't it the guy from Game of Thrones the other guy from Game of Thrones yeah Richard Madden Richard Madden Vicky was it Richard Madden I think it was Richard Madden and Gemma Chan anyone at the booth yeah Lucas is thumbs up it was Richard Madden and Gemma Chan I'm gonna rewatch Eternals with uh in the cliffs they fucked on a beach I think so like in a cove more or less why do you want to rewatch Eternal because it's the only one of the movies that's not even trying to be connected to anything it's just it's own thing I don't think it's successful at all I really didn't like it but I looking back on it I appreciate the one time they were like well let's just try to do something different and then immediately course corrected and we're like ah no Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek became such good friends on the set of Eternals that now Salma Hayek is starring in Angelina Jolie's new movie.

34:48Sean Fennessey:Yeah, what's that film called? I don't know. It is in theaters right now, I think. Yeah. And no one's seeing it. I think it premiered at a film festival over a year ago. Okay, so you're not going to see the encore? Is it still, was it a one week only? I think it's a multiple week thing. Okay. I have other things to do this weekend because it's three hours, three plus. It was three hours and six minutes. Okay. So you're not going to go? Probably not, but I'm glad you had a good time. Okay. Well, let's talk about Heart of the Beast. Yeah. This is the new film from David Ayer. Of course. There's been quite a bit of reporting about this film and the struggle over its contents.

35:29Sean Fennessey:Matt Bellany's been on this for the last couple weeks. It stars Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons, Anna Lambe, and Uber, Sika, Riker, and Hondo, four German shepherds who play Odin the dog in this film. It's about a man who, after a harrowing plane crash, a Special Forces veteran, he and his combat dog find themselves stranded deep in the Alaskan wilderness. Together, they are forced into a brutal fight for survival against the elements. Now, as I said, I did miss the first 10 minutes of this movie. You filled me in after the screening. You missed, did you see J.K. Simmons? I did. I saw the whole scene of them around the campfire.

36:05Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And when the film ended, you made a face at me that suggested you thought the film was a fiasco. No. I found this movie to be totally competent. Okay. And symbolically, sociologically very grim. Okay. I'll just say as a pure entertainment, as a guy with his dog movie, I thought it was pretty good. Yeah. I kind of enjoyed it. Yeah, the dogs are great. The dog performances are wonderful. Shout out Ubers, Sika, Riker, and Hondo. Yeah, great dog names. So in the spirit of those dog names, I think this is going to be true for anybody who watches this movie. But if you grew up a dog person, and I was born in 1982, and my dog, Kane, was born in 1982.

36:54Sean Fennessey:Kane was a German Shepherd. I grew up with a German Shepherd. He was my dog until he was 12 and he died. I walked him every day. I cleaned up after him. I took care of him. He was very special to me. anybody who has a relationship to a dog, this movie, it's going to hit. Like, it's just going to hit. That stuff is just very well handled in the movie. There's a flip side to the movie, which is that the movie is, you know, just like a very kind of Pete Berg-esque, jingoistic military movie. And some of that stuff is a little groan-worthy. I thought some of the PTSD flashback material seemed a little hacky, the way that it was handled.

37:28Sean Fennessey:And heavy-handed. And no, I agree with that. And there's one toward the end paired with a lot of voiceover from Brad Pitt that I found to be cringeworthy. The flip side, the dog is great. And Brad Pitt is just basically asleep and or walking over a tree trunk, but focused on that and on no emotion whatsoever for the entirety of the movie, with one exception, when he is relating to the dog. And it's not just for dog people. you can be a normal human being and find this moving. The one thing that you missed, and this is like vague spoilers for Heart of the Beast, the dog movie, but it is the opening scene of the movie and it speaks to the way that you related to it and what I thought was a very interesting way is it opens with the dog standing alone on a road and it says somewhere in Alaska.

38:25So it's the dog meeting another human being and then cuts to a week earlier. And so if you've seen the whole thing throughout the movie, you know that the dog is going to be okay, which does a little bit change, which is great because I would be freaking out too if I thought the dog was not going to be okay. And I don't like watching movies where the helpless character, be it animal or child, is in peril and you don't know what's going to happen to them.

38:54Sean Fennessey:I'm so torn on that one. But it does, but it really changes. every single scene that you're watching because you know at least one of these people or one of these two characters, Dog or Brad Pitt, is going to make it. I just think with any regular moviegoer that gives too much of the game away at the beginning of the movie in a way that I would find unsatisfying. And so actually it's quite interesting that I did miss it because I just didn't have any of that information. So I was like, I don't know what's going to happen here. I'm actually quite invested in the story of this Dog and this guy. Sure.

39:24But I think the movie understands its audience and makes the right choice because our 1.30 or 1.45 screening on a Friday afternoon was packed with senior citizens. Yeah. And people who are around me who were very clearly there for the dog. And they were, anytime the dog was in peril or anything bad happened to the dog, gasps from the people around me didn't care anything about Brad Pitt. Yeah. And so I think those people would have been really, really freaked out. And there is a whole, you know, constituent of movie goers who just have to know, is the dog okay? Is the dog or is the animal going to be okay?

40:02Sean Fennessey:No, you're right. And that's who they're making the movie for. You're right. And that audience wants to feel comfortable. And it's interesting to know that there was a lot of behind the scenes tension in terms of which cut of the movie was used. then I just can't unknow that and that there was one cut that was Ayer's cut apparently that was more kind of action focused and more maybe a little bit more grim and that there was another cut that maybe Pitt preferred and his producer Damien Chazelle preferred on the film that was I guess for lack of a better word a little more artistic you know a little bit more it's certainly seemingly like there's something kind of like ethereal about the movie at times because the Pitt character it really goes through some extremely grueling physical trauma throughout this movie.

40:46Sean Fennessey:And it's also constantly hearkening back to the PTSD that he experienced on the battlefield over the years. And so... And the PTSD that the dog experiences. They both have PTSD. Which is very sad. It is. But, you know, some of the survival thriller incidents are really cool. I thought, actually, the sequence where he's going across that bridge and then slips and falls and falls into the ocean. Yeah, that was terrifying. That stuff works really well. And then other stuff where there's a lot of CGI animals, that stuff really didn't work as well at all. So it's kind of a mixed bag in that respect.

41:20I think you missed also the part where before J.K. Simmons shows up. And J.K. Simmons is there for one scene to be the audience for Brad Pitt's character's minimal exposition of why he's here out in the woods. Which is just, you know, he's served and he's had enough. and like he's seen too much, much like the dog. And so now he's just like at one with nature and they talk a lot about silence and stuff and how J.K. Simmons is ruining his silence. But before J.K. Simmons shows up, there's this beautiful night shot. The dog and the pit character are by the lake, campfire, you know, it's just, it's like a man alone.

42:05And then he raises his beer to the stars and says, miss you guys. Which felt like, in a word, the tension between the two things that are trying to go on here, which is like, you know, a man's spiritual quest to get over his stuff and some really hardcore, like Sheridan-coded special forces, you know, nonsense.

42:30Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Yeah, the movie isn't MAGA or anything like that, but it is Sheridan. It is. Very Sheridan. So Sheridan-coded. Yeah, and they're just about sort of like man's war with nature and his desire to find peace in the face of the battle of life. And, you know, the idea that every time you think you've overcome something, there's something else around the corner. Like that's in all of the Sheridan stuff as well. Okay, let's talk about Pitt. Yeah. Is this his first old guy role? Because in the entirety of the movie, he's really kind of down. or wounded or unable to accomplish what he needs to accomplish.

43:11Sean Fennessey:He's constantly failing physically. And he looks old. There's a lot of gray in his beard and he's really rumpled and his eyes have bags under them. He's not beautiful in this movie at all. And obviously he still has a kind of... He's still pit. He's a handsome guy. But you know what I'm saying. In the Redford comp, it is like in the last phase where that's a handsome old guy as opposed to that's a handsome guy. But I'm not sure. Because Redford made a movie like this. He made Jeremiah Johnson, but he made it really more when he was much younger. He made it when he was in his late 30s or early 40s.

43:40Sean Fennessey:And Pitt is now, what is Pitt, like 60? He's got to be near 60. He's over. He's 62. 62. So it's an interesting choice. You know, as recently as Babylon, he was not, he was still looking beautiful in that movie. He's still looking beautiful in The Lost City and in Bullet Train. And, you know, it's been kind of a rocky five years for him at the movies. and I thought this was an interesting choice. The idea of him being so taciturn in the movie was also a choice. It tracks because there's no humans in the movie other than J.K. Simmons so it's logical that he wouldn't talk very much but he's not able to rely on his movie star charm at all.

44:20And even when he does the laugh with the dog it feels like a real fake force laugh and not in an intentional comedic way. It's like this is trying to communicate some sort of emotion with this dog, but it's just like you doing the Brad Pitt laugh that we all know, like phoned in.

44:43Sean Fennessey:Yeah, yeah. I mean, anything that feels like mirthful in the movie just feels totally like wedged in there. You know, like there's not really any laughs in the movie whatsoever. It's a very somber, scary survival thriller. Yeah, and no joy whatsoever and not really any introspection, which is okay. Like there is one cut of the movie where that is the point. This is just a person who has seen too much and so is just trying to do stuff and trying to survive. Yeah. And like all of the set pieces are pretty exciting. The connective tissue that you need, because this is a movie about Brad Pitt and the dog for the most part.

45:24So it is, it's, he needs to hold the frame. And when he's not crossing a log or, you know, dragging things up from the bottom of the ocean or the lake or whatever he's physically doing, he's not giving you any, like, emotional energy or charisma or anything that you do need in a movie to carry people along, especially when you're by yourself. It's, you know, it's not Matt Damon and the Martian.

45:49Sean Fennessey:Right. It's a good comparison. And... The dog really gets all that stuff. The dog gets all the applause moments. The dog gets all the emotionality of the movie. And also, you know, the dog is there. People are rooting for the dog. You can't not. So I guess Brad Pitt is just like, I can be asleep. But he is sort of asleep for it until, major spoiler alert for Heart of the Beast. Well, I mean, there is just one scene in the end before things reach their natural conclusion where he comes alive for two minutes. and it's when he's relating to the dog and he's like, you've been the greatest, you know, friend of my life and I also started crying.

