One Mailbag After Another, and the Updated PTA Movie Rankings

20:14Yes, when it went out. I need to know what you think would be the worst place in the film for the power to go out. I mean, like the most obvious answer is obviously during the car chase. Yeah, the car chase. That would be bad. That would be bad.

20:28Sean Fennessey:You've gone through two hours and 35 minutes of movie. And then working back from that, I think like this scene between Willa and... Lockjaw? No, no, no, no, no. I was like the standoff with all of the, you know, the crazy Jan 6 guys. And... Like when she's apprehended? Yes. Okay. And when she's arrested and like before, like when Avanti is coming, you know, and like what's going to happen there. Okay. That's a pretty high tension thing. You wouldn't want it to cut out in the middle. That would be unfortunate. I think it would be a real bummer if it cut out like right during the bank robbery to chase to like, you know, of perfidia in that prologue where because there is so much energy.

21:18I think it would be tough if it cut out shortly after that during that convenience store sequence like right before the wig gets blown off Alonheim's wig which is a shot I have been thinking about a lot the wig flying and

21:38Sean Fennessey:very good fellas as it's been pointed out that's a real like oh shit the consequences have hit we all like Marnie you know it's not a crime I love him love the guy love the guy what else those are some great calls yeah all those are great I mean I think that there's also just some comic moments like actually so I'll tell you the story of my Friday screening because this is relevant to a question later on so let's can we just jump to the question about format yeah a lot of people ask this question which is just basically what is your favorite format to watch the film in okay so on Friday morning as I said I went to the Vista I had already seen the movie three times the three ways in which I had seen it was I saw it with you and 70 at the DGA I saw it at the premiere on IMAX at the Chinese.

22:20Sean Fennessey:And then I saw it again with you at Universal City Walk in 70 millimeter IMAX. Those are three of the six ways you can see it. The way that Paul Thomas Anderson says you should see it is in VistaVision. Sure. There's three screens in America that are available to the public in which you can see it in VistaVision. There's a fourth on the Warner Brothers lot not open to the public. We do happen to have one of them in Los Angeles. the Vista ran the film on Thursday night and I read that it broke yeah and they were able to get it back going and there was some delay but I shared this with my wife because I saw it with my wife on Friday Friday was our wedding anniversary we had a whole day together it was great oh that's nice we saw the movie in the morning we had lunch we picked up our daughter had an afternoon with our daughter 45 years we had a huge day it was 16 years married that's really good it was nice so and you know she likes Paul Thomas Anderson she loves Leo we saw the movie so but right before the movie starts I was like doing the you know annoying like guy explaining something to a hot girl meme where I'm like explaining to her like the formats and stuff and you know in a self-aware way sure yeah and but I was like here's the thing hun like this is kind of a risk to be going to this movie theater because this this could break yeah and lo and behold 40 minutes into the movie it broke I don't know if it was it said that the film rolled out on itself That was what they communicated to us and that there was no way to fix it.

23:46Sean Fennessey:Now, I know that the film played later that evening at that same theater and it didn't break. And Paul Thomas Anderson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Chase Infinity were at that screening. They introduced the movie at the Vista on Friday night. But for us, the film broke 40 minutes in. They tried to fix it. We had a 10-minute break. They did fix it. It ran for two seconds, then broke again. So then they switched to DCP. I didn't even know they had a DCP projector at the Vista because Quentin Tarantino movie theaters are always on film. That's the whole idea. But they did, thankfully, so that everyone could at least see the rest of the movie.

24:16Sean Fennessey:There was, I cannot overstate the difference between the Vista Vision and the DCP. To actually have in real time see the depth and beauty and the screen size that they have formatted in the Vista for how the movie is supposed to look. And having seen it in other formats, the first 40 minutes, it was easily the best version of it that I saw. So kind of heartbreaking to then have to go to the DCP. You know, Eileen, she doesn't care as much about these kinds of things. It's not as meaningful to a normal moviegoer, but I actually now feel like I kind of need to go again and see it in that format. Yeah.

24:52Everything that you're saying is, you know, valuable in your experience. There are four theaters in the world that can play VistaVision. Four theaters in the world.

25:01Sean Fennessey:Okay, so what would you recommend? Listen, I think my best answer is the movie theater that you like the most. like you not not you Sean though that can be your answer too but like if you are deciding like a lot of movie theaters go see a movie theater but go see one that you like and with respect to Paul Thomas Anderson who made the film like my favorite movie definitely of the last five years and is a genius like we are making like the great the enemy of the good a little bit here like go to a movie theater, go see it, see it as big as possible. But like, let's all come, you know, like, because most people are not going to go see it four times.

25:44Most people are not going to be there at 930 on a Friday morning waiting for the projector to break. And like, I, you know, I'm with you as I saw it on 70 millimeter at the DGA. And then I saw it in IMAX 70 millimeter at the CityWalk. I vastly preferred the DGA experience. Yeah. Cause like respectfully, I don't want to go to the fucking CityWalk. Like, you know, like, it's like, I don't want to go to a music park. Yeah. But people have different experiences. Um, that's funny.

26:11Sean Fennessey:I find it actually easier to get to CityWalk than I do to DGA, but that's kind of neither here nor there. I also was like a princess and thank you once again to my friends who like reserved me a seat at the DGA. I had like the prime seat and like a beautiful theater designed by directors. So it's not like, you know, I was watching it in my basement. Your point about our privilege is well taken. I mean, one of the reasons why I live here is so that I can have these experiences and I don't mind saying that. I agree with you that I think if you can see it in a large format, it's better. I think it's better in a large format.

26:43Sean Fennessey:Totally. And I think if you can see it on film, it is better. It's like seeing, you know, the actual painting versus the print. Like we do, these things do matter, but also just like see it in a movie. Go check it out. Yeah. Like make an experience of it, but make sure you enjoy yourself. Next question. About 100 of the 500 emails were, what are the updated PTA rankings? All right. I want to hear yours as well. Yeah. I've been thinking about it. I don't feel good about this right now. I don't agree with your list. Well, of course. I mean, it's a list. That's the whole point. I don't... A lot of movies are very tightly packed together.

27:25Sean Fennessey:And 7, 8, 9 are all... like four and a half, five star movies to me. And that's weird for a movie to be at number nine on the list and be a beloved movie for me. And I'll tell you some of what I'm about to share is informed entirely by the movies I've seen most recently. Okay. Except for number one. But we'll get there in a second. Okay. Ten is Heart 8. Mm-hmm. I think Heart 8 is very good. Yeah. I think it is a really impressive debut by a 24-year-old. It still feels like a movie made by a 24-year-old. Number nine is Punch Drunk Love. I don't know why it's number nine. It just is number nine right now.

28:01Sean Fennessey:It just is number nine right now. I think number nine feels like something that like, he like, like an exorcism of something. Like him, like trying to reject what had come before. Like he like, I don't want to say he vomited it up because that would make it sound gross. It's beautiful, but it feels like a reaction. Yeah. To Magnolia and Boogie Nights. Number eight is Licorice Pizza. I have not rewatched Licorice Pizza since we did a number of pods about it back in 22, 23 number 7's Inherent Vice yeah I could make a case for this as high as 4 right now I know you don't like this movie okay I'm keeping it at 7 I've kept it fairly low alright I do I'm now much more on its I'm as fully on its wavelength of just go with it and stop trying to understand it as I ever have been number 6 is Boogie Nights this is the lowest Boogie Nights has ever been on my list by far it's I'm mad for you.

28:57And the last time we did this exercise, you ranked it like much lower than you should. And I remember telling Bill Simmons.

29:03Sean Fennessey:I think I put a three last time. You did. But I remember then being the person to tell Bill Simmons how lowly you had ranked Boogie Nights. And that was at three. And he was appalled. Well, you know, I work for Bill, but I don't work entirely in service of Bill. I have my own tastes. And Boogie Nights is amazing. It is a five-star classic that changed my life. I had multiple dads at the kids' birthday party that we went to together this weekend ask me about my first time seeing Boogie Nights. It is such a totemic movie for dads of my age. Well, I was literally crawling on the floor taking plastic broccoli out of my child's mouth.

29:40Sean Fennessey:It gets better, Amanda, you know? Just wait till those kids grow up. I didn't have to say one word to my daughter for four hours. It was a great birthday party. She played with her friends and had a great time. Number five is Magnolia. I've had a big turnaround on this movie. I rewatched it and I love it. I love it. I've completely flipped. It's still only a number five. Number four is Phantom Thread. Yeah. Which I think is a great film about marriage. It is. Number three is One Battle After Another. Yeah. It's ridiculous to know where this belongs right now. Okay. It's just too soon. Yeah. I obviously am over the moon for the movie.

30:18Sean Fennessey:I don't think the movie is without flaw. I do think there's some story. I think that there is some, let's just roll with it in the filmmaking that Paul talked about in the interview that you can kind of feel in some of the plotting at the end of the movie. To me, it doesn't like ruin the movie or anything, but it's interesting because there's like a lot of unanswered questions at the conclusion. Well, sure. Same in life. True enough. Number two is The Master. Number one is There Will Be Blood. Okay. There Will Be Blood and The Master have been in my top two for five years. I maybe I'm just having a hard time letting go of that.

30:56Sean Fennessey:Okay. And maybe one battle goes up. Maybe Magnolia goes up. Okay. Maybe Boogie Nights makes a roaring return when I actually revisit it. I haven't watched it since we did a four hour rewatchables about it some years ago. Okay. That's no way to treat a movie you love. Well, Boogie Nights, I could never watch it again and I will have seen it more times than most living humans. So that's not really a problem for me. Okay. And I will just say, I don't feel good about the list. Okay. I don't really agree with it. You've already said that. What is your list? Yeah, so number 10, Inherit Vice, get out of here.

31:28Number nine, it's just not for me. It's not for me. And I revisited it like in the last two weeks.

31:34Sean Fennessey:Don't be an enemy to artists. I'm not. You're asking me to rank things. Don't say get out of here to a beautiful film about lost love and reckoning with the past and what could have been. I just, listen, I will never be on that level of weed wavelength. You know? Like I just am not. I want to get closer and closer as I get older. I'm on other wavelengths. I'm so ready to be weed dad. And all I need to do is not have a job and have my child be old enough to take care of herself. Do you really think you have weed? And as soon as those two things happen, I'm going to be so stoned all the time. That's coming real soon.

32:05Sean Fennessey:12 years from now. I think that you're being pretty dishonest with your... No, you're wrong. You don't have weed dad energy. That's exactly the point. Yeah. That's where I need to go. I need to be freed from these shackles. And you think that that's where it would go? Of course it would go there. I would mellow out. I would just sit on the couch and watch movies which is all I want to do. Okay, so at 10 I have Inherent Vice. 9, Hard 8. Like a very good movie. 8, Licorice Pizza. 7, Punch Druckla. Drunk Love. Two movies that I think are magnificent. But that's just kind of how ranking things works.

32:43Great love stories. Yeah. I can roll with six Boogie Nights five Magnolia and just by the way the fact that I haven't started singing Let Me Roll It Yet is just an amazing act of willpower by me. Alright, so four, three, two, one. Four There Will Be Blood. Okay. Three The Master. Two One Battle. One Phantom Thread. Okay. There I am.

33:12Sean Fennessey:I like the differentiation. Yeah. I mean There Will Be Blood is an absolute masterpiece. I'm like I understand and we've all like, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's, it's an announcement. He did it. Yay. But, you know, there are others I connect to. You don't have to be dismissive of There Will Be Blood, one of the finest films made in our lifetime. I'm dismissive of all the other people, you know, being like, tattoo There Will Be Blood on my chest. I've never done that. Yeah, I know. If you could get a tattoo of any film, the entire poster on your back, what poster would it be? I would, I would not. It's one of the most boring answers.

33:47Sean Fennessey:Yeah, I don't, I don't know. There's a level of permanence to it that I'm not comfortable with. Okay. You know, understood. Life keeps changing. Life. Next question. Next question comes from John. As someone in my late twenties who only really got into movies during COVID one battle after another feels like the most monumental and important film I've had the chance to see in theaters as people who have been having important theater going experiences for a long time. Where does this stack up for you guys? when is the last time a movie felt as significant and important in the way that this movie does?

34:22Obviously, Infinity War and Endgame felt big. Barbenheimer was huge. But I don't remember a collective feeling of this movie is going to go down as one of the greats that one battle seems to have.

