The 2025 Dumpuary Extravaganza. Plus: Steven Soderbergh Returns!

29:17Hi, Grace. When she was like eight or nine. And is now my sister, my daughter's favorite movie. My sister, my daughter. That's intense. Yeah. Well, younger sister gets complicated. But Rapunzel is an obsession in my household. Tangled is a very fun and pretty creative movie for recent vintage Disney. And frankly, I'd like to see what Michael Gracie could do with it. What's the Tangled setup? So is it just Rapunzel or what's the twist? She's locked in the tower. She's a girl boss. It's if Rapunzel was a girl boss. She's got more girl bossy qualities, but she's not full girl boss because she's locked in a tower.

29:53Okay. How does she get out? By the patriarchy. She lived in the Tower of the Patriarchy. No, by Mother Gothel. Oh. A mother figure. Oh, it's girl on girl crime. Who is siphoning power from Rapunzel's hair. How does she, does she liberate herself? With the help of a man named Flynn Rider. Okay, what's Flynn Rider's deal? Flynn Rider is a bandit. He's a male ally. He has ally qualities. In my home, often, my daughter will say, I'll be Rapunzel and dad, you be Flynn. And then we'll play as Rapunzel and Flynn. Flynn, I think, is he voiced by Zachary Levi? I think he is, which is not ideal. That's tough.

30:43So we don't want that casting in real life. I think Mandy Moore is Rapunzel. My old neighbor. Oh, she is. Yeah, a couple bangers in the soundtrack too. Anyway, Tangled, for whatever reason, it's in that middle tier of like the princess and the frog. and there's a bunch of movies made in the last 10 years. And Donna Murphy is Mother Gothel, a.k.a. the instructor from Center Stage. Where are you on Center Stage, the film? I haven't seen it. Oh, gosh. It's all right. Donna Murphy has an absolute showstopper on the soundtrack to Rapunzel as well, or Tangled as well. Anyway, I would like to see it.

31:13Michael Gracie, direct Tangled live action. I need one good Disney live action movie before I die. Before you die. So maybe that could be the one. Can I ask a Sean Fennessey style question? Cool, sure, go for it. What are your guys' favorite music biopic? and most disappointing music biopic. We definitely did an episode about this, but I can't even remember what it was hooked to. Listen, you love Rocketman because Elton John is your guy. I do love Elton John. And I just, Sean took some swipes at him. Oh, I was listening. And I think that that is disrespectful. Elton John is a king. No, I took some swipes at the Better Man or Never Too Late documentary, which I thought was Benel.

31:50Okay. I think Elton John is an amazing artist. He is a king. Oh, thank you. so I enjoyed Walk the Line I've never wavered on that great movie yeah so that's where I am and I and as a result I also enjoyed A Complete Unknown Walk the Line too I loved it yeah well we're gonna pod about one of the best ones okay so you're gonna I don't know if you wanna spoil that or not me and you yeah oh yeah yeah yeah we can spoil it I think it'll be pretty soon connected to your ongoing Britpop series on Bandsplay no Robbie Williams episode sorry guys we're gonna do a conversation about 24 hour party people, which is more of a music biopic about a label and an era in England.

32:28Yeah, like a scene almost. A scene. Yeah. That one's really good. I mean, you know, there's a couple that are good. I like Control. I hate Control. You know that. You know what we like. You did mention that to me. Speaking of self-serious. Yeah, it is very self-serious. Make a photo book, Corbgen. We'll talk about that when we talk about 24-hour party people. I don't, you know, like, these movies are self-serious, but like Coal Miner's Daughter, What's Love Got to Do With It? The sort of earlier editions of this before they became so rote. I think but it's usually all of those movies just like this movie except in this case it's a CGI chimpanzee are built on that central performance and if the person embodies and captures the thing that you like the way that Joaquin does in Walk the Line or the way that Timothee Chalamet does in A Complete Unknown or the Val Kilmer in The Doors movie oh my god that movie's not very good but Val Kilmer is incredible but it does that thing where it's like so not good that it transcends into this piece of art that is so singular and wonderful because it's crazy what about 8 Mile does 8 Mile count if the person plays themselves good question it's a good one though I think it counts it's not an Eminem story it's a you know he's not he doesn't become Eminem right it's kind of fictionalized it's loosely adapted from his life I still think very good movie I loved it yeah important Lump Spaghetti Bim hits hard still I like Amadeus not yeah different version of music biopic but it is that's a good one yeah he was a musician musician.

33:53That's a good one. Gary Busey, Buddy Holly story. Pretty good. Gary Busey's very good. I like Love and Mercy. Yeah, that's good. The Brian Wilson one. I haven't seen that one. Oh, it's nice. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. And on that one also kind of breaks the mold in terms of the way the story is told. La Bamba, that's a good one. La Bamba's great. There's been some. I think most of the best ones. Sid and Nancy is great. Yeah, we're naming a lot of movies from the 80s and 90s. It's hard to find recent stuff. What about behind the candelabra. I didn't see it. Liberace? Yeah, Liberace. That's a great movie.

34:23No? On the Soderbergh episode, you're dissing the keep behind it? I like it, but it's just not my... You love Elton John, but you don't love Liberace? No, no, no. I just, you know, that, it was good. Okay. I think it's over-indexed on the Soderbergh. Worst one? Last Days, I'll say it. For me, personally. Most disappointing for me. I almost walked out of the theater. I love Mr. Van Sant, but what are we doing? Have you seen that one? The kind of quasi-Kurt Cobain? one? No. Kind of similar to the 8 Mile thing, except not portrayed by Cobain, obviously. I don't love it, Last Days. There was like a, what felt like a 12 minute scene of him on heroin making mac and cheese, and I was like...

35:00He does look like Kirk. He does. Great casting. Yeah. It's not the best movie. I'll tell you what I don't like is Elvis. Didn't see it. Not interested. I mean, I would agree, though Austin Butler was very good at it, so... I mean, Back to Black is the most recent. Like, I was so offended. That one's a bummer. And the way that it, I still can't believe. Bunch of Baftanoms for that movie, did you see? Listen, you can't. Those were for Amy Winehouse, not for that movie. I didn't see it, though. Marissa Abella will be back in black bag. Very excited about that. She's the hot girl from industry. Yes.

35:32Among many hot girls, but yeah. Well, one of the hot girls, but like, she is a hot girl from industry. Yeah, love her. It's just not a great, it often produces exciting performances and also often produces bad movies. Better is not a bad movie. But they want it because they make money at the box office. Not just Sean Fannessy. Because it's fun to watch all the people recreate moments that, you know, you weren't there for. Like, listen, the Aretha Franklin biopic was really bad when they start writing Respect or arranging Respect in the studio. I was like, it's Respect! Yeah, you know? You know what's an interesting example of this that is now 10 years old, which is crazy to think about, is Get On Up, the James Brown movie.

