‘One Battle After Another’ Is a Modern Masterpiece, With Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson!

27:12Let's do the math on that. So do we think he just slept till 6 p.m.? Like, what happened? Well, I did notice the second time that the school dance is happening during daylight hours. Yeah. Like, even when. But could it have been like 5 p.m.? Like, it seemed like he slept pretty late that day. Sure. It's possible, man. It has some odd hours. Yeah. He got home around 3 or 4, he said. So, you know. But like the bathroom is a lifestyle, not just a time of day thing for him. So that's a good point. In that scene, you know, Chase Infinity, we saw her in Presumed Innocent, the TV show. And this is her first movie.

27:49And her job in this movie is to go toe-to-toe with Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina Hall, and Sean Penn. So that's a tough job. Yeah. She also has to be an action star for some of it. Has to credibly hold a gun. Has to credibly run away. has to credibly fight grown men. Got to figure out how to get... Zip-tied hands. Like the zip-tied thing, which I was really ingenious. I was like, wow, this is... She knew right what to do as well. We're going to do the Amanda Dobbins drives a Dodge Charger with zip-tied hands challenge. She was really, really turning the wheel a lot there at one point. But yeah, no, just the leg reversal thing.

28:23I was like, this is practical knowledge. I'm glad I have this now. One of the things that we don't get explicitly clarified, but that you can assume is that Bob has shared his ideology with his daughter, not just the information about how to keep her safe and keep her anonymous, but like how they see the world or at least how the French said Yeah, this is the running on empty influence or whatever. But this idea of we're off the grid. There's like a really, I think, lovely bit of this movie that's about how just because you're not on the internet doesn't mean you're not connected to a community.

28:58And like Bob, obviously, even though he's something of a hermit, like goes to bars, knows the Benicio Del Toro character like as part of this community and his daughter wants to be maybe part of a bigger world, you know, and both in terms of what Bob used to do and also just having friends and going to dances and, you know, wanting to be out in the world through her phone. One of the things I like about it too is just the way that like most daughters are like smarter than their dads and they know it and that that's a huge part of this. Like Bob is such a burnout. is a real one of the running jokes of the movie is how he's completely fried his brain so he can't remember anything especially when he really needs to remember something and he also wants to be he wants to be progressive he wants to be like he wants to have an empowered daughter that's important to him yeah and so when she starts scolding him he wants to say like stand up for yourself that's right you should tell me what you say I am an idiot you know like I did fuck up I'm sorry which is very amusing and obviously like she reacts to it but she's like any 16 year old girl she's like I hate my parents they're so annoying why won't they get out of my shit but that interaction also she has some points because he came home at 4pm but you know and he's admitting to drinking and driving you know and he's like I know how to drink and drive you know and then to me the absolute funniest part of the movie is when her friends arrive to pick her up for the dance it's a classic you know and Leo greets them and I can't do justice to What's Up Homie, but the entire What's Up Homie experience where he talks to Bluto is so good.

30:36And it does, to me, the movie kind of like goes into a second gear once that scene happens. Yes. Because it feels like it finds its comic sensibility in a real way. And if Leo gets activated in the movie in a way that he has really for the most part not been up until that point. Yeah, that's where, that's where like, that's the best acting I've ever seen. Rick Dalton shows up. Yes. You know, it's like, he's kind of like running the whole space. Well, and it is also when the heart and the emotion of the movie shows up. The first 40 minutes are incredibly upsetting and involving and technically accomplished.

31:14And there's amazing action set pieces. But then you get to this moment and you're like, oh, he's a girl dad. But there is, to your point about there's a hope in this movie, there is some, there's real emotion and it becomes evident once Leo is in a bathroom screaming at people. Yeah, and their connection is the engine. You know, the idea of him being so protective of her. There's this great little plot device in the movie of these kind of transmitters, these responders that they're given, that Leo is given right before he goes off on the road to go to Bacton Cross eventually. I love that actor who gives him the transponders, who put the, the Howard Somerville character, who is never in movies.

32:01He's in this great movie, Frownland, that Ronald Bronstein made some years ago, and he's a composer. And that character who creates these transponders and eventually shows up a little later in the film in the present day, is a classic Paul Thomas Anderson thing where I'm like, did he just remember that that guy is alive? He did that. There's a guy in this movie who plays basically Sean Penn's character's interrogator, who has a single IMDb credit and it's one battle after another and he is one of the scariest parts of this movie. And I just don't know how he does this. He just, whether it's like the guys in the Christmas Adventures who we'll talk about, but like, you're just like, where did you fucking, how did you come up with the roulette wheel that gave you these three dudes?

32:45Yes, there's a lot of examples in this movie. You can go through every one, honestly. It's a podcast. We have time. But, you know, he hands his daughter this transponder and we, you know, we realize that her life is kind of hard because he is obsessive about protecting her. He's paranoid also. As she says in the car they're driving away. Yes. And he's like, really, it's wearing her down as she's entering her teenage years. And I think actually Paul might have said this when we spoke, but just the idea of like maybe for the first 12 or 13 years of her life, she didn't realize how weird this was.

33:19Yeah. But she's starting to realize now. Isn't that true for all of us though? Yeah, it is. Very much so. I love that idea in the story of her trying to find a way to break free, figure out how to be her own person. But she's kind of bound by the actions of her parents, you know, and that she can't actually be as free as she wants to be in the world, which is really interesting. You know, the common condition of law. Yeah, here we are all are. And I think it's funny that Leo is doing this part to me. He's never been a parent to an older kid in a movie before. He turned 50 years old last year. And he's in...

33:56He was born sometime in the 80s, according to this movie. And I was like, I clocked that. He's playing down a little. Well, he says that to a police officer. We don't actually know if he's even telling the truth there. But this is a new step for him, I think, to be playing... He's played parents before, but not like this. And there's a certain kind of like desperation and goofball-ness, like loser-ness. Yeah. many of the dads I know like instantaneously become losers when they become dads like you kind of like seed something not you though you just leveled up I mean I was a loser well before I was a dad but I just think this performance is really special it's been part of a lineage of movies that he's now done for roughly the last six or seven years we talked about The Wolf of Wall Street on the show this week and then if you go from there to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood which Chris just mentioned And then they'll work Dalton Energy, Don't Look Up, Killers of the Flower Moon.

34:53These movies are all like really nervy, comic, kind of like goofball, but also deeply dramatic stories. It's also an interesting, it's interesting to think about like him thinking of himself in this way. Yeah. Because it's, you know, sometimes you see a picture of him and respectfully, like he does have a little bit of a Bob energy. You know what I mean? when he's got like a v-neck white t-shirt on and he's like vaping with a hat pulled down. And then he's on a jet ski. And then there are times where he puts on a tux and you're like, well, you win. Yeah, there's Cary Grant. Yeah. And what he wants to be, I mean, he hasn't done Cary Grant in a while.

35:30You know, he's basically been like, I want to hide it. I want to have a punch. I want to be stupid. I want to be insecure. I want to be in a bathrobe the entire movie. It's interesting that that's what he is interested in. But still like, you know, vaping on a jet ski or like playing tennis, with his younger girlfriend, which I think was this summer's activity. Leo loves the summer, much like myself. That's still very far from the dad energy that he is bringing to this. And there is something so... I mean, he's just a really good actor. It's deeply felt, emotionally. You're just like, oh, no, you have the dad stuff.

36:08You really do. You care. And that scene in the car when he's talking about how he doesn't know how to do her hair, And the scene at the, you know, the very end with the hot, like, it is, it's so moving. And there's a softness to it that I didn't really know Leo had. There is. That is so essential to making this movie work. And, and then, and that I've never seen before. Yeah. And I also think that the, one of the most powerful things the movie does is just say, like, it doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't really matter. Like the, the title is incidental to the behavior in terms of like people's family, familial relationships.

36:44or how they treat each other. And it's like, if Bob treats her like a daughter, then he is her dad. You know what I mean? We'll get into why that is. But this movie essentially moves from this moment where Willow goes to her dance. This is where the movie leaves fucking earth. And you will like, don't leave. Don't blink. You can't go to the bathroom after that part. Don't fucking do anything. Just stare at it because this is one of the best sustained pieces of filmmaking I've literally ever seen in my life. and it just turns into the fucking inverted version of the searchers told from the Comanches and it's like this maniac chasing down this family and it's unreal.

37:24One thing, one last dad thing I want to note that I think is important is like pretty relevant to this whole movie is Paul Thomas Anderson is the daughter of biracial children. Oh, no, the father. The father of biracial children and like this whole movie is very much a movie about black women and black women existing in the world and his experience, I assume, as a white dad, trying to understand how to help his kids get through the world. I do also think that there's a little bit of his wife is Maya Rudolph. And there's a Katie Weaver profile of Maya Rudolph, like 2018, 19, I think, that I always remember because Maya Rudolph's mother, Minnie Riperton, died pretty early in her life and has the detail of Maya Rudolph's father not knowing how to do her hair.

38:12And that being like a thing to, like in one detail, explaining like what that loss means at that age to a young black woman. And so then that is showed up literally line for line. And you know that there's also absent mother in that. So it's just, he's pulling from, not his experience, but people very close to him. There's no doubt. This is an incredibly personal movie for him. And it's risky to kind of draw conclusions based on people's biographical details, but some of the things are just so overt that you can't help but ignore them. The other thing too is that one thing that we joke about a lot on the show is the generation gap and the way that ideas are a little bit different for people who are 10, 15, 20, 25 years younger than you are.

39:00And this is a version of it in politics and in particular ideologies and the way that parents, as they get older, even if they fancy themselves, revolutionary types, just turn a little more inward, you know, get a little bit more focused on their own shit. Sometimes they turn conservative, but even if they don't turn conservative politically, they turn conservative personally or they just become more nostalgic. They don't think about progress in the same way and that having kids or even just encountering young people can really be like a confrontation of your values. It's hard to make a movie about that and this movie is very much about that because of how strong Chase Infinity's character is.

39:38Even though she's not like banging a gavel explaining how the world works to her father for two hours. Right. You sense that there is a real tension insofar as she gets herself a cell phone, even though he's told her not to. Like she is seeking a certain kind of independence. Yeah. And I think that there's like a very funny exchange about they, them pronouns that like, he's just like, I'm just trying to be polite. You know, it's just like, and she's just like, it's they, them. It's not that hard. I think that it's basically what this movie illustrates really well is that when you're old enough to have any wisdom, you lack the willpower to change anything.

40:09and when you're young enough to have the willpower, you don't really have any wisdom and people get hurt. And I think that that's depicted very well in this film. Yeah, I think also just beyond like the difference in ideology between generations, there's this movie's inflected with a real sense of like, we are not, we didn't do anything, like we didn't fix it. And so now this generation, and you know, I think we all feel this way about our boomer parents, but now we're also having kids and it's like, okay, well, what we're handing down to you, Like we've completely failed to change it in any way, shape or form.