34:33Sean Fennessey:I think there's... I actually... This is a really good question. Yeah. And I appreciate John's question. And I like the way that he's framing this because there's two different things going on here. one is something that we love and talk about all the time and we were really at the height of it during Barbenheimer which is movie going events when everyone is going to see something and movies take over the culture that is very special and very rare it does not really kind of doesn't happen anymore you know Barbenheimer way more of a crazy event and then there's the other part the second half which is the this will live on in film.

35:14It was like, you know, I was there. I like, I saw the Beatles. That's what it is. That's how it feels.

35:20Sean Fennessey:That is how it feels. Um, I made a list of a bunch of things that I don't think even quite get to the center of those two converging in any way. I, I do want to say in 1994, um, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, and The Lion King all came out. Yeah. And I was 12. So, you can take, take this with a grain of salt, but all three of those things in different ways felt very big. And I think they felt very big to three different audiences, to kids, to cool young people, and to parents. But they were, there was a kind of we can have it all quality for that year. And you can disagree about whether or not Forrest Gump is boomer crap or the Lion King is overrated or whatever.

36:04Sean Fennessey:We can talk about that. But the idea of something happening that feels very big in our lifetime, there were not a lot of, examples much bigger than that to me. I'll say the one that I think is bigger, is undeniably bigger, that I know you will have some relationship to, is Titanic. When Titanic came out, that was the biggest thing in movies for years. And people were legitimate, not weird guys like me. All people were going five times. Yes. And then teenage girls were going like 45 times. It was like a Swifties energy, but applied to the movie theaters and to Leo. To a big historical drama. And certainly Leo was a huge engine of that.

36:51Sean Fennessey:And Cameron's ability to do spectacle was a huge engine of that. And then the other thing that was happening with that movie is for the 12 months in the lead up to it, no movie had ever been declared a disaster pre-release as loudly as that one. There was so much bad presser on the movie that it felt like this incredibly positive whiplash effect. and then I've to me like the next run of movies is all a product of yeah like IP franchise fandom kind of thing but these are all big things and a lot of these movies are very good well that's not there's one exception yeah there are there are a couple of them that you could perceive as exceptions but The Matrix to me because of it's kind of out of nowhereness yeah and like lack of relationship to the filmmakers I remember this like I I saw The Matrix on a very tiny screen because my high school boyfriend was like no no no you gotta you gotta know about the matrix so there you go thank you to him for doing the work yeah Lord of the Rings trilogy sure if you say so just massive event I know for movie fans I know and I keep hearing about it massive yeah Jack you were being born you were being born born in 2000 okay alright okay let me kill myself um the Dark Knight yeah so I mean that was a thing for you notably missing from this list is Inception which comes a couple years later and is its own Nolan thing.

38:08It was a huge thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

38:09Sean Fennessey:Dark Knight was a bigger movie though. Okay, that's fine. Yay, Batman. I like Batman. Avatar? Yeah, yeah. Now, none of these movies, I don't think, with maybe the, I don't remember the Matrix reception being, this is going to go down as one of the greats. I remember it being like, this is a mind-blowing, game-changing spectacle. And it is a step forward in science fiction storytelling. But I don't know if we thought, but this is like Star Wars. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't really know. The only one of these that we knew immediately, like, this movie's going to be around forever, is Titanic. Yeah. You know, it was like, this is an awards movie.

38:46Sean Fennessey:It cements two young stars. It is a filmmaker who's been innovating aggressively for 20 years, reaching the mountaintop. Like that, you know, and then, you know, Avatar is obviously Cameron doing that again. Mad Max Fury Road did have the thing to me of... you know, like witness me being one of the mottos of the movie became like something that you heard people talk about the experience of going to the movie. Yeah. I, I didn't really personally, but it, I mean, it, it, it was definitely a thing. And it also felt a little bit like that. Um, the, the Leo once upon a time in Hollywood meme of pointing at the screen of every other filmmaker, anyone who has anything to do with movies pointing being like, how did they do that?

39:31like can you believe that maybe that's part of what it was is that

39:34Sean Fennessey:George Miller's peers located that movie is so special this is a smaller scale but it was a thing Get Out oh no it was a huge thing I think the way that Get Out got into the culture which we talked about on our on our 25 for 25 episode the phrases yeah the conceptual ideas the way it kind of like confronted audiences to maybe think about some things in their life or in society that maybe they hadn't strongly considered before I think was a really powerful version of it and I do think that we was pretty much confirmed as a classic within six months. Yes. You know? And then, you know, John mentioned Avengers Endgame.

40:08Sean Fennessey:Just from a pure movie-going perspective, that was a thing. People losing their minds in movie theaters. We have not had that since where people are like filming the screen and everybody is like exploding. Like, I know you can denigrate the quality of the entertainment, but that, I can't remember people going nuts. That shit. And then Barbenheimer. Yeah. Which was real. That was... It was a thing. That was crazy. We saw multiple screenings of both of those movies, you know, with paying crowds. And it was like 300 women in pink, you know, in the room. Or 300 men in trench coats thinking about the powers of science.

40:46Sean Fennessey:Okay, next question. Have I ever gotten anything? I'm sure there's a bunch of others that I'm not thinking of. Well, I mean, those are all, those are the event movies. In terms of movies where you're like, wow, I'm watching something that will go down in cinema history. That becomes like, I have a lot of personal examples of that. There Will Be Blood was that for me. I felt my soul leave my body when I was watching that movie. I really did feel, I had a hugely spiritual experience watching the movie. I remember Inglourious Bastards as just being like, oh, like this is happening and everyone, and a little bit everyone going nuts, you know, on a smaller scale.

41:25But I wasn't in the theaters for Pulp Fiction. So that was kind of my Tarantino moment.

41:30Sean Fennessey:You're right. And that first scene in Ghostbastards, that incredible, you know, when Christoph Waltz comes to visit the family and they're under the floorboards, there was a palpable feeling in that moment. I think once upon a time in Hollywood, you know, especially when we saw it in the Arclight Dome, again, speaking of formats, you kind of felt like, oh, this is another, you know, in the Tarantino vein. I'm trying to remember, you know, No, the rest are like, Clueless was a huge one for me. Like, Lady Bird was a huge one for me.

42:05But, you know, those weren't on the scale of Oppenheimer.

42:09Sean Fennessey:There's something about this movie is going to go down as one of the greats, as John put it, that is complicated. Because I think there's a lot of fear about overhyping or overstating. Even I can feel myself, even with one battle after another. Right. I want to sell it as hard as I can because I really believe in it and love it. And I'm like, I don't know if this will last the test of time. I hope it does. But it's a little hard to know because these things change, you know? And smaller movies that fail become huge. Exactly. And sometimes you don't know in the moment. Also, sometimes it takes a second viewing or something going down, standing as like one of the great movies, you know, of history.

42:50is 80 % the movie and then 20 % the moment, how it's alchemized with the audience. So you don't always 1 ,000 % know.

43:00Sean Fennessey:I think that's spot on. Next time we hear one, we'll wave the flag and say this is one of the greats of all time. Okay, what's the next question? This is a good one. Well, I was also going to say, I think for people my age, Gen Z, this is like the first one. I think you guys mentioned it. As grownups? Yeah. As an adult, like the last time I think we experienced this was Parasite. That happened when I was a freshman in film school. So that also was very special. Like at Ithaca, we got an early screening and it was like, holy shit, what just happened? But then COVID happened and, you know, movies got held up.

43:37So this feels like the first one for like this age range.

43:39Sean Fennessey:You didn't feel that for Oppenheimer? I felt like a lot of young people were really into it. I did. And that's totally true. but as of right now I think Oppenheimer had way more detractors right out the gate than this movie did. Good point. There were people zagging from the jump saying here's why I didn't really get with this or that whereas this one it's like it really feels close to universal. And by people you mean me. I know lots I know plenty of people Danny Hunter is not like Oppenheimer. But it was also a billion dollar movie that steamrolled to the Oscars. Yeah but that's the difference from an event and yeah.

44:10Sean Fennessey:And there's also something special about it being this movie because there were I mean, six months ago, we were all very nervous, you know, like hearing bad things, what's going on. It's not playing at festivals, et cetera, et cetera. And then for it to come out, kind of similar to what you were saying about Titanic, right? Like there was a little bit of anxiety and nervousness around him for it to be so great is a relief. It's really interesting to think about that this is for that generation to put their arms around this movie and love it. I think that would be great. Okay, what's next, Jack?

44:39So if the PTA rankings were asked 100 times, this question in some form or another was asked 250 times. A lot of people are talking about Eddington with this movie coming out. Well, sure. People want to know, how are they similar? How are they different? Is it a trite comparison? Is this marking a trend going forward of politically charged mainstream movies? It's a very open-ended question, but did you guys think about Eddington at all following this movie?

45:08Sean Fennessey:Definitively? Yes. I'm sure you have a lot of thoughts about this. I do as well. When Eddington came out, when I shared our episode, I tweeted something that said, this is the movie of the year and maybe the movie of the decade. And I was very specific about how I phrased that, what I meant by that. And this is a movie that I really, really, really, really like and think is incredibly successful in what it's trying to accomplish. But I was like, this is a movie that captures this time in a way that I've not seen very many movies even attempt to. And one of the ways in which it captures the time, Eddington, is that it is a movie about being on your phone.

45:49Sean Fennessey:And the way that being on your phone can be diverting, but also paranoia-inducing. It can cause you to misunderstand other people, to feel a real loss of connection. It can cause you to feel rage about things that maybe don't even really matter all that much. it can dupe you into thinking things are true that are not true and that life lived through screens is a very dangerous experience one battle after another you said is the movie of the year and probably the movie of the decade on our episode last week and I think in part what you were saying was that it is the maybe the best it may be the best made and the most successful but also that it might be the thing that I was talking about with Eddington yeah the difference between the two films is that Eddington is a movie about being on your phone and One Battle After Another is about not being on your phone.

46:43Sean Fennessey:And One Battle After Another is about being in the world. And the talking point that me and you and Chris have brought up many times with PTA is why won't he make a movie set in modern times? Why are these filmmakers afraid of this? And I know at least with Paul that he views the idea of people just looking at their phones as very uncinematic. Some filmmakers have been able to subvert that. I think what Park Chan-wook has now done in two consecutive movies with phones is pretty remarkable and does show a path for making that feel more narratively intriguing. But this movie, if you think about this movie as a relationship to phones, it's fascinating because Bob is using a 1G phone that he's desperate to try to charge and he can barely charge it.

47:25Sean Fennessey:He talks on pay phones. Willa has a cell phone and it gets thrown out the van and smashed on the ground. Yeah. And then Bob at the end of the movie when he has essentially like kind of given up. He's like on the back end of his life and he's no longer a progressive forward-thinking activist person is trying to figure out how to take selfies and figure out his flash. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the movie's relationship to what phones are and what they do is really interesting because it's kind of, it feels more like a sequel to Eddington in that way. It's sort of like in the post-mortem of Eddington, the chaos of that movie, if you put your phone down and go be in the world, maybe you can make some change as opposed to just panicking about a world that won't change.

48:10Right. Well, the very, very last shot of Eddington, though, is the landscape of the AI center that is being built to help your phone further ruin your life. So it's inescapable. Which to me is the... Yeah, they have a ton in common. And they're set in the present day about kind of impotent guys trying to figure out what to do with themselves as the world completely falls apart for, you know, political capitalistic reasons. In the American West. Yeah, in the American West. So, yes, they are. Like, I definitely thought about them. Eddington has no hope. and I think one battle after another, it wants to have hope, and it believes it wants to send the Willa character out into the world as the next generation, or at least acknowledges that the next generation might be able to do something that we cannot.

49:15So it doesn't end on a like, we're all fucked. You're right. So to me, that is the main difference. I agree with you that whether or not you're on a phone may determine whether or not you're fucked going forward in life. Yeah. They say on YouTube. But, you know, to me, it's an energy and an outlook.

49:37Sean Fennessey:And there's something nuanced, too, I think, at the end of that moment in one battle where I think a criticism a lot of older people, you know, lodge against Gen Z is that their version of activism is very soft. and that it is very online oriented and not action based and that there's like a friction in the dynamic and you can really feel the weirdness, the kind of anxiety of him ripping a story from the 80s about the 60s and trying to plug it into the present day where if we try to conflate this too much with our modern society, then it gets a little bit dicey trying to unpack it because it's like the most that we got to in 2008, 2009 was like Occupy Wall Street.