36:14Oh, yeah. Which I think is kind of a mess of a movie, but has this wild Chadwick Boseman performance in it. And is worth it just for that. Yeah, it's not ideal. Should we pivot away from Better Man? Anything else you want to say about it? No. I loved it. Go see it in the theaters. Let's respect Robert Williams. Okay. Jack Sanders said before we started recording, better than A Complete Unknown, Better Man. You agree? I loved A Complete Unknown. I know that's not a popularly held. I also argued with my Scottish friend who's like the biggest Bob Dylan fan. Shout out, Chloe. I was like, I think you're mistaking what this is.

36:48Like, I think you need to understand that this is a fun time at the movies and not a piece of art. Like, and if you go into it that way, it's so fun. A complete unknown. A complete unknown. Yeah, no, it's, yeah, of course. I agree. Yeah. I don't have a lot bad to say about a complete unknown. Did Timothee Chalamet learn guitar and how to sing and everyone's impressed by that? Yeah, so did all my ex-boyfriends. Cool. They're not amazing and deserving of, you know, like. Their own biopics. Many people learn how to play guitar and sing. How many of them have won the Best Actor Oscar? That's what I'm saying.

37:18Okay. Not very many. Step up. All right, let's pivot. Another movie. Another example, I think, of a good movie that is sort of dumped, but it's also maybe just smart programming from a studio's perspective. That's One of Them Days, which came out last Friday, the 17th, which is directed by Lawrence Lamont, written by Syrita Singleton, who was the showrunner on the last season of Rap Shit on Max. produced by Issa Rae notably who created Rap Shit and starring Kiki Palmer SZA Maud Apatow and Cat Williams among many others this is a movie that feels like it was teleported in from 1998 100 % in the best way possible yeah it's great extremely fun I've seen a couple of comparisons to movies like Friday I've seen Greg Araki's Smiley Face as a comparison point I think a lot of like Bill Murray buddy comedies from the 80s you can see you can see a lot of the like Romy and Michelle sprung to mind while watching this obviously Girls Trip is an influence on the movie Bridesmaids Bridesmaids it's about two friends who are roommates who are late on their rent and need to make money all across one day that's basically the whole plot of the story Kiki and SZA are the friends it's like the plot of Friday basically with two tweaks or whatever so we gotta get money otherwise we're gonna get kicked out of our place or killed by a gangster.

38:40Or killed by this large gangster, yeah. And I don't know how deep a conversation this needs to be. This movie's got super funny set pieces, great cameos, the jokes are good. Yeah. We have mentioned like, when will Kiki Palmer be like elevated into a place that she deserves to be in? This is like a perfect use of her talents. Okay, can I say one little thing about that? Sure. I love Kiki Palmer. I did love this movie, but I was a little bit like, oh man, I feel like we almost lose something when she's the straight man. Interesting. Because she's so funny. She's so funny when she's like bigger and more wacky.

39:17And I'm not saying she's gorgeous. She can totally play the main person. But I was a little bit like, oh, like this did handicap a little bit of like what she's capable of on the other side. It's an interesting point because she gets moments where that jumps out in the movie, especially when SZA is not on screen and it's more trained on Kiki. but that's actually like a it's an art it's an art like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase and all those guys totally yeah even Will Ferrell to some extent like those leading men who get to be at the center of these madcap comedies often have to be able to do both they have to be the relatable everyman and they also have to have the slapsticky big performance style it's a test of a true kind of movie stardom I think she did it in this movie she also has great chemistry with SZA and SZA was surprisingly great SZA was hilarious, but it is also, you know, she is playing off of Kiki Palmer.

40:13So like Kiki Palmer has the ability to like ground it and make it, make them work. Just like really funny. Did you know SZA was going to be an actor? I don't think, is this her debut? Yes, it is. She did kind of, kind of amazingly good. Phenomenal for her first one. Really, really, really, really funny. Her hot ones or their hot ones. They did like a three person hot ones with Issa Rae. Oh my God. It is genuinely really, really funny. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, no, she was very good. Like, all the bits are good, you know? Like, the biscuit stealing and the payday loans lady, who I just want to shout out.

40:48Her name is Kila Monarosa Meja, and she is incredibly funny. She stole the show, I believe. She really, really did. She was extremely funny in the last two seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm, if you didn't see those. She has a great part in the second to last season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. But, like, every character in bit that shows up, and every time, like, you know, another obstacle gets thrown at them because that's the structure of the movie. Like, they all work. They're all very, which is rare. So I was quite abused by it. The heed was not taken. Took me out. I love Cat Williams. I do too.

41:20His part in particular. It's really funny. He's obviously like has been, has had a amazing comedy career tinged with a certain kind of straight talk social commentary. It's funny when he gets to do basically his act inside of a movie. This happens from time to time. It happened in like on Atlanta when he had that guest spot in Atlanta. But, you know, he's kind of just doing a Cat Williams routine about why you should never do a payday loan. And it's really great. Really funny. And he's like, I feel like, isn't there like some archetypal story trope of like the shepherd or, you know, the goddess?

41:55Isn't it the goddess? My brother's obsessed with those ways you structure stories and how a person comes in. Blessing in the Northman. He calls it the goddess, yeah. Attempting to get to Valhalla with the person who guides you along. in a way in a way he popped up at every corner to like guide them yeah absolutely this is a very grand statement but there is a kind of Odyssey like approach to this like Lil Rel Howery is like one of the tricksters you know it's a hero's journey it is a hero's journey truly also a beautiful LA thing I mean I think you're from here like for me I was like this is so all of it is so from that Norms I've been to so many times oh in La Cienega that's the best I love that Norms it is a very LA movie and it is just a very nostalgic kind of comedy that you could reliably get two or three or four of these in movie, in theaters every year.

42:42I think I read that this is the first all-black female comedy made by a studio since Girls Trip, which sounds insane because Girls Trip was such a breakout. But this movie did what basically every movie like it does every time, which is it sort of overperforms the projections at the box office because there's obviously black audiences that want to show out for these movies. I saw it at the Regal LA Live on Wednesday night sold out at 8pm on a Wednesday that's fun and like people want movies like this they're good they're fun okay can I just say something that your soul is gonna leave your body you neglected to warn me that it ends with their house burning down I don't think I knew when I asked you to do it just a little too soon yeah I'm sorry I apologize about that I was like not this you're gonna have a lot of traumatic experiences is at the cinema because of this incident.

43:37It actually just made me laugh. I was like, oh, really? Interesting. Yeah. Can I say one other thing that was the one part I couldn't suspend my disbelief for? Sure. That art is bad, babe. SZA's character's art. Yeah. They're like, this is, I can't wait, I buy$650. Would that be the first time that bad art became popular? Sure. Yes, fair. We just talked about Robbie Williams, you know? Right. Oh my God. The disrespect. Just a joke. Angels is a sensation. Okay. All right. It's a hit. On our Robbie Williams, you're going to be doing great. You're going to be lauded for your respect for you. Making a lot of appearances on various subreddits, just so you know.