46:31I was like, this is lovely.

46:33Sean Fennessey:All that stuff just works really well. But he, but suddenly Brad Pitt is back and it's really, really noticeable that he is, he is back and he is like, there is interiority where it's just kind of been on autopilot and I think it's like on autopilot for most of F1. Yeah. It's about five years of kind of autopilot for him. It's just, Wolves you know like I said Lost City Bullet Train these are like kind of forgettable movies F1 is kind of a similar thing where he's just like I just want to drive cars and I guess you can write some dialogue around it that I'll deliver half-heartedly and that is a bit of a bummer yeah it's I'm trying to figure out whether or not I think that the movie like the decision to do the film is cynical or not or if it's just the natural evolution of a matinee idol and like this is just something that they do when they get into this stage of their career.

47:25Sean Fennessey:Because, you know, we talked about this with Cliff Booth coming in a couple of months. And yeah, he's clearly at a turning point. Like F1 was a huge hit. But prior to that, it probably had been since Once Upon a Time when he really was like at the center of a major movie. I mean, it feels a lot like he and Cruise are just kind of going back and forth with Digger being the exception of If you reach a certain age, a certain level of fame, a certain level of interest and or confusion in your personal life and people's image of you and you just disappear into these action movies and this big budget spectacle.

48:06I mean, you know, they're trading driving movies like they're they've done survival movies. They'll do. Has Pitt flown anything? Planes in the air yet?

48:18Sean Fennessey:I'm sure that he has. I can't remember specifically. The other thing I was thinking about is like, he has done movies like this before. He's just always been the younger guy in doing them. Like Seven Years in Tibet has some qualities of this. A River Runs Through It has some qualities of this. Like he has been like a wilderness man, you know? He has gotten out into the natural world. So it does feel like it is a little bit of a continuation of the earliest days of his career. A River Runs Through It is a great example of this. He's so great in that movie. And so I do get it as a choice. His next film is called The Riders, which is a Edward Berger, I guess, drama thriller about a guy who I think his daughter is kidnapped and he has to get her back.

49:01Sean Fennessey:It's an A24 movie that's coming out next year. And then after that, I don't think he has anything on the books. IMDb says Ocean's 14, but I don't know. Grain of salt. Yeah. They've been talking about that for like. Yeah. And the Ocean's prequel is also next year with Bradley Cooper. So that's I think that's set in like the 60s. I think every time Clooney does something, he's like, there's a script. We want to do it. And then, you know, then six months go by. Does this movie have you guys worried for Cliff Booth? I don't really think they're connected. It just is like, is he going to give a good performance?

49:33Sean Fennessey:That's really the question. You know, this performance is like, as you said, it's just kind of remote and shut down. There's just not a lot to hold on to for much of the movie other than just his physical toll. So I don't think it's indicative of anything per se. It's interesting this movie still got to$20 million. Well, I mean, and this is kind of what bummed me out. But it's still, it's Brad Pitt and a dog. So that is recognizable to a lot of people. It's kind of grandfathered in. This is the Paramount movie of The Weeknd. It is. To me, this is like, this is what you can expect. Yeah. This is what you can expect.

50:09And so that is, I guess, the fact that it made$20 million is good in that sense. But I find everything else about it to be a little bit of a reminder of where the industry is and where certain decision makers are going. Yeah.

50:24Sean Fennessey:I mean, look, on the one hand, I've liked David Ayer movies in the past. I think he's been off the path for the last seven or eight years. But like Chris and I talking about Fury or Sabotage or Harsh Times, like I like those early movies that he made. I think he's made some real clunkers in the interim. But on its sheet, when you look at the – it's like, okay, movie star movie, original story. you know a very skilled kind of action filmmaker it's an on paper it should totally work and it like it kind of does but it does feel like it is appealing to a bygone generation of moviegoer and that's why it was a lot of 60 year olds okay what's next on our list oh Forgotten Island yeah okay so this is the big DreamWorks animated film of the weekend another original movie this is when I say like this is an exciting weekend at the movies it's because there is a lot of originality Avengers Endgame notwithstanding to go see.

51:20Sean Fennessey:So this movie is directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado. It stars her, the musician, Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Jenny Slate, Manny Jacinto. It's about two best friends who become stranded on the mystical world of Nicali where their only escape might cost them their shared lifetime of memories. The film is really rooted in Filipino mythology. It's about these two high school girls who are at the precipice of starting their lives and then something crazy happens. Yeah. And they're transported somewhere. And so I saw this with my wife and daughter, Alice, a week and a half ago. Mm-hmm. And the movie ended and Alice was like, that was really fun but scary.

52:05Sean Fennessey:And my wife said, I hated it. And you suggested that you didn't love it either. So I saw it with my four-year-old, Knox, and who spent two thirds of the movie in my seat with me, which is not normally the case. He's normally like, I'm fine. Leave me alone. Let me have popcorn. And the lights went up and he said, that was a bad guy movie, which meant that he was quite scared. And I thought that it was so hyperactive that I couldn't focus on anything that was happening and felt a little bad about bringing a four-year-old to something so frenetic. It's extremely frenetic and it's a total aftermath of Spider-Verse movie to me because the style, the filmmaker's previous film, Puss in Boots, The Last Wish, is very similar to this too where you've got a lot of different kind of animation styles being smashed together and you've got a really high energy, fast cutting style of filmmaking that does feel very social media, short form vertical video influenced.

53:09Sean Fennessey:Plus you've got like a very manic And I thought idiosyncratic in a fun way, sense of humor. But that sense of humor lends itself to rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, punchline, punchline, punchline over and over and over again.

53:22Sean Fennessey:I liked it. I didn't love it. I liked it because I thought it was completely original. I just didn't know anything about the Filipino mythology. I thought the animation style was impressive. I thought the vocal performances from the two leads were really good. I liked that it centered two girls and that it was just about two girls and their friendship. and that was the really like the emotional crux of the whole movie. So I really just like watching movies like that with my daughter. And I like watching her get connected to stories like that. But, and we talked about this with the Super Mario Galaxy movie and I think that there is a similar thing here.

53:53Sean Fennessey:I think this is a more artistic version of it. But, the speed of these movies is kind of strange. And it's like, are they tested to serve the audience and is this what kids want? I've been trying to figure that out as we have kids that are, You know, they might have been a year or two too young for this movie, but maybe it's made for seven or eight, nine-year-olds. And is that what they want? I think it's a combination of the speed and the scariness. And there's a demon character who came up again throughout the night, which is how you know that my son was really— She made an impression. Yeah, but also sometimes I wonder if he knows what's going on in anything that he's watching.

54:33And halfway through the movie, he goes, are they out of the bad world yet? so there was something that he was able to to catch on to um i think that there was just so much else streaming by him so fast that like was both over stimulating and a little confusing so i i i but i i really did watch it just thinking like i don't think that this is what your brain needs right now and i'm like and some of it is just that it's probably pitched at an older audience, which, you know, that's fine. But I felt bummed about it. And then also my brain, it really, really liked everything that centered on the two girls and their friendship and even the way that their memories of their friendship.

55:16And so much of that is in the Filipino culture that is so inherent and like, you know, feels lived in within the movie. That's the best part of the movie. But all of the other characters in the other world, like, I don't know what Dave Franco was doing. I like I don't know what that dog was doing. He was a dog. The dog.

55:37Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Who's a dog boy. Sure. Who's part dog, part boy. But when a stick comes around, he turned he goes full dog. But he's not a boy. He's a wolf the rest of the time. I think he's like Teen Wolf or like like like. Yeah. I think he's a dog boy. All right. I you know. And then it's a wolfy quality. And I would say that that's not the best Dave Franco performance. I've seen this year. What is the best Dave Franklin performance you've seen this year? No, regretting you was last year? Yeah. That's sad. Okay, so I guess this is the best Dave Franklin. What about Idiots? Idiots was better than this, yeah.

56:14Sean Fennessey:It was, yeah. Dave Franklin was doing a lot. It's a very... And also nothing. It's a very animated performance in an animated movie. It's funny because it's one of those movies where you see this in a lot of animated and kids' movies now, too, where the demon who is presented initially, this sort of vampire, flying vampire witch character, is actually not really the villain. Like the true villain is the Jenny Slate character who is a memory demon and who wants to siphon things from your mind and keep them for themselves. Which I was trying to figure out, is this like a metaphor for Instagram or social media or something where you take photos, they take your photo.

56:56Or forgetting who you are and where you, you know and where you came from and like the that your experience defines who you are and that doesn't mean that you can't go do things I was so nervous we were going to have a Lilo and Stitch situation where she wasn't going to go to school okay and I was just like what is it with these movies being against young women in STEM but it worked out I love the ending of the

57:15Sean Fennessey:movie but I don't want to spoil it yeah yeah yeah I thought it was really good uh I I hear your concerns and Knox's concerns sure I I I support them um well I just think also this movie only made 12 million dollars which for a you know a big animated kids movie is not i think what they were hoping i know i the reason i wanted to have this the frame around this conversation today is like i knew that heart of the beast and this movie and prime time to an extent um and and a lot of the films were going to get overwhelmed by avengers end game encore and a movie like this about young girls in a non-white culture not being able to succeed is kind of a bummer and it's why there are eight Minions movies and it's why there are excuse me you know listen Puss in Boots I think is the sixth film in the Shrek series you know and we're getting Shrek 5 next year like I'm I just kind of want to stump for the original stories and so it's really hard but I do I do agree with your sentiment I know Eileen does too that it was just too manic and I don't know how we get how do we convince the filmmakers to just like slow it down just a little bit that was also the response I had to Super Mario Galaxy and that made you know more money than God yeah I mean a Minecraft movie is very similar yeah you know in terms of the speed with which the story is being told and the jokes are being delivered and I feel like there was a lot of that in our culture when we were growing up in the 80s and 90s and now I feel like it's at hyperspeed yes says the man who listens to podcasts on 2X Oh, I'm accumulating and retaining information as a part of my work.

58:52Okay.