50:18Sean Fennessey:Yeah. in terms of that rigorous activism-based lifestyle. But this movie, like, kind of presents the opposite. It says that, like, Willa is getting in her car and driving to the protest. You know, that she is, like, gets the bat signal to go be a part of something and goes out and finds it, which is not... I don't even know if hopeful is the right word there, but it is forward-thinking. It is the sense that, like, people are still fighting, which... Yeah, it's not a foregone conclusion. Right. It's not done. At the end of Eddington, the center is built. And one of the reasons why I jived with that movie so much is because I don't have a lot of hope.

50:59Yeah.

50:59Sean Fennessey:You know, I'm very cynical and am not in an activism era of my life at all. Yeah. And part of why Bob is so interesting to me is that that is a very resonant thing of just like, you know, I'd rather just get high and watch Battle of Algiers on my couch. Right. Because that's all there is left to do. Just these are very like, I think they're both very sensitive portraits of super flawed failing people and in failing times yes and Eddington is more comic and one battle after another is more sincere but one battle after another is really funny and Eddington is really devastating and so they're they're almost like mirror images of each other in some ways I totally understand people drawing the conclusion um I prefer one battle after another at this point but it doesn't It doesn't take away from my appreciation for Ari's movie.

51:49I am ultimately a softie. Or I would like to believe in hope. I like what PTA is offering at the end of it, even though I still think it's pretty... Eddington's hardcore. It's hardcore and I really respect it.

52:07Sean Fennessey:I do too. Okay, let's do a couple more. Okay. Olivia asked our next question. can you spend some time working to suss out what makes a PTA movie a PTA movie? To me, PTA being the same guy who did One Battle After Another and Punch Drunk Love is wild. What are your thoughts? Can you define PTA's films in terms of style, tone, or interest? I mean, One Battle After Another and Punch Drunk Love are about two guys with an inability to connect socially with the world who are also thinking outside the box of your traditional capitalist structures in order to try to feel something. So there's, you know, there's a lot of similarity there.

53:00Sean Fennessey:I think all of his protagonists, there's a through line through all of his protagonists for sure from Doc Sportello to Dirk Bigler they all have a kind of sensibility that I talked about on the last episode where they're all really horny and they're all creative but socially obtuse and they're good at solving things but they do it in a bumbling way you know like they're all it's there's a man on the other line of the telephone screaming at them yes there's a Mattress Man on the other end. So that's one way you can kind of spot one of his movies is there's a consistent characteristic in the protagonists.

53:38But I think there are a few other things.

53:41Sean Fennessey:I think there is a sensibility about sexuality that he's very unashamed of. I think it's really just normal and common and interesting and funny to men. Yeah. Maybe to women too. But for me, speaking as a man, to men. and this movie's got like five sex jokes in it and all of his movies have five sex jokes they do yeah that's like that's his sense of humor and it could be seen as juvenile or it could be seen as natural naturally occurring and there is like a sense of perversion you know there's a guy who watched like a lot of pornography as a young person you know like and if you process that through the movies and the kinds of stories and the kinds of characters that he writes there's a person who cast porn stars in movies it's a person who you know is calling a nunnery the sisters of the brave beaver.

54:29Sean Fennessey:You know, like he's he's like a horndog pervert. That's like one of his things. I'm sure he's a wonderful dad and he's like a lovely guy. I've only always had great interactions with him. I really like him personally just in conversations with dad. But he's in his shit. It's a part of humanity. Yeah, he's in his stuff. And like that's a thing that helps to make someone seem singular. You know, like there are jokes in this movie that would not appear in any other movie like this. And we can talk about the collision of satire and real world stakes. We can talk about the male psyche and, you know, as Adam Naiman will share with us shortly, his relationship to female characters.

55:06Sean Fennessey:I think Adam's insights into that are really, really good. There are a lot of things that you can look at. I wonder if Olivia, I wonder how old she is because I do think you can... You don't need to age shame her. I'm not age shaming her. I'm just going to cite that if you have been paying attention since the movies have started being released, you can see progressions and recurrences that feel very connected. Yeah. That's true of most filmmakers. I mean, I think there's obviously a difference in scale and in these movies and just in, I mean, this is a big budget action movie, you know, and Punch Rock Love mostly happens like in a warehouse in the Valley.

55:43Sean Fennessey:Yes. So, you know. And Hawaii. You're right. You're right. And Hawaii. Thank you. Yes. With the airline miles. But so I think scale and,

55:56a number of characters, even though Punch Drunk Love does have, you know, a tremendous number of women who also have opinions and are calling him on the phone to yell at him.

56:06Sean Fennessey:Well, also the John Bryan score in that film, which is simultaneously very big and lush and then very kind of like nervy and weird and plinking is very similar to One Battle. And like the song that plays between the two, the receivers, oh yeah the melody yeah yeah very much very much sounds like that so yeah I can see they have something they definitely have some things in common it's a person working at totally different scale as you said okay I mean there's more we could probably talk about in terms of his style but I'm not an expert in how he moves the camera or the color palette that he explores they're all worth seeing what's next Jack?

56:48Sean Fennessey:next question comes from Peter I couldn't help but think on my drive home how much one battle after another is similar to Star Wars. The revolutionaries, Jedi, get betrayed by the chosen one, fall apart, and all have to go into hiding. Years later, the child gets told a lie about their dead parent. Please help me find more one battle after another connections. Well, Leonardo DiCaprio himself made this observation in my conversation with him. He was like, I keep thinking about Star Wars when I think about this movie, which is great. We were talking about Last Jedi for some reason and training and then it came up for one battle after another and how grouchy the Mark Hamill is in Last Jedi but it's hard to be an aging revolutionary you know it's true yeah I think Bob does it with more grace personally a lot of people have been asking for the syllabus for this movie I'm a little like betwixt and between on syllabuses because I like doing them people seem to like them but I feel like they give away too much of the movie usually okay and also now all the filmmakers are like I have a syllabus yeah and I'm like have the marketing people been just watching the syllabus and then telling the filmmakers to just do it themselves?

57:53You didn't invent the concept of a syllabus. I'm not saying I invented it.

57:56Sean Fennessey:I mean, The Ringer's been doing syllabuses for a long time since before I started it. But they're very specific. Filmmaking, like watch these movies. So you have here, we have three things. We have three sections. This is where you really, you know, logged into Blogspot. But the first you have here are Paul's picks. So are these all movies that he cited? Well, Paul and Leo, in part in my conversation, cited these movies. So when we talked, Leo cited Star Wars. and then later he talked about Dog Day Afternoon because of all the phone conversations that Al Pacino has in that movie and so phone acting being a thing to think about which I thought was a great observation Paul pointed out The Lion in Winter and he was like there's no tangible connection from my story of one battle after another to The Lion in Winter but he said it's the best acting you will ever see in your life and so he was like I asked Leo to look at that true great and then the five that they cited ahead of the release that was part of the official syllabus which we got into a little bit in the talk with Searchers Running on Empty Battle of Algiers which we see in the film French Connection with Car Chases and Midnight Run with the comic sensibility I think specifically between Sergio and Bob.

59:04Sean Fennessey:So there's callbacks in the movie. Sure. You pointed out Casablanca of course a very important one with the French 75 and with Profidia. Yes. Set It Off is literally something that Jungle Pussy says when they're robbing the bank. She's like this is some set it off shit. Great moment. Terminator 2 Judgment Day. The shot of Sean Penn rising. And then a lot of people have pointed back to that 1997 interview with Charlie Rose that Paul Thomas Anderson gave where he told his story about film class, film school. Right. And he was like, I didn't go to film school because like the first day I went into film school, I sat down.

59:36Sean Fennessey:And the first thing the professor said to us was, if you're here to write Terminator 2 Judgment Day, leave. And Paul was like, what if somebody, what if that's their favorite movie? How could you just say that to people when they come in to film class? and he turned on the idea of film school very hard in that moment and he's obviously nodding to it in this and I mentioned Star Wars and Dr. Strangelove which I also talked about in our episode and that was the first thing that Spielberg brought up when we saw him talking with PTA yes and Kubrick also you know Kubrick getting older and a little bit less in fashion but Kubrick always been a big person for PTA he's talked about it many times so here's like the work that I've done I'll try to talk about this very quickly yeah yeah yeah so I think you can really deepen the context of this movie with a bunch of movies I paired them as double features.

1:00:19Sean Fennessey:The first one is Putney Swope. Robert Downey Sr.'s satire that I think I did mention last week. And then The Three Day Pass, which is Melvin Van Peebles' first film about an interracial relationship that is a very interesting movie. The next grouping is Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which also has an American Girl needle drop. Oh, I didn't remember that. And obviously features Sean Penn. Paired with that, Chris mentioned Cheech and Chong. Up and Smoke is probably their best movie. And The Big Lebowski. undeniable homage to Big Lebowski in this movie. Number eight is for the revolutionaries. I just rewatched The Weather Underground, which is a documentary about the activist organization, the violent activists in the 1960s, which spends time interviewing them in the present day of 2002, which is a really fascinating psychological portrait of people.

1:01:05Sean Fennessey:And the fact that so many of the people portrayed in the movie are still as hard-line about their ideas as they were in 1968. And then The Company You Keep, which is the last movie directed by Robert Redford, that is modeled on some of the people from the weather underground and a man who goes into hiding and becomes a lawyer in a small town. Pretty interesting movie. Number seven, I mentioned Uptight, the Jules Dassen movie from the late 60s about black revolutionaries and then Judas and the Black Messiah. Right, recent, yeah. Really the only other movie I could think of from the last 15 years in which revolutionary acts are portrayed on screen.

1:01:39Sean Fennessey:I'm sure we're missing some. From a studio, you know, from like a big studio. Zabriskie Point and Medium Cool. I think I mentioned both of those when Chris was asking about it. Vanishing Point for the car chases. Yeah. Along with Duel. Yeah. And there is a Dodge Challenger in Vanishing Point that reminds me a lot of Avanti Q's car. Parallax if you include for the score and the conspiracies. Support the Girls, which is Andrew Bujalski's movie from about 10 years ago about a Hooter-style restaurant and the waitresses who work there. Is that with Haley Lou Richardson? Haley Richardson is a star along with two stars from One Battle After Another.

1:02:18Sean Fennessey:Regina Hall who plays the manager of the restaurant and Jungle Pussy. Shayna McHale is also one of the waitresses. That's where they met. I wonder how they came together for this movie. And then 1001 which is Tiana Taylor's movie A.V. Rockwell's movie that she stars in from a couple of years ago that I thought was just an absolute knockout. Silence of the Lambs speaking of American Girl needle drops and deep focus close-ups Jonathan Demme's movie along with Something Wild, Demi's other movie, which kind of feels like two sides of the coin. The same way that this movie has like 40 minutes of a certain style and then 40 minutes of another style.

1:02:52Sean Fennessey:And then Nashville and Shortcuts for the Altman heads. There you go. Big ensemble dramas. See, you're not weed dad. You can be weed programmer. Dad I would love. Yeah, or just dad programmer. That's really where I'm headed. That's nice for you. Yeah. Will someone buy me a movie theater? Right. No, you'll use your currency, which are discs, in order to trade it for a movie theater. Got it. Sounds great. Thank you for letting me. That's how the new economy works, you know? The barter system when our currency fails. Well, I do have some, I have some rare materials that people may want. Oh, wait, we got to do one more.

1:03:26Can we do? Yeah. Do we have time for one more? Absolutely. That was really good.

1:03:29Sean Fennessey:No, we can do two more. Let's do two more. Okay, let's do two more. All right, we'll start with James and end on the special. Okay. James has a question here. He says, what are some small moments or shots in one battle after another or any PTA movie for that matter that you can't stop thinking about. So my favorite thing in the movie is when Willa is in the yard with her dog and this Johnny Greenwood kind of bluesy, atonal guitar is playing. And then the camera shoots up and we see a hawk flying overhead outside of her and Bob's house in Bacton Cross. And then we cut back, I think, to Bob looking out the window.

1:04:11Sean Fennessey:and then we shoot back to that same image where we saw the hawk flying overhead and then we see a Black Hawk helicopter. Yeah. And that is the signal that the movie is about to go sideways, that we know that, you know, the MKU is on their way and the Lockjaw is here to blow up whatever is happening in Bacton Cross. That's just a visual filmmaking, I guess, metaphorical thing that is beautiful and interesting and a little nerdy, but that I like a lot. Yeah. I have I think mine are more the little character moments not surprising coming from me I guess but the this all the scenes in the tunnel really all of the scenes of Benicio del Toro of Sensei interacting with all of the the families who he's giving a safe place to and then moving and just little moments of like you know don't be scared or it's okay like all in Spanish Yeah, non-subtitled, by the way.