40:42And like, you know, Jack's generation or our children's generation like know it. And so like Chase's Infinity's character, Willa's little like, yeah, you did it. Like you fucked up. And I like I don't want to deal with this. And all this is for nothing. And now I have to figure out how to do things my way. I think it's really insightful. It's definitely a huge part of the movie. and I was driving into work today and I usually listen to podcasts because I have to listen to a lot of podcasts. I was like, I'm just going to listen to music. I want to have like a clear head. I want to have just a nice emotional upbeat drive.

41:15I didn't want to even have to make a decision. So I went to Made For You on Spotify. Oh boy. And I clicked hip hop mix. Okay. And the first song that played was Bombs Over Baghdad. Okay. Outcast, Bombs Over Baghdad. And it hit me that there's not a lot of popular art that is about radical politics and rebellion. There is a lot of art about that. Not a lot of stuff that gets popular. And this is an attempt to make a popular work of art about these ideas. Bombs Over Baghdad is not the anarchist cookbook or anything. It's not like a guide to how to feel about the world, but it is very much a song about the chaos of that era when Outkast was making music.

41:57This movie is the same thing. This is a movie about the chaos of being alive at this time and thinking generationally about the decisions you've made and how they affect the people in your life as you get older. Which is really deep. But also, what you just said is true, which is that once Willa leaves the house and she goes to the dance, the movie grows wings and starts flying. And you can think about all the ideas if you want to, but you really don't have to to enjoy yourself. Because then it just becomes an abduction chase and retrieval movie. Yeah. Which is super duper exciting. And the mechanics of how he does it.

42:32Like we can talk through each step. But I was impressed. You know, it sounds stupid to say that. Pretty good. I was impressed by how he pulled it off. Even though this is my favorite director. Even still, I was like, I didn't know he had... It's new. We haven't seen him do all these things. It doesn't mean that he can't do them. But you are just like, huh. And there is also, it's not just one chase sequence. I mean, we've described like the first hour of the movie now, right? So it's another hour and 40 minutes of people and cameras like on the move. Yeah. And there's an element to the second half of this movie and I wish I had a more like maybe unique comparison point but it made me think a lot of Nolan, Christopher Nolan movies because what he does is he takes the real world and so there's a huge sequence in a town and then there's a huge sequence on the road and what he does is he takes these like pretty like recognizable things and then you're like, did you spend a billion dollars building out a tunnel system in in this area or how did you orchestrate like a rooftop chase like this while there's also uh of like a riot going on in the streets and that that ability to see what we see every day and then imagine like what's five layers deeper than that and imagine like what if you went through that window and then out that door and then into this other room that's over here is that feeling like you are actually inside of a world rather than watching someone paint something or construct something.

44:04Yeah, there's two things about that. One, you're right that there is a level of world building that is really big. So that allows for, in the storytelling, this really great experience of intercutting and simultaneous action because you've got these key characters who are separated from each other. Yeah. And what's happening to both, there's not like one guy sitting in a room waiting for something and things are happening to another person. They're both on a kind of, you know, separate track journey. Three different, because Sean Penn's character is also, you know, he's trying to lay siege. Bob is trying to find his daughter and Willa is being exported out.

44:39And that allows for the movie to not just be like rolling down a hill the whole time, but for all of these things to be happening in the periphery and all matter to the story too, which you're right, Chris, that's really, really hard to do. And it's like a huge feat of editing too. It made me think about like how when you watch Dunkirk, you're like, God, you go inside of the boat and then you go inside of like the cafeteria, like the mess hall of the boat. And then you know where the mess hall is when the boat gets sunk and how like hard it is for them to get out. And that same thing happens in the Bacton Cross battle, essentially.

45:11Right. Where you're like, oh, I understand how like this store turns into a dormitory which also turns into like an underground railroad for immigrants. And like it just... all unveils itself to you as you run through these doors. Yeah. Let's talk about that. Because at the big switch over to 16 years later, we very quickly meet Sergio, Sensei Sergio, who has been an Ecio del Toro's character, who is a karate instructor. And we very quickly come back to him because Bob needs his help. Bob needs his help because Lockjaw has laid siege on his home. that leads to Bob escaping through a tunnel, one of many tunnels in this movie.

45:58And he realizes that his daughter is, if she has not been abducted, she is in big trouble because he's received a call from the wider resistance. I guess that's what we're meant to believe is that there is a larger apparatus. Remnants of French 75 that have turned into whatever. It's a point of contention. And it's not really clear who Comrade Josh is answering the phone on behalf of. Get a better name, Josh. Get a better name, Josh. That whole sequence where Lockjaw is trying to find him and smoke him out with a tear gas, and then he needs to escape through that tunnel that presumably he has built into his home some years ago, and then race through the convenience store, and then get on the payphone, which is the moment that is seen in the first trailer, with Rise and Shine, and that whole exchange of Leo doing phone acting.

46:52is amazing. Amazing. And his performance in this movie talking into phones is remarkable. Some of the best stuff is just him on a phone. Some of the best stuff is him needing to charge his phone. It's a number of different places that he plugs in that one G phone. So good. It's really, really funny. He does eventually find his way to Sergio who helps him to transport him. And Sergio also needs to jump into action because Lockjaw Haw's team has invaded the high school. And invading the high school has triggered this sense of panic in the community. All of these places are being raided. This seems like it's a very progressive community.

47:30It's a sanctuary city. It's a sanctuary city. And that World War III is starting to happen in the streets. There is a direct confrontation with police forces. And while that's happening, everyone is scurrying around trying to clear out all their illegal activity. This is happening simultaneous to Bob, who's trying to get to a safe harbor to charge his phone to get in touch with his daughter. or at least to get in touch with the French 75 so he can figure out where his daughter is headed. Yeah. So I talked to our friend Wesley Morris about this, and he pointed something out to me after the first time I'd seen it, which is that that sequence when Sergio takes him up to that building where all of the migrants are being transported, protected, you know, given safe harbor.

48:13The patience that the movie has during that scene is amazing because it makes a real effort to humanize as many people as possible because Sergio keeps introducing Bob to all these people. Telling them their name, making him look at them, making him like respect that they are alive. Benicio Del Toro is amazing in this movie. We can talk about why. But that decision in the face of Bob's chaos, right? Bob is freaking the fuck out. And all he wants to do is yell at Comrade Josh and get the rendezvous point so that he can go find Willa. But he has to look at all of these people, this older family, this young mother.

48:52The toddler. Yes, a little kid. I noticed this time Leo touches the little kid the way that you do when you meet a little baby and just touch their finger. And all of that patience and the super zen quality that Sergio has in that scene while Bob is losing. Ocean waves. Breathe, ocean waves. Him trying to calm him down. It's such a good choice. such a human choice in the movie, which then leads to another... He also keeps giving him Modellos. Yes. Which is just a great, like, it's still kind of a buddy comedy. It's still, there's elements of that where it's just like, we can stop to have a beer though.

49:27Totally. One of the movies that PCA has been citing is Midnight Run. And they have a little bit of Midnight Run energy between them, you know, the still waters and the chaos beside him. And then the conversation with Comrade Josh in Sergio's apartment. I'm calling it a Greyhawk? I'm calling it a Greyhawk 10. Oh, Greyhawk 10. That's right. He's like, you're doing this? He's like, yeah, I'm doing this. And he gets his supervisor on the phone. And his supervisor is played by the R &B singer Dijon. And Dijon, who's got like dyed gray hair, I think he's like 28 years old, gives him the clue. This is the most Paul Thomas Anderson thing in the whole movie.

50:09Where he's like, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob. You're going to know it. You're going to know this question. You're going to know this question. This isn't what time is it. You're going to know it. You're going to know it. What's my favorite type of pussy? And Bob, in less than five seconds, is like Mexican hairless. It's the only time he's cogent in the whole movie as he instantaneously remembers this inside joke slash true story. It kind of sounds like a cat, too. It's just like perfect. So that allows him to learn that, in fact, he's headed to the sisterhood of the brave beaver. the supervisor is like apologize mean it to comrade josh it's just really yeah he's like this is a war hero is what he says to comrade josh um i love that sequence so much i love leo and that whole sequence um and then that leads to like another amazing chase you mentioned the rooftop foot chase oh yeah um it's honestly has my my favorite shot i think of the movie which is the all the smoke and light coming off of the street and the kid with the skateboard like leaping over like a roof and Leo has to climb the ladder to get up.

51:12Yes. And just following those skaters. And it's just like, you know, I watch a lot of TV where there's a lot of critiquing and nitpicking of like the mechanics of doing something. And it's like, why did this character do this or do that? I love that he puts real people in action sequences and that Leo falls off the roof. It's the fucking funniest sight gag you'll see. Like for a second, I was just like, this didn't just really happen. It's so unexpected. Because he's making his getaway and you're like, you're a revolutionary soldier and these awesome skateboarders are leading you to freedom. And then he fucking falls off a 40-foot roof.

51:49It's like a beautiful shot down the tree. And I don't even know how they did it. I have no idea. I've seen it three times. He's in the shot. There's no cut. And it's down through this tree as he falls off these branches, lands on the ground, stands up, walks five feet and gets tasered. And it's so awesome. which also then actually I don't mean to run ahead but like that leads to honestly one of the most beautiful sequences in the movie which is the hospital. It's wonderful yeah. Is when like then the like kind of the underground of the community kind of kicks in and they say oh he's diabetic even though he's not and so he needs medical attention and then immediately the nurse is like And that nurse who runs in and you're gonna you know go through this and he just says right now and she just like very like calmly like yes right now and then leaves.

52:34It's wonderful. Those two actresses, the woman who receives him and then the nurse who sends him out are so good in such small moments. There's 10 performances like that in this movie of people you see for a minute and then they're gone. Before we get too far, we should probably talk about the Christmas adventurers. Oh, that's right. Because we've totally skipped over them. I guess we should also talk a little bit about Lockjaw, like just in general. Yeah, and Sean Penn. Because they're such an important part of this movie. The reason that Lockjaw is attempting to apprehend Willa and kill Bob is because he has been asked to join a secret society.

53:09He's been invited to a hotel room by characters played by Tony Goldwyn and James Downey. James Downey, the famed SNL writer, who of course once appeared in There Will Be Blood, showing up 20 years later in a PTA movie. And these two men want to invite him to join this secret club called the Christmas Adventurers Club. Yeah. Introduced with the What Are You Doing New Year's Eve Needle Drop. Yes. Which is really... So good. As soon as it hit, I was like, okay, this is what's happening here. Their greeting is Hail Saint Nick. Hail Saint Nick. Yeah. Tony Goldwyn marshalling the wonderfully malevolent force that only he can marshal.