58:52Sean Fennessey:Not as a part of my entertainment. All right. Let's speak briefly about Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother. Since this film is still in very limited release and is doing very well in limited release. This is the new film from Basim Tarek. He was the director who was supposed to make, with Mahershala Ali, Marvel's Blade film. which I guess after lots of script discussion and delays ultimately never transpired and so this is the movie that they made in the aftermath of that film falling apart. It also stars John Cho, Giancarlo Esposito, Abu Bakr Ali, Tramiel Tillman, Tiffany Boone. It follows Lateef, a devoutly religious hitman who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children after his wife dies, confronting forces closing in and beliefs threatening to unravel.

59:39Sean Fennessey:The journey, the desperate journey, is for breast milk. I didn't know this till I went in. Same. This was an incredible and really upsetting and stressful plot point in a movie. And really, like, you know, there is, Lateef has kind of two struggles. He has his family, emotional issues, and then there is also kind of like an outside villain. I think the family stuff works way more than the outside villain, even though the outside villain allows for some action sequences that are very exciting. Something for you, something for me. Yeah, well, that you don't quite get when you're just like scrounging around.

1:00:18Do they even incorporate the best breast milk into those action sequences in really, really genius and upsetting ways? You know, it's one of those where I watched this and I was like, okay, so someone in this film had to do this exact thing and was driving around the city trying to figure out whether it's actually finding breast milk or whether it's the formula shortage or something.

1:00:39Sean Fennessey:It reminded me of the formula shortage during COVID. And there's just something like this has been lived and turned into a movie. And I think because we have both been through that, we understand it in a very specific way. But many people go through that. It is incredibly hard to keep your child fed in this very literal sense. And so it uses something very literal to access something that is like also very emotional and more universal, just of like you have to do right by your kid. That's right. The primal concern of every parent, which is take care of your family and no matter what. And I mean, look, Mahershala Ali is like one of the great living actors and has been forever.

1:01:20Sean Fennessey:And it's so... But this is like a really challenging part, right? Because he needs to be both like Rambo predator and also like a deeply religious man who's trying to follow the paths of his faith and also like a desperate widower, you know, a person who has like no partner to turn to to work with. He has three children and he's on this quest. But also, you know, as a father, he doesn't totally understand, like he hopes that formula will work and then he finds out formula won't work and his kid won't keep it down. And then so he has to figure out how to get breast milk. And then he keeps, he sort of tries to play by the rules at the beginning to get what he needs from doctors and from the institutions.

1:01:59Sean Fennessey:And then those institutions don't work with him the way that he knows how to work and live in the world. Well, those institutions don't work. I mean, it's also just like an incredible portrait of just the, and reminded me a lot of the Rose Byrne movie, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, where it's just that there are these entire systems that are quote unquote supposed to help families and you just watch the inhumanity like shut in front of you every single way. And we say that as two parents with a tremendous amount of resources. So it's really, really smart and specifically observed. And I think Mahershala is obviously just so, so good.

1:02:35Yeah. And can kind of, he can do the range both of the, like the devoutly religious person and like, you know, the sense of duty to, in one direction, the sense of duty to family. There are still real moments of, you know, levity.

1:02:51Sean Fennessey:It's very funny at times. Yeah. He's just such a fully formed person. And that's honestly without saying much, you know, it's kind of like you put it up against Brad Pitt's performance of not saying anything and just feeling like no one's there. He's one of our great actors. Yeah, the movie is also this really cool genre, Stu, where you do get that deep emotional family drama stuff and you do get the sort of melodrama of being on this race. But it's just also a complete samurai assassin movie where he's taking all this training from Blade and he's literally an assassin who kills with a katana, with a sword.

1:03:24Yes.

1:03:25Sean Fennessey:And so you get this occasionally really good action sequences. I would say it's about 50%. They were, I thought they were great. The other 50%, I felt like they were a little labored. And maybe just like, this is a more modestly scaled movie and a bigger movie might have, you might have gotten even better stuff out of it. I thought, I found Jon Cho incredibly amusing. Completely against type. It was very funny, but those are a little, that part is broad and also fantastical. And there is something about, which I think is purpose. because it's paired with this thing that is so, so, so realistic and so kind of grounded in the everyday.

1:04:04And, you know, it's not surprising that the breast milk half of it affected me more. But it's funny. And also that this is, that this movie got released, that this is a studio movie and it's about, you know, it doesn't spoil too much to say that Jon Cho is like an evangelical cult leader. and that rocks.

1:04:25Sean Fennessey:Yeah. In that respect, it's really, it's fascinating that it exists. I think it's in, I think it's going to go into like 50 cities next week and then expand even further after that. Yeah. Highly recommend people check this out. It's very, very good. And it is kind of like a perfect fusion of things you and I are looking for. I was nauseous watching it though. So I don't know, like do you still have the sense memories of trying to find this stuff? Like for me, it was still very physical. I mean, I didn't breastfeed. I think there's something different to that. But just like a fair, if anyone out there did, it was like really, really, this was way scarier than any horror movie I've seen on my journey.

1:05:01Sean Fennessey:I drew the same connection that you did though, which is that it did remind me specifically of in, you know, August of 2021, just driving to like 19 different pharmacies trying to find formulas somewhere. So even in that very small, very simple way, it hits a narrative beat that maybe I've never seen before. That's the other thing is like thousands and thousands and thousands and a hundred years of movies in. And they still came up with a new idea where I was like, God, this is just clever. Like this is exactly what would happen if you had an infant and your wife died. So it was really smart. Okay, let's talk about The Weight.

1:05:38Sean Fennessey:You did see The Weight, right? I did. Okay, so The Weight is this new film from Patrick McKinley. It stars Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones, Austin Emilio. It's about a man who's desperate to save what is left of his family during the height of the Great Depression. he's a veteran who while imprisoned is hired to help smuggle a fortune in gold across 100 miles of impenetrable wilderness so we've premiered at Sundance and was just released last weekend and what do you think of this? I will go anywhere Ethan Hawke goes or almost anywhere sometimes so that he's is he Purge or is he no Black Phone?

1:06:17Sean Fennessey:He is both the original Purge film and the Black Phone yes Yes, and insidious. Purge, great idea, but I don't feel like I need to sit through the whole thing. I get it. I think there have been five Purge films. Yeah. Plus the sex purge. I was going to say. Thank you to One Night Only. Yeah, so he's wonderful. And once again, the dramatic scene over a ravine really freaked me out. Otherwise, you know, I was kind of, like, it was good. It was fine. I think it's solid. I think this is like a solid thriller. I think the attention to period detail is really good. I think there's a couple of sequences that are very well done.

1:06:54Sean Fennessey:It's interesting to talk about this movie and Heart of the Beast and Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother together because they're all kind of the same in some ways. You know, they're singularly focused on these aging men who are desperately trying to accomplish something that is very, very physically taxing. And the way that the actors handle it is all different. You know, it's mostly a superficial comparison, but it does kind of tell you a little bit about, like, what gets made in Hollywood these days too. It's a Jude's Rock movie at the weekend. Weekend at the movies. All three. It's funny that Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother is the funniest of these three movies.

1:07:28Sean Fennessey:The Weight is also not very funny. And it feels very inspired by Sorcerer, the sort of like Descent into Hell, Men on a Mission movie. They're on foot instead of on a truck. But like the crossing the rope bridge, the getting through the depths of the forest and trying to survive, encountering strangers who want to take something from them. I didn't really know anything about this, but I learned reading about the movie afterwards that it is based on some real history, which is that in 1933, due in part to the Great Depression, of course, FDR disallowed citizens from hoarding gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates.

1:08:07Sean Fennessey:And so that dramatically changed the value of the dollar when this happened. And so you could see that this gold is worth more than ever. And then Gerald Ford repealed the act in 1974. He undid FDR's work. And everything, you know, went swimmingly from then on. Do you have a lot of gold? I have some. I kind of don't want to put it on record how much I have. Why not? No. It stays with me at all times, so. Yeah. I thought this was a solid thriller. I'd be very curious to see what this filmmaker does next. One small note I have is that I really like when Ethan Hawke gets to be charming and funny.

1:08:48Sean Fennessey:And that doesn't mean that he can't give a more like an anguished performance. He did that in Blue Moon, right? One of the great things about Blue Moon is that he's so entertaining, even though there's this pit of sadness inside of him. And this movie, he's just in a lot of pain. It's true. And he's also fighting to get his daughter back. Yeah, that is kind of tacked on and sort of sad. And then kind of like unearned, unbridled enthusiasm at the end, but that was just my take. How would you do in a prison work camp? I don't think I would do well. How would you do?

1:09:29Not well. How would you do going over a ravine? Whether by...

1:09:33Sean Fennessey:I'm not afraid of that. By bridge or by... I don't get scared of that sort of thing. I'm not scared of heights. I'm not really scared of... I'm very scared of heights. That's one thing where I just, I don't really, I mean, I think I would prefer the rope bridge to the log. You know, I am training, but the log is just sort of a balanced thing. Like I stand with Odin on that one who did just not, did not want to do it. I probably the most, like, I don't know if it was the scariest, but the most perilous hike I've ever been on is Angels Landing in Zion National Park. Yeah. Which is in Utah. and it's a very, very narrow ascent to a perch at the top of a large rock formation.

1:10:19Sean Fennessey:And under normal circumstances, if it were empty, it would be not that scary. But when I did it, it was a very, very crowded day at the park. And so there were people going up and coming down. And you're about this far apart from people. Right. Well, you just don't like being close to people. Well, that's true. But in this case, you really don't want to because if somebody just like puts their arm out, They could just hit you and you just topple over down the rocks. I mean, it is scary. I don't like doing that. I wasn't that scared. But is it up against like one side though? Both sides are unblocked.

1:10:54Oh, I don't like that at all. Yeah. That's the proper hike. It's an extension outside of the wide open spaces. Like I don't, you know.