1:05:10And all of these, you know, these families and, like, what they're clutching. I mean, there is just, there is something. And the movie spends time of all of it. With, you know, the opening scenes, when the French 75 are liberating that camp, sort of, in the tunnel, that long shot through the apartment that you talked about. I think... What else?

1:05:35Sean Fennessey:I had small, like... Some people ask, somebody asked me online why we don't see. Okay, so something that I love that hit me hard the last two times I saw it was just the Steely Dan needle drop into seeing Willa performing karate. And then we get that hard close up on Benicio's face. And he says, you're not breathing. And then go back and she's synchronized to Steely Dan's dirty work. And for whatever reason, it just kind of gives me chills now. And I watch that scene. For the longest time, that song to me was Tony Soprano's song. That's the song that James Gandolfini is singing when he's driving the car in that New Jersey accent.

1:06:13Sean Fennessey:It's very funny. And now that song belongs to that moment in the movie. But there is a moment later in the movie where Lockjaw is trying to drag Willa to Avanti Q, to his car. And she hits him with a takedown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. she drops her knee and she hits him with a karate move and he goes down. This is like a soldier who goes down. And so when the person was like, why doesn't she ever use karate? I was like, she does. She uses like a real, uh, I don't know enough about karate to explain what it is that she's doing, but you can see that it is from her training. And I really liked the through line of that too.

1:06:49I thought of another one, which is the shot at the, it's a shot mirroring the beginning of the movie at the very end. When, um, Profitia is reading the letter. and they cut back to Leo and Perfidia and baby Willa or baby Charlene in bed together. And the first time you've seen it, she's crying and no one can console her and it's really tough. And then I'm going to start crying, but like the last moment is... They're happy. Yeah, it's really lovely. So not to...

1:07:24Sean Fennessey:Sorry, sorry to be parents on a podcast. Not to dispel your feelings about this, but I've had a couple of friends, including our friend Michael, ask us ask me do you think that Bob wrote the letter? Oh um which is not how I read that scene but I think there are some people who are speculating that maybe he did that it's not to free her and that's and that's beautiful in its own way I think I didn't I didn't respond to it that way just because Tiana Taylor is reading the letter and like reading the letter that is what that's how That's how I feel. And because I really did interpret the reasons for her leaving are very complex.

1:08:12And one of the things I like about this movie is that it's not just like, mom, motherhood is hard, you know? It's like everything's all entwined together. But it does, that scene is a very beautiful and it's really a montage of just the many ways in which that period of life can be difficult. and figuring out who you are as a person. And so to me, it makes sense that in that moment, you would only remember the crying. And then, you know, 20 years later, you would remember that lovely moment.

1:08:42Sean Fennessey:I don't think I said this on the episode, but Eileen and I talked about it after we saw it. The other thing I like about those scenes is that when Perfidia is talking about how she feels about like her jealousy and her frustration and her experience in postpartum, we never see her. we always see Bob standing outside the room because that almost feels like PTA saying like this is as close as I can get to understanding this which I thought was extremely powerful like you know obviously from my perspective of not being able to like you kind of can't help like there's not really anything you can do in that scenario if you're in Bob's shoes but you do feel close to that or you see Bob and the baby together and you see her watching it which is like a very you know they're writing about like I carried her for nine months and now she gets to be the person is like is is spot on like that is like really that is like known stuff whoever is contributing that so but you know the camera is communicating that distance so that stuff is really good yeah it's really good this episode is brought to you by Hulu Glenn Powell is Chad Powers hi Glenn Coming September 30th to Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, eight years after flushing his college football career down the toilet, hotshot quarterback Russ Holliday makes a comeback disguised as Chad Powers, an oddball athletic talent who walks onto the struggling South Georgia catfish, determined to once again take college football by storm.

1:10:16Sean Fennessey:Watch the hilarious new Hulu original series, Chad Powers. September 30th, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. Let's do one more question, Jack. All right, our last one comes from Sharon, and it's not PTA related. She says, I am a longtime listener of the show. At the end. That is true. Good point. I am a longtime listener of the show and proud member of the Dob Mob. I recently secured two tickets to the upcoming live show in New York City, which I am unbelievably excited about. They were supposed to be for my boyfriend and I, but we recently split up.

1:10:49Would you guys be willing to help a newly single big pic girl meet her big pic boy and And help me put the word out that I'm looking for NYC-based listeners who might want to buy my second ticket and be my date to the show. I'm 29, live in the East Village, and this is my Letterboxd Top 4. The Social Network, Phantom Thread, Lady Bird, and Clueless. And Amanda had me reach out. Yeah, so can I explain why? Of course. So I had you write back to Sharon because I wanted to get some parameters before people can submit themselves. So I asked for like, what are three movies that any prospective New York City-based date should know and love?

1:11:27And then also to understand sort of like lifestyle compatibility, I asked what time of day does Sharon listen to the big picture? Jack, please read the answers. Her three movies are The Social Network, Phantom Thread, and Marriage Story. And she listens during her morning runs. I mean, I think I might need to be Sharon's date, honestly. But I have to be on stage. So those are really good answers. Except for, I will say, I'm married to someone who listens to this podcast during runs and who listens to podcasts during runs. I do feel that it is a psychotic act. It's not something I would do. I know that there are many people to do it.

1:12:10So if you are a New York City based boy. Who is like available and not weird and wants to buy the ticket.

1:12:21Sean Fennessey:Huge caveat there. Well, I know, but I was I was a little nervous about this, but then I was like, it is like a group event. So everyone else who has tickets to the New York City show, we're all going to be responsible for each other. We're all looking out for each other and for Sharon and also for my in-laws who are going to be there. So everyone behave. But anyway, if you are New York City based single guy who is looking for a ticket to the show and is also open to the possibility, like maybe you'll have romantic sparks. Maybe you won't. Maybe you'll just make a friend. That's great, too. Email.

1:12:54What's our email again, Jack? BigPickMailbag at Gmail.com. OK, and I'm going to read them. I am not. Yeah, Sean's not. And I'm going to collab with Sharon. And we will pick someone. But then we're not going to further put you on blast. This is just like a one-time service that I'm working through. But make the emails good, you know? Make your case. I mean, the greenest of flags for the three movies she listed. I mean, I do feel like I'm being worked a little bit, but that's okay. Yeah, Sharon is a bot. To be fair, though, she in the original email put down her letterbox top four before I reached out.

1:13:32Okay. And two of the three movies she wrote back was in her top four. So I don't think she's catering. Okay. But it's good that you also need to know and love marriage story because you should understand that relationships can be complicated.

1:13:44Sean Fennessey:That's maybe a red flag. Loving marriage story. I'm just putting that out there. It's fine. What are you talking about? Will you say the email one more time? It means you get a sick high off of watching The Dissolution of Love. I don't get a sick eye. I cry. Do you get a sick eye from watching There Will Be Blood? Of course. Yeah. Because we all live under God and capitalism. We have to understand that. Yassi Salek just texted me, do you feel like it's important to see one battle in IMAX or regular is fine? Yassi. I hope she listens to this episode. You should listen to this episode, but Yassi, I'm once again answering your text on a podcast.

1:14:18I think if you can get an IMAX ticket, sure, but regular is fine as long as you like the theater. Go see it.

1:14:27Sean Fennessey:Okay, let's go to our friend Adam Naiman.

1:14:34Sean Fennessey:As Amanda just introduced him, one of the great scholars is here to talk about one of the great films, Adam Naiman, the mean pod guy. I don't suspect much meanness from you today. How are you doing, Adam? I am doing okay. The Toronto Blue Jays are in the playoffs. Okay, we didn't have to study. That was not the right place to start this conversation. It was the only bad part of the weekend for Sean. I'm just in a good mood. We don't make the playoffs that often. You know, it's a good day. Okay, I'm happy for you, I guess. Okay. Let's talk about brighter news. The brighter news is that one battle after another is out in the world.

1:15:10Sean Fennessey:And this is an unusual situation, and here's why. Nearly unanimous acclaim from critics. Not entirely unanimous, but nearly. And I think that there are some listeners of this show who know that you are a very rigorous and hard-charging critic and you are not swayed by the crowd. You follow your own light, which we all respect and admire. And you also loved this movie. So before we dig into the movie a little bit more, I'm curious what you make of the fact that, you know, we've fallen in line on one battle after another. Is this a generational masterpiece in the way that it has been discussed in your eyes?

1:15:49Sean Fennessey:I mean, I would say that people are trying to rally around something at the moment for a lot of reasons. I think film culture is trying to find things to rally around. And some of it is a little bit of that throwback mentality, a phrase you may have heard a couple of times, you know, we're so back, you know, never heard of it, never heard it. You know, there's, there's a desire to have movies that kind of make us feel the way we felt at a certain point. You don't want to say make movies great again, right? But to capture something of a past, to feel like movies are pushing against bigger cultural trends.

1:16:24So either find movies that are authentically political, that feel like sites of resistance, or try and construct them as sites of resistance. We like to think about people spending money the right way, whatever that means. We saw earlier this year, there was that sort of really stupid cycle of press around sinners, like, is this movie going to make its money back and then it more than did so that sort of gives that film a different kind of clout right like a director made a movie with big studio money and it succeeded people were trying to do the same thing with bong joon ho and mickey 17 which was less of a happy ending i think on both fronts people have invested a lot in paul thomas anderson right they've invested stuff in him from the beginning because he's always pushed for final cut and he's very ambitious and there's an idea of an American cinema that you guys are very conversant with.

1:17:13Sean, I watched your Altman introduction on the Criterion channel last night. I hadn't watched it yet. You know, it was really good. And an idea of like what a maverick, tough, uncompromising filmmaker works with. These are myths, right? But there's truth in them. This is one reason why people really like this movie. There's also the fact that the first wave of critical reaction to this movie is very white and very male. and deeply happy to have access to it and happy to sort of try and be on the front lines of trying to say, here's some actually good news. And I'll be interested to see how it does with the longer, deeper cycles of discourse because the movie can't stand up to that.

1:17:58And if the movie can't have consensus challenge, it's actually probably not very good. But when I sat down to write the piece, not only did I not feel like challenging consensus, I felt like I was on the front lines of a movie I reacted really strongly to. In some cases was like exhilarated by and then tried to manage that response and writing about it honestly because he's leaving himself open to some things with this movie. And that has to be talked about as well as the craft and the performance and the we are so back stuff. I believe in all that, but it's a big enough movie that you got to chip away with it a little bit.

1:18:34Are you surprised by the critical more or less consensus? No, because to Adam's point, it does feel like even right now in the cycle, we're still in phase, you know, like the first circle of film critics, letterbox bros, movie nerds to Adam's point, like a pretty predominantly white boy culture, though, you know, I guess I can be a PTA boy, too. But, you know, I have half of that covered. And so it does seem like we are still like at target audience and it's going to keep growing. On the other hand, and, you know, this is just anecdotal evidence, but I have many people in my life who have tickets for a few weeks from now who don't normally go see every single movie in theater.

1:19:27So it feels like we're at the start of something and it's growing. And that is maybe not surprising, but exciting.

1:19:38Sean Fennessey:I think there's some correlation in what you're describing and what you're describing too, which is that one of the reasons why critics race to the front line to excitedly share their love and obsession with a new movie, certainly there's like some ego involved and there's all kinds of cloud chasing that comes with this era of criticism and the expanded nature of it and the fact that a lot of people have voices now, which is more or less a good thing. I think there is a genuine desire to proselytize for art and to encourage people who normally wouldn't go see a two hour and 45 minute movie about revolutionary politics in some ways to get them to go out to go see it, to explain how exciting it is and how fun it is and how deep it is.

1:20:27Sean Fennessey:And that's a good thing. Like, I don't really have a problem with that. I liked what you said, Adam, though, that if the movie is not being challenged, that's probably a bad sign. I think there is a certain strain of criticism that, like, is singularly positive. And maybe even in this conversation we have today on the episode, we can talk about some things that, like, maybe don't click as much or don't make as much sense. But you said he leaves himself open to some things. Like, I'm curious what it is that you think he's leaving himself open to with the movie. well I mean leaving himself open or just by nature of his authorship open right we have a tendency to sort of graft filmmakers onto their movies and look for those strains of autobiography right and you know if a movie's not personal then it's impersonal and that's kind of shorthand for hackery and whatever you think of Paul Thomas Anderson that's not what he is right even his detractors even the keenest critics would never suggest that this is an impersonal filmmaker so You look at this as a film where DiCaprio's character, and it's been a byproduct of so many readings of the film already, that there's a strand of potential autobiography in there, not least of all because you're dealing with the white father of mixed race daughter, but also that Bob sort of seems to be generationally and age-wise somewhat analogous to Paul Thomas Anderson.