53:49Great sport. From a time to kill, or not time to kill, the Pelican Brief to... Ghost. Scandal. Yeah, just always a great asshole in a suit. Yes. and they explained to Lockjaw that they want him to apply to start the initiation process for this very secret club which is clearly a white supremacist organization that is attempting to eliminate the maniacs haters and punk trash as Sandy Jim Downey's character identifies which is what we're also trying to eliminate here on this podcast and he's like that's all we're trying to do no more lunatics and they're all lunatics right and Lockjaw who we don't know anything about except for the fact that he loves black women because he has told this explicitly to Bob's face.

54:31Yeah. And has had an affair, a coerced affair with perfidia and works for this government organization. These are the only things we know about him. Well, we know a lot from his physical demeanor. We know a lot from his haircut, which is, I mean... Shaved on the sides. Yeah. Grown long down in front. Yes. And combed down. With spit. With spit. And he has a very specific walk. Yes. and his posture is stick up the ass yes and also injured at some point yeah and veins visible just about everywhere in a in a pretty alarming way i have not heard sean penn say this but i would be stunned if he was not inspired by vincent mcmahon this is vince mcmahon oh this is how vince mcmahon walks this is how his arms look this is how his hair looks and is cut at times this is vince mcmahon he also reminded me of michael flynn totally yeah there's huge There's huge parts of that for sure.

55:29Sean Penn, something I keep hearing about his performance in this movie is that this is the movie that will remind people why Sean Penn is Sean Penn. Because it's been a very long time since he's given a performance. Right. One that a lot of people have seen. Two that has been acclaimed. And three that is outside of the context of the kind of chaos of his life. Right. You know? Like interviewing all Chapo and stuff. Yes, exactly. Thank you for your service. I just, you know. He was in Licorice Pizza in a small park. And PTA's always said Fast Times is one of his favorite movies of all time. And when he saw Sean Penn, he was like, I'll follow that guy anywhere.

56:05I love that actor. And he's an actor who, like, I would say roughly until about 2015, other actors venerated so deeply. Like, young actors would be interviewed and they would say, I just want to do what Sean Penn does. You don't hear that as much as you used to. We kind of moved into, like, making either Taken ripoffs or... not ill-advised, but just unsuccessful, independent acting showcases. Yes. He directed a couple, he directed like an action movie. He's, he's, he's had a kind of a curious decade or so. Yeah. Um, I, there's a case, this is his best performance since Carlito's Way. Like, this is the most, the scariest, the most immersive.

56:45Like, he disappears into the part. Yeah. That's the thing that people used to say that he did. He disappeared into parts and you couldn't see him. All of the, the little ticks and the, the, The actual physicality of it. He's so gestural. His voice, you know, he looks like a piece of burnt beef jerky. Really, really very gross, yeah. And he just gets grosser looking as the movie goes on, intentionally. But they do a lot. Shout out to the hair and makeup department of this film. But he is really committed to using his whole body for it. He gets disfigured in the cause of whitewashing his past. Yes.

57:22Basically. Which is, I think, a big theme about the people who are in power who are trying to control other people is their own hidden shames. Yes, their hidden shames about the things, the way they really feel about things but are afraid to tell anybody or let anybody know. And it's tried and true, but very effective. And the Christmas Adventurers Club stuff is so good because it's the most Pinchonian part of the movie, in my opinion. But it's not. Have you read Vineland? It's not. It's not in the book. It's not. Because the first time I saw it, I was like, is this Pynchon? It's spiritually Pynchon.

57:54Yeah, but it is very, it's a nice marriage of it too. The only thing in the book that is really the same is this triangle, like love triangle slash familial triangle that evolves over the movie, as far as I can tell. Like, obviously the sentiment of the characters and the idea of revolution. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, and you could tell the movie would not exist without Vineland, but a lot of people like should I read it beforehand. Thomas Pynchon named all these people. Right. Yes. You know, yes. This episode is supported by FX is the lowdown starring Ethan Hawke allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon a quirky journalist slash rare bookstore owner slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tale of his latest.

58:33conspiracy. This time his most recent expose puts him head to head with a powerful family that rules Tulsa, meaning only one thing. He must be onto something big. FX is the lowdown. All new Tuesdays on FX. Stream on Hulu. Lockjaw, because he is being asked to join this initiation and knows that he's going to have to go through a fairly thorough vetting process, needs to clean out his past. He needs to get rid of, he needs to find out if he is the father of Willa. He needs to get rid of Bob. he needs to close open business so that he can join this club and I think one of the more bracing commentaries on like contemporary politics and the militarization that we see going on in this country is how much of his own personal animus is animating like national policy so he's able to just be like yep this is a big narco terrorism and sexual human trafficking hub and it's not You know, and he's just like, so we're just going to have to go in fucking Delta Force and wipe it out.

59:36He literally says to his lieutenant, make me a reason to have to go to back to cross. Which is, I think, how many people feel like national politics and the military state operate sometimes. You know, that there are conveniences. I think especially in the aftermath of W's Iraq War, the like incredible cynicism about the way that these decisions are made that has been coursing through the country for the last 20 years. And lack of oversight and lack of, and just. the amount of power and tactical force available to just people who you've never heard of who can just do whatever they want. They take over a small city.

1:00:12In fact, during that protest sequence, there's a funny, chilling moment where they say, activate Eddie Van Halen. And a guy jumps out of a military vehicle and he's got a Molotov cocktail, but he's dressed like a protester. And he throws the Molotov cocktail at the police to incite the violence. and then that leads to tear gas and rubber bullets and the police moving forward with their shields and it's terrifying stuff but it's terrifying and it's happening alongside of Bob being funny and the movie is able to walk this tightrope of this huge Sean Penn performance of this really comic, nervy Leo performance of Chase Infinity's performance which is very steely not comic at all she's pretty much under threat the entire movie And it's all like, he spins the plates effectively.

1:01:05Again, I can't overstate how hard this is to do in a movie. Like most movies like this have to be one thing or the other. You know, they have to be incredibly like hard bitten and straight, or they have to be really over the top and Mel Brooks-y. And he's synthesized these two genre types like so amazingly well. Where should we go from here? All right. So we did Christmas Adventures. And we did... We do see them again. Can we talk a little bit about Regina Hall? Yeah. first of all watch her on Good Hang she's incredible she's one of the best working actresses this is like a supporting role where she kind of fills in as a surrogate mother figure midway through the movie and also a you know suspicious interrogator of Willa as she ex-fills her from Bacton takes her to a convent a revolutionary convent in the California mountains.

1:02:04And I find that she just does so much remarkable shit emotionally and just reactively with very little. Sometimes like she's in a mirror. Sometimes she's watching two people look at each other. And she does amazing work in this movie. So I mean, she obviously becomes like a major part of this sort of second act here. She's incredible. She also, this is a very, very funny movie at times, but she, who is an incredible comedic actress, does not get one laugh line. She's just wearing an awesome sweater and watching people. That's what it is. And so much of what she is communicating is through just the way that her face looks.

1:02:42Yeah, I had the exact same thought. It's fascinating to not... When I heard that he wanted to work with her, I was like, he's going to write her the funniest part of Match. Right. PTA was born to write funny shit for Regina Hall. And the choice to not have her do that is actually more powerful. Yeah. To make her just watch through the entire film. And sort of like a guardian angel and sort of like a person who is still fighting the good fight, but has also been left behind in some ways. You know, like she doesn't have the wherewithal to look for Willa's phone. Like she asks her, but she doesn't have the force to root it out and find it.

1:03:16Yeah, and I think there's also like that this is the difference is like, you know, if you live in a revolutionary cell for most of your adult life, like being honest with one another is probably a condition of survival. That's right. And it's like you don't come across a lot of teenagers who are like... Yeah. But then she also, she has the scene with the, you know, Mother Superior of the Brave Beavers. And it's like, I didn't have the heart to tell her that her mother was, you know, was a rat. And it's her revolutionary duty kind of going up against the surrogate, you know, mother figure. And you can tell she has a lot of, so the personal versus the political, just in that moment.

1:03:54And she doesn't really know what to do. Very nuanced and very powerful. So because she holds onto this phone surreptitiously, Lockjaw's able to track her essentially to this convent. So did you guys happen to clock who the Mother Superior is, who that actress is? No. This is another lost figure in the PTA filmography. That's April Grace. She played the journalist who interviewed Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia. Oh my gosh. So that's 26 years ago. Wow. And she is also a very striking actor. It's also interesting in that exchange that Mother Superior has with DeAndre? DeAndre, right? DeAndre, yeah.

1:04:35Where they're like, we might need to get rid of this girl because we can't have another loose end running out there. It's what you described. Yeah, Perfidia Beverly Hills is back. When you are part of a revolution, that tacit trust is essential. Yeah. And this idea that there is something genetic about Perfidia's ratdom is, you know, that explains how tight, By the way, we didn't talk about that. Her name is literally Perfidia, which, you know, is really, is right there. And like all things in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, you know, the obvious is actually not obvious and you're supposed to, but that is pretty funny.

1:05:12All of the names are insightful in one way or another. Jungle Pussy, the rapper and actress, Shayna McHale is in this movie as like her cohort. You know, Jungle Pussy says it all, right? She also gets that incredible speech moment where she's taking over the bank for a couple of minutes. May West. May West, yeah. Really good. That wig. Whit Harris' Laredo. The wig shot is just really, really... Her in this convenience store. There's so many moments like that. Also, the sisterhood of the Brave Beaver is also just an incredible PTA joke straight out of DeNear and Vice or Pinch and Joke for that matter.

1:05:46At the DGA screening we went to, Paul told Steven Spielberg and the rest of us the story of Chase Infinity not understanding the name The Sisters of the Brave Beaver and him having to explain why he had chosen that. Beaver being a... Yeah, but that was not something that Chase Infinity's generation was up on yet. So that is special. Unlike the DVD Beaver. I was going to say, she's clearly not a visitor to DVDBeaver.com, Chase Infinity. Tough stuff. Yeah. And then the movie starts to culminate because the second encounter with the Christmas Adventures Club, someone has been brought in to eliminate Lockjaw.

1:06:25It's clear that Lockjaw is trying to cover something up. He has now gone basically rogue even within the MKU military unit that he controls. Yes, he overreached. And is taking guys with him to go specifically just find Charlene slash Willa. And they have a stunning confrontation in this convent where he runs a DNA test on her and they have their first ever conversation which goes about as well as you can imagine. Yeah, and to make the act of a paternity test visually interesting sounds hard. Yeah, a lot of little test tubes. Yes, all the little tubes and droplets and the spinning wheel and the lines coming down.

1:07:09But he makes all of that stuff work, and there's a real tension because we're watching. Well, we don't want her to be his daughter. Yeah, but we know because, I mean, just the visual language, It cuts from them having sex to her, you know, nine months pregnant, shooting the machine gun, which is in the trailer. And it's probably also a huge reason of why she leaves. Yeah. And you're like, right. Yeah, there we go. Yes. So we know. We know. And it is revealed, in fact, that Lockjaw is Willow's dad and that that sets him off. And he knows that she also needs to be eliminated. She needs to be wiped away.