1:11:05Sean Fennessey:Wide open mountains? Wide open mountains or no wide open plains. But also, if you're inching along something and there's a drop on the other side, that to me is less scary than having to be out with nothing on either side to hold on to. Okay. So you're not going to Zion National Park. What about the Narrows? Do you know about the Narrows? No. The Narrows is a wonderful, it's almost like a series of slot canyons through a larger canyon that fills with water. And so the hike is essentially a flat hike across flat land. But as you walk through, the water gets higher and higher and then lower and lower and then higher and higher.

1:11:38Sean Fennessey:You can go down these slot canyons and you can have the water kind of fill up up to your neck or down at your feet. And you get a huge walking stick. You have to wear special kind of shoes. But you are essentially like hiking through a low-level river. Also one of the hardest things I've ever done. But very, very satisfying to get to the end of it. Why would you do that? Sometimes I'm just like, why? Because it's great to be in the world. And once you have to get special shoes, you know? I like having special shoes just to wear in my life. I don't know. I don't like gear. I don't like that. That just seems like it.

1:12:08What is the reward? Then you're there. What's the view?

1:12:12Sean Fennessey:Well, you can get the Angels Landing has a great view. Well, sure. The canyons don't really have a view. But when you're inside of a canyon, and the thing that I liked about doing that hike, I'm so glad I'm sharing this. I haven't been to Zion in seven years. Not since Avengers Endgame. is

1:12:29Sean Fennessey:as you're moving along more and more people fall away and turn around because it's one way in one way out oh so it's about making you feel special well it's about accomplishing something about getting to the end of it but like you won't go to the beach the beach is boring but you'll go swimming like so you don't like the swimming it's just the accomplishment I love the swimming at the beach you know my whole story with the beach I don't like the sand I don't like the sand I don't want to be on the sand You go in a fucking canyon with like... Yeah, canyons are beautiful. And you're swimming with like boots on?

1:12:58What are the special shoes?

1:12:59Sean Fennessey:Just like water shoes. That's pretty common. I don't like water shoes. Okay. That's another thing. It's like I want to be able to swim. They're more like proper water hiking shoes, not like water shoes that you wear like on the ocean floor. I mean, either. I want to, you know, I want to be free. Sounds like you wouldn't do well in the weight. Sounds like you wouldn't do well in a prison camp. Sounds like you wouldn't do well in your mother, your mother, your mother. Sounds like you wouldn't do well at Zion National Park. Yeah. What about... Your mother, your mother, your mother. when the breast milk spills on the floor.

1:13:24Sean Fennessey:Painful. Was the... Quality filmmaking. The worst, scariest thing that happened in any of these movies. It's a great shot. Yeah. Like it hit. Ugh. Okay, let's pivot as far away from these stories as we possibly can. So three movies about men made it to the theaters. And then this is the movie about the woman and a man that went straight to Amazon Prime. The film is The Love Hypothesis. I was not aware of this movie until last Friday, right before I saw you, when I saw that it was the number three movie on Letterboxd. And I was like, okay. Yeah. That means this is something. Sure is. And it's directed by Claire Scanlon.

1:14:03Sean Fennessey:We last spoke of her many years ago with Set It Up, her breakthrough streaming rom-com. I think so. Not the first of its kind, but close to. This new movie stars Lily Reinhart, Tom Bateman, Rachel Marsh, Jaboukie Young-White. After an impulsive kiss, two scientists end up in a fake relationship, testing their theories about love and each other. Yes. You want to give us some background on this story, which I also learned last night? Well, I also, I learned about it in real time, and then I called in our friend, who has some experience in the fan fiction world, and sent me voice notes trying to explain fan fiction to me.

1:14:41So, thank you, Hannah. And hopefully I have some of this down. So this story was originally self-published as Reylo fanfic, which to bring people in is fanfic shipping Rey and Kylo Ren from Star Wars. And that is a very, very robust subgenre in an extremely robust publishing world that has turned out to many of your favorite romances, if you have those. Hannah reminded me that Fifty Shades of Grey was originally Twilight fanfic. Right. So this is how things happen. So in this case, once the fanfic hits a certain level, the names are replaced of the original characters with different, with just random names.

1:15:33So Rey and Kylo Ren were at some point replaced with Olive and Adam. Adam being Adam Driver, who played Kylo Ren in Star Wars. Yes. And they are, Olive is a PhD student, a scientist. And Adam is an accomplished scientist. He's called Dr. Evil is his name. And she's a cancer researcher. She's researching pancreatic cancer or wants to. I don't really know what kind of doctor he is.

1:16:09Sean Fennessey:Unclear, but he's a professor at Stanford. I think I was learning about fan fiction at that point. Sorry to the love hypothesis. this and they embark on a fake relationship in order to achieve goals in their professional and personal lives. And then wouldn't you know it? The fake relationship, you know, shows some real sparks. Shocking turn of events. Stunning. Okay. They actually had feelings for each other. So the thing that I wanted to understand about fan fiction. Okay, so this starts as Rey is a scientist. She's a pancreatic cancer researcher when they're writing this. But I was like, is she also like Rey, a Palpatine?

1:16:54I don't know. Turned Skywalker? Like, is she still a Jedi? Do they have lightsabers? And the answer is no, apparently. Why are you saying no? It's just the essence of Rey. Like, but what is the essence of Rey? I've seen the three movies. She's got nothing except that she's a girl who the lightsaber comes to.

1:17:09Sean Fennessey:I generally get where you're coming from. I just know a little bit more about fan fiction. So I just knew that if you take her out of the world, then she's no longer wielding a lightsaber while boning her, you know, biology professor. Okay. Yeah. I think so fan fiction is like a great springboard, I think, for a lot of writers. Yes. Where you get like, you find an entryway because you have an already predetermined character that has a point of view and specific characteristics. And then you can build a world around them that usually comes from a world that you know and understand and like. Yeah.

1:17:41So, I mean, it's really, it's just using archetypes, right? And it's using archetypes, but with slightly more corporatization IP, like baked into it. But you are also stripping away, like all of the world building, I think, when you.

1:17:56Sean Fennessey:You are. And I think it's a question of, based on how good a writer you are, whether those are superficial qualities or whether they're essential qualities to telling a character's story. Obviously, I would love to see a movie in which Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver played a student and a professor, but were still acting like Kylo Ren and Rey. That would be a fascinating, creative, corporate experiment. We're never going to get that, obviously. But we do have Daisy Ridley's husband playing. Adam. The Adam Driver character. What are your feelings about Tom Bateman? Well, he's quite tall. So I was like, oh, I get it.

1:18:34He's tall. And they have a fake John Williams march, like Imperial March playing every time he storms down a hallway. He's known as Dr. Evil in the film. Yeah, which is very funny. So he's tall and she, Lily Reinhart, of Riverdale fame, who plays Olive, is very charming.

1:18:52Sean Fennessey:So you enjoyed yourself. Well, it's sort of like it was what it was. I mean, I knew I was watching a streaming movie based on fanfic, based on Rey and Kylo Ren. And there were still a couple of moments when the evil, there's another doctor who is not up to. One of the most cartoonishly ridiculous characters in movie history. But when he did his speech, I was like, what is going on here? it at least snapped me back from my second screen. And I was like, excuse me? Are you guys really trying to do this? You know, he played Noel Coward in Downton Abbey, the grand finale. I was trying to figure out where I recognized him from.

1:19:34Sean Fennessey:He was a memorable actor as well. Yeah. The scene in question is abominable. It's just a joke. It's horribly written. The whole thing is horribly written. Yeah, I, we can do better. We can't do better. We should do better. This is not my genre and I'm not, I'm neither an expert nor an enthusiast. Yeah. But come on. This is one of the most popular movies in America right now. I know bad movies are popular all the time. Some people think Avengers Endgame is horrible. I get it. Yeah. But like this is really. And if this is the movie that is for women this weekend. It's very disappointing. Quite poor.

1:20:04Sean Fennessey:I agree with you. And it's kind of fascinating that like. One, I don't disagree with you that I think Lily Reinhart is charming. She's a TV actress. Nothing personal. But like she's not a movie star. It's a TV movie. It's a TV movie. Tom Bateman's fine. I feel like he's, you know, classic British guy trying to do like a monotone American accent. And like the whole time, like, this guy, the British just wants to jump out of him so badly. And also, once again, like, the science community is international, at least until Trump has his way. But so, like, he could be, but he also could be. He could be British.

1:20:38Sean Fennessey:Yeah. And just like at Stanford, you know? Yeah. The other thing is, and this is a petty complaint that has been happening since the dawn of Beverly Hills 90210. but everybody in this movie is like 35 years old. Like what? I don't. These are PhD students? Rachel Marsh, the actress, is 34 years old. It takes a really long time to get it. But they're like first year PhD students at Stanford. Are they first year? that the two friends meet at the beginning of the movie. Well, sure, but then it spans a long time because then she has. 10 years? I think more than one year. I didn't really bump on that.

1:21:14People can reinvent themselves all the time.

1:21:16Sean Fennessey:Well, Tom Bateman's 37 and Lily Reinhart's like 32 and it's meant to be this like huge chasm in terms of their life experience. Yeah, yeah. They look like they grew up together. I don't, like what are we doing? Again, it's a petty thing, but it's one of those things where the whole time I was just like, where are the 24 year olds? Yeah, I, well, they're, the 24 year olds are not at Stanford completing their PhD research. There's not, you have to do other things first to get the grant, right? Sure, yeah. No, I mean, I agree, but the movie does start with them at the beginning. You know, it's not like it doesn't start with them.

1:21:51Sean Fennessey:Again, it's a petty grievance. I thought the pacing of the movie and the writing of the movie was really bad. It's like way too long. There's enough here for a 42-minute episode of television. This is just not a movie. And there's a ton of other movies that are like this that are better, that we put the most famous people in Hollywood in. It's true. You know, like this was Sandra Bullock's bread and butter for 20 years. I agree. though not all of them were you know uh when harry met sally and that's okay but i do think they weren't like but a b minus studio movie with like real production value and writing with you and i like i mean this is part of a trend where you know fan fiction and like self-publishing has become such a major part of romance novels which are huge huge business and so the audience is built in and so we are getting a lot of this like fanfic to streaming rom-com tv movie um pipeline and I just the source material is not good enough.