44:12You have been? Yes, I sent you the one from the big picture where someone was like, Yossi's Alex House Burned Down, unhappy face. Yeah. Oh, that's nice. First heard of her on the big pic episode about Hot Frosty. She was hilarious. And I was like, thank you. You've got to be careful receiving feedback from Reddit and valorizing it. Someone said that to me. Speaking of the Hot Frosty episode, my neighbors also came. They were like, hey, Yassi was very funny on the Hot Frosty. Yeah. Thank you. Gina and RS, they're listening. They're fans. Hi, guys. Thank you so much. So it's not just Reddit, you know?

44:43Thank you for my opportunity to shine. Support for Yassi and Hot Frosty is everywhere. This is what happens when you turn your life over to cinema, though. You know, you find new voices and new people. I was there. You know, you saw my New Year's resolution. I was hot on Letterboxd. I was averaging a film a day, and then we had some personal tragedy. But we're back now. Okay, so you're back to the cinema tonight? Maybe not tonight. Okay, so the other movies that we're talking about in this episode, I want to know which of the movies you will go see. Okay, great. I love this. So after you depart, Amanda and I will talk about Back in Action, which is on Netflix.

45:13Which is what? Stars Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. Okay. It's the number one movie on Netflix as we're recording. I love her wine. Oh, so you're an Aveline person? Yes, because it is very healthy. Well, is it healthy or is that just the marketing? I think. Yeah, no, no. I mean, it's true. We talked a lot about this. I'm a health influencer, as you guys know also. Bobby knows. No, I just anecdotally, you know, R of 1, as they say, I feel better when I drink that. R of 1. Okay. That's a Huber. And so it's organic. My initial understanding of it was that it's sugar-free, which, as Sean pointed out, is not possible for alcohol.

45:51I don't think it's sugar-free, but I do think it has like less tannins. Don't quote me on this. Aveline wine is great. There's three flavors. It's like red, white, and rosé. So yeah, I'll see it. I actually really like it. I think we did it as a part of our taste test. I believe we did. Yeah. I don't remember liking it very much. And it's co-owned with... Was it a rosé or white? It was a rosé. They have both. They have both. They have both. We did it arguably way too late in the process to really assess it. Oh, to understand. To assess it. No, no, but so... We had assaulted our tongues by then.

46:20So we had like a nice time. Which is so bad. And then it's co-owned by Catherine Power who founded Merit, the makeup brand. And that's how my love affair... Well, no, I already liked Merit, but then Vanessa and Merit was listening and sent me stuff. So send some stuff to Yassi Merit. I did lose all my makeup. If any makeup brands are listening, skincare, I'm open to packages. I have a PO box. Yeah, I'll see that one. What, I can't be a burnt down house influencer? Yeah, she really does. Absolutely can. I hope many people send you things. That's expensive. I get it. As I told you, Sean, on one hand, did I lose all of my personal belongings that I loved and treasured for 30 years?

47:00Yes. On the other hand, I love attention. Conflicting. Real devil's bargain here for you. I think you'd rather have your belongings. Yeah, but you got to look at the bright side. Well, let's try to send Yasuke as much shit as possible. You want some wine too? Yes. Cammy, are you listening? Which flavor? Yeah. The red, white, or rosé? Is that how it's described? Yeah, I mean, that's a little white girl. That's what you say when you show up to Napa. Me and Amanda are sommeliers. I don't know if you know that about us. You're certainly drinkers. Wow. Wow, The Shade. I'm a drinker. Your Catholic jumped out right there.

47:33I'm just IDing. I'm spotting my own in the wild. Okay. Any closing thoughts? What, did you want to ask me more movies? Yeah. Presence, the ghost story that Steven Soderbergh is directing. You know that I unfortunately don't, it's not that I don't like them. I'm a weak, weak person who cannot handle horror movies. It's not really horror. It's not. It's like, because I'm the same one. Oh, you saw it. It seems like it's riddled with jump scares, which is the one thing I, no it's not it's kind of the opposite yeah yeah yeah okay then I'll definitely because you know my more of a meditation my girl Julia Fox is in it and we stan Julia Fox amusing casting yes she's very funny so okay I'll see that what about and I love Lucy Lou Wolfman that is speaking of your horror concern that's gonna be a no from me dog I also skipped that one no Wolfman Flight Risk directed by Mel Gibson starring Mark Wahlberg I think it's like takes place entirely on a three seater plane okay It's like, you know how Mark Wahlberg was like, if I'd been on the 9-11 plane, I would have saved it.

48:34I would have saved it, which is like a real Mark Wahlberg quote. They turned that into a three-seater plane movie. It was like a mega three-seater. He said not only would he have saved it, he said, it wouldn't have gone down like that. That is the quote. Great. Incredible that you had that at your fingertips, Bob. Love it. I think about it, no joke, every day of my fucking sad life. God grant me 10 % of the self-confidence of Mark Wahlberg. It's done wonders for his life. Yeah. Now he just wakes up at 2 a.m. to work out. Do you know about that as well? You know about his schedules? Oh, sure. Is that part of your health plan?

49:06No. You know what? I came, I had a, we don't have to get into it, but I had a dalliance with procuring some black market peptides from a sinister gay man in West Hollywood prior to the house burning down that really set me back on the right path of like, you need to find Jesus and stop being so insane. Okay, with like the peptides. You're still insane. telling that story here is true to crazy. It's not illegal. No, I didn't say that. But then I was like, maybe just be normal a little bit. It can never be totally normal, but I'm not counting my protein grams anymore if that says anything. I'm not either.

49:43I was trying. Yeah. We need to be free from the shackles of cottage cheese, you know? I can't take it anymore. I'm tired. We only have so much life left. And now it's fiber, so. It's just like, I'm so tired. Are you fine? I'm going to breathe in the toxic air and I'm going to have microplastics and that's fine. I used to do bags of drugs that I found in trailers backstage at Coachella. I'm doing great. This has been a revelatory appearance by you. My dad doesn't listen to this show. Okay. I'm not going to see that movie. Okay. That's the whole list. Yossi, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

50:17That's such a wonderful time. I got to finally pod with Amanda who I'm a huge fan of. But you'll be back soon, right? Won't be the last time. Yeah, Bridget Jones. Yes, Bridget Jones. Yeah, you're on the spreadsheet. Do you know that? Do you have access to the spreadsheet? No. And I don't. You're on it. I will not be granting you access to the spreadsheet. I don't have access to your spreadsheet. Are you a Paddington person? Oh my God, babe. Am I a Paddington person? Okay, well that episode is a Paddington and Bridget Jones episode. Wow. Yeah. I love Paddington. Do you know how much Paddington shit I bought when I went to the UK?