1:07:41But crucially, he cannot do it himself. He cannot bring himself to do it himself. So he hires, well, we go forward step by step if you want. yeah I just he we are reintroduced to this character of Avanti Q who is a bounty hunter and tracker right who is played by the great Eric Schweig which PTA mentioned he first saw in Last of the Mohicans I haven't seen him in a movie in 10 years yep and Avanti won't kill a kid so he's told to take him to take her to 1776 great which is apparently the compound of a white nationalist group right yeah to have her killed And that sequence is incredibly tense. Maybe the most tense thing in the movie because she's been handcuffed to a bench and the world is operating around her.

1:08:28All these military men are coming in and out and she knows what her fate is going to be. And Avanti has gotten back into his car, but he hasn't left. And he has a change of heart. And he decides that he's going to save her and that he's going to take these guys out in part because they show us that the 1776 guys are racist. They make note of his Native American heritage. They mock him. and his those guys prefer the original version of the searchers yeah yes like he's literally called wagon burner in the movie which is clearly a callback and fire water yes and that is happening in this series of intercutting moments where Bob who has been freed from prison escaped right transported by Sergio right while they're driving drunk drinking Modellos and talking about revolution.

1:09:18And I think at a certain point, Sergio says, saved a French 75 or twice in one day. Really like remarking upon the wildness of their experience together. Then there's a stop, drop and roll. And a... Very funny Tom Cruise joke. Yes. And a great... And Sergio, you know, sacrifices himself for the cause. Bob jumps out of the moving car, hot wires a car. He goes on the chase. Like a Celica. Yeah. that was a Decelica? It looked like that. That looked familiar to you? I just, it was just a great car. It had that hum-clicking sound. And a spoiler. Yeah. And then he goes on a hot chase and that hot chase is happening simultaneous to what we learn is Tim from the Christmas Adventurers Club who's been assigned to eliminate Lockjaw.

1:10:04So Lockjaw has left Avanti Q and he's off to go to the next stage of his life hopefully joining the Christmas Adventurers. Lockjaw and also the implication is also Willa, right? they need to clean everything up. So there's, you know, it's a pretty grim assignment. Yeah, and DeAndre will be killed. Howard Somerville will be killed. All the French 75 will be eliminated so that this can be all clean for him to join this club. And out of nowhere, Tim shows up. Speeding down the road, is he in a Dodge Mustang? A Dodge Charger. Or Dodge Charger, excuse me. I believe that Avanti and Tim are both driving Chargers.

1:10:39I was like, I would love to see what a Dodge Charger does on a drive-thru in Vegas. That's right, because Willa takes Avanti's car. yes right and then he's also driving like a bright blue no he's Avanti's is white Tim's is blue yeah yeah yeah Tim's is blue yeah we're talking so much about these cars because this movie is leading to a huge car chase yeah eventually Tim shoots Lockjaw in the most bracing moment of the movie shoots him in the face while they're driving the car crashes off the side of the road we think Lockjaw's gone for good Tim circles back Bob arrives since he's on the chase to discover Lockjaw Lockjaw's dead, he thinks.

1:11:17He turns around, moment of panic. He's uttering the Green Acres line from the Gil Scott Heron song and trying to get somebody to show up, to show him that somebody's on his side, that someone's going to help him, and he's all alone. He doesn't know what to do. And then the final act of the movie is this chase scene, which takes place in Borrego Springs, a highway, which is an incredibly loopy, up and down highway in California. It's like a roller coaster. Yeah. I just want all our lords of letterbox out there if you're thinking about making a road trip, just be careful. Yeah. Don't react to this.

1:11:57This is not a safe roadway. There's a lot of highway driving in California where you will just be like, holy shit. You come over a hill and then the sun is eight feet from your face. This really captured it, but also made it feel like Inception and also made it feel like the... Is it the California Adventure Ride? What's the ride at Disney where you're hanging over California as you're being kind of like flown through the air? I think... Are you thinking of American Scream Machine? No, it's not. It's like you're looking at a screen. Oh, Soarin'. Soarin'. It reminded me of Soarin'. Yeah. Soarin', no G.

1:12:42Okay, Soarin'. Okay. You've been on Soarin'? No. You've been to Disneyland? No, I've been to Disney World when I was seven. Anyway. She skipped right past that because she does not want to get into two sons who want to get their picture taken with Iron Man. Which is coming. It's coming. It's you in an Iron Man costume. I might be busy. Okay. Because it might be good content if you have to go. No, but watching this in IMAX definitely had an amusement park feel. Like you actually did become, as the camera goes up and down, it makes you queasy. You start feeling like the motion. And again, at the DGA Q &A, Paul Thomas Anderson said that they did not have this ending until they went location scouting and that they were just around an event problem.

1:13:26They found this road and he was like, and then it all came together. I wonder how much of this movie is a result of like finding a place to put it. He talked a lot about that in the interview. You'll hear that. Okay. It wasn't as much on the page as you might think. Yeah. I've never seen a chase sequence like it it's one road moving straight three cars trying to catch each other but they disappear nothing like this has been done before the closest comparison is probably Steven Spielberg's Duel which is a straight chase movie of a truck and a car and that's it and moving at a consistent high speed together not necessarily whipping around turns and flying across things you know it's not and then the conclusion which is incredibly exciting and incredibly scary and sad and incredibly savvy shows Willa is also a freedom fighter again incredible practical knowledge yes she has been schooled well despite everything that she would say about her dad as far as much as it's a great car chase movie it's an amazing car crash movie the crashes in this make me really want to buckle up yes there's a crash that the car that Perfidia is in escaping from the bank robbery is a wild car crash it feels like you're sitting in the seat when it happens Anyway, Willa decides when she's gotten to the top of a very tall part of the Borrego Springs Highway that she's going to park the car quickly, come to a hard stop, so Tim cannot see that she has stopped her car, and then he crashes into her.

1:14:54And as he stumbles and gets out of his car, he's survived, but she attempts to find out whether or not he is friendly. And he's not friendly, and she shoots and kills him with the gun that she has found in Avanti's car. And I said this to you last night. I heard the scream that she lets out when she shoots him for good. It's very emotional, very upsetting and raw. And you see that, you know, this is the real toll of the things that have happened that her parents have done. Like this is really, she's now taken someone's life and has been under this incredible, terrifying threat. And also has this terrible knowledge that her father, her birth father, is a monster.

1:15:33Eventually, Bob does show up in the Celica. he arrives and she doesn't know what to think and she's confused and she almost shoots him right until she finally he finally convinces her that it's me it's your dad yeah keep saying I'm your dad it's your dad and then he does also quote part of the the Gil Scott-Heron talk back yes will no longer be relevant yeah can I ask you guys when you first saw it so the next sequence you're kind of like great so we've gotten to the end of the movie and he's gotten her away from this and then like a Terminator Lockjaw has has returned and he's storming through the desert, blood all over him, holding a machine gun.

1:16:11And he's got more shit to do. So when you first saw that, were you like, oh, are we going to have another like confrontation action sequence between Bob has to kill Lockjaw and take. I'll tell you why I didn't because of the music that is used in that scene. When we see the roadway and you see the sun haze and then you see his head come up over the hill. It's a laugh moment. Right. It's a comic moment. And do you know what that song is called? Tell us. Perfidia. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. He's surviving for her as well. And because it's funny, I didn't think that we were headed toward a Robert Patrick moment.

1:16:51Me neither. It could have happened. But in fact, that's an unexplained part of the plotting that you can ask that question. What happened between that moment and Lockjaw learning, determining that he is going to join the Christmas Adventurers Club because he's actually not been successful. He thinks he's been successful at what he's doing, but he hasn't confirmed it. Right. We don't actually know. Tim has also been killed. And has that feedback gotten to the Christmas Adventurers Club? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is all unexplored. There's a gap here in information. It does seem like a pretty expansive organization when you get right down to it because that's just the Southwest office.

1:17:30That's true. And like they introduce like the fifth like fleet commander just to the Southwest. That's true. So there are a lot of levels here. Yep. I don't think that's actually the Southwest office for the record. That's where he's murdered. Yeah. Lockjaw does eventually get into the club and by get into the club we mean gets gassed. Yeah. He's gassed to death in a very funny moment. While he meets his last his moment of finally arriving at like He's been accepted. In corporate America he gets the corner office. Yes. He gets the corner office. And you know That's what you learn about that character, is that that's somebody who's been fighting wars to feel accepted.

1:18:05You don't think that the Christmas Adventure Club has a gas chamber as part of its office? I don't know if that would be an office you would want others to occupy on a regular basis if you used it as a gas area. I thought Lockjaw could have been like, where is everybody? Right, right. There's something very eerie about that entire sequence, and you're meant to feel like, oh no, something terrible is about to happen to him, and something does. Maybe on another floor. That might just be the gassing floor. Okay. for the Christmas adventures but we don't know and then the movie's denouement is one last conversation at the kitchen table between Bob and Willa where Bob gives Willa a card a letter that is written to her by her mother and Tiana Taylor in voiceover reads this letter to her daughter and it's incredibly moving and powerful and I think it's a big part of what this movie is about which is don't give up Maybe you can change the world in the way that we were not able to.

1:19:02And this moment of like exciting inspiration comes where we see Willa a little bit later on getting a CB radio call about a protest that is happening in Oakland. And she jumps out of her chair and grabs the car keys and goes and drives up and leaves her dad. And then American Girl starts playing. Yes. And my heart grew 10 sizes. Yeah. Yeah. A very simple, straightforward and conventional needle drop. not a wow look what I found in the crates you know but oh yes you know what I mean like I meant I meant is it like is there any what does it mean you know like what does the whole ending mean is something we can talk about but yeah no it's it it's a crowd-pacing moment yes I think that it that will steal some Oscars just that one song you walk out of the movie feeling yeah a sense of relief and happiness and maybe even inspiration for some people a little bit of melancholy as Bob tries to figure out how to take a picture with his new iPhone.

1:19:57Yes. But how nice for him that he finally got an iPhone. I kind of, I mean, it's fantastic and I'm glad that they figured out that they can be, you know, on 5G. Yes, sure. But he's moving into his dotage. Yeah. Yeah. And he can't make the flash work. Nope. Yeah. I mean, you know, it comes for us all. It's very much a movie about passing the baton. But also, what's equally great about that scene is the instructions that she's giving are like useless. You know, I was like, she's like, But that's how you tell you that thing. And I was like, oh my God. If they don't know this natively, you cannot explain technology.

1:20:29It's just like 25 years ago. How do I get the flashing midnight off the VCR? You know, how do I fix the tracking on my tape player? All these things, this is what kids and their parents and you have to do for them. So the movie is very, very insightful about all those things. Bear with me as I read through why this, I think this is the culmination. Wait, you can't talk about the ending? Yeah, no, no, no. No, I just like, you know, it does feel like how happy is it of a happy ending? Do you know what I mean? Like what are, because there is so much in it that is, there is hope. And I do find this movie to be very open hearted.