1:22:48They're like this, this source material is not good enough. And also like studios and the people green lighting these just have a price point affixed to it. That is just much lower. And this doesn't yield like the, you know, the right script and the right, the right actors, the right production, the, you know, the soundtrack on this is a nightmare as always for any movie, you know, directed at a woman. And I, but I think they're also not sexy.

1:23:13Sean Fennessey:song is hysterical. It's, I mean, hysterical. It's, it's ridiculous, but I also think they're just, they're not trying to make When Harry Met Sally. I think they're very consciously making just like a different lower budget. But it's the, to me, it's the proposal. That was the movie I thought of, the Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds movie, where it's like, I'm not a huge fan of that movie, but it's a huge hit and people loved it. They loved that movie. Yeah. And it's the same thing where it's like the older person and the younger person and they have to pretend to be together and then by minute, 82, you realize, oh my God, they do really love each other.

1:23:46Sean Fennessey:Sure. It is a tried and true thing. Ernst Lubitsch was doing this 80 years ago. It's a very familiar framework. It's just... But the execution matters. It does. And I really do think that for both budget and library reasons, we're just in an era of way lower level execution. And it's a bummer. You ladies have to stand up and say, we want theatrical okay we don't want to settle for Cap and Peggy I mean we did and then no one went to see One Night Only because the federal government had banned sex and no one and planted bio trackers and everyone and no one else in development was like should we explore that how's that gonna make people feel I let's put a pin in One Night Only it'll come up again in this episode okay uh I think part of the challenge is that But stars and their agents know that these movies are not theatrically appealing for whatever reason right now.

1:24:49Sean Fennessey:And so the best of the best don't go into them. That's why Monica Barbaro gets her chance to star in a movie when it's One Night Only. That's why Lily Reinhart gets a chance to star in a TV movie when it's The Love Hypothesis. Were you a good science student? I was okay. Science Corner. Science Corner, sure. Yeah. No, I did all of the science. Like I took the most advanced courses because I was trying to, you know, pad the college resume. But I wouldn't say it came to me naturally. No. So it was sort of brute force and nerdiness. And I will, I refuse to be bad at this. Physics, though, no. It's just that's not how my brain works.

1:25:30So there you go.

1:25:32Sean Fennessey:Okay. Were you? Terrible. Yeah. Easily my worst subject. Everything else was fine. In college, all of the required science courses that I took were like the true gut courses. That's why I got a liberal arts education. No science or math prereqs whatsoever in college. Really? Really. I also had a liberal arts education, but we had prereqs. No prerequisites. It was wonderful. Glided right through. Yeah. Three and a half years. See you later. The history of concrete. Speaking of science, there's some science in this movie. Yeah. Let's just do a... This has changed the way that I read construction books to my children.

1:26:06for the positive. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I know a lot more about concrete and cement.

1:26:11Sean Fennessey:It's a very informative film. Not, that seems to have been the intention among other things. This movie also is not in very many theaters, so I don't want to spoil too much, but this coming Friday, it expands quite a bit from where it is right now, and I hope people will listen to the interview with John Wilson, but the long line of the film is a filmmaker applies lessons from a Hallmark movie writing workshop to pitch a documentary about concrete, our oldest active building material. Did you watch How To? I watched some of them, but, you know, as with all TV, I can't watch all the episodes. There are definitely...

1:26:47It's echoes.

1:26:48Sean Fennessey:There are Monday mornings of this episodes of this pod over the last five years where I'm just like, How To is cooking. And this isn't a TV podcast, but I love that show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is an interesting extension and continuation of what John was doing on that show, which is that he's attempting to bring a very kind of dry, explanatory approach to the world that is also quite wry and absurd. And I really, really, really appreciate his willingness to just go down rabbit holes that 99 % of filmmakers would not go down. And so when he meets someone that he thinks is interesting, as he says in the interview, he will go spend long periods of time with them and just give you, you talked about characterization for some of the fictional people in these movies.

1:27:34Sean Fennessey:Like, Wilson, like, consistently introduces you to people who within one minute you're like, wow, there's a whole world. Maybe a weird world or an ugly world or a strange world. There's a whole world inside this person. And, I also, as a former New Yorker, you know, he's just great at the, like, the energy and vibe of a New York environment where you walk into any store and people will chat you up and they have a whole, their whole strong point of view about how everything ought to be in the world that I really, really admire and think is fun. Yeah, his eye for people. And that's really the discovery of this movie and most of the how-tos.

1:28:10And then you also learn some facts about the differences between cement and concrete.

1:28:14Sean Fennessey:Would you say you're a concrete person? No, not. I guess I have more respect for it now. What are you more porcelain? This is, um, yes. Marble? Yeah, sure. if we gotta, you know. And in general, movies with scenes at the Carrera Marble mine work for me. Sure. See The Brutalist. Yeah. And The Great Arch, which I don't think you ever saw. I haven't seen that. Which is Claes Bang building La Défense in France. And it's basically The Brutalist, but France. And the enemy is the French government. Why did that movie come out in America? I don't know. Did it come out in America? Maybe it did. It was at Cannes and then I watched it on the plane.

1:28:58Sean Fennessey:The Great Arch. The Great Arch. But they also go to Carrera. So maybe Marvel. It's been an interesting thing now because we're reading a lot of construction books at home. But, you know, there are politics built into everything. And so the new one that does feature a lot of concrete is also about tearing down buildings and trees and then rebuilding large buildings. And I don't feel great about that. No. But it's Cy's favorite book, so I don't know what to do. Well, is he really absorbing it? I don't know. But, you know, I... What if he grows up to be Andrew Carnegie? An industrializing tycoon who just destroys our ecology, but amasses the great fortune, and then becomes a philanthropist.

1:29:48Sean Fennessey:Would you take that trade-off? No, because I just really don't want to be bulldozing trees. it's noisy on top of everything else the bulldozing yeah the bulldozing and the cement mixing and all of that stuff that is noisy yeah you want to live in nature sure like Brad Pitt in Heart of the Beast yes yeah with my brown Belgian ale were you there for that part I was around the campfire yeah that's it no more movies coming out this year we got them all we knocked them all out pretty good right last episode no we gotta make it to Beatles come on No, it's X-Men. It's been extended to X-Men. Sorry, X-Men.

1:30:27And we're TBD on... What's it called? Days of Thunder. Days of Thunder 2.

1:30:36Sean Fennessey:What the fuck was that? That was my son playing at the car. That was the other problem with Forgotten Island, which is that he clocked the arcade before we went in. And he was like, I want to drive the car. And I said after the movie. So every time... What theater were you at? Oh, Alhambra. Alhambra, yeah. And every time it was scary. He would just say at the top of his lungs, can we go drive the car? And I was like, no, we are learning about the plight of the teenage woman. Okay. Very important. Speaking of important, let's go now to my conversation with John Wilson.

1:31:12Sean Fennessey:John Wilson is here. I'm already laughing. I'm such a fan of your work. Funny looking.

1:31:20Sean Fennessey:You know, I'm from Long Island, John. Oh, you are? Yeah. Oh, wow. And I kind of wanted to talk with you a little bit about growing up on Long Island. Absolutely. Because I found it to be quite odd. And we were laughing a bit about, I live in Los Angeles, you're here in Los Angeles, but you live in New York. I know you moved there. You weren't born there. Were you born in Queens? Yeah, I was born in Queens. Yeah, so my whole family is also from Queens. So we have some things in common. What did you make of Long Island as a kid? I feel like I was, it was a nice place to play. There was a lot of room to run around and do, like, make little movies.

1:31:58And I think I was really eager to get out when I was growing up because it felt like culturally it didn't really have what I wanted. So I think that's why I kind of sank into the movies and, you know, all that stuff growing up. And I don't know. But looking back, I feel like it was like a really kind of calm place to raise a kid. And I get it. Yeah. I mostly am with you. Where in Long Island were you? Huntington. Huntington Station. Yeah. So you had the Cinema Arts Center. I did. Yeah. As it was. I did. I mean, it's still there. Yeah. Huntington's cool. I feel like. So what town were you from?

1:32:48I was from Rocky Point. Yeah, kind of near Port Jefferson on the North Shore. Yeah, sure. My dad lives near there. Cool. You think you guys would have been friends? Yeah, maybe. I highly doubt it.

1:32:59Sean Fennessey:Probably in the same King Cullen at one point. How did you feed your... I know you picked up a camera at a young age and were always making movies, but in terms of just watching movies and getting interested in film and television, how did you do it? Were you a person going to Blockbuster video stores? Did you have like a film literacy as a young person? Yeah. I feel like we would go to Blockbuster a lot. Yeah, definitely Hollywood Video. It was always a dream to work there. I would always apply and I would never get an interview. Why wouldn't they take you? I don't know. It's probably why I ended up opening my own movie theater.

1:33:37Just to, yeah, you got to build it yourself if they won't have you. Now you have revenge on them because they're gone and you're still here. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. But yeah, I would just obsessively watch whatever I could. And, you know, we would make movies every single day. And, you know, we'd just give something a title and just like make some absurdist comedy short thing. and we also used to just like dumpster dive in the uh blockbuster and hollywood video so like we would get all the stand-ups from all the you know movie promotions and those were all over my room and we used to like steal all the the dvd cases that they discarded like from their uh dumpster so that we could uh burn our own dvds and you know make them nice and sell them out of our trunk.

1:34:35Really? Yeah. Wow. A bootlegger. Yeah. We had bootlegger. Yeah. We were entrepreneurial. What was your favorite standee that you had in your, in your room? Oh, I feel like we had, I don't know. A lot of them were just like whatever you could get. So it was just like, um, I don't know, like Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, you know, just like random like movies like that. Did you, when you were making, well, first of all, who's we, Who were you making movies with? I had a kind of rotating cast of collaborators in high school. I think early it was just a couple of friends from around the corner. And then I started working with, I mean, with Chris Maggio and my friends Andrew and Alex.

1:35:27They were, we were kind of like, I don't know, we would make a lot of movies together. But Chris and I have continued to make work together, like to this day. And, you know, we still live very close to each other. And I don't know, it's been cool to see kind of how things have evolved over the years.