1:21:43Anxieties about parenting are now at the other end of the spectrum than they were at the beginning of his films. He used to make movies about absent fathers, dying fathers, imperfect fathers who were sort of seen from the point of view of their kids. Now that's been kind of flipped around in some ways with this movie. But also that Bob's job is to create diversions for a revolutionary sect. Like he's the showman, you know, they're like, Bob, make a distraction. Bob, or Pat rather, as ghetto Pat, you know, set off the fireworks. And I read something of his shift to action filmmaking in that idea that his job is not to have the politics or the ideas.

1:22:17it's to create the show. And then you have what he's chosen to adapt from Vineland and then tweak very, very strenuously in the direction of kind of like, is this radical chic? You know, that Tom Wolfe idea from the 60s, Wolfe of contemporary pensions, that you're not really that interested in the politics, you're interested in the performance and in the appropriation of that performance with Pat slash Bob as one of the few white members of a predominantly African-American sector, let's just say a diverse group of revolutionaries, but very much headed by a female Black leader in Perfidia Beverly Hills, played by Tiana Taylor.

1:22:58And that what unites Bob slash Pat and also Lockjaw, the Sean Penn character, is a degree of fetishism towards that woman, towards Tiana Taylor's character. And PTA has been written about, I don't want to say accused because it's so loaded, right? Like he's been written about and debated in terms of his gender politics and particularly the way women are objects of desire in his movies. And The Master and Heron Weiss, it's always chasing an absent woman. There will be blood as defined by female absence. And here you have another woman who disappears. She happens to be seemingly the most principled, aggressive, you know, visionary member of this group who then sort of bails and doesn't just snitch on her compatriots, but sort of walks out on her family.

1:23:45This is all stuff that should not pass without comment. It shouldn't just be folded into like, wow, this movie is well-made. I think it serves what's interesting about the movie, which is that he is dealing, I think, I said this in my review with you guys, he is dealing with his role in telling this story. And I can't tell if he is staying in his lane or swerving a little bit. and that's why some of the ways that people have read the movie's politics are pretty it or the question whether it even really has politics or if that's just the texture of this action movie story it's interesting yeah i've been thinking a little bit about the conversation

1:24:24Sean Fennessey:that we had about it and the way that the end of the movie confronts you with the idea of what did pat and his cohort and perfidia accomplish if anything at all right and i think that i think you're right that the movie is not communicating this is good politics and i think a lot of the like immediate online backlash from people who reject revolutionary politics is just this very binary reading of like if this is in a movie then it's bad yeah and i don't i think the movie has this really interesting relationship to the first generation of revolutionaries where more or most of them if not all of them are either murdered sent into exile um imprisoned and or left behind.

1:25:08Sean Fennessey:You know, in the case of Bob, who's just a burnt out dad on a couch. There is a very hopeful portrait of Willa. Yeah. You know, who's excitedly pursuing her future, but is kind of left with the wreckage of everything that came before. And I think that like crosses over, interestingly, with the showman concept that you're suggesting, Adam, this idea that like, what did I really do with the last 30 years of my life. You know, I made some fun movies. And what did that, what did that amount to? Which is maybe self-critical, maybe just something that kind of all men in their 40s and 50s start doing where they're just sort of like, what was I, I thought this was so important.

1:25:50Sean Fennessey:Why did I waste my time on this? Yeah. I mean, to Adam's point about the autobiographical or semi-autobiographical nature of this, like, you know, most of that, that feeling and the obviousness of it is located in the Bob character and his sad bathrobe. But, you know, the Perfidia Beverly Hills character has her own version of that. And I think we walked out of the theater saying like, okay, so where will the challenges to this movie be? Like, what will people? And that character is obviously, that's him taking on someone other than his experience and like going for it. That is a person that is a character who is the leader of the politics, but also, you know, is subject to all of this fetidization and then rats and then disappears.

1:26:40So you have a lot of sticky things there. I do think that the characterization of perfidia and like explains it and develops it and brings in those, not just the sense of failure. I didn't get to hand down what I needed to do, But, you know, everything having to do with whether you call it postpartum depression or just what it means to have a kid, what it means to experience the sexual abuse, I guess, you know, or fetishization and how that affects your politics and who you are as a person and how you want to do things. It is all in the text. Now, whether it's developed enough, whether it's centered enough, to Adam's point, I think those will be the good conversations.

1:27:29And as more people see it and it grows. But the perfidia Beverly Hills stuff is a prologue to the rest of the movie. And that character does hang over the rest of the film, which is different than it being about that character. so I completely understand if there's pushback. But I like, you know, it's pretty textured, especially in the context of women characters in PTA movies. Well, like, this is a guy, he uses female absence a lot, right? I mean, and there will be blood, there's no women, and you sort of see what, aside from Mary Sunday, the kid, you know, and you say, you know, look at the relationship between Daniel and Mary.

1:28:16For sure. But I mean, there's an absence there that defines Daniel's psychology and the kind of homosocial, homoerotic thing in their wee blood. The Master's all about like leaving literally Doris Day behind. You know, every woman in that movie is sort of like a specter of his teenage sweetheart. Her advice quite literally is about Shasta being gone. I mean, Phantom Thread, the absent mother, Reynolds' mother, and Weather Elm is sort of replacing her. It's like, of course he's going to structure this movie. Everything Amanda said about Propiti is exactly right. And that's his authorship, right?

1:28:47He is taking a small part of Vineland and scooping out her narrative into the present tense because he likes to tell the story this way. It's just very loaded when it's not just an absent female character, but it's this absent female black revolutionary whose example hangs over not just her husband, but also her daughter and the other models of resistance we see in the movie. It's not about good or bad. It's just I can see where the anxiety from some viewers is coming from in that case because it's extra loaded.

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1:30:09Sean Fennessey:I think the most resonant scene featuring her for me, especially having seen the movie quite a few times now, is the scene right before she leaves the house after Will has been born, when she has the conversation with Ghetto Pat. Right. And she's explaining that this is the new consciousness. Right. You know, your unoriginality. I'm not, you know, I'm not interested in that. And it's, you know, her trying to claim not just a version of independence, but a new way of being alive and recognized in the world. And immediately after that scene is the bank robbery and her arrest and her humiliation and eventually her turning on her friends and then her disappearance from the movie.

1:30:53And that's a consequence

1:30:56Sean Fennessey:of her trying to break the expectations of a person in society, of a woman and a mother, of a person's politics. And I don't think it's, I think it's very sympathetic to her, you know, and I don't think it judges her, which I think I said last week. I think it just shows how borderline impossible it is to actually execute on those kinds of ideas and to live in that way when everybody expects you to do a certain thing in the world. There is also, just to credit Tiana Taylor's performance, the way that she even says that line, like, this is a new consciousness. Like, it is not the rallying cry that she has, you know, in the opening scene.

1:31:35Yeah, and it's complicated, and that is communicating a lot, not just about where she is in her own life, but where she is in relationship to the revolution. I mean, it's an amazing performance. There's been a lot of speculation about who should get this. They can all get supporting nods, but I know where my vote was going.

1:31:53Sean Fennessey:I might know where it's going, yeah. Tiana Taylor. Yeah, I am, yeah. What was most striking to you about the movie? What surprised you the most? i mean i was surprised even as a fan of his just how fluid and intense the storytelling is in those first 40 minutes i mean one common refrain not just from critics but like on letterbox with friends is they're like that first 40 minutes takes like five minutes you know and he has this amazing ability i wouldn't call him a montage driven filmmaker necessarily this is definitely in some ways the shortest i guess average shot length or or you know less long takes than some of his other movies.

1:32:31But he does something here where he crystallizes like speed and clarity at the same time, which is very hard to do. You know, people sort of see him as a show-offy filmmaker sometimes. And here it's not so much showing off. There's no time because the narrative just sort of moves so quickly. So I wouldn't say I was surprised by that, but I was exhilarated by it. I saw the movie with my brother, Matt, who's an editor and sometimes does special effects. We were trying not to talk, especially since the first time we watched it. We kind of just kept nudging each other with some of the cutting and sort of going like, wow, even, even for this, even for this budget level, and even with this filmmaker, this is pretty virtuosic, but I have to say not surprised, but the part of the film that has stuck with me the most is Benicia del Toro and the degree to which that sequence, I mean, it's, it's the parental nature of his care because there's so many families there and those little glimpses of the families on the, on the margins in his various homes and rooms, the little things you see kids doing, they feel very authentic and they feel very tender.

1:33:35I don't think I've ever seen a better depiction of multitasking in a movie. In a very charged sense, this is like life or death and Bob's trying to find a cell phone charger and there's this big police confrontation brewing. But the calm that Del Toro has, and it's not disengagement, right? It's not the calm of someone who's disengaged. It's not the calm of someone who's cynical it's like that line play defense which i think is the best invention in the anderson script and you know it's set up with the scenes of willa rehearsing her her moves that idea of playing defense and teaching defense and self-defense i think del toro's sublime like i'm not thinking in terms of oscars i'm like he's one of the best characters i've ever seen in an anderson film everything about his performance and what he does to help elevate dicaprio's acting and give him in the movie something to bounce off of.

1:34:27And I don't know how deeply he went into the weeds with spoilers already, but this is obviously, you've talked about the movie already. His final scene where he's pulled over. I mean, the shimmy. The little shimmy, the way you realize that he's kind of getting himself into a DUI in order to sort of protect Bob, the delight he takes in not quite being able to walk the straight line. People are already, and I have mixed feelings about clips from this movie showing up already. But I've already seen people capping the few small beers bit where he's kind of laughing under his breath. And it's beautiful.

1:35:01It's a beautiful, humane performance. I wrote in the piece for Ringer that he seems to have wandered in from a Jonathan Demme movie, which for me is a high compliment. I'm sure Anderson would take it as one because Demme is a huge filmmaker for him. We can maybe talk about the American Girl music cue at some point if you guys want to, because I think that that's important in the Demme of it all. But yeah, Del Toro is my MVP. He's so friggin good. Same. so

1:35:25Sean Fennessey:um two things about that one I said I think last week about how much I love that same sequence that that Adam is talking about where they're walking through you know Sensei's world essentially and introducing all the people and then there's that great conversational set piece where Bob's on the phone and with Comrade Josh and he's really starting to unravel and the thing that a cool choice that that Anderson makes in that scene is he doesn't just hold the camera on Leo the whole time. He keeps cutting back to what Sensei is doing. So he goes into the bathroom at a certain point and washes his hands and you get the laugh line of him answering the what time is it question.

1:36:04Sean Fennessey:And then you get this series of extended shots of him trying to pull the rifle out from under his bed. You know, there's a shot underneath the bed of Sensei reaching towards but not quite able to grab the gun that like other filmmakers probably would not spend a lot of time cutting back to that other character and showing that there's a balance there. and I think my favorite thing that PTA told me when I talked to him for the show was that he and Benicio and Leo just kind of worked all that stuff out when Benicio got there. That he wrote a scene but that Benicio got there he had a very limited amount of time because he was shooting the Phoenician scheme and Benicio was like I love this but can we just sit down and talk through what all of this is so that I understand and we can make it make sense.

1:36:51Sean Fennessey:and it sounds like they rewrote it a lot which is amazing because it just seems like a very assured very like clearly defined like all in one guy's head kind of a thing and I'm as guilty of you know valorizing the mega genius auteur more than anybody but they've talked a number of times throughout this cycle of the amount of moments during the making of the movie where they were like okay let's like set aside what we thought this was going to be and actually do it based on what's standing right in front of us now which is I feel like a new way of hearing PTA movies discussed. You know, they're usually discussed as these like, you know, granite chipped monuments to genius.

1:37:29Well, even when we saw Spielberg interviewing PTA, remember, and they were talking about how they find that final sequence. And do you remember Spielberg then goes like, and then you storyboarded it, you know? And Paul Thomas Anderson was just like, no, you know, we just wrote it. And he like responded with like a very loosey-goosey thing that did indicate, you know, a small moment of like, no, we were, you know, we were feeling it out.

1:37:54Sean Fennessey:Yeah. It's so interesting. I mean, it's, it's, it's a relief as somebody who just runs a little tight sometimes, you know, that maybe as you get older, you can let go, like let things happen. I was encouraged by that. What else, Adam? I think that, yeah, we're talking about the, the, the, the movement of the camera. I mean, this stuff is obviously military precision, right and the juxtaposition of the different groups i mean anderson's very very good at this personifying different movements within individuals and cults of personalities like you see sensei's world and lockjaw's world you know they both kind of preside over these different groups of people who are sort of helping them they come into into conflict with each other and then you know the way that bob moves kind of stumbling falling on his face willow's movement is constrained because she's constantly being passed from group to group.