1:21:08But especially on my second watch, I, you know, I told her, I found it very, like I was taken by the comedy and the spectacle the first time. And the second time was more emotional. It's more upsetting. There was a lot of dark stuff here. there was a lot of messed stuff going on. There was a lot of regret. There is, you know, to Chris's point, like at the end, Leo's just like sitting on a couch trying to figure out, like he's out of the, and in Perfidia's letter, there is a lot of regret. So, you know, and the last line, he yells like, be safe. And she's like, I won't. And it's very cheerful. So, you know, I don't know.

1:21:42Maybe, is it supposed to be just purely like, hey, it's Tom Petty. Are we supposed to give over to that? Is like that the question? Just, you know, are we supposed to... I think you can read it very clearly. Paul Thomas Anderson thinks that a young girl that looks like Willa is the American girl in 2025. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that part of it, I think, is very sweet. Yeah. And that I'm sure she looks somewhat like his kids. Yes. And that maybe it requires having your whole life in front of you to imagine a better world, you know, and to imagine anything is possible if we push back hard enough.

1:22:19whereas like once you get older I think you have all these reasons why I can't push back that hard because I have this right you know we have to do that absolutely and also the first line of that song is she's an American girl raised on promises which you know has its own bittersweet perfect writing by the way I do think I do think it is hopeful but I think it's also very wide-eyed and I should say eyes open about the fact that Willa now knows the cost yeah that she has fired a gun that she has seen what the monsters really look like and that she has made an active choice to try to make that change.

1:22:52Maybe inspired by her mom's letter, maybe inspired by her experiences, maybe inspired by what she knows now about her dad and what her dad did to go save her.

1:23:02And she probably knows that it's not, it's going to get worse before it gets better. I think that's a big part of this too. That you have to, if you want to make the change, you're going to have to get into some shit. I don't know if the movie actually thinks that that change is possible or plausible. Right, right, right. But I think it does want to believe that it could be. Why did it get called one? Why did he arrive at one battle after another? And I think that that title gets brought up like in little ways explicitly. And then also it's basically one fucking thing after another. And what is the, is it ultimately the conflict that forges us and not the result?

1:23:42Right. And what side are you on? You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I guess I'm kind of curious about how, when the movie goes out into the world, how much of that is tangled with. Yeah. You know, like whether or not that's a takeaway. I think having seen it multiple times, it's very clearly. Right. An older guy looking at what he did or did not do in his life and what impact that did or did not have and what it means for his family and younger people. Yes, exactly. What's now, what is their responsibility? Yeah. Which is a scary thing to think about, but also happens to anybody who cares deeply about the world and people.

1:24:22And also is like maybe a little bit, feels a little guilty about what they didn't do. Yes. Or couldn't accomplish. I think, I mean, I think that's a big part of it. So this is an amazing movie. I mean, we haven't talked about a lot of like the mechanics of it. It is shot on VistaVision with IMAX cameras, which must have been extremely challenging. Those cameras are huge and loud. Right. And they're also moving up and down those hills. Yes. we also heard that there's a special thanks to Giovanni Ribisi in this movie. And that is because Giovanni Ribisi has a hobby of restoring old movie cameras.

1:24:54And he is a lover of film and celluloid, which JT Mulder talked about on this show when he helped shot Strange Darling. And he rebuilt and gave PTA a VistaVision camera to shoot this movie on. And I have yet to see the movie in VistaVision. I'm seeing it in VistaVision tomorrow. I'm excited about that. At the Vista, it's only playing in that format on maybe fewer than 10 theaters in this country. But I've seen it in IMAX twice now, once at the Chinese and last night at CityWalk. At CityWalk, it's overwhelming because that screen is so tall. And the movie, like you said, in the chase scenes and in the whipping action, but also in the close-ups, you know?

1:25:33One of the key influences on PTA is Jonathan Demme in the into-camera close-up. There are several of them. You know, Tiana Taylor's face, the detail that you can see in her eyelashes is wow on an IMAX screen. The same for Leo's face holding the screen Regina Hall Benicio Del Toro and then to be making a movie that is in constant motion with those kinds of cameras too. Right. It's not a chamber piece. No. It's out in the world. It's pretty impressive. Also kind of an unusual color palette for PTA. Very dusty very brown Bob's robe. It's kind of the like it's the dust bowl of California. It just looks like California to me.

1:26:13I mean, this is kind of the real California. Yeah. Yeah. The inland. Yeah. And we haven't mentioned Johnny Greenwood's score. I was going to say, yeah, you want to do the score? It's really interesting. I mean, I think it tells you a lot about how he views, how PTA views the movie because it's very David Shire, Michael Small. Like, it sounds like clute. It sounds like the conversation. These, like, single plinking piano notes that are played, like, very rapidly and kind of getting your heartbeat up because you know something is happening. Like we're headed somewhere is kind of the energy that it gives you.

1:26:44There are a couple of orchestral moments. It opens with this kind of like big orchestral dirge when we meet the French 75. I don't know if you guys remember that. It does. Like usually in those close-up shots, like when there's one with Willa, there's one with Lockjaw when he comes up and it's like is a recurring motif. There is also one needle drop that producer Jack was particularly excited about, which is when Mo Bamba drops at the school dance. I laughed so hard. It's really funny. I think, you know, the inclusion of someone like Dijon in the movie and the Mo Bamba drop, there's a lot of like, my daughter's told me about this stuff going on in the movie too, which I really like.

1:27:21You know, like I don't think PTA is really banging Mo Bamba at home, but I bet his kids were at a certain point in the last 10 years.

1:27:30It's still a movie that is like about all of his same stuff. You know, I wanted to mention this to you guys. So he gave... PTA gave an interview with Dazed this week, and he acknowledged that he participated in some way in the scripts for Napoleon and Killers of the Flower movie. Okay. Which is something that had been rumored for a long time. Yes. I've told you I've gotten separate, like, private phone calls of people being like, it's true, it's true. Right, yeah, yeah. PTA worked on these movies. And when we talked about those movies, we talked about the fact that it's very plausible that PTA, if not contributed, like, wrote them wholesale, because they're about dumb guys who love to fuck and can't get out of their own way with the women that they're in love with.

1:28:13And they also do terrible things and have to kind of cope with their decisions around those terrible things. And it's like one of the hallmarks of all of his movies. Bob is yet another PTA guy. Like there's just every movie has a guy like this. Like what I wrote down is like unsure, creative, horny, sincere man boy who subjugates himself to a woman and then has to reckon with what it means to have subjugated himself to her, right? Phantom Thread, that's what Phantom Thread is. You know, a lot of these, Punch Drunk Love, that's what Punch Drunk Love is. Like all of these movies are about a guy turning himself over to the idea of love and passion and then shit going wild.

1:28:50There's a million things like this in the movie though. Like all of his movies are about families breaking up and mom and dad can't be together anymore. And then what does that mean for the man boy at the center of the movie? or the tangible connection between radical politics and satire and how things that seem like they could change the world also seem ridiculous. Like he always talks about Robert Downey Sr. All the Robert Downey Sr. movies are about that very idea. I think he also, I mean, I'm thinking of The Master and there will be blood in Magnolia specifically, but like sexual trauma and unclear parentage comes up a lot in his movies.

1:29:30and that's obviously something that's in this film, but then is on the other side comes out. It's just like, we can get through it. If you love each other, you can conquer that. That's it. The movies are so humanist. They're all about flawed people trying to figure it out. I go back to Perfidia and how she kind of haunts the movie, certainly for me, and the fact that her voice is one of the very last voices that we hear. and the fact that the, you know, her identity in the world as a rat, despite the things that she did and the way that she talked and the way that she acted, and the fact that other people kind of define her agency in the aftermath of everything that has happened is a really interesting concept.

1:30:14And like, maybe the way that we think about people who try to make change in the world and then get villainized and the things that they have to do to survive, which is very complicated. Oh, I mean, once you find out her secret, you can go back and chart different interactions with Lockjaw after they've had sex, obviously. And, you know, there's a really amazing scene in a hospital after Profidia has been captured and Lockjaw comes to her and is basically like, it's this, you know, or life in prison, you know, it's like, you have one chance here. And the decision that she makes to save, you could say like, she makes a selfish decision, she rats these guys out, she goes to witness protection, she eventually escapes, is also probably to keep Charlene away from Lockjaw.

1:30:57You know, to do whatever she can to kind of keep him away from her daughter. What else? Do you want to talk about Oscars at all? Yeah. I also want to talk about how this has been presented and how it will be received to the extent that it's possible. Okay, let's do marketing and box office and then we'll close with Oscars. The second trailer, which is the predominant trailer for the movie does not feel like a trailer that Paul Thomas Anderson cut. The first one does. The first one with the Johnny Greenwood score and the phone call, that feels like a PTA trailer to me. The second one does not. People don't seem to like the second one.

1:31:34That's the one they're running before movies. That's the one that I think has failed to ignite a ton of interest. I think it is not a bad trailer, but not very representative of the movie. And so the movie is now tracking for somewhere between 20 and$30 million in opening weekend. It's a very expensive movie. Costs anywhere from$115 million to$180 million, depending on what you read and who you believe. I definitely don't need to have a long conversation about whether or not this movie needs to make money or not. For me personally, I don't care. But I am quite curious about what the world thinks this is and what they're going to get.

1:32:13I don't even know how to talk about that, but it is a movie with the biggest movie star in the world. Yes. And it is an action movie. And he is selling it in a way that I have not seen him do. Or really a major movie star do since like late 2000s. You know, he is on every podcast. He is doing junkets. He is doing magazines, sort of. And he's just on my Instagram way more than Leonardo DiCaprio has ever wanted to be. There's like a Chase Infinity has been putting him in her TikToks. TikToks a lot. Totally. They are like, we need to sell this movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The way that other movies are meant to be marketed.

1:32:58And Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't do a lot of press these days. Yeah. Leo, of course, he hasn't been on a talk show in almost 20 years. He went on Jimmy Fallon this week. Or excuse me, yeah, Jimmy Fallon this week. Hasn't done it in 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. And they're working hard. Yeah. This movie comes from the same studio that is on one of the most legendary runs of the 21st century at the movies where Warner Brothers has six consecutive movies that have opened at$40 million or more. There's not much else going on at the movies this weekend. Yeah. Weekend three of Demon Slayer. Chris will be running it back for a fifth time.

1:33:32And... It is three hours. It's three hours? Yeah. And I... But so you asked, like, what do people think they're getting? And they are selling it. And, you know, the trailer and then the very Leo forward strategy may make a lot of people who aren't really in the habit of going to the movies being like, oh, Leo's like in an action movie. Like, I guess I would go see this. But then they are going to get something slightly different than what that would. But I actually wonder whether that kind of marketing, you know, whether the random person is like, oh, Leo's in an action movie. Like, sure, I'll go out to the theaters, you know, versus the more specific PTA heads or the, you know, premium format people or all of the, you know, the IMAX of it all is another.