1:35:47Sean Fennessey:Were you guys mostly making scripted movies? Or was documentary something that you understood in high school as something you would want to explore? I wish I did more documentary stuff in high school. A lot of it was kind of skit-based and, you know, a lot of movie spoofs or, you know, we were big fans of like trauma at the time. So it was a lot of like gross out, like kind of really rude stuff. And very similar upbringings, I think. Yeah, I bet. Yeah, I mean, it's like the cultural waves from like trauma in, you know. in New York. Under Big, yeah. Tromeo and Juliet was basically like happening when I was in high school.

1:36:31Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, that and like emo music, you know, you feel like the whole world is getting all of this stuff, but you realize that maybe it's kind of localized. Yes. Like within the tri-state area. And yeah, we made a, I think the first doc we made growing up in high school was like Chris and I made a movie called like American Barbershop or like Portrait of an American Barbershop like now and then. Wow. You were Wiseman-esque even then. Yeah, but it was really like, you know, I was on camera as like an investigative journalist trying to find like dirt, basically trying to manufacture this conflict between two barbershops in town that didn't exist.

1:37:19you know and we submitted it to some student festival of some kind and played it somewhere but that was I don't know that was really cool and I kind of wish that that was like one of my favorite things looking back that we did and I kind of wish that we did more of that because I think that the documentary stuff ages a lot better than the the fiction stuff a lot of the time because even if it's super stylized, you're still capturing something that's like very real, you know, at the time. And it's like a nice portrait. You still have access to all that stuff you made in high school? Yes. I have everything on hard drives in my apartment.

1:38:05Okay. So your archives will be profound. I guess so. I mean, I kind of like part of me wishes that they could just get corrupted or something. So I just like, part of me just like wants to be released, you know.

1:38:20Sean Fennessey:Maybe we should explore that, John. Yeah. Were you the kind of person who venerated filmmakers? Like were you ripping off style when you were making those spoofs or the documentaries? Yeah, we would make, we would make, you know.

1:38:36Yeah, we did like Blair Witch stuff. We did, you know, a lot of Kubrick stuff. we did I don't know why but like all of the movies all the spoof movies we did just had my name in it I think it was kind of like it was a joke between us and like we did like a John Mark Orange Full Metal John

1:39:03Robo John yeah it was just all like an excuse to wear stupid costumes and just like get really messy. So were you frequently the star of these films? Yeah, I was always the star. Yeah, my like childhood friends, Frank and Pat, were just like, who were just neighborhood buds. We would just, I think they liked to humiliate, he liked really liked to humiliate me and like make me dress up in certain ways. It was just like, I became, I think I feel like I was the butt of a joke for most of it, but I just like, I just loved, I was just such kind of a clown that I just, you know, whatever. I don't know.

1:39:42Like making people laugh at that age, that's always been just like a huge part of what motivates me to do anything. There's something very addictive about, you know, fulfilling about like making, getting a reaction out of anyone. And I think that like I had that very early on as a kid and I kind of never let it go.

1:40:06Sean Fennessey:Something I'm really curious about with the work that you make now too, which is that it feels at least to me a little under-discussed that also what you're doing is you're not just capturing a film, creating these idea-based movies, but you are also performing. I mean, you are like a, you are the central performer in every piece of work that you do. Like, do you see it in that way? Yeah, I think, you know, it is, it is like a, I want it to be like a complete art, you know, where I, And I'm kind of, like, a lot of the artwork that I really like is the stuff where you can feel, like, the kind of hand of the artist in a way.

1:40:50And I think especially with video art, you know, with, like, Jonas Mikas or, like, George Kuchar or, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of documentarians that are kind of slightly first person in a way. and there's something like there's kind of an an aura to that that i really enjoy watching it like you you really feel like it's it's coming from their perspective and um you know or someone like nick broomfield who is always his own sound guy or like i mean frederick weissman's always his own sound guy too um there's there's something about like the energy of of of that creates in the room and how that affects like the film visually and emotionally that I really just it felt like and it's also the easiest thing to do if you're broke that's what you do you know you just you just have to be really acrobatic and perform all the roles yourself um but I often just find that like the easiest most intuitive way to do something is often the best um because I can be really lazy.

1:41:57And I, so that's how you know that this is the easiest way to do like things in certain ways.

1:42:03Sean Fennessey:Do you remember having any kind of aha moment when you were younger seeing a work of art like that and thinking like, oh, that not just that that's something that you can do, but it's something that I would want to do. I feel like it was more from the kind of more from like journalism in a way where I'm, I don't know, just like reading like Hunter Thompson in high school, uh, you know, reading like Hell's Angels and stuff like that. You're, you're just like, oh, this is like a first person story that, you know, takes you, it's like, and it's really tense because, you know, it's, it's like all, um, you know, And it's embellished in a lot of ways, but I think there's something really fun about that.

1:42:53I don't know. It's hard to say. There's a lot of stuff in the soup that kind of affects ways of seeing. I'm trying to think of another real memoir type thing.

1:43:06Sean Fennessey:It's a good example, though, because I'm curious how much of what you think you're doing is journalism. like when I went to journalism school and we studied the Hells Angels piece in literary journalism class and you know it was interesting to get emotionally attached to that piece but then also much of the lesson of it was sort of like don't do this because it doesn't really follow the orthodoxy of journalistic practice it kind of breaks convention and I think that there's maybe you can tell me if I'm wrong about this but like somewhat of a similar divide aside in terms of documentary that there are like many different kinds of approaches but there are some that are sort of like more removed there are others that are more personal and sort of like you can feel someone either holding the camera or standing right next to the camera and i don't know how much you thought maybe that's just influenced you so much that the first person felt like the only way to go yeah i just it felt like you know i'm not really much of a gamer but I can imagine that this kind of perspective is like, I think we have this, like it makes sense to see things from that way.

1:44:21And it almost feels like a first person shooter in certain ways when you're doing that. But, so, I don't know. Yeah, it just made sense to, like, kind of invert whatever rules I thought there were. It's like, you know, everything I, you know, I worked on commercial stuff for a while in my 20s and all the stuff that they told you not to do, I just, like, really, I wanted to do in my own work. like really oddly composed things or, you know, things that I was supposed to keep out of the frame. And yeah, I don't know. I think that it can be really motivating to, to like, to kind of like say, like, fuck you to the people that are telling, or like instructing you to do X, Y, Z, you know, and just like try to find your voice in there.

1:45:19I mean, I get why people would tell you not to do Hunter Thompson in school. Because I feel like there are a lot of imitators out there that, you know, and you may get caught up, like, just trying to imitate this thing. Yeah. Instead of finding your own voice, you know.

1:45:35Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I think there's maybe even another layer, which is a sort of, like, trying to protect people from their own lack of talent, which is a complicated thing, too, where if you're attempting to trailblaze but lack the skills to accomplish that, that that's maybe more decent than you realize when you're 19. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious for you though. Did you feel like you, since you worked on commercial stuff, like always knew you wanted to be an artist? Did you have a moment when you said, this is what I'm going to do, you know, kind of come what may financially, personally, no matter what? I think I was just always, you know, I never really wanted to wear a suit or anything.

1:46:13I think it was, I think just all the art that I consumed just made me want to, I don't know, just like try to investigate like more existential things in life that aren't really covered the way that I was hoping that they would be covered. I don't know I feel like I'm being vague but yeah I feel like I didn't it's also for lack of you know I didn't really have any other skills that would that would be marketable I think or you know I think that's why I worked as an editor for so long I mean and I love to do all of it but yeah I just I read a lot about artists in my 20s you know and just like read books by like different famous artists or like about what the art world is like and I just I always thought artists were these like godlike figures that you know were impenetrable or you know like you you couldn't understand them or something but everyone's just like a person you know just like a real person uh it's like you read the like Warhol um diaries thing you know when he's talking to like M or like all the first letter name people.

1:47:38It's just like, oh, this is just like a normal person. You know, it feels like a contemporary or, you know, like a friend could have written something like this. And it kind of demystifying like the idea of the artist was kind of important because it made it feel like I could be one in a way.

1:47:57Sean Fennessey:In terms of the actual structure and style of the work that you were doing, Like how much happened before the TV series? Like how were you making the work? How were you distributing it? How did people become aware of it?

1:48:16I started making how-to movies probably in 2011 or so. And I would just kind of hit export the moment I was done with it and then basically publish it straight to Vimeo. and uh yeah i didn't promote it or anything i would just i just wanted to like get it out of my system and you know i was like really self-conscious about my written word and the way my voice sounded and stuff so i just i wanted to confront everything and just make it public and just put it out there and you know if people liked it then cool if not then i would learn the hard way that it wasn't like like worth anything or you know that that people wouldn't want to watch it but um yeah I and then and people seemed to a couple people seemed to like it at first so I just kept doing it um but yeah I I've never you know I just every project came from somewhere like internal that I was like trying to work through something.

1:49:27Whether, yeah, it was like bedbugs or like regret. I don't know. There's a lot of stuff. I try not to like think about the viewer that much

1:49:42because, you know, I don't know what a viewer is. I don't know what like a viewer means to like different people. I feel like for something like this, I don't know, like what is a viewer? It's like, is a viewer like... I don't know, it's complicated for me as well. Is a viewer like a number? Is it a dollar amount? Is a viewer someone who you're affecting positively in an emotional way?

1:50:11Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I've given this some thought about a lot of filmmakers and artists who came up at a time where their work sort of like germinated online. And then your relationship, you have sort of like an immediate connectivity because you have maybe a comment section, but you also have like a complete lack of emotional face-to-face experience. And you were saying before we started talking on mic, like you've been doing screenings and people are coming out and seeing it, the movie that you've made. And that's different from, forget about Vimeo, like even putting a show on a streaming service. Yeah, totally.

1:50:43Yeah, like this kind of, yeah, like this, I knew that people were watching the show, but yeah, it's been so like crazy to see the physical manifestation of that.

1:50:57Sean Fennessey:Yeah, and I feel like the work on the show and the film for me is so interesting because I feel like it's so generous and curious. And I feel like that's a very hard thing to accomplish. and I'm kind of curious, like, so when you were making those things and uploading them to Vimeo in 2011, like, was that always the point of view? Did you have to, like, train yourself to figure out what your style was? Was it not intellectualized at all? I think it was, I think I wanted to start making, like, fake tutorials just because I just found the idea of an expert really funny and just the confidence that anyone has when, like, instructing you to do something.