1:38:45And then even when she's finally on her own, she's literally kind of handcuffed. She's forced into this position of driving, which I thought was really funny. Yeah. That, you know, like part of the way she becomes, goes from being a teenager to a real teenager, she kind of like has to drive. It's such an automotive culture. But I think what you're saying about the spontaneity of the Del Toro scene, it's actually something that I think Anderson's earlier movies were conceptualized more around, because at that point people were seeing him as an Altman-esque filmmaker, right? So people would be like, well, how do you find those moments with the actors in Boogie Nights and Magnolia?

1:39:17Not that the camera wasn't a big deal, but that the rhetoric was that he loves actors. And then starting with There Will Be Blood, the rhetoric sort of becomes, oh my God, these visuals. Oh, the size, the scale, the period piece, quality of them. So I think this movie finesses some of those things together. But this is obviously made with military precision, but there's the possibility of some spontaneous give and take between the actors. It kind of feels like people like sneaking their stuff in a little bit. And, you know, actors are kind of taking their cues from each other. I mean, I'm sure you guys talked about it, but I know you have because I've listened to the various coverages of the film.

1:39:52Just the way that that final sequence, it's one of the most expressive action sequences I've ever seen. Where it's not just that it's suspenseful or exciting and spatially coherent. That way of visualizing the themes of the movie and the rise and fall of the road. and the fact that he kind of is able to bring it all back to the searchers at the end, which every American filmmaker since the 70s is trying to do. You know, they've all talked about it. Scorsese and Spielberg and Schrader, you know, this is my searchers. This is my searchers. And it's not a contest. But Anderson's searcher is pretty darn amazing.

1:40:24Yeah. When she doesn't know if she can recognize her father because of the different kinds of communication and trust, right? Another critic pointed out that when Penn is carrying Willa around at one point, He's carrying her like Ford carries, like Wayne carries an alleywood and his searchers, right? On his hip, you know. That's right. These things are integrated at such a casual, high speed, you know, high velocity level.

1:40:51Sean Fennessey:You know what's another example of that? I noticed this when I was watching the movie this weekend is there's a cutaway to Avanti when Willa is trying to get away from Lockjaw. and it's just hard on his face, which is just like one of the shots of the Native American characters in The Searchers where there's sort of like bemusement, frustration, this kind of like ugliness of this culture that is proximate, but so far away from what we're experiencing. Like a lot of little gestures like that that are so great. And it's kind of risky to be like, I was really thinking about The Searchers, you know, in 2025, like because we've heard that so many times.

1:41:28Sean Fennessey:So to pay it off is really impressive. Well, yeah, because the idea of thinking with the searchers it's a cinephilic idea but when you think about the searchers in terms of what it's about and how little that that movie how much it's about how little has been resolved in a lot of these ways in the 67 years and then it has to do a lot with Penn's performance did you guys have you guys talked or thought about a friend of mine pointed this out to me last night that DiCaprio's last shot his last image rhymes visually with the last we see a lockjaw you know i take lockjaw's ending very much yeah dying you know dying thinking he's the good guy to me that's boomers burning in hell right this this this pathetic little corner office you've achieved nothing you look like shit doing it and then you die and you know you think you did something you don't realize that you've left nothing but i mean leo's last shot i don't think is as critical but it's a mirror you know and and i i don't know what you guys think about, you know, the, the whole, the point of the whole movie is that a dad learns to use an iPhone, which is a bit productive, but even just the use of selfies and photography and, you know, you know, self-image in this movie, I think is pretty potent as well.

1:42:37I've still only seen it the once. So I'm sort of, you know, I watched it the one time, wrote about it, and then I'm just picking and choosing little nuggets that I see people leaving out there until I can watch it again. I want to update the book at some point, which will involve watching it, you know, a bunch time.

1:42:51Sean Fennessey:But there's a lot. There's a couple of echoes inside of that triangle where early in the film when we first see Perfidia, she's wearing a black tight t-shirt and fatigue pants. And that is the outfit that Lockjaw is wearing at the end of the movie. A tight black t-shirt that Willa mocks him for. Why is your shirt so tight? Yeah. And Bob's bathrobe is the same color and design as the shirt that Perfidia is wearing when she's shooting the machine gun. you've got like all of these, you know, these echoes of these characters and the ways in which they're bound together and are not really talking to each other.

1:43:33Sean Fennessey:That's the other thing too, is I think that there's like a, there's definitely a comment about people in that generation, in the generation in front of Willa, not really knowing how to talk to each other and then that leading to a lot of confusion and the expectation, like even Sean Penn saying like, you know, maybe if you were a little nicer we could have got to know each other. And the difficulty of parents getting to know their children. Like, there's a lot of amazingly insinuating pieces of writing throughout this, or in costume design, or even just the idea of like a car chase that goes up and down.

1:44:07Sean Fennessey:You know, that that is so exciting on its face, and then metaphor packed, and also something you've not seen before in that specific way. So it's just that when you do watch it five or six or seven more times and expand the book, I think you will see how rewarding it is. I mean, I'm on four and I'm still really enjoying it. And the other thing too is that I have found, you mentioned a version of this for sure, that you had a much more emotional relationship to it the second time around. It was less funny, more visceral and upsetting. Right. And I'm finding that like different stages of it, I'm having different emotional reactions to different scenes.

1:44:44Sean Fennessey:Things that I thought were funny now I think are sad. well I mean since becoming a parent I'm just I'm just a mess all the time sure you know but I took I took my older daughter I took Leah to karate on Saturday which is literally one battle after another because yeah she's impossible but you know she's eight and a half and she was doing her little stuff I just teared up you know and I mean I think that that has to do with just being a parent more than the movie and I think in some ways projecting yourself into that vision of parenting is dicey, but it's not so dicey for Anderson because as people have pointed out, that line about not knowing how to do her hair, which choked me up in the theater, that comes from an interview, I believe, that Maya Rudolph did about her father.

1:45:30And that line is absolutely loaded. That's not just like, oh, dumb dad. That has to do with not being able to connect maybe on a certain level culturally or there's there's you know not just something that mom can't do but you know it has to do with hair it has to do with you know with with with with racial identity but it's a beautiful line and and i think when he says it is what gets me so much it's like long into the chase you know like she's disappeared she's been taken we know what's happening he's already tried he's already failed this is kind of downtime with sensei and he just thinks about something so tangible about her.

1:46:06Like it's such a little tangible strand of some larger failure. And it choked me right up in the theater. And, you know, it's almost like it's almost going unsaid as people are focusing on Penn and Tiana Taylor and, you know, Jim Downey, who gets my Oscar vote because, you know, Jim Downey's the greatest. But I mean, what DiCaprio does as a movie star in this film, much like what I think he does in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it's almost so good that you take it for granted now at this point. you know and I'm not just talking about the significance of the casting and how funny it is to have Leonardo DiCaprio of all people as a girl dad like I will stop myself from describing his extracurriculars because I don't know him but the casting's pretty funny you know and he folds all of that into a performance that I think is is is really quite something I think that's part of the

1:46:53Sean Fennessey:reason why it's getting so much acclaim is because it feels like such a transformation right but it It is legitimate. Like he really, it's an incredible, deeply felt performance, which I just, I knew that he could do almost anything, but I didn't know he could do this. Yeah. Can I ask you guys at your various screenings, whether these are like secret Christmas adventurer screenings that you guys get, or, you know, you're seeing it with normal people. Sure. Did people like laugh with recognition at Jim Downey? Like, does the public understand who this is or care? I don't think so. I mean, I think he immediately gets laugh lines.

1:47:27Sean Fennessey:and so it's a little hard to tell if they're picking up on it. I think that he did at the... DJ? No, no, no, at the IMAX on Wednesday night, which was like, you know, true nerd culture. What does he say? Like punks, punks, haters. Lunatics, haters, and punk trash. We're going to eliminate them. No more lunatics. Yeah, I mean, that's a truth social post. Yeah. And it's funny too because if you know Downey's history at SNL, he's pretty strenuously down the line in terms of their political content. I feel like tapping my heart when I say this, you know, he was Norm McDonald's Confederate there and they refused easy applause and all that weekend update stuff.

1:48:06So like when Jim Downey is kind of doing the Christmas adventure, but you sort of know the pendulum has shifted in, you know, for, for, for, for, for even Downey to, to, to, to put a stamp of approval on a movie from this side of the partisan aisle, I think it's pretty, pretty great.

1:48:19Sean Fennessey:Yeah, the other funny thing is that he actually did become more famous in the last year because of the Conan meme, but is unrecognizable relative to how he looks in this movie. So even then, I think the levels of recognition are maybe not there as much. I agree with you, though, about the Leo thing. I think it's pretty special. It's very rare that the best, the actor most capable of giving a great lead performance is also the biggest star at the same time. That's not common. and not that Leonardo DiCaprio needs more laurels per se because I think he's had a wonderful life but it's very very cool that he is spending his capital making movies with these people because he could be making a lot of crap right now yeah and dragging an audience I wouldn't say dragging them kicking and screaming maybe let's not say dragging let's say pulling an audience towards this because again like we talk about echo chambers of criticism I mean you guys navigate at this stuff you know smartly all the time but like there's a huge difference between what we think is what people are talking about and what the larger pop cultural sphere is talking about if you were to go by my timeline last week this is like the moon landing yeah yeah and then you and then you look at how much it makes in its opening weekend and it's less than like conjuring last rice which is a movie i swear no human being has seen i've seen it and i didn't see it it's One of the largest films of the year.

1:49:38Sean Fennessey:Yeah. Yeah. So DiCaprio is one of the few actors who can bridge this and bridge it just effortlessly without special pleading. How much did it make its first weekend in North America? Not that I'm a box office guy, but like$22,$23 million. Yeah. That's not Paul Thomas Anderson fans. Paul Thomas Anderson fans can get the master, you know, a high per screen average. Leonardo DiCaprio can get this movie a$23 million North American opening. Well, I'm sure we will talk about this earlier in this episode, but one of the things that I think having Leo in your movie does is set aside the opening weekend box office.

1:50:14Sean Fennessey:It just creates a level of awareness that there is a new Leo movie that even if you don't see it opening weekend, you're probably going to check it at some point. And he also has been like pounding the pavement in a way that he hasn't, you know, he doesn't make movies that often anymore, but he has not been doing press at this level. Like if they announced a Hot Ones next week, I would not be surprised, which is he is saying yes. Yeah. Not since the 2000s, really. Has he done this much press? Yeah. Which, you know, I think is contingent on getting this movie made. It should be Sean Penn should go on Hot Ones.

1:50:47You're right. He should. If I'm drafting one battle after another cast members for Hot Ones, Sean Penn is the first draft. That's a good draft. Yeah.

1:50:55Sean Fennessey:We should do that. The Hot Ones draft period is a great draft for us. Oh, okay. Just in the entire sphere of entertainment. Sure. Maybe we can come team up with Sean Evans on that one. Okay. Okay, closing thoughts. What do you, like... Yeah. What is the... Well, I'm supposed to be like, where does this stand in your rankings? But kind of like, what is your biggest emotional takeaway from this movie? My emotional takeaway from this movie, I tried to put it in the piece, which is that it's about time, you know? and Anderson he he won me over for the first time in real time I mean we're around the same age I think you were more into him when you were younger than I was I saw him as a filmmaker to react against I talked about this in the book we've talked about it that when I was 20 I was like no you know I I like Robert Altman and I like Scorsese and this is leftovers and all that and then that match cut in there will be blood which I didn't understand until I got older how true that is about how time just jumps away but I mean just on a formal level when I saw that and there will be blood.

1:51:57I'm like, I like this filmmaker now. I'm on board. You know, it's just so beautiful. And this movie gets at that idea of time. I mean, time is the password. Time is what Bob doesn't understand. Time is what the guy on the other side of the phone doesn't really understand just because it's the password. In the end, Bob gets it right. You know, what does the guy say? He's like, you know, time doesn't exist. It controls us. And Bob's like, fuck that. You're not a parent. You know, that's the part of the movie that I, that I took away from. And it's what, you know, as I tried to put in the piece, It's what made the code of work for me because I was worried that he's willing optimism that doesn't exist.