1:34:22Or people who are susceptible to the critical response to this film being almost uniformly in a way that I have not seen, certainly since Oppenheimer, but even Oppenheimer had it. It's like, well, you know. There will be a well about this movie. I just want to put that out there. Yeah, no, totally, of course. There's going to be, we are going to get a lot of feedback that is you oversold this and that everybody oversold this. That's going to happen. That's okay. It's just because we've not had this level of unanimous acclaim from critics, I'm trying to think of when's the last time probably Parasite Parasite's probably the last time everybody was like we're all on board this is let's make this a movement but there's a big difference between Parasite bubbling up as a foreign film that then just becomes a phenomenon to the biggest movie star we've got is in the movie with one of the best living filmmakers and we're going for it and we're advertising it on Sunday Night Football there have been examples of this that have become tremendously successful based on that power.

1:35:18The movie I think of is Gravity. Gravity is a little bit like lost to time now because it was such an in-theater experience and the script is only okay. But that was a movie with platinum reviews. It was two huge stars and a huge, super celebrated director. And, you know, I don't remember word for word every review that came out, but people were gaga over Gravity. And it worked. Like that machine. Now that movie had space spectacle on its side. And it was also 90 minutes long. That's true. Which, you know. That is a factor, for sure. And also, it's a different time in movie going, of course. Which I'm not saying this movie should be shorter.

1:35:53I'm not saying that like that actually does. But now we do have this, I asked Paul and Leo about this too, this large format in theater, like cult thing that is happening. You know, like Coogler really pushed a lot of that along with explaining the formats and the film stocks. We see Benny Safdie doing this now with Smashing Machine. Last night, people, I mean, we were like at Nerd HQ, but people, by the way, thank you, Corey Everett for my ticket. Shout out to Corey. He's the other real one who's now seen it three times. He's going a fourth time. But we, people applauded at the IMAX teaser. It's like the IMAX brand thing and all the men.

1:36:29And it was about 80 % men were applauding. There were some ladies there. No, I bet there were some. I get a little nervous about this. I don't want it to become too stratified. I get it. There's just not IMAX theaters everywhere. They're not good or whatever. I mean they do need to build more that's a whole that's a separate episode the only other thing is I think that there's one I had a long conversation with Van Leithen about this yesterday he hasn't seen the movie he's been on a jag about how it needs to make money I don't agree with him he and I have had that debate many many years

1:37:03this movie probably needed to do a better job of marketing to black audiences because it's a movie about black women and like Leo is definitely the star of the movie but it is about Profidia and Willa and to a lesser extent, D 'Andra. And activating black audiences is something that really works at the box office. And they just didn't, I don't think they've really done it. I don't think they've really, the fact that Van is like, I'll go see it, you know, but isn't like, I can't wait to see it, is, that's not good. And I don't know who that's on specifically, but maybe there will be a word of mouth thing that helps with it over time.

1:37:38And the other thing is, we can use this as a trailway into, It will have long legs. But it's going to be around for a long time. There is, there's a case for 10 Oscar nominations and there, there, I can certainly see the headlines on March 18th, 2026 that are one battle after another wins best picture and best director. Paul Thomas Anderson, crowned king of Hollywood this year. That's, that is plausible. I'm not saying it's going to happen. There's a road where this is, this is like an Oppenheimer thing. And you know, the minute it comes out, it's like, like, okay, a celebrated director, finally.

1:38:14Yeah. And it just is kind of a steamroll through. It would also be interesting if this gets sucked up into the culture wars at all. Yeah, which it could also happen. I think it will. I think it will. I mean, it is about radical politics. Sure. But that, lots of people watched Jimmy Kimmel this week. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's more than enough people that could just support the movie that agree with its politics and it could be a success. Sure. No question. But, and honestly, from a box office perspective, That would probably help. That's what I'm saying. It almost would be helpful if somebody was like, this movie, are you fucking kidding me?

1:38:48Yeah. Yeah, but they're like exploding the power grid in a major American city, you know, and they're like, this is the hero of the movie. But that will probably, I think, become a bigger issue or a bigger talking point when it's awards season and movies are under a little bit more scrutiny and then there's the usual dirty tricks. I would like to start the Benicio del Toro Oscar campaign here and now. Okay. please vote Benicio Del Toro for Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After Another. Not showing pen. You can nominate him as well. Interesting. And I know, and that is like the showy performance and obviously he's one of the three, but I mean, Sensei is incredible in this movie.

1:39:27And it's, that's also like a quintessential supporting. Yeah, it sure is. You know, he shows up, the movie does not work without him. Memorable. He's on his own kind of wavelength. Yeah. And then he goes away. so um thank you i don't think that will happen because supporting actor is a knife fight this year well that's fine but i you know i have a platform you do have a platform and i don't have a vote i support you thank you stell and scars garden sentimental value sean penn adam sandler and jay kelly paul mescal and hamnet jeremy strong and springsteen yeah lordy and frankenstein so hamnet you brought up that which is the other that's the collision course right and so so we either have like an Oppenheimer year or we have a Saving Private Ryan versus Shakespeare in Love year.

1:40:12And, you know, and which is, but which is, which is interesting because in a lot of ways, Hamnet is Shakespeare in Love. But as Sean pointed out, like Chloe Zhao has already won an Oscar. She's kind of Spielberg in this race. Yeah. So what are you going to do there? What if nobody sees Hamnet still? Like we're, it'll still be like, it's a specialty release that speaks deeply to artists. Okay. You know, the Telluride, it won Toronto. It's like, it'll be in the mix. It will definitely be in the mix. I think it's also... I know how I feel, but, you know, I just, we're talking about like Oscar, the models for Oscar season.

1:40:51PTA is 0 for 11. Yeah. It's very easy to tell that story. There's definitely a world where it's like Hamnet wins Best Picture and he wins Best Director. I could see that. I could see that very clearly. Sinners is not going to be the mixer it will definitely it'll definitely be nominated for best picture everything after that I don't know I thought it would fall away a little bit when a bunch of movies started coming out but some stuff that I thought would be big was not as well received whether or not Cooler gets in I don't know but adapted screenplay seems likely editing seems likely whether or not they decide to run Chase Infinity or Tiana Taylor for supporting actress.

1:41:33I don't know. Right. They're going to have to probably make a decision there, which is tough. You know, you've got production design. You've got best casting. Score. That's right. We have the new Johnny Greenwood score. Colleen Atwood for costumes. Costume design. That bathrobe is legendary. There's definitely a 10 or 11 or 12 Oscar nominations potential. Warner Brothers has a lot on their plate. Right. Right, and they're running campaigns for, they announced, sinners, weapons, and one battle after another. Yes. So what's going to get the most time and energy? You know, Warner Brothers did campaign Dune Part II, but not very well.

1:42:14Right. So they haven't really run the race. This era of the organization hasn't run the race in quite this way. We'll see. Leo will be nominated. I mean, they won. No, that was Universal for Offentheimer. They lost Barbie. You're right, because that was the switch. Yeah. Yeah. I take solace in the fact that we will be talking about this movie in 20 years. Yeah. It's pretty exciting. It's pretty exciting. So I hope it makes money and I hope it wins awards just for everybody's benefit. Where are you in the PTA rankings right now with this? Do you want to do this? Do you want to save it? I would like to save it for Monday.

1:42:51Okay. Is it minute to minute? It always is. We'll also be having that conversation again throughout this year. This is the first movie that it really impacts 25 for 25. where we have to look at it and say, do we have to do that? Is this the right choice? I think we'll probably talk about it for the next couple months. So you guys are a lot. Did you have a caveat that you can break in case of emergency? It's until the episode is done. Once the episode is recorded, we can't go back and change it. But we have changed things. Interesting. So if we wanted to choose this film, there's still time. There's 10 more movies to go.

1:43:33I had one last one yeah you know I think I don't know if you're going to do a syllabus for this I made one I don't I didn't want to put one out because I don't want to spoil the movie for people but I have a long list right now that I can talk through PTA talked about Searchers running on empty midnight run in Battle of Algiers being inspirations for this movie or being movies that you could watch along with this I can't get over how much this movie made me think of the Searchers like I think I will watch the Searchers this weekend and then I would like to go back and see one battle after another 4K from Warner Archive.

1:44:02I have it. Did you get a copy of Witness? Yes. You can just bring that right over. As like a loaning situation? To my house. No, no, no, no. I just like, do you need it? Do you need it is the question. Any movies that this movie made you think of? A lot. The Christmas Adventurers Club and Lockjaw just could not be more Doctor Strangelove. like the the the Colonel Ripper the Sterling Hayden character and especially the speech that Penn gives at the end where he talks about being raped in reverse and her wanting his power is like is just pure Ripper um so that was a that's a big one um there's a really great Jules Dassen movie called Uptight from 1968 that I would highly encourage people to check out it is about it's essentially a remake of John Ford's The Informer and it's about a black revolutionary group and someone who turns and informs on the group.

1:45:03That is an imperfect movie, but it's an incredible time capsule because it's made, you know, simultaneous to the movement, to the rise of the Black Panther movement and is really powerful. There's like a bunch of other movies from that time, like Medium Cool and Zabriskie Point, I think are both in this movie to some extent. And then there's all the comic stuff too. Like you mentioned Midnight Run, but like something wild it has Cheech and Chong in it Cheech and Chong totally Lebowski is all over it yeah I think I tried to think about some other movies that are about this because there's just not a lot of movies set in these worlds oh well there's not it's it's not about this specific thing at all but there's a lot of Casablanca in this movie including both like Perfidia the song is also played in Casablanca he orders a French like there's the Easter egg stuff but like cocktail a love triangle like three people you know during revolution yeah and what are your responsibilities to love and has some of the hidden passageways yes the Morocco yeah no it's completely true I mean that's the other thing too is making a movie with a a leitmotif you know like having an idea of like the characters are always moving across bridges or moving through tunnels there's that moment when Tim goes through Alice's house and goes downstairs into the basement and into the tunnel.

1:46:27And it's this large circular tunnel so that he can get into the meeting room for the eldest member of the Christmas Adventurers Club. Played by Kevin Teig, right? Kevin Teig, who's so good. He's like, I want to be able to eat it off the floor. That's how clean I want it. That is like pure movie making stuff that you can make. You can have 10 examples of this feeling. Racing across the rooftops, skateboarding into World War III. just the idea of like being dragged on a line for you know 90 consecutive minutes on the movie is so great and hard to pull off I mean also just like obvious stuff like all the president's men sorcerer movies that give you that feeling of paranoia and anxiety as you're trying to get to where you need to go to unsolve to solve this mystery any other thoughts before we go to the guests of this episode I wish I could make a fool of myself before you introduce them but I can't think of anything okay Thank you both for your thoughts on this film.