1:51:40So, yeah I don't know I I feel like I don't know I forget where you were going with this

1:51:47Sean Fennessey:I guess did it get maybe more emotional because the premise is very feels like it's got shtick attached to it but then I mean the show is always so surprising to me yeah I mean I think yeah I just I wanted to I wanted to kind of like let the work evolve but like yeah I had to find the voice it took me four or five movies in this style to like use a microphone and like interview people. Like that was kind of a late thing to the game. You know, when you look at everything together and it was about, yeah, getting over that fear of talking to people and kind of like exposing like my, like my, like, yeah, exposing like my thoughts and like my, you know, politics, whatever, you know and and and getting over just like approaching people in public to talk to them uh that was all part of it but I also feel like I can be a real cynic in a lot of ways and I think that the work is is a way for me to kind of like suppress a lot of a lot of kind of like like kind of criticism that I like that I that I live with you know and and I I just want to like live in this world where like every everything is like accepted and like everything is like all at the same level of normal in a certain way um and I'm challenging like my own prejudices I I think, like, at the same time, like, as I'm asking the viewer to, you know.

1:53:31Sean Fennessey:Do you, I think about this all the time when I'm watching what you make, that New York is very special in a way as, like, the breeding ground for a lot of the work because people are just so open to talk. Like, all, you know, we're from New York. I lived in New York City for 10 years. Like, I do that experience of, like, a lot of people certainly, like, have their AirPods in and their head down and they're going to their job. but if you just walk into any store people are just like what's up man yeah and it's very different from other cities i find and um i don't know how much you like intellectualized that or thought about that as you started making the work or just like thought well this is open terrain here in a way that i might not have elsewhere well yeah i mean i i think it's uh you know i i kind of respawn in new york at the beginning of every uh of you know every film just because i i feel like i I, like, having grown up in and around, I, like, understand the rules.

1:54:27And I know, like, when it's, you know, like, when it's safe to cross the street. You know, like, very basic stuff. And I think that, like, I understand what the kind of tolerance level for something like a camera is in New York. but people don't usually have like an idea of what you're doing when you walk into the store with a camera like that if you walk in with a cell phone like this people think you're like an auditor or like you're trying it's something incriminating and I think having a piece of technology that is like a little unfamiliar is helpful to begin with I think that's why I shot on a tiny like handicapped for so long because it, you know, people just don't think that you're, people don't take you seriously.

1:55:25It deprofessionalizes you. Yeah, which is really helpful. Yeah. But, you know, to me, a doc should just look however it looks. It doesn't matter what you shoot it on. But, yeah, so I think that helps.

1:55:41Sean Fennessey:an interviewer to interviewer does the the follow-up question come naturally to you um follow-up question because i feel like one one thing that i absolutely love in your work is that i can feel the moment when if i were in your shoes i would probably just like move on and go to the next person or the next place or the next thing and then i can sense you almost saying like wait a minute maybe i should explore what's really happening with say jack in the film yeah there is like always this Willingness to stop and be a little bit more open than maybe I normally would be. So how do you think about that?

1:56:23Right. I mean, I spent like a year and a half with Jack, you know, just from that chance encounter at a liquor store. That was like a block away from my house. I think you can kind of, I got a sense from him that he had a lot of gas in the tank and he just like, I mean, he was just super optimistic. and I think I was like spiraling in this self-doubt after all the rejections from trying to get financing for the film and you know he was just really buoyant and no matter what happened to him he was all about the art and I found that like yeah I was on a mission to get a ringer yeah you know a musician that like was willing to talk to me.

1:57:15Did you really, you felt like you were on the hunt for a very specific kind of person? Yeah. I mean, I was, there's a lot that we don't include in the movie from that search. You know, like I try to go to like a Bonnie Raitt concert and talk to her and I was denied at the door. I wasn't allowed to film inside. And then I ended up talking to this guy in the lobby who was tabling, trying to spread awareness about the overpopulation of jellyfish on the Jersey Shore, like in these man-made lagoons. And then I ended up spending a lot of time with him. And, you know, I guess it became about overdevelopment, you know, because like these new McMansions like on the Jersey Shore have these like plastic jet ski docks that the jellyfish love to mate on, you know?

1:58:11And that's becoming a huge issue and no one can swim anymore. But I ended up only using the names of, funny names of boats, you know, that I was filming from like hanging out with him in the movie. And I think there was like one kind of party of a bunch of people that are like staring at me. And they're all waving because I have a camera. But then after they're waving for a while, one of them is just like, what is this? And I kind of cut out there because I didn't know what it was.

1:58:44Sean Fennessey:Do your subjects ask that question too? Like when you're spending a lot of time with them, do they say, well, what is this? Yeah, sometimes I'll spend two or three days with someone and they'll, at the end, they'll be like, what is this? What is this for? Like, where is this going? Do you think, I mean, what do you think that says about those people? Like, are they lonely? Do people like to be the subject of something? yeah I think some people have just been waiting to like have a camera pointed at them in certain ways I mean Jack I think is one example but yeah that's why I just don't I give like I give as much context as I can to like up front if they're curious it's like I'm making this movie about concrete I know that you're a tattoo preservation company but there's something about historical preservation in this movie, you know, and this might have something to do with it.

1:59:37But I'm in the moment, right? I mean, right now I'm interested in watching you taxidermy like human skin, you know? And they're like, they don't really care because they just want, they want to promote something or they're like an exhibitionist of some stripe.

1:59:54Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I feel like there's almost two tracts of people that you find, that there are people who are sort of like in a niche business and they see an opportunity to elevate their business because someone is filming them. And then there's the other person that is sort of like almost like unaware of the idea of even promoting oneself. I mean, one of my favorite sequences in the film is you just sitting with the two men working on building the sort of like deck platform, you know? Yeah. And their curiosity, which I don't know where, is that in Jersey? I don't know where that is, but that feels so Long Island to me, those two guys.

2:00:28Sean Fennessey:That was Ohio. Ohio. Yeah. But just that like the comfort that you guys have with each other, just talking about what it is that you're doing and then your decision to put that in. Yeah. I just love that. Yeah. That was a really long day that like I initially, yeah, it was a father and son company called Grub Mud. and they were repairing a pool deck that had been hit by a tree after a bad storm. But I went because the son has like, we found him on YouTube. He has a YouTube channel where he basically, he finds former addicts or active addicts and teaches them how to pour concrete and hires them to try to get them clean because he used to be an addict himself.

2:01:22And, you know, there was, yeah, and there was some other stuff that was interesting. But I thought that was what was going to be the in for that scene. But then, you know, the most valuable part is like this tiny little section, you know, where he's just talking about cyclical renewal and kind of planned obsolescence as it applies to concrete and like, you know, and the greater kind of material world.

2:01:50Sean Fennessey:at what point did you decide to make the struggle to make the movie a part of the movie I unlocked the meta components maybe like a year in I was shooting this movie for about a year and threw out almost all of it just because I was getting the stuff that you think of at first you know I was just like oh well there's this building over here. This is a famous concrete structure. Wrote history? Yeah, just like, just kind of the first draft. Is that common for you to shoot a lot and throw a lot out? Yeah, I think you kind of, you have this idea to begin with and then you try to do that and then the product, you know, the finished product ends up being this part that you thought was like a little throwaway part of your whole adventure.

2:02:50And it ends up becoming the thing that feels like you feel the most connected to. And that has like, I don't know, the most like real emotion in it because you couldn't have written it. Like the, yeah, so like a year in, I was like, okay, I'm done filming the sidewalk for right now. And just like, just trying to watch potholes grow. I'm going to, and like, you know, because we were pitching for about a year also, and I was just like casually doing stuff just to fill my time. But yeah, at a certain point I was like, why am I asking for like a million dollars to go to Ohio? Like, I'm just going to go to Ohio and just like film the oldest concrete street and just see what's there.

2:03:38you know we had bigger ambitions for like I don't know like different going to different parts of the world but I just realized that like keeping it at a human scale was like probably for the benefit of the film and and then yeah and then about a year and I just like looked through all my old footage I found this like Hallmark stuff that I had shot you know and like some other stuff and I was like okay this is now I'm reframing the way I think of everything and I'm just gonna kind of try to see if this helps me structurally and it did

2:04:18Sean Fennessey:it feels a little bit like an important document in the moment this moment in history of documentary making it does feel like we're it seems like a challenging period of time because why do you say that well having worked on some of them in the past, like much of what is desired is authorized celebrity or, you know, a renowned person focused and or true crime. Yeah. And that kind of drives a lot of the business. And then anything that is not that necessitates convincing. Yeah. I feel like the movie is kind of about trying to convince people of an idea, even though maybe the person with the idea isn't totally sure of what the idea is yet.

2:05:05I mean, if I asked you for a million dollars, I'm just like, I'm going to go hang outside of a high school for three months and walk around. That sounds dangerous. You know, do you have a million dollars? I'm a fan of your work, so, you know. But it's like, you know, it's the exploration that's like part of it. I don't know. I understand why it was tough in a way. But I feel like the documentary industry right now is really kind of strange. Because, yeah, a lot of it is just retelling stories that have already happened. And I think, like in, you know, a lot of my favorite documentaries, you know, from the, like, 60s through the 90s, I don't know, kind of a long period.

2:05:49But the, you know, that was before I think we started to kind of like, kind of excavate all these old stories, you know. It's like we were still more interested in like, I think documentarians back then were treated like portrait painters. And it was like an honor to be shot by certain documentarians in this way where now a documentary is usually like a gotcha thing. It's something that people are scared of in certain ways.

2:06:26Sean Fennessey:It didn't seem at all like a commercial enterprise back then. Yeah, just people did it. There were odd lengths. It's like you have the Maisels, like Pennebaker. you have all of these like people like making these incredible portraits and you know 52 minutes or they're four hours yeah or like less blank you just like and it's like it's super awkward lengths but then but you know you you were capturing something that was happening then and was you know fleeting and and that was like that's so much more valuable to us now you know than like them making, I don't know, I don't even think it's been in their head to make like a Bob Dylan documentary, you know, like the way that we do now.