50:46It was like my suitcase was full of Paddington shit. Did you know that there was a recent Gap Paddington collaboration? If you're looking. I don't know whether they made adult sizes. It's mostly for kids. I can fit into a kid's small. it's very big in my house with the children so but it's it's a good stuff they made a duffel coat a Paddington duffel coat it's honestly a good coat you should check out the sizes I want a Paddington Gap sounds like you're headed to the Gap immediately after this recording is it currently in stores? it was for December so maybe now it's on sale also if anyone at Gap is listening Yassi would love some Paddington for Gap materials Paddington the bear is listening I would love a hug thanks Yassi thank you so much guys

51:37Okay, we're back. It's just me and you. How are you feeling? Great. Do you feel like you're back in action? You know, you've got two children in your home. You know, you're a lady, a lady in the world. I'm pleased to announce that Back in Action is actually an autobiographical film of what happened when I tried to institute Monday Night Movies with my three-year-old son. Not going well? No. No, it's too bad. I thought of you while watching this new film, which is... That's an insult. I thought this sucked. It's very bad. Yeah. So this movie is directed by Seth Gordon, who's made some kind of funny movies in the past, Horrible Bosses.

52:12Sure. It's about two CIA spies who retire, played by Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx. They also happen to be married. Mm-hmm. And then they get sucked back into the world of espionage and thrills and MacGuffins. And also it's a funny comedy with lots of hand-to-hand combat. I thought of you because it's also about raising a teenage daughter. I don't have a teenage daughter. Well, soon you will. One day I shall. And the little boy is just like, hey, look at my cool wearable technology. You know, he's not a problem. But Cameron Diaz is working through a lot with her mother. Yes. who is played by a British Glenn Close.

52:52Glenn Close affecting a British accent, not a British woman who is Glenn Close. That's correct. And then Cameron Diaz is also trying to work through her relationship with her teen daughter. Here are some notes I've made about this film. I'd like to share them with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a Mr. and Mrs. Smith meets family switch action comedy, a.k.a. Red Notice for Moms. I I object to this slander against moms here okay like I am I too am a mom not all moms not all moms unless you're Cameron Diaz in this film not all moms this is a subgenre that I am calling Wahlbergalia okay yeah it's not a flower it's not a city in Luxembourg it's a breezy semi-competent weightless form of wallpaper movie okay There's nothing wrong with it.

53:46But the better the talent associated with a movie like this, the more enervating this movie can be. Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx are way too good for this movie. Unfortunately, they're not good in it. I mean, they're not anything in it. They're not really asked to do anything other than just like be charming the way they would be charming in a commercial for vodka. That's really what it kind of feels like they're doing. Yeah, but like even broader than vodka because it's family. like it's family and it's supposed to be about like I love my mom a commercial for potato chips you know sure yes exactly it is a mass consumption product but they have like a little bit of that thing that they're reading lines as if they just need to get to the end of them as fast as possible which is what I associate with like it's how I would act are you sure you weren't watching it at 1.5x on Netflix no I wasn't can I tell you something I watched this while taking a bath and it's the chilling visual you don't No one asked you to visualize it, okay?

54:42Sorry, my mind is so strong. And so I would say like the 30 minutes where I was just like in the bath really engaged. Not to, I'm really reluctant to explore this more deeply, but like laptop perched on the bath? iPad in the shelving, the shelves that we had built, like directly on one side of the bath. There's, you know, that very famous image. I don't know if you've ever seen it from A Nightmare on Elm Street, where Heather Langenkamp is taking a bath and she sees Freddy Krueger's hand emerge from the bathtub. Right. I picture that, but the iPad appearing from the water screening back in action for you.

55:22No, it was just, it was set on the lowest little shelf. Okay. And I watched about 30 minutes when they go to London. Well, and I had started it earlier and then got in the bath. And that part I was really locked in. And then it was time to get out of the bath and, you know, kind of do my nighttime routine. So I just kept it going on the shelf. So I wouldn't say that I was like deeply engaged, but I do think I was watching it the way that most people watch a Netflix film, which is like while doing other stuff. This is one of the best, most recent examples of like the wheat and the chaff of real movie and Netflix movie.

55:59Yeah. Because there's a lot of people here who've worked on Hollywood movies, big productions. Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx are huge stars. I mean, they are really incredibly famous. Cameron Diaz hasn't been making movies for almost 15 years. That's where I'm going with this. This is also her back in action. You know, this is about her. Very much. It's framed around her going back into action, not just the character. It's been 11 years since she was in a movie role. She took a long break, I guess, to get married, start her wine business. She has a family. Yeah, she has a family. So she's been spending time with them.

56:33You know, this movie comes one year after Argyle. And when we talked about Argyle, we talked about wink action. There's something going on with this subgenre. Right. Where this is, it's like mutating in real time. This movie is now part of this ongoing thing that is happening where big movie stars in the aftermath of John Wick. And maybe we should have called it Wick wink action. are now participating in these movies. and this movie has a ton of it where you've got either like famous movie stars or their stunt doubles in lots of hand-to-hand combat. And it's really their stunt doubles because the cuts and the wigs are like very obvious.

57:15Very obvious in this movie. Yeah. But then now later this year we've got Love Hurts, the Kiwi Kwan-Ariana DeBose movie that feels very similar though Kiwi Kwan doesn't use a stunt double as often as many of these other actors. Nobody 2 is coming out with Bob Odenkirk and then this Jack Quaid movie Novocaine and you know there's a long lineage of this stuff Atomic Blonde and the Wick movies and the Leach and Stahelski movies but now they've kind of found it into this like very silly serious style of action movie and this is a really low form of it and it it being the movie where Cameron Diaz comes back is just kind of strange because she had a very up and down movie career but she was in a part of a lot of great movies yes and very funny a great comedian and that's something I want to ask you about is like her career and kind of where she fits in because she's been like multiple Golden Globe nominee.

58:05She's been in some very well. Okay, J-Lo. Well, you know, she was hard to forget. Like she was nominated for Vanilla Sky. You know, I think she was nominated for Being John Malkovich. Like she was in good movies. Yes, she was. And her career took like a more broad comedy direction over the last 10 years when she started doing like Bad Teacher and Sex Tape and she was in the Annie musical. and then that's when she stepped away. But through the first 15 years of her career, she was a staple figure. And I started writing down like generationally what she was like lineage wise, what she was a part of.

58:40And I was like, is it Carol Lombard or Claudette Colbert? Is it Jane Fonda or is it Diane Keaton? Is it Kathleen Turner? Is it Meg Ryan? Like she was always kind of straddling the line between sex pot, daffy woman, like independent minded, You know, I don't need a man type figures. And, you know, to her credit, like she really kind of bounced around between all those kinds of identities. And then now she's just in like this. Now she's like a mom. Yeah. You know, just like she looks great. She looks beautiful. Jamie Foxx, too. He's like 57 years old. He looks like he's 30. They look great. And I will say like the one time I laughed was during one of those action sequences, which are just like really bad.

59:24And so obviously like cut and cut around the two actors and, and also like weirdly violent, very violent. And I'm just like, what did you think that I was tuning in to watch? But anyway, but can I pitch a theory about that? These sequences are in these movies because they want you to look up from your phone. Sure. And you're like not paying attention to the dialogue and then something crazy happens. That's when I stopped watching for the most part. I was just like checking in for the plot points, which are bad, except the - Plot points. Well, the one surprised me because I was only paying like 20 % attention.