1:47:24We'll talk more about it very soon. Let's now go to my conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson.

1:47:35It is an honor and a delight to be joined by Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Guys, thanks for being here. Paul, I know you've been working on this movie for 20 plus years. Why was now the right time to actually make it? There's a few answers to that. I think one of the first answers is that after we finished Phantom Thread, Adam Sumner, producer and assistant director, legendary assistant director and producer, said, it's time for us to go make that one. And I went over to see Leo after coming back from England. I said, I don't think we're getting any younger. And I think, and, but then I didn't, I started to look for a Willa and I just, I got distracted and I didn't seem, I just didn't, I couldn't quite feel like I had it right yet.

1:48:34And got distracted and made licorice pizza, got to work with his dad, but not him. And then it just sort of seemed like I felt comfortable with where the script had landed. and Adam was really forceful and saying enough you've searched enough and I think it's really time we have to do this film now and so I got him I said all right I think we've got to get started you know and and that was but that was also years before really I mean honestly it was probably a couple years before so the search began to find Willa and then we got slowed down a little bit by the strike, but we kept working. So we were ready when that was over and here we are.

1:49:16But there's also a shorter answer would just be, I don't know, it just felt right. And thank God, everything seems to have happened the way it was meant to happen. And I'm just so grateful for the way it's all turned out. So Leo, in 2018, I talked to Paul and he said, I love Leo. and I loved him then which is around the Boogie Nights time because I was obsessed with Gilbert Grape and he said this boy's life was a fucking amazing film and he said Leo and I will work together one day and it will be the right thing it will happen so when was that 18 okay the phantom thread time yeah so you were thinking about it yeah what what was it that you connected with with Paul's work and why did you want to ultimately work together his body of work you know his unique storytelling you're you're transported into world i'm i remember watching the master and i it's very rare where you get that moment of how do you put it detachment from feeling like you're in a theater where you feel immersed and i don't know what it was but i felt like i was in that time period and i felt that these people were real and and you know even with a film like this, you know, the fact that Paul's been working on this for 20 years, you say, right?

1:50:3620 years. There's so much intricate thought put in and layering to what is essentially, you know, a sort of action film about a father trying to get back to his daughter. But there's, I compared it to Star Wars in a lot of ways. You have the bounty hunters, you have Princess leo you have yoda you have you know darth vader but it's saturated and real world you know the world that we live in right now it's holding a mirror up to society and it's in the fact that he wrote this started thinking about this 20 years ago the fact that it's so incredibly topical to the world and the struggles that we're dealing with now and in society the fact that no one seems to be listening to one another that you know there's extremism on both sides and the conviction that all these characters believe in their ideology that they feel that they're right and i know i i'm i'm just really if to me you can see films that have a lot of thought put into them you know that have had ideas put in that you know maybe he's taken out and replaced with something else and the mal that what was great about working with him on this one was the malleability that he had for new ideas too i think you know regina talks about a moment where you're you know action sequence tbd to be determined or something like that there were kind of little moments in the movie with sensei and i where we kind of didn't know what direction to go and then you get the actor in you know we we waited three months to get benicio because we knew he was our sensei carlos he was our man and then he came in yeah fully cooked with his idea of who sensei was that he would have connections in the corrections facility and at the hospital and that he's got a sort of Harriet Tubman immigration system going down in his basement.

1:52:25And we go, okay, let's follow that direction. It's highly ironic that 20 years of writing and we basically, Benicio came in and wrote that in a day with us. It was like, huh, okay. So a day and a dinner, we just wrote the best sequence in the movie. Let that be a lesson to you. Don't write for 20 years. Thinking about something for 20 years is okay. I guess that's what gets you there. But it's true. Benicio, that sequence was so sort of stagnant before he kind of came in and brought all of this energy. It was much more isolated to that apartment. I can't even remember what it was exactly at this point.

1:53:02It grew so quickly and beautifully. A whole world sort of just sprouted out of nowhere. And then the fact that we're in these communities working with real people, real shop owners, was like okay this is we have a relationship here we was like yeah made on the spot it was improvisational and it was fantastic and that's flexibility was just so much fun part of it feels so real despite the tone and you know even though you started writing it 20 years ago you haven't made a contemporary movie yeah in over 20 years yeah the novel is set in the 80s it's about the 60s. Why the decision to set it right now?

1:53:39Well, I mean, I think in a practical way, in a very, very practical way, not even an artistic concern is, Jesus, wouldn't it be nice to just walk into the street and shoot a movie and not have to think about all the things that you have to think about when you're making a period film? That is a kind of relief and I think enabled us to do the kind of things we're talking about, to be fast on our feet, to kind of you know, make up things. You can look over here, you can look over, you can do anything. But more to the point beyond a practical thing is, I suppose, as I started to get much more serious about writing this film about seven or eight years ago, I had kids that were becoming teenagers.

1:54:23I could understand in a deeper way, the relationships to teenagers, the gap that's between generations so it sort of became impossible to ignore that and the fun of making a film I think right now was when we first started talking years ago I was still tiptoeing around really embracing that it was a contemporary film I had a kind of I had I kind of safety nets and I didn't want to talk about phones and I was too nervous of all these things and between him and Chase especially him it was it was pushing it and leaning in more and more to grounding it as a contemporary film. I mean, really just having to shake hands with it and look it in the face and say, we can't get away from this.

1:55:13There's nowhere to hide. And if we hide, we're doing ourselves in the story a disservice. Yeah. There's a lot of people talking on phones, but not looking at their phones, which is a very smart choice. Leo, you haven't played a dad in very many movies and not, certainly not an older having an older child and i have a young daughter this is an amazing father-daughter movie and i think we'll hit a lot of father-daughters very heavy but i'm curious like what conversations you guys had about the father-daughter relationship and kind of getting into the mind state of somebody trying to take care of a kid at that age i have i've had played dad dads before revenant i think i played a father revolutionary road inception movies like that But yeah, this centrifuge of this entire story is this sort of makeshift father that is, you know, trying to relate to his, you know, trying to relate to his daughter.

1:56:11And that's the driving force of this entire movie. You know, when I was thinking about this character and movies to watch, we watched a lot of different movies, not based around father-daughter dynamic. But I remember watching, what did we watch? Running on Empty, which was, you know, sort of revolutionary parents running with their children. We watched Battle of Algiers. I think I remember watching a lot of Dog Day. I watched Dog Day Afternoon a lot because that urgency of the great Al Pacino in that movie with those phone calls, the franticness of trying to get your loved one back at all odds was a big influence.

1:56:56Did you watch Lion in the Winter? I watched Lion in the Winter, too. That has nothing to do with it, but it's great because it has the best acting ever in a movie with Peter O'Toole and Catherine Hepburn. And they can be so gigantic and so fun and so hammy, but that switch to an intimate thing that's razor's edge. and I'd like that as an idea. The movie is very different but in similar ways that we could go from really big and broad and all over the place to keep it real and make it really something else. Is that something you would literalize when you were preparing to make the movie or even on set?

1:57:35No, I don't think so. I think those things just sort of come because you're feeling your way through it and you kind of just try to play loose and see where it goes. And, you know, most of the times you kind of, you feel good and you go, this feels right. I will not say in six months when we're looking back at it's right, but we have to keep moving forward. And so this instinctually feels pretty good. Or from time to time you do do something and at least within 24 hours you go, maybe we should revisit that. And that can happen too from time to time. I was curious about something related to that.

1:58:11This is a really big movie for you in terms of scale. You've worked on a ton of movies, Leo, with huge scale. When you're working on something that is this big, that this has this many moving parts, do you know when you're getting it? Do you know when you're getting what you want because you have to have so many various moving pieces going as opposed to just two people sitting in a room talking to each other? Yeah, I do. As big as it is, it was still the same 15, 20 dopes around the camera that it always is. It was all just us making the movie, you know? I mean, things would grow, we would have bigger days, but we started the film in that little cabin in the woods, shooting three days.

1:58:50There was only room for four of us, and Chase and Leo, so you know, and we would watch dailies every night and sit and, you know, have our dinner and look back and say, okay, this is feeling good, and keep progressing. So yeah, you do, you do. The scale kind of becomes inconsequential, you know. If we were prepared, we knew what the goal was. So you're just really focused on getting what you need, looking for inspiration and keeping your shit together, really. Leo, it feels like Killers of the Flower Moon, this film, Don't Look Up, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There's a strain of comedic drama that you seem really interested in in the last few movies and this kind of nervy, very funny, but kind of anxiety riddled figures like does anything account for that what is drawing you to these these kinds of guys uh what's drawing me to them to be honest it's it's not a it's not a conscious choice it's it's it's reading the material working with the director and trying to do this this story justice and bring a uh my hope my hope is the comedy comes from real life circumstances in real life, you know, uh, scenarios that, that, that, that make it funny.

2:00:12Otherwise it's never funny to me. Yeah. Once a set up gag or a set up joke, I mean, just, just the, the opening of Bob's character. It's kind of like, I love the fact that, you know, it's like you're 15 years, 16 years later, his past comes back to haunt him. What would Bob be doing he'd be smoking pot you know on his couch watching battle of algiers for the 50th time and that would be and he would have an argument with his daughter about the fact that he got drunk last night you're you're right and you know there's the setup for that is and then of course you know the gag of my character not knowing the password is a brilliant choice you know you think you're going to be with this sort of traditional hero who's going to use all his revolutionary techniques from his past to save his daughter in a profound way.

2:01:02And he can't get, he can't get past over the first hurdle of the race, you know, tripped on the first hurdle. And then he continues to trip on every single hurdle all the way around the track. And then we kept on doing that too, where there are moments in the original screenplay where like, okay, maybe he does this. And Paul was like, nah, no, I think that the mirror for our protagonist, our flawed protagonist, I think the mere act of just propelling himself forward against all odds is his heroism. And through that is a lot of hilarious moments, you know, a lot of comedy comes naturally from that, from those, from that situation.

2:01:42I think to that, I would say, you know, we had an idea, it didn't exactly kind of emerge like this, but it was good for us to go into it thinking about it this way, is that what if like the sixth most important member of the French 75, you know, like, and ended up being now suddenly the last man standing and the guy with the baby, you know, like of all these people who you'd really rather see, you know, in an action position, guy number six, choice number six, who was really kind of just involved in shooting stuff off. And maybe that was his job is the last man standing and also has the child.

2:02:20It's like, what happens then? And that was good for us to just have in our body and our mind approaching the story. He's not like a full-blown buffoon, though. I love the Mexican hairless moment where it's like, this man's a hero. No, no, no. That's exactly right. If you go full buffoon, then that's preposterous. I mean, he's sharp enough, but he's also stuck. and what he's done to himself in 16 years to disengage has definitely slowed his game down. I want to ask you guys about that because I do think one thing that I really connected with that I think a lot of people who are maybe 40 plus will is you're very young, you're hopeful, you're idealistic, you're maybe even radical, get older, you turn a little inward, maybe don't turn conservative, but you become just a little bit more into your own stuff.