2:07:11But, yeah, I think that the industry needs to redirect their attention to like actually nurturing people that are trying to you know, follow a story that's actually happening and whether or not it It resolves into something. It's okay if it's not this blockbuster. But I don't know.

2:07:39Sean Fennessey:It dovetails a little bit with where you're at with the movie too because you got the movie made and then you released the movie in one movie theater and then it did well. Yeah. And now it'll come in more movie theaters and it is a commercial enterprise for you to make a movie and then release it. Yeah, I know. I had this very complicated relationship with the industry I'm trying to court. Um, you know, it is, but, you know, I, I think that like if you're making a Billie Eilish doc, you know, I watched that on the plane ride here, you know, the James Cameron one. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny.

2:08:12Uh, but, you know, there's like a million cameras, every angle of everything you could possibly ask for. But, um, and yeah, something like that costs money and I get how, you know, you could pitch something like that. But I also don't really think that we should be trying to be in the industry as documentarians in a way. Like, I think it's cool to do the thing at whatever price point you can get away with and just make it to make it. Because I think that a lesson for me with this project is like something I thought I had internalized a while ago, but I forgot was like, you shouldn't ask for permission.

2:09:03You just need to do it. Like, just do it. Like, don't, like, why am I asking all of these suits for permission to do this thing that, like, comes so naturally to me and the materials out there? Everything exists. I don't need to, I don't, I don't need to rent a ton of gear or, like, you know, get a trailer for a bunch of, you know, actors or something.

2:09:30Sean Fennessey:Well, you've reminded me of something that I wanted to ask you about, which is the Kim Kardashian dinner sequence in your movie, which is like speaking of not asking for permission, that feels like a moment where maybe you did not. I was invited. That was a real let the right one in kind of moment. Yeah. I mean, it's wonderful that you were in the room for that and that you were a part of that experience. Not that you don't belong, but I suspect maybe you didn't have a ton of peers. Yeah. that was I think like Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson were you know I ended up spending a lot of time with um yeah but but even the choice to say like I'm gonna take my camera out and I'm actually gonna film in here and this is maybe like an illicit act but I it feels important yeah I still yeah that was a very strange environment I mean I I didn't have my real camera I just had like in that scene like let's say you're Kim I'm like this far and I'm just like this you know and no one is saying put that down no no one said anything but I think that's you know because in the raw footage that I had there was some evidence of other people I think from the GQ team that were filming it but I haven't seen any of that material I don't know like where that stuff goes right and I was just like this is a very rare environment.

2:10:53I don't know what else to do. These speeches are uninspiring to me. Um, I'm just going to, uh, take out my camera and, you know, I, I'd never seen a, like an unedited shot of the Kardashians before. So I was just like, I just want to roll on this room for six minutes and you know just like try to keep as much of it uncut within the film as possible because it is kind of freakish to see such a naked i think image um of these like alordi and like all these other people that are like at the table like duane wade um it was like it was like you were

2:11:40Sean Fennessey:showing us a secret that was how it felt you know what i mean but it was a it was like a public event. I mean, like public, I mean, you can like, it was a known event, but yeah, it was like a known event, but no one pays attention to that stuff. Yeah. I know. There's just very, it's weird because it feels like we have more access to everything than we ever have before. And yet people know, and I think that this is kind of like a corrupting idea in some ways, but people know that there is something happening in a room that you're not allowed to go into. Yes. Yeah. There's a bit of Bohemian Grove kind of like, like stuff to it where I'm, it's like, what are we celebrating here?

2:12:12This, cause it's like Kim Kardashian was like man of the year. but it's like so we were they were giving speeches as if she was a man but also like a girl boss it was like very it was very like confused and you know the guy who was the editor of GQ at the time I think his name is like Will Welch I know Will oh you know Will? I do yeah well he's not the editor anymore he's not yeah he well yeah so he like arranged this seating arrangement and I'm just like what is this like he knows he knew that I like film stuff you know and it's like is this the shot you wanted? you know you'll have to ask him that I don't know I hope he's on yeah greener pastures yeah

2:13:06Sean Fennessey:I am I'm wondering if you feel like you're working in like a a new tradition because it does feel like there's a bunch of people probably people many of whom are your friends you know like Lance was in here yesterday you know I know you obviously worked with Nathan on the series and you know the Safdies and there's a whole cohort of like-minded people who kind of pivot between documentary and feature and I don't know I'm not I'm not sure if it's a movement but it feels like it is something and I'm trying I've been trying to figure that out just at my own Anthropological interests? Like, what do you make of it?

2:13:45Yeah, it's harder. I mean, it's easier maybe in hindsight to define a movement in certain ways. But when you're in the middle of it, it just feels like you're just kind of in this river of just like kind of on like a lazy river with like a bunch of other people doing similar kind of stuff. And, you know, we all like influence each other, I think, in ways. I think it's rad. I think it's cool that like that kind of experimental nonfiction is having a moment, you know, and I hope it kind of continues to because I feel like we've gone so far in the other direction. I think like so many people recognize this with like, you know, you're kind of bloated blockbuster type things.

2:14:29I mean, they've always been around, but I think it's becoming like, like, especially kind of meaningless, like a lot of the work that's that, you know, people are making right now. so you know the more I think attention and I think resources that can be given to people actually like thinking deeply about what they're doing you know I think that's that's that's better I don't know and yeah I like I like all the people that you know I consider peers okay you coined the movement

2:15:00Sean Fennessey:right now what's it called what oh I don't know whatever it is you're a part of I can't no don't give me that if you don't do it I'm gonna have to do it and then you're gonna have some shitty movement name that came from some guy who's not in it. Yeah. This happens all the time, John. It's not going to be a core. Yeah. I don't know. Something nonfiction. People get really touchy about label stuff. Yeah. Good. I'm going to do it then. I'll do it as soon as you leave. Do you know what you're doing next? Yes. Would you like to know what it is? I'm curious. Oh, wow. Yeah, I'm working on two. As I'm doing this press stuff right now, I'm currently shooting two.

2:15:50Well, I'm shooting one feature and then kind of producing another one and then also getting ready to, I think, make a new show. Wow. So you're busy. Yeah, it's been crazy. All nonfiction. whatever you want to call it

2:16:09Sean Fennessey:okay well I mean that's the last piece of the puzzle too I don't know if you're going to make a transition but I feel that your work doesn't really do the blurring that a lot of some of your contemporaries are experimenting with I just don't I don't know

2:16:25I appreciate experimenting with actors and non-fiction stuff and all that but like I feel like a lot more of a purist in a lot of ways where I just like my the high that I get is like is getting something that's like actually real you know like even if I'm doing a bit of puppeteering with like the chronology of like how things break down you know or you know come out but I don't know yeah I forget what you were saying about

2:17:02Sean Fennessey:Are you happy right now with how everything's going? Yeah, I think everything's cool. I don't know. I can't believe I'm here. I can't believe that the movie is selling out all over the world right now. It's crazy. But I think it's evidence of hunger for something that's maybe a bit more plainly worded. Something that is actually saying exactly what's happening right now instead of trying to dress it up. John we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen oh um and I guess it was not the Billie Eilish doc no not the Billie Eilish doc um uh one night only no way oh my god tell me about your thoughts about that I like that movie I thought it was cool what did you like it about you're a New Yorker capturing the end times as well I was shouting after it because I was I was shouting to my girlfriend.

2:18:02I was just like, this movie's incredible. Well, what did you love? I think it's a great New York movie. I love these poppy kind of rom-com movies that are really literalist about the geography of New York and do it really well. Even though they botch a bunch of stuff in that movie, but they try. And I don't know. I just, I love all the cameos in it. Just, I love any, I love a movie like that. That's like so of the moment, you know, it's got like everyone, like all the people in their prime, just like right in one spot. And it's got this kind of strange, you know, kind of sci-fi element to it. And it doesn't entirely make sense, but nothing matter.

2:18:52You know, it doesn't really matter. I don't know. I just had a great time. I just, I feel like movies like that are kind of like, I feel like they age really well. It's kind of like Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. Like, it reminded me of that movie. It is like that movie. I'm just like, you're going from here to there to there. And like, thank God you're like capturing all of this stuff.

2:19:11Sean Fennessey:It's true. I thought of 200 Cigarettes as well. Did you ever see that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just like that. This is, I mean, it's a real Hollywood video movie. So it's from a patron of Hollywood video. Well done. Hey, thank you for doing this, John. Yeah, thanks for asking me.

2:19:29Sean Fennessey:Okay, thanks to John Wilson. Thanks to Jack Sanders, our producer, for his work on today's episode. Thanks to Luke's Kavanaugh for production support. So later this week, we're drafting baseball movies. Yes. And then after that, we're talking about Digger on the following episode. Three episodes this week. Yes. Are you ready for the Digger episode? Do you feel ready? I feel half ready. You and I have not talked about it. We've not said a word to each other. And I have not shared any thoughts. And I have a lot of things that I want to discuss with you. I've also had a lot of other people asking me about it.

2:20:03Yes, me as well.

2:20:04Sean Fennessey:This is the most what-did-you-think movie I've gotten this year other than The Odyssey. So I'm excited for that. I've been doing a little bit of prep. I'm going to do a little more tonight after I do my baseball prep in between recordings that we're doing here.

2:20:23And emotionally, I'm very ready. are you not ready? Here's the thing.

2:20:31Sean Fennessey:Go ahead. It is, we should have one of those like, you know, focus group like monitor things of me hitting every day where I am on it. Uh-huh. Because I don't know that I'm fixed yet, which is unusual for me. That's fascinating. Yeah. I know exactly where I stand. Okay. But. Congratulations. But. Is it somewhere interesting? That's just me. I mean, you and everyone else will find out and agree or disagree. But I really do look forward to the discussion. Yeah. And I hope, I don't know what I hope about that movie. But I look forward to the discussion. And I'll leave it there and we'll see you then.

2:21:26Thank you.