59:59The Kyle Chandler one. Listen, stop spoiling shit for people. Telegraphed from a mile away. Well, I thought it was going to be Andrew Scott. Yeah. Because, you know - The most like, if you've seen one spy movie ever, you know what's happening in this movie. Once again, I watched him get shot in the bath. And then I got out. He wasn't shot in a bath. You were in the bath when he was shot in the bath. Yeah, and then I got out and I had to do my red light mask. So, and it's really hard to... Do you know about this? Yeah, you're conjuring the substance right now, so... I'm not injecting anything. It's just me.

1:00:36Both weeks of, you know... Did I tell you that Eileen tried to watch the substance last night? Oh, no. Didn't go well. No, she didn't like it? No. After 30 minutes, she said there's too much injecting going on in this movie. Okay. And then I said it gets a lot worse than that. Yeah, no, it does. I think she bailed. The injections were fine, but, you know, I lived through a lot of that. Anyway, I was doing my mask, my red light and blue light mask at once. So it's kind of like hard to see the screen, you know? So you were doing them while the movie was on? Yeah. Okay. It's very respectful. I mean, I was like washing my face.

1:01:09I was washing my teeth. You know, I was doing all of the things. AirPods or no? Oh, no, no AirPods. No AirPods. Yeah. The good reminder to help me like order those. Yeah. Those had some ash in them. So they're gone. Okay. It's fine. And I had watched them already, you know, so they weren't performing at the highest level. So I missed that. I was surprised by the twist, but I tended to be like, I was like, okay, you're doing another junkie action sequence. I can look away. The only one I did watch was the one where the teen daughter is watching it. And I guess the son is too. And at one point Cameron Diaz, and I do actually think it is Cameron Diaz who headbutts someone because they like, uh, no, I would have said this was like at the rest.

1:01:49stop. Okay. And I do think that she's headbutting. And then the teenage daughter is like, mom. And Cameron Diaz, like while moving, it's like, honey, she's fine. You know, it wasn't that hard or something. And I thought that was funny. And I laughed. And it was just, that was like the one glimmer of like real Cameron Diaz. And then it went away and she had to like feel anguished because her mom was Glenn Close, who was an MI6 officer, and then sent Cameron Diaz to boarding school. So then she was CIA. Why couldn't this just be American? I think Glenn Close wanted to have some fun. That's the impression I get.

1:02:30Well, also you've got Andrew Scott as the MI6 officer. And I guess like London tax credits? Perhaps. Yeah. Perhaps. It did get us Jamie Demetru in the movie. I don't know if you're familiar with him. British comic actor. his sister Natasia is in What We Do in the Shadows and is absolutely hilarious on that TV show. Oh, right, right, right. Both of them are great. He's innocent in this movie. This movie is very bad. Glenn Close, you didn't see, I assume because you were on leave, Lee Daniels' The Deliverance, did you? I did not. This is a horror movie that Lee Daniels made that was released on Netflix in September.

1:03:04It was good? You liked it? No, it's terrible. But, you know what? I shouldn't say that. It's not terrible. It's just wild and ridiculous. there has not quite been a horror movie like it before but it's an almost entirely all black cast except for Glenn Close who is a woman in the deep south living within a black community and affecting a black community attitude. Yeah. And it's funny and weird and stupid and it's just a lot. And she's having fun right now. She's doing whatever she wants to do knowing that she will never win an Academy Award. You think it's never now? Well, if you keep taking on parts like Back in Action and The Deliverance, you will not win an Academy Award.

1:03:47And Hillbillyology, which I haven't forgotten. Very strange. This is like really, really bad. And I thought a little bit of Spy Kids, Bobby, while watching it. Damn, shots fired. Well, I mean, it's the parents were spies and the kids like at the end sort of save the day. The kids aren't involved, but that's the problem. It's like, it doesn't quite get to Spy Kids. but it's trying to have like the family tone, but then it's also trying to do weird, fake, super violent stuff. Like, what are we doing? Yeah. Spy Kids has way more charm than this movie for sure. Yeah. It sucks. Really bad. This is the true dump you worry candidate of this discussion today.

1:04:28Two thumbs down. Okay. Well, great seeing you. Thanks so much. Going to bring in CR now, I think. How do you feel about that? Do you want to say anything about presence? You've seen presence, right? I have. It was great. And thank you to the kind people with Neon, right? Who sent it to me like three weeks after Cy was born and I did watch it. But, you know, my brain at that point. I don't think I have like an elevated. There's a reason I'm not going to sit in on the conversation with you guys. But I liked it. I mean, you know what? I like it when Steven Soderbergh tries things. And it's a very, just my guy trying things again.

1:05:00Very much is. I'll talk about it with Chris now along with Wolfman and Flight Risk. Thanks, Amanda. Let's go to CR.

1:05:14Chris Ryan is here, headed to the Super Bowl. Congratulations. Thanks, man. You're always so benevolent about your praise of Philadelphia and Philadelphia sports. Tricky, tricky Super Bowl for a lot of fans. I understand. Unless you're from Philadelphia or Kansas City, we say congratulations to you guys. I think that these are two of the four best teams in the league. Agreed. Well earned, no question, but not the most exciting. But I'm happy for you. I'm happy to have you here in Dump You Area. It would not be Dump You Area if you were not here on the pod with me. And we've got three titles to discuss in a short period of time.

1:05:48You've got to get out of here. You've got another pod to do. What are you talking about on the watch today? We're talking about Severance, and we're talking about the agency. And we'll probably just talk about Vic Fangio and whether or not he can legally become our fathers. I see. In the meantime, speaking of fathers, let's start with Wolfman. Also, you take your time, man. Okay. Andy can wait. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that. I know that's not how you really feel, but I appreciate you saying that. Wolfman is a story about fathers in many ways. This is the new film directed by Lee Winnell.

1:06:16This is his, I guess his third consecutive movie for Blumhouse. Upgrade, Invisible Man, and now this. Yes, his fourth directorial feature. He's got his start as a writer working with James Wan many years ago. You may remember him from the film Saw, where he was one of the victims in that movie. Wolfman is an adaptation of Wolfman. And it's one of the most legendary universal monster movies that we have. What Winnell did with The Invisible Man, I thought was fairly ingenious. One of the last films released wide before COVID hit. That movie did pretty good business. And I think very smartly centered the lead monster into the villain role of the movie.

1:06:52This movie sort of attempts to do the same thing. It stars Christopher Abbott, Julia Garner. And it's a very contained, constrained, intimate horror movie. it's not done well at the box office and has not gotten good reviews and yet you saw the film and you texted me and what did you say? I said I liked it and what I think I mean is that I think I can make the case for it. Okay. Is this the substance for guys who care about macros? I have a totally different read on this film but please fire away. I think I can make a couple of different like what this movie is about in theory arguments more than I can make an argument about why it might be an enjoyable film to watch.