2:03:10And Bob is not conservative at all, but he's kind of stuck where he was in some ways. And I'm curious about like that dynamic and developing that dynamic and even talking to someone like Chase, who has, you know, a much more limited life experience. And I would assume is maybe a little bit more idealistic and kind of making sense together out of that in the movie. You're touching on one of the main things that we always talked about that and the fatherhood aspect um we just mentioned it but you know there there's a there was a up north they have a type of character that is bob and they refer to them as hipnecks which is half a hippie and half a redneck and and generally probably when they were younger they were miles apart in terms of what their ideology is but they become closer and closer and end up being the same exact person and middle age and they share the common theme of just leave me alone i do not care you know and so um yeah i mean it's a natural and it's it i don't know you put miles on you and you slow down and it's a funny one And probably his inability to relate to his daughter's generation whatsoever.

2:04:24You know, the fact that she's off into the stratosphere with, you know, her own ideology and he's trying to pull her into his. But at the same time, just the setup that we have of this guy in a log cabin that can't make a phone call. I almost thought it would have been interesting if he put in the laser disc of Battle of Belgears. He's not online. There's probably no connection to the internet, you know, and here he is trying to exist in today's society. It's just a brilliant setup in that regard. I think we're finding them two at a time. I bet, I bet, and you can kind of see in the backyard the remnants of all like little toy slides and things like that that are now overgrown and everything else.

2:05:10I would imagine that their life from like zero to 10 was absolutely idyllic. She knew nothing else except this doting dad, and he's going to take her, and maybe we go to the market, and we come right back, and he's taught me all this stuff about how to survive. But as you start to emerge in young adulthood, you start to – you are forming your own path. And a friend of mine recently took his daughter off to college, and his heart was broken, and he said, if I had known she was going to break my heart, I wouldn't have gotten this close to her. You know, it's the sort of premise that the best thing that he can do is, is let go, you know, is let her go out that door.

2:05:53No matter what danger she might end up facing, that's his job. One other thing I really loved about the movie is it's set up to be a showdown movie. You, you, you incurred Darth Vader, you know, this idea of good versus evil, but you actually only get, I think just the one scene with Sean. Yeah. And I was wondering if you guys could talk about the decision to kind of keep them apart, ultimately, to make this not high noon and something a little bit different. Well, I think that was Paul. I mean, I remember us talking about the varied possibilities, not only for the ending, but the midsection of my character.

2:06:32And I remember him just saying, look, I just don't know how to do that. I don't know if I want to do that with this character. And I think to him, I'm not speaking for him, but it would have robbed that moment, and not to give away the ending, but of the sheer relentlessness that Bob has for just being there and being present and being that father figure. That becomes his heroism at the end of the day. I mean, there was a lot of traditional tropes that we could have done a little, but it took a lot of discussion. And I think I had to let go of a lot of those ideas as well into the process. And it kind of naturally occurred.

2:07:11And I don't think we even decided until we're right there on that road in Borrego Springs with her, with the three cars sort of following each other. And he said, no, no, this needs to be passed on to the next generation. I remember him saying that the trauma of what, you know, Bob is now she's now paying the price for Bob's ideology right here. Boom. And it's the next generation dealing with all of this right here. And what happened and then not to give away the ending again, but the idea of her being in complete shock, you know, the who is this man? And she's been put through such extreme traumatic events.

2:07:55And I thought it was a brilliant choice at the end of the day. Yeah. And it was sort of discovered. You're standing there and you're just faced with logic. You just ask yourself. He's like, let's get back to common sense. Forget the moviness of this. What is common sense? What is she asking herself? We know what he's after. He's after just protecting her. That's quite simple. you know but now it was her time you know after all this time of being thrown around in the movie and handcuffed she's got a blossom and she's got a few fucking questions of her own to ask around here you know and that's to his point before i think i what took so long over 20 years is is trying all of these versions maybe more traditional things that it felt like you were supposed to do wait a minute you got a bad guy and you got a hero and i wrote all these things and all these things.

2:08:48And there's a certain point you can really, you can really try to do things that you think you're supposed to do. And they're terrific exercises because inevitably they will let you know like, Hey, it worked or that characters aren't going that way. That's not what they want to do. You know, and you just have to keep listening to the story or the people in the story. And the more you listen to them, the more they'll speak back to you and help guide the story. hopefully they're guiding it in an energetic and and kind of action-oriented way that has momentum and is interesting to an audience hopefully they don't want to like be boring well it's so it's just interesting to hear you talk about finding it so so much creatively in the making of it especially because shooting in on VistaVision and I know that those cameras are a little bit complicated to use and it's a little different from just grabbing a digital camera yeah and but But on the other hand, like something is clearly happening in Los Angeles, I think in other cities where there is a film fandom that really wants on film large format.

2:09:53I want to be with 500 people in a room community thing that is going on. And it's like Nolan's movies and Quentin's movies and the repertory scene here is like very crazy now and exciting. And I'm wondering, like you guys have participated in that. You always shoot on film. Most of your movies are on film, too. yeah like what do you think that is about why are people especially young people into it i think even young people are oversaturated with with the sheer amount of imagery and and fast-paced content i mean uh i mean look at the amount of production that's out there on netflix alone and no discredit to any of it there's some brilliant stuff out there but that i don't want to say lo-fi experience but that theatrical communal experience of seeing something on that's got to be equally as vital.

2:10:44And I hope to me, it's exciting because, you know, otherwise there's a huge gap in the art form, you know, that all these things have to sort of coexist together. And this movie was, it's a truly original idea. You know, it's, it's a big budget film and it's meant to have that communal theatrical experience. This movie is specifically made for that. You know, more than anything else I can imagine, it is made for the theatrical experience. Benicio and I were talking about it the other day. You know, I love uncomfortable moments in movies. That's what I love the most when I'm sitting there with the character, feeling an embarrassment for them or not knowing whether to laugh or cry or, and that communal experience almost allows you to connect with the character.

2:11:35Oh, that guy feels that way about this moment. Oh, that's, oh, that's actually funny. It, it, it, it's, uh, it's something that can only happen when, you know, a bunch of homo sapiens are together in a room, you know, feeling the energy of one another. And I think everything that Paul did to make this movie was, was for that singular experience. It is one of those movies that's not meant to be seen on a tablet or a small screen. It's meant to be in the theaters, to be felt and witnessed and experienced in the theater. You said it best. I'm just going to fuck it up. That was exactly right. I mean, no, that's why you go through the pain in the ass of working with these cameras and doing all these kinds of things because it's absolutely worth it.

2:12:24Back to your point about, you know, finding things with a VistaVision camera. Yeah, they're kind of counterintuitive. You know, you kind of, you would think you should, but because I don't want it to seem that we were out there just kind of making it up as we went along. You know, this is the product of a schedule that, you know, if you have four days to do something, you can do it as it's written the first day. Look at it back. You come back the next day. You refine it. You better get it right by the third day. And you've got that fourth one to really bring it home, you know, especially for key and important, valuable scenes that, you know, are essential.

2:13:00and that there might be something more to. That's what a great producer and assistant director brings you. That's what we had. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing that they have seen. What have you guys seen recently that you've really dug? It's a film that I've seen before. Is that okay? That's okay. Vertigo. Why did you watch it? I'm working on a film where that's a reference point. marty had a conversation with marty about it and you know anytime you get to sit and talk with him about movies is a religious experience but when he talks about a movie that he's still trying to figure out it's even it's an even more he's like you know each decade that movie means something different yeah is she a ghost is she not a ghost is she there is he a ghost what is it right and you know, listening and to talk to him.

2:13:57So I rewatched it and I knew the moments, the exact moments in the Redwoods that he was talking about. I was like, that's the moment that Marty felt that. Right. So, yeah, there's something that we're working on that has been a reference for that. That's a Vista vision movie too. Yeah, it is. You know, and we actually, funny enough, it was, did we have one of our cameras from Vertigo or was it North by Northwest? Or was it? Probably not. I don't know. There was from that whole other. There was, but we shot a whole sequence that we cut out of the movie in the beginning of the movie. And we were in San Juan Bautista where they shot a lot of vertigo.

2:14:35Very famous. Where they shot vertigo there. No, the church is there. There's the carriage that she goes and walks by that's there. And there's an upper landing that they used for the courtroom scene. So we took our little vision camera there and we put her up there and we stood there and we went, hmm there was a camera here 60 something years ago shooting vertigo or standing in the same room we ended up cutting the whole sequence out but nevertheless we really felt like fucking hell this is exciting um i saw for the first time a movie called tom horn which is with steve mcqueen i'd seen i'd saw i guess there's a book about him later in his life i think it was his second to last movie and i said god i never even heard of this i never even seen it it's terrific terrific film um about tom horn who was a real uh pinkerton detective but kind of uh protected a cattle rust that he kind of employed by by rich cattle barons in wyoming so it kind of touches near where heaven's gate goes and stuff it's a really interesting film beautifully shot by john alonso and recent enough that there was a gaffer named Jim Planette who I worked with many years ago.

2:15:51I got to text him and said, I just saw Tom Horne. He was like, we had a great time making that movie. It was exciting to see Steve McQueen in the movie. It was his second to last movie, so I think he was already ill, but he gives a great performance and Richard Fonsworth is in it. It's a terrific film. Great recommendations. Leo Paul, thank you so much for chatting. Thank you, Sean. Thank you.

2:16:15Okay, thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson. Yes, thank you, Leo and Paul. A normal thank you. Thanks, guys. I'll see you later. Thanks, guys. Catch up with you at your house. Thanks to you both for your contributions. This is a very special movie. We hope the listeners of this show go to see it. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Don't forget, bigpickmailbag at gmail.com if you'd like to send us some questions about the film, though we did talk about a lot of it here. See you in New York. Yeah. Next week we head to New York for a live show at the 92nd Street Y where, what are we doing?

2:16:49Don't spoil what we're doing. Okay, we're not allowed to announce it. I'd like to show up and be like, tonight we are drafting Wizards. Yeah, tonight we're drafting Wizards. Former members of the Washington Wizards. The Gilbert Arenas movie draft. I'm actually quite prepared for that. You'll be there. I will be there. Thank goodness. Yeah, on stage, not just in the audience. Of course, yeah. And there will be other special guests. I'm willing to say that. So that'll be on October 4th. In between then, we have nine episodes to record. So we'll do our best. Are you serious? No, we have three. Oh, I was like, I mean, that would be possible.

2:17:21I was like, oh shit, I gotta check the spreadsheet. And hopefully everyone listens to all of them. We'll see you then.

2:17:40Thank you.