1:52:32And people, I know some people say it should have ended by the side of the road, but the searchers doesn't end by the side of the road. The searchers ends with Ethan not being able to go inside the house. It's a beautifully ambiguous ending. And I see the ending of this movie is ambiguous. He's willing hope into it, but I believe in the hope. You know, I think Bob knows what time it is and that's his little triumph.

1:52:53Sean Fennessey:I love that part of your piece and that observation. I hadn't thought about it in that way. And the other thing about that last moment is even to the very end, Bob says, you know, that's like a three and a half hour drive. It's the most dad thing you could ever say is like trying to prep your kids with some information ahead of their trip. Right. And what a beautiful detail that it's a drive because you know what? We've seen that she can do that. That's right. And, you know, I think that that's a wonderful little detail. And again, the other thing that kind of choked me up in the theater was just when he says, be careful, because that's really at this point, all I feel like I have to offer the people in my life I care the most about.

1:53:33I mean, they're not old enough for me to send them out on their own, of course. But my daughter walked to school herself this morning and I was like, be careful. And I wasn't doing it as a bit. Like, you know, it wasn't a bit. I was just literally like, you know, be careful. Be careful. And I think that being able to thread the needle between either revolutionary politics as subject or texture, but shrink it down to something human like that. He's always been good at that. Is this my favorite of his movies? It's always going to be the master, but that's because that speaks to the oblique, conceptual, desperate kind of movie making that I really love.

1:54:08I mean, that movie is tough and this movie is not. This movie is more pleasing in the end, but he's earned it, man. You know, I don't know if we've earned it, but he's, he's earned it. I feel that I've earned it. I know. I feel I have put in the work. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty good.

1:54:26Sean Fennessey:You know, it's pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty good movie. It's pretty good. You're pretty good, Adam. Adam, thank you. We'll have to figure out what you're coming on next for. I don't know what that's going to be. Whatever the next one, the hot, the hot, the hot, the hot ones. That's it. That'll be it. Next time you're in Los Angeles, me, you, Amanda, CR and Sean Evans. That'll be a good pod. Sounds great. Thank you, guys. Okay, buddy. Thanks, Adam. Thanks, Adam. Yeah. Bye. Okay, now let's go to our friend Andy Greenwald.

1:54:55Sean Fennessey:Andy Greenwald's here, co-host of The Watch, one of the biggest boys I know. A man boy? Would you describe yourself as a man boy? I tried that for a while, but as I've sort of moved into my latter 40s, I think it doesn't really work anymore. The boyishness evaporates slowly over time. so on this pod a few weeks ago Amanda told a story oh good oh yeah we're doing this yeah yeah yeah great there's a story about Paul Thomas Anderson films she was you were 14 years old how old were you on the night of this this movie going experience I don't know this was September 2012 yeah so I was 28 years old okay 28 years old yeah and it was a date I think Zach and I were dating at this point because you had moved to Los Angeles, which, you know, cleared up his schedule.

1:55:43So that then, and Chris had as well. Yeah, go ahead. If I may help with the timeline, you were dating because the first time I met you was at another film screening. Right. After The Avengers. After Marvel's The Avengers. Well, I was there for that one. Yeah. And so Flatbush Farm and Barn has since closed, which is sad. Yeah, but that's where we were.

1:56:00Sean Fennessey:So you guys went to go see The Master then? Yes, in September. In the fall. In the Ziegfeld Theater? I believe so. It was the New York premiere. So who among the guests? Who was there? Who was there? In our party or writ large? Just do the whole guest list if you can. Well, I think it was us and Zach and Chuck Losterman. Yes. And maybe someone else who you could Rashomon style bring them on next week. Okay. The person I'm forgetting. Oh, I don't remember. I remember. That's the crew. Joaquin Phoenix was he present? Yeah. He didn't show up? He loomed large that night. It's a very big theater. More ways than one.

1:56:31Sean Fennessey:Did you guys go somewhere afterwards? Okay. Yes. May I interject? So it's beautiful to me that this night was meaningful for you and has played a large role in your podcasting. This night is also of outsized importance in my own life. But not, yeah. Both because I got to spend time with the lovely and charming 28-year-old Dave of my friend, Zach. But also because I had a very unique experience. As we got into the theater, it's plush seats. There was a lot of hubbub because it was a New York premiere. and they were doing some like introductions and things before the movie for people in attendance.

1:57:09And two things happened at almost the exact same instant. One was I received a text message from my wife with a positive pregnancy test. Oh, wow. And I stared at this with utter disbelief and shock. And the only thing that pierced my sudden surprise was the voice of someone up front introducing the beloved executive producer of the movie, Harvey Weinstein. Stop it. Who then went on like a rapturous monologue about the luminous Amy Adams. So all at once, I have imminent fatherhood and a true life monster speaking. Now these moments are inextricably linked now. Okay. I sort of quiet my heart rate.

1:57:54And it's also when, you know, as you both know, that when you get the within the family positive test, you don't share that. So it's too early. So you may begin acting like a lunatic or sweating. Let me ask, like, is that a, are you responding by a text message or are you hopping out to make a quick phone call? Well, no, because there was security to get in. And you can't miss a PTA movie. So that was just, that was just a text response. That was a text response. Okay. And more than one, you know. And then I was just trying to quiet my heart rate and just like lose myself in this world of like lightly masqueraded Scientology or whatever was to come.

1:58:25And then, you know, they finish and Amy Adams speaks and whomever else. and they like start to dim the lights. And I like, I'm clutching my Coke Zero or whatever. Like they don't give us snacks and press screening. So I had nothing. And it was before I learned about water or water bottles. I only learned about that when I moved here. So I was dry mouthed clearly. And then I got another text and I hoped it would be like, and isn't it great that we're having a child? But it was a text from the same person informing me that her great aunt had that moment died. Oh my God. So all within about a 90 second span, next to you in blissful puppy love, I had the full spectrum of birth, death, Harvey Weinstein.

1:59:07Right. And then the fucking master starts. That's good. And the John Greenwood music's like, donk, donk, donk, donk. Like the blue water. It was like absolutely like your friend on a bad acid trip for at least the first 60 minutes of the film.

1:59:22Sean Fennessey:Yeah. That is better than I ever could have imagined. That's really good. So then, and I don't know how much of this factored into the stories you've been telling. But then we did go out to a place that I loved in Manhattan, which is like a secret step-down Japanese izakaya. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they serve beer by the pitcher. And I ordered a pitcher of beer and then I said, oh, do you guys want some? Because I was... And you didn't share your news with anyone at the table. No. Did you feel... I've told the story of going to see The Master a few times on the show because I saw it with Chris. He had also recently moved out here and Alex Papadimus.

1:59:57Sean Fennessey:We went to a midnight showing at the Arclight. on a Thursday night. That's not a short film. And it's a long movie and we walked out into the streets of Los Angeles at 2.30 in the morning and everyone who had walked out of the movie was just like gobsmacked. Did not know what to say to each other. It's not the kind of movie that after you've seen it you're like, okay, let's break down every scene. Totally. It has a different kind of power. And so you're coping, channeling, figuring out how to feel about these huge events in your life. I have no idea how I feel about that movie to this day. I don't think I've ever really seen it clean.

2:00:30Here's the thing about the Japanese Izakaya spot is that Chuck Closerman was also in attendance. Was he breaking it down?

2:00:37Sean Fennessey:He was holding court. He was holding court. And I think that I was, I mean, I, you know, congratulations, you know, and also condolences. But I like... The origin of a girl. Yeah, which will come into play very shortly. But I was also, I was contending with having seen the master, like new friends, and then my first time experiencing Chuck Hold Court, which is a, you know, a sight all on. Very, very fun thing. So all I really remember is just being like, oh, this guy. It's kind of like, it's like going to your first ice hockey game and sitting right next to the glass where they can smash his. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:01:15Sean Fennessey:Yes. I do, one thing, I mean, he doesn't live in New York and neither do I anymore, but I do miss being out for drinks with Chuck. Yeah. I, that's amazing. Yeah. Okay. Did you like the movie? Which one? The Master? I have no idea. At the time, I had no idea. I think that... It's not dissimilar to One Battle After Another, which I exited feeling so many emotions all at once and being in awe of the Jenga tower of competing feelings that I was experiencing. And I had almost no desire yet to hold court about any of it. Like, it filled me up with something that I'm not fully sure. segment? I gotta go.

2:01:55No, I'm ready. I'm ready. But I have come to love The Master, but not in the same way that I have loved some of his other movies, I would say. It is not in my top five.

2:02:09Sean Fennessey:Interesting. Okay. Good to know. One battle after another. Is it in your top five? I think so. Okay. But I, this is such a hedge. I do need to see it again. We did this earlier. You've seen it a lot. He's seen it four times. I've seen it twice. I definitely, and I said this briefly a moment ago on The Watch, just that that I tried to stay completely in the dark about a lot of it, but the one thing you can't keep out, because it's not technically a spoiler, is everyone saying this is a masterpiece, and that this is a generational film by one of our great talents who has finally ascended even further.

2:02:41And because of that, and because of how deeply, deeply connected I was feeling to certain moments and momentum early in the movie, then when it became, and I say this actually not as a pejorative, as a good thing. When it became a PTA movie, sometimes I was like, what? Oh, I didn't know that the brakes were on this car or that we were turning right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to see it again. So all of that's gone and I'm more deeply engaged. And I would also say, and I'm curious for you guys as the masters of cinema to comment on this. I was very excited to go see it in Vista Vision because I also, a format I learned about six weeks ago when they announced it.

2:03:20Yeah. And so I did see it at the Vista and which was, you know, it's a wonderful theater on the east side of LA and I didn't know two things. I forgot that they don't have assigned seats. So I didn't get to the theater two hours before with the rest of your letterbox lads who were already there. Most of whom were talking about the master, not a bit. Like there was a lot of talk about the master in line. I bet. And then two, so because of that, I was in the like second to last row, which I would prefer over being in the front.

2:03:49Sean Fennessey:But Vista Vision, not a big format. No, it's a tall and narrow screen. They refashioned the screen at the Vista for this film. So I felt lucky to see it in an intended format, but it did not do the thing that I most wanted it to do at the start, which is I want it to be in the movie. In the last row with a small screen was a little bit like watching something on television. One thing about the Vista is it is a huge room and there's lots of room between the aisles, which is so unusual in movie theaters. It's actually the exact opposite of the City Walk, where the aisles are too close together. The roads are too close together.

2:04:25Sean Fennessey:I would recommend checking it out in IMAX. I want to see it again. And I want to be more immersed in it. So I have a smoother ride. But I felt, I don't know, do there specific things that you want to get into? I'm just curious for your take on it. I mean, there's somebody who I know likes his movies and the Girl Dad part of it is always interesting to me. I mean, those are the two biggest planks. I mean, like in terms of, there are things that I am just in awe of in terms of performance. Like this might be, is this top three Leo performance for me? Absolutely. up to maybe rising further. I think Benicio is perfect in this movie.

2:04:54I think Tiana Taylor, like everything that has been compelling about her, whether it's music videos, music, or her episode of My Super Sweet 16, he put it into a movie, which is shocking and awesome. But the two main threads that I'm carrying, which I think neither are particularly insightful or unique. One is it was absolutely electric to see a movie made by an artist who seemed to be telepathically intuiting what it feels like to be alive at the moment the film is released and how exciting and important it is for artists to deal with the moments that we are living in. And not like in a, you know, like a pedagogical way, but like with art, with fiction, with heart.

2:05:34But like to just look forward for once instead of just always running backwards, I found just so compelling and exciting. And then yes, hashtag girl dad. Oh yeah. The last two lines of this movie have destroyed me in a way that I don't remember a movie destroying me before. I already started crying on this podcast about that last scene. I can't say it. And I'm not a dad, so I have one. Well, that's good. So you're up there. You're hashtag dad girl. Yeah. As a daughter of fathers, I feel like how you should begin everything on this podcast. I said this on the watch, but that is the new want to have a catch dad from Field of Dreams for me.

2:06:13I can't say it or I will start crying. and I'm as grateful as I am for a movie to be like contemporary and alive to what's happening and not running from anything or the complications or nuances of it I was so happy to have a movie that gave me that feeling of like being alive in myself not just alive in a moment

2:06:34Sean Fennessey:I'm glad you liked it you did just remind me of a story that I told very briefly over the weekend to a friend but in 2007 I was working at Vibe magazine working with our friend John Caramonica and what would happen when I was working at Vibe is artists would come in and they would want to introduce themselves to the magazine so that they might be spotlit featured somehow you've experienced this many times I'm sure in the spin days especially spin.com days and in 2007 Tiana Taylor came in when she had a song called Google Me it was a her R &D pop breakthrough still relevant to this day and she came in with like you know a manager and a handler and just talked at me and John for an hour.