1:07:33A bunch of the movies we're going to talk about today feel like leftover COVID movies that are two-handers, three-handers, limited sets, or very isolated sets. So this is shot in New Zealand. A couple of the other films we're going to talk about just feel very like, we got a room for you guys to go into after you test, and we'll shoot it, and we'll fix it later. This is like, I think it was very much, at least the story itself feels rooted in that experience, whereas the other ones feel like they maybe suffered from or especially one of them feels like it's suffered because of that. But yeah, I just feel like this movie could be about a monster movie about killing your dad, a movie about the impossibility of connection with anyone other than blood, or a movie about blue-collar cosplay gone wrong.

1:08:19The last one is a good bit. I'm not sure it's in the text. My reaction to the movie, which I don't think is very successful for a variety of reasons, is that it's a decent drama about not fucking up your kids. Right. One of the core ideas of the movie that opens with Abbott's character as like a 10-year-old boy traversing the forests of the Pacific Northwest with his father, who is mindful of the dangers of life. You could say that, yes. He's sort of a paranoid about what could happen. And I guess the implication is that his wife has died somehow. Yes, apparently there was a cut scene from the movie where she has MS, I think.

1:08:55Or ALS. Oh, ALS. Okay. And so that has created a sense of isolation and paranoia in this father figure who then hands it down to the Christopher Abbott character. You know, through a series of phantasmagoric events, we learn that there is a lycanthropoc disease going around in this part of the Pacific Northwest. Christopher Abbott's character has to go back with his wife, Julia Garner, and their young child. To save their marriage. Yes, to save their marriage. Because she loves working too much. Yes, she's a journalist. It's like the San Francisco Chronicle or something. She keeps getting scooped by the Times.

1:09:31It's an amazing scene where she just walks into the apartment. She's not using AirPods or headphones. She's like on the phone. And she's like, are we just going to get scooped by the Times again? Would you say that that's how you feel listening to competing TV pods? No, I don't. I want everybody to succeed. And I also just think that if you just do your thing, the people will come. You actually do believe that. And I appreciate you saying it out loud. Do you feel that way about film pods? I used to be so competitive and now I'm like, we got what we do. And I feel good about it. I feel actually.

1:10:00There's only one Amanda, you know? Honestly, true. That is how I feel. There's no one could possibly replicate whatever's usually happening in that chair. And God bless her for it. The problem with the movie for me ultimately is that it's not scary. Yeah. We can debate whether or not it's effective as a Wolfman movie, which is often like such a heavy metaphor for the sort of feral nature of masculinity and our inability to communicate. and so we turn into animals and all these things that, you know, you can find going all the way back to the 41 Lon Chaney version of the movie, which is an excellent 70-minute classic monster movie.

1:10:31Yeah. It's been really hard to make a good werewolf movie and especially a good wolfman movie. There was one, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago that Joe Johnson directed starring Benicio Del Toro. Del Toro, yes. Which has some cool monster effects but is more of like a chamber piece and more of a historical story and I don't think works quite as well. There's the Mike Nichols, Jack Nicholson one. Wolf, of course. I think an American werewolf in London is probably the best loved of the more recent vintage, but that's going back almost 40 years now. I'm a big fan of dog soldiers. I mean, we're getting into just werewolf movies, not wolfman movies.

1:11:07The wolf, just like normal guy turns into a wolfman thing is hard to do. Now this movie, the actual makeup effects are good, but I didn't like the transition. It's kind of a slow transition into the wolfman and it becomes much more about, you know, I heard my friend Elric Kane said this on his podcast that this reminded him a lot of The Fly. Where Brundle Fly and The Fly like very slowly starts to become a fly. And Christopher Abbott very slowly becomes a wolfman in this movie. And I just wanted to see him just be full wolfy. You know, I wanted to see him be Teen Wolf. Yes. And he never does that.

1:11:41There was like a moment in the beginning of the movie where, so the Julia Garner character, the Christopher Abbott character and their daughter Ginger, or, you know, they're on their way to his late father's farm, which he hasn't been to in decades. They get lost and a mountain man who is also living there, who I take it to be like the kid who was like the son of their family friend and like the radio chatter, gets in the truck and all of a sudden introduces this element of like mystery because you can't quite tell if this guy's friend or foe. He's sort of, on one hand, seems to be mocking their urbane snowflake kind of tenderness, but is also like, you should be happy about that because that means you've had a good life and you're not made hard to the world.

1:12:24And that guy leaves the film quickly. And I thought that the rest of the movie kind of, there's nothing wrong with the performances. I think Abbott and Garner are two of the kind of finer actors of their generation in a lot of ways. There's a big reason why I was super excited. And Abbott brings a ton to the early scenes and even you can tell it just goes for it in the transformation. He's like, I watched hours and hours and hours of animal videos to try and get the gate down. but there was something kind of like they needed another thing in this movie. They needed something that like demanded that the two adult characters interact with or something.

1:13:02Like there was something missing from that element. And like you said, there was something missing from the scares. There was like two good set pieces, but they're kind of devoid of suspense. The car and then headed onto the top of the greenhouse. The car and the greenhouse, yeah. That was very effective. I thought the two best sequences of the movie were the opening sequence with the sort of the hunting spy tower and the fear of kind of what was below and then that sequence that you just described where they come across this guy who he has seen in many years. I've seen other people ask this but so we can just talk about these openly, right?

1:13:29I guess so. I mean this movie's going to be on streaming in like a week. Yeah. Other people have mentioned this but why if the guy is like I'm so you have to understand like everything could be taken from you because Blake's dad in the first scene is like everything can be taken away from you. Why does he have him in this incredibly dangerous remote part of Oregon? I think he's just trying to teach him to be a survivalist. That was my impression, was that you've got to see up close what you're up against. Yeah. And I wouldn't say that that's my parenting style. Right. But I'm trying to avoid wolf contact wherever possible.

1:14:05Nevertheless, I think, you know, the other challenge is just, Julia Garner's just too young for this part. You know, she's like, she was 28, I think, when they made this movie, and she's the daughter of an eight-year-old kid and she's a high-powered journalist. Like, I just don't think I really bought their relationship. I didn't really buy her. She's a really, really talented actor, but she's in an interesting pivot point of her career where she's played kind of like the trickster younger woman. Yeah. And now she's going into full-blown. Like, I'm in my 30s. Yeah. I can't have it all. Yeah. Well, I mean, she doesn't ultimately in this movie for a variety of reasons.

1:14:40But, you know, I would have liked for this to have been better, especially because you and I were both, we were both really enthusiastic about Upgrade which did we see together at South by? I don't think we saw it together but we saw it at the same South by Southwest. Okay. I heard the next Megan is supposed to be Upgrade-y vibes. Interesting. Yeah. Terminator style. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds exciting. And Invisible Man I thought was ingenious and so this is a bit of a step down and that's really unfortunate. Did you notice that in this movie Abbott's character is like all Carhartt-ed out in the beginning but like fashionable Carhartt?

1:15:08I did. And then by the end of it he's wearing a U.S. Marines fatigue shirt. and has become Wolf. Like he's gone from the like, you don't get this? He's gone from the like, you can buy this identity. You're kind of in throwing Fitz territory here, you know? Shout out to throwing Fitz. It's like what a man's wear can tell us about the man. You're giving us some Derek Guy dye work wear? No, no, no, no, no. I think it's interesting that this guy is like an unemployed writer who's wearing all of the like accoutrement of like a working class, like I get after it guy. Oh, I see. You think this was class commentary about my culture is not your costume.

1:15:50But then by becoming the wolf, he actually earns his wardrobe. Can I pitch something at you? I feel like if you could, you would take the wolf juice. If you could become a wolf man, you would do it. Wouldn't that have been an amazing version of this is like guys who opt into being the wolf man? It's kind of like getting blackpilled. Yeah. But for feral activity. Yeah. Wolf-pilled. Okay. You want to move on? Sure. Speaking of wolves, flight risk. Okay. We saw this film together. This movie eats absolute shit. Like, this movie might actually be a crime against cinema. Oh, it's very bad. There's open and naked use of AI in, like, the first scene.

1:16:39You think that moose was AI? It looked like the moose or like an animal from like a really bad Coke Christmas commercial where they're like, we used AI to make this. This was something I was saying when I was talking about the brutalist AI controversy where I'm just like, this is happening in movies all the time and we just don't know because the filmmakers are not telling us. And now we're going to do a point where things are appearing in movies and you're like, huh. I guess it's like, that's not a moose. So is it like animation or CGI? You know, was it the same artist who built Thanos, you know, drafting this moose?

1:17:07these craftsmen are listening to the big picture. I wonder if Sean and Chris... Why am I catching strays in this shitty Mel Gibson movie? Mel Gibson directed this movie. And let me just say, so, Eats Absolute Shit, Crime Against Cinema, like, et cetera. Yeah, down the list. Didn't move an inch during the entire film. I was riveted. Yeah. I was riveted knowing it was bad, but I, you and I are both prone to getting up to go to the bathroom during a movie. Neither of us did. Well, you were like, I was like, you wanted candy before we start. You bought tickets, I'll buy the food. and you're like, you know what?

1:17:38I plan on getting up. I heard this isn't very good. And I didn't. Reader, no, you didn't. I didn't have a single Sour Patch Kid that night. This movie stars Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, and Topher Grace. Yep. That was the aspect of it that had me going in hoping it was going to be good. When I saw the trailer at CinemaCon, I told you and Amanda, this is a cool idea for a movie. It's a pretty good, contained, and we were still in sort of the post-COVID environment. I was like, I get what this is. Yeah. This is a movie that was made probably in 2022, maybe even 2021. And it was because there were a lot of protocols and restrictions.

1:18:10So the studios were looking for scripts that could be made cheaply and in contained environments, like you said at the beginning. And this one takes place largely on a four-seater airplane. It's about a U.S. marshal who needs to transport a witness in a mafia case, essentially. You can tell it's a mafia case because they're testifying against a guy named Moretti. Moretti. so Moretti has done bad Topher Grace is his accountant he's given Charles Grodin in Midnight Run but not really do you think the mob still has accountants like that or it's like some square pencil pusher I move money around from the mafia you think they've deployed AI to do their accounting I think they've just figured out this took down Capone let's be a little careful fair point in the process of this transport from I guess the the wilderness of Alaska.

1:19:04I think he's gotten out to the Alaskan tundra. And now I don't know where he plans. To eventually get to Seattle to testify against Moretti in the case that the U.S. government has been building against him. As they are about to take off, the pilot gets on the plane. That pilot, of course, is portrayed by Mark Wahlberg. Is he a pilot? He is. Is he the pilot? He's not. He is, in fact, not just a hitman sent to kill this testifying witness, but he is an absolute sociopath who is there to plunder, pillage, and destroy both of these people that are on the plane with him. This is the most committed Mark Wahlberg performance in several years.

1:19:38I wouldn't say it's a good Mark Wahlberg performance, but every time he talked, I was like, what is going on here? This person is a great... There's some of the most vile and aggressive threats made in this movie. Which I didn't see in the original script. This has been discussed a little bit online, but this was a blacklist script. Jared Rosenberg, I think, wrote it. and pretty like solidly built. Yeah. And what it lacks is the constant threats of sexual violence that Mark Wahlberg's character spouts, which is just definitely like an interesting wrinkle to throw on it. Wahlberg wears at one point a toupee under a hat, which I guess is supposed to be either this hitman's act of vanity or is...

1:20:23He's in a disguise. He's in a disguise. but when he's bald, it's quite obviously a bald cap. Yes. No, it's not. He shaved his head. Mark Wahlberg shaved the front and back of his head. Yes, I read this. Mark Wahlberg shaved his head and it looks like a bald cap because he has an enormous head. Yeah. But that's just his head and that's one of the reasons why he's a movie star. And did he say why he did it? Or what was it about the character? Commitment to the part. Okay. What part? I guess just that this guy's an absolute crazy person and there's some sort of false equivalency to bald people? Yeah, I guess so.

1:20:57I don't really know. A really strange movie. Yeah. A movie that I desperately wanted to know what was going to happen, even though I knew I would be disappointed by its conclusion. Yeah. But the entire time was thinking over and over and over again about all of the silly decisions that the Michelle Dockery character is making and her unwillingness to either tase Mark Wahlberg's character to death or into submission for the entirety of the movie. Like the idea of being on a four-seater plane with an absolute sociopath. Who's talking. Who's taunting you and letting him just hang there and figure out a way to escape is ridiculous.

1:21:35Michelle Dockery, interesting times for her. One of my faves, Lady Mary from Downton Abbey. Fantastic in the film The Gentleman. Yes. And, you know, I think she's also in kind of a pivot point of her career. She's done a fair amount of TV. Yeah. She's done a lot of TV. She's done network TV in the U.S. I was just reading last night that she was in a Stephen Knight miniseries in the UK. I guess they don't even call it miniseries. It's a series, a six-episode series about music in the 80s. Yes, this town. This town, which I never saw. It has not come out over here. I've tried my best. To see it or to talk about it?

1:22:07To see it, yeah. Jason Manzoukas and I were just talking about this. Oh, really? Yeah, it looks really cool. When is this town coming? I'm like, damn, dude. It's about the two-tone ska movement in Birmingham in the 80s. Yes, which sounded really exciting. So she's obviously still doing cool stuff. She's a little saddled with some tough script situation here. You know, her American accent, not always the greatest in the world. There is a... I said to you, I think after we walked out, like that had Shyamalan vibes. Like the way people talked and the sort of oddness of the characters. That stilted quality, yeah.

1:22:40Yeah, she, I mean, for people who want to see Dockery in good stuff, she's in The Gentleman. She's in Godless, which is a really incredible Scott Frank series, Western. Yeah, Topher. I mean, Topher Grace. Well, let's actually, let's do this. When the film ended, there was some light applause in the theater we were in. Yeah. As the directed by Mel Gibson card flashed. I don't know if it was in direct relation to Gibson as a filmmaker or just the satisfactory ending of the film for the theater that we were in. Yeah, I think. I mean, it's like, I guess maybe they were just celebrating his ambassadorship to Hollywood, which President Trump recently granted him.