2:07:19And obviously,

2:07:20Sean Fennessey:it was captivating. I mean, she's like one of the most magnetic looking people in the world and has so much, so self-assured. And it never really happened for her as a musician, you know? And yet, she didn't go away. And I probably would need a hundred hands to count the number of artists that we ran small profiles of who never made it and have not been heard from again between 2005 and 2008. But for whatever reason, she kind of hung in the culture, right? She's like in the Fade video, the Kanye video. She got married to Amon Shumpert. She started taking more acting parts. And then, kind of out of nowhere, has been plucked to be the most critical character, like the engine of the movie.

2:08:02Sean Fennessey:Right. In this PTA movie. It's just a, it's a fascinating road because that was 18 years ago? Yeah. Well, no matter 18 years ago, that's fucking crazy to me. It kind of reminds me of a time like definitely closer to 18 years ago than five years ago when I was stopping by Atlantic Records to do something like hear the new Paramore single or something. Right, right, right. And as I walked in, the newly appointed president of one division of Atlantic was there to introduce the workers to the new artist he had signed. And the artist was Janelle Monae who performed in the artist. And the president was Sean Puffy Combs.

2:08:39so a lot of like near misses with predators in my time in New York that hasn't happened again it's tough it's not ideal but it is funny you do remember when people are like this is going to be the next someone and then it's not the path you expect but you know

2:08:53Sean Fennessey:we've just had a whole second episode about this you're at the tail end of it here and we didn't I don't know they call that the closer you are the closer you are he pitched well how dare you I already said I was never going to he pitched well Actually, Andy did say on a podcast that in a way he doesn't hate the Mets. Like he doesn't feel like anger towards the Mets. Wow. Where is the anger directed? The Cowboys. Sure. Mostly. Braves in baseball. Okay. Don't stop it. I've renounced to the Braves. Okay. I've told every single person I know from Philadelphia. No. The Mets, like also having lived in New York for so long, the Mets are the correct choice.

2:09:33Obviously. And many of my good friends, Sean included, are true believers. Yeah. The alternative is equal. No playoffs. They're out. We've gotten this far in the second episode the first time it's come up. You can't rip the Phillies hearts out in the playoffs again this year.

2:09:47Sean Fennessey:No, and I think Philly fans are celebrating in part because they don't want to have to deal with us. That was bad last year. I mean, I was there watching all of it. Yeah, it was bad. Yeah, it was real bad. See, we can all unite over that. We're friends. We're actually friends. The name that I don't think has been uttered is Chase Infinity throughout this whole conversation. And as the TV critic here, I could say, was exceptional and a standout in Presumed Innocent last year. I'm loathe to spoil Presumed Innocent, but if you haven't seen the show Presumed Innocent, I guess, turn this off. You could just say that she plays a pivotal role.

2:10:16She's a huge part.

2:10:18Sean Fennessey:Also, the show itself spoils it in the third episode, but whatever. Does it? Or the fourth. Like, yeah. I don't remember what she does. Maybe it's the fifth. I don't know. Maybe it's the finale. It's not the finale. It's well before the end. Yeah. It's a fun show. Yeah. But another actress who, like, when I saw her on that show, I was like, oh, she was good. but I was not like this is a generational superstar come to us well but there is a thing right like the greatest directors and you two could speak on this much more cogently than I could but like they know what they want from actors and they know what they love in actors and they can get it and so you look at the the INDB page for this movie and you have a mix of like the greatest actors of their generation who have been you know Oscar rewarded in Leo in Benicio in Sean Penn and then you have like in key supporting roles the artist Jungle Pussy and also Dijon and then also a guy who's composed the music for the early Safdie Brothers films and then the interrogator who was so disturbing and you look him up and it's like oh he's an interrogator and somehow they are all playing on the same field it's the best it's the best thing about PCA movies that's so cool it is like it is always the collision of here's Joaquin Phoenix and here's a character actor who you've never seen before like for example in this movie the woman who plays is Willa's teacher.

2:11:39Sean Fennessey:When Bob goes in for the teacher conference, you know, and he's like, well, he's fucking slave owners. That woman is a theater actress who's never appeared in a film before. The Philippines. You know? I'm sure you'll get to that. And she's so naturalistic and perfect in that scene. It feels like we're in that school. And he's obviously doing a lot. Leo's very big in this movie. And he's very big in that scene where he just starts crying and then explaining everything. He's so funny in this movie. But I love that ability to kind of handpick people out of nowhere. And it seems like Chase Infinity obviously is a working actor and is going to have a big career.

2:12:10Sean Fennessey:So she wasn't like nobody, nobody. But if you told me she's Meryl Streep 40 years from now, I couldn't be like absolutely not, you know? But I think there's two different styles. I mean, I'm sure there are many more than two. But like directors who quote unquote know what they want. There's a version of it that I think actors find very oppressive where they're just told where to stand and how to say a line. And, you know, they're really just chess pieces on the bigger board of the frame. And then there's directors who know what they want. who have already seen, they're able to hold the cut movie of their dreams in their head and get there.

2:12:40You know what I mean? So that the actors feel like they're alive and they're playing things, but they're being put in the position to succeed and be the best versions of themselves in that process.

2:12:49Sean Fennessey:It seems like that's what he was really able to accomplish in this movie is that he wasn't acting like the conductor, you know, where it was like, you play this note at this exact moment. It didn't seem like that kind of a set. Where, because I haven't listened to the, because I only just saw the movie. I've not listened to you guys expound upon it. I don't want your listeners to hear it again. Thank you for following the directions. Of always. Oh, whenever someone tells me I don't have to do something, that's easy for me. Amanda, where are you with the movie? I'm incredibly high, and it's definitely top three of my PTAs right now.

2:13:23Yeah. I was blown away by it. What makes it top three for you? I mean, we've been talking a lot about it in the arc of his career, and as Sean has pointed out, And in a lot of ways, it's like it is as a summation of all of the different phases and things that he's been doing. But I find that I respond most to the PTAs that the later period when my heart starts opening a little and also where women do start showing up in the movies. I mean, I would just not, you know, I like I don't say that as like I must be a woman in a movie for me to like it. But I do notice the correlation. They get equal billing in the last three.

2:14:05Sean Fennessey:Yeah, exactly. And so I just kind of I find them more accessible, I guess, or just like I can connect to them more easily. But I think that this has everything that is great about the last three movies. It obviously has the, you know, like the huge spectacle and the action sequences that is brand new. It brings in like what we know from other PTAs. You know, I can't, I really don't like PTA's inherent vice. Yeah. But this takes pension and takes like not the same lessons, but it just like everything from all of his other movies works together in this in a way that's pretty amazing for me. It also, I think, feels very personal.

2:14:51Yeah, of course. In that this is a movie about a hero who doesn't do anything other than parent, ultimately. Like, everything that he does, he's kind of a patsy. He's kind of along for the ride. He's being pushed into things. He falls off the roof. He's the beneficiary of so many people's hard work and sacrifice to get to a point where he's like, hasn't done anything except maybe he's done the most important thing. And also, you know, as PTA, being a parent of biracial kids in the world, like, I just feel like there's something that he was willing to play with that he probably couldn't have in the past.

2:15:22But what is your top three? I'm sure you said it on the podcast. We did it earlier in this podcast. What did I do? Did I do Master 3, One Battle 2, Phantom Thread 1? Yes. We have the same number one? Yeah. I mean, Phantom Thread is, you know, it's still... I think it's Phantom Thread 1, Boogie Nights 2, this 3. Okay.

2:15:39Sean Fennessey:I bumped Boogie Nights all the way down to 6 on this episode. That's so wild. You should watch Boogie Nights again. That is what I said. I said I have not seen it since we did the rewatchables, and I have been rewatching most of his movies. But that one is so committed to memory that I was like, I'll come back to it another time. I think the thing that, the reason I want to see it again, well, there are many reasons, but one of the reasons is there are aspects of his filmography where he makes choices that are so, at least to my mind, feel so intentionally confounding that sometimes I feel locked out of them.

2:16:09And there were moments in There Will Be Blood, but ultimately, I did not feel locked out of that. The Master was more of that. I'm one of the few people that doesn't like Punch Drunk Love at all. and I did not like licorice pizza at all and so when that happens in this movie I want it to like I want to see it again to let it feel as part of the whole not detours from it one thing that I do admire and I think it's kind of something he has in common with the other Anderson with Wes is that there's scenes in this movie where I'm like he's still doing the thing where he's having Dirk Diggler make a movie inside of a movie there's like there's things that are so like it's not that there's quotes around them bracketing them but they are stylized and filmed like, we're having a laugh here, aren't we?

2:16:50Yeah. Yeah.

2:16:50Sean Fennessey:The phone call with Comrade Josh is like, it's like such a meta moment, you know, of like a guy just, everybody's been using that as a bit, exactly. It's like, I'm called the cable company and I'm trying to get them to help me, you know, unlock my password so that I can get the cable to work in my house. And that's such a universal thing, but it does feel a little, quote, markish. There was a moment in that moment, there's a moment in watching that scene where I was like, oh, this is what my younger daughter saw me doing when StubHub sent us fraudulent tickets to see Hamilton. And I was like, ma 'am, this is a Broadway theater.

2:17:25They don't wait for latecomers.

2:17:28Sean Fennessey:What kind of revolutionary are you? Yeah, truly. It's tough. The most bourgeois of all time. Oh, it's so sad. Okay, any closing thoughts? When are you going to go next? I don't know. Maybe I'll have to see it. I'm traveling, so I may have to go see it in London. The BFI. What's the format there? Do they have the same formats there? They do. I believe they have 70 millimeter. I don't know if BFI South Bank has an iMac. I'm sure some intrepid listener can communicate that to you. Have you guys already done the box office spin and your take on the spin? Yeah, Sean did a whole monologue. Okay. Feel good about it.

2:18:03Yeah. I do too, but I also kind of appreciate that we are in a world where there is goodwill towards... like I'm sorry step on the podcast I did 30 minutes ago but like it's not too long ago that like other studios would go on background like Paul Daguerrebadian and be like those numbers are actually bullshit this movie sucks and it's DOA and now you could get any person in town being like an encouraging start truly for original film which is nice

2:18:33Sean Fennessey:yeah I think a lot of the one thing that we didn't talk about is the idea is that this movie is going to be around for a really long time like Warner Brothers is not going to put this on VOD for like five months. Good. So unlike other films where if you make less than$30 million in your opening weekend, you can expect to see it at home. I don't think they're going to do that. I think they're going to try to play it out for a long period of time, hope that they don't have a big second week drop. But also, I think it's, this is an occasion, not all occasions with big movies from O'Tours are true in this way, but this is an occasion where I'm like, if it doesn't make back its budget in the next six months, that's okay.

2:19:07Sean Fennessey:Like, it's probably going to be a legendary movie. and not our money again that's what Amanda was saying but I did have a moment where I'm like all the hype all the like the even before anyone had seen the movie like in the trades it was announced that like a big deal for an original movie but Warner Brothers is ponying up this much money because it's PTA's most commercial script ever and it's a great role for Leo all of which is true none of which said that in minute six of the movie Sean Penn has a raging boner in his camo pants I mean it's such a PTA movie. It's still no matter what, no matter how exciting the chase sequences are and there's explosions.

2:19:44Sean Fennessey:He's like, I gotta be me. Right. It is a PTA movie. Well, just an incredible, way better story than I ever would have guessed. it's really good totality of life. there you go. Like a, truly a button on this for a girl dad. I mean, perfect. I know. From conception to teenage. That was the night I, there you go. That was the night I became a hashtag girl dad. There you go. Beautiful. Yeah. Thanks for letting me share it. Thanks for coming by, Andy. Thanks. Always a pleasure.

2:20:16Sean Fennessey:Thank you to Adam Naiman. Thank you to Andy Greenwald. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Interesting week. Yeah. Number 10 on 25 for 25. I'm excited. You're very smiley right now. It'll be a good one. And after that, the Smashing Machine. I've also invited Van to join us. And maybe Van wants to counter some of my one battle thoughts as well. Right. He's sitting in the middle, because I'm just like, I'm going to be a coffee break for me. I love you both. But go see the movie in theaters. If you're listening to this part and you haven't seen the movie in theaters, I'm pissed at you.

2:20:49Sean Fennessey:That goes double for me. We'll see you later this week.