1:23:20unknowingly apparently to Mel Gibson. Did you know that, that he didn't know that was coming? I didn't. Did you hear what his response to that was? I saw that he was like, daddy's home or daddy's back and he's taking the belt to like... Here's the thing. Mel Gibson's personal history is downright disgusting. Yeah. He always had a good sense of humor and his response to the news that he had been granted an ambassadorship was very funny, which was, does it come with a residence? Because his house had just burned down in Malibu. That was his public statement about this. You have to laugh, yeah. Mel Gibson, probably the single weirdest directorial filmography in movie history.

1:23:52I'm going to read to you now the films that he directed. Let's do this in order here. Okay. He breaks out in 1993 with The Man Without a Face, which I saw in movie theaters. I completely forgot about the existence of this film. This is a huge premier magazine movie. Massive movie at the time. Young Nick Stahl as a young boy who comes across a badly burned man. Right. who he learns to love and teach him how to have empathy or whatever. Totally middling drama. Follows that up directly with Braveheart, one of the biggest movies of the 1990s, a Best Picture winner, a film that very quickly got etched into the history of American movies.

1:24:34Yeah. He waits a solid nine years to follow that film up with The Passion of the Christ, the most successful independent movie ever made, an extraordinarily violent portrayal of the death of Christ. he then a few years later makes Apocalypto arguably his most accomplished movie controversial movie in some ways still a success and then his career goes down you know really dark terrible path after he gets pulled over in Malibu he makes a bit of a comeback as a director with Hacksaw Ridge which is like widely acknowledged by the Academy I think he was nominated for Best Picture Andrew Garfield was nominated for Best Actor in that movie a war film in 2016 and then nine years go by nothing and now Flight Risk Well, 2016 to 2025 is an interesting time in American history.

1:25:21It certainly is. You could make the case that this is a well-timed return for him. Sure. You could say it's odd that he wasn't given a chance in 2017. I, you know, apparently the resurrection of the Christ is coming. His sequel to The Passion of the Christ. Are you serious? This film he's been working on. Apparently it's coming this year. Do you think he did flight risk to prove that you can insure me? I think it's a good theory. I think it's a good theory. I believe the resurrection of the Christ he is funding. Because it's worth mentioning that while he has been in, let's just say, director jail, whether that's true or not.

1:26:02He has been making four to five straight to VOD B movies a year. Yes. bandit hot seat confidential informant desperation road boneyard now he has made one very good film which is Dragged Across Concrete I will say he and Vince Vaughn are amazing in that that was 2018 but for the most part has been in the wilderness for the last decade I don't I think with the exception of Father Stu which is when he first collaborated with Mark Wahlberg a few years ago I don't think he's made a studio movie because Dragged Across Concrete is not a studio movie. Not since The Expendables 3. Oh, no, I'm wrong. It's actually Daddy's Home 2 when he and Mark Wahlberg connected, which I know is your favorite film of 2017, where he played his dad.

1:26:55Have you seen this? I have not seen either Daddy's Home. Daddy's Home 2 stars Will Ferrell and John Lithgow as father and son and Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson as father and son. So it's just meet the parents. I don't know I haven't seen it okay is Flight Risk the worst movie ever directed by an Academy Award winner it's gotta be up there that's a really great question how in deep do you want to get into this question I'll just call out best directors should we revisit the early works of John Ford and just see how those 1920s silence stack up to Flight Risk it's gotta be way up there I mean, it's impossible to tell just based on looking at the names because I don't have your filmographies in front of me.

1:27:45Haggis has made some shit, right? Has Paul Haggis never made... I think Crash is his worst movie. Like, In the Valley of Ella is not a bad movie. Anyway, maybe some fodder for the listeners at home to think about. Flight Risk, I wouldn't recommend it. And yet, tremendously watchable. This is the power of Dumpy Worry. This movie's doing fairly well at the box office. Yeah, and that's the thing. is that this is exact, it's a real best of times, worst of times part of the year where all of the big films from the previous year are being endlessly circulated and celebrated. But deep down secretly, that little demon inside of you just wants to watch Wolfman and Flight Risk.

1:28:22What about Presence? How do you think that figures into the equation? Because it is a genre movie. It is from a legitimately talented Best Director winner. Two movies from Best Director winners this month. and Steven Soderbergh who's the guest on this episode of the show along with you and Yassi it's written by David Koepp this is the second of three collaborations between Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp who is I think you could say very much in the conversation for most successful screenwriter of the last 35 years etc written many many many hit films over the years Lucy Liu Chris Sullivan and Kalyani Lange are the stars of the movie it's a movie Julia Fox is also in it as a real estate agent how'd you feel about her performance I thought she was born to do it.

1:29:05She was very funny. A family becomes convinced they are not alone after moving into their new home in the suburbs. And we very quickly learn that this is a perspectival movie seen through the eyes of a ghost. And since Steven Soderbergh is the camera operator on all of his movies, he is literally the ghost moving through this house. The movie is set almost entirely inside of this house, just like all of these other films we're talking about here today, which are very intimate. What do you think of Presence? awesome movie incredible movie really actually quite moving at the end not unlike like No Sudden Move which is one of my favorite movies of the decade that Soderbergh directed during the great Max straight to streaming run in 2020 I feel like this really lingers after it's gone and you start thinking about the distancing techniques that he uses formally so the idea that there's not a lot of traditional coverage of what would have been family dinners, family arguments, family moments of intimacy.

1:30:10Like you don't get like close up medium. Nothing over the shoulder. It's all like this wandering eye, which you know is a ghost because of like the sort of set up to the film, like because of like the promotional materials and the ideas. But it really started making me about like self-surveillance and about the idea of like how much intimacy we have with each other without really knowing each other because you like know where people are and know what they're doing. And like the son who turns out to be something of a bully is sharing with his mom the photos he's taken of this victimized girl and laughing about it.

1:30:48And it's just such a thought-provoking piece over the course of what, 82 minutes? Or something like that. And on top of it all, it's like a rock-solid screenplay that has like really intriguing elements of like what's Lucy Liu's character's deal. And Chris Sullivan does a fantastic job as like dad of the year. And I don't know, I just love this movie. Yeah, it's really, really good. And I think the screenplay is pretty smart. So Soderbergh told me that it was his idea and he brought it to Cap and Cap fleshed out the story of the family. Was he like, I want to do a ghost story from the perspective of a ghost?

1:31:21Yes. And it was like all in one house. This house is, you know, he seemed to have like the really the bones of the story clearly. but I think they make a good choice by signaling a lot of things about why families are the way that they are without coming out and saying them. For example, in the story, Lucy Liu's character has clearly, whether she's committed a crime or there's some sort of like financial fraudulence in play, we never really get the details of it. Like that's actually not the point. The point is that there is all of this subterranean activity even within families, even within the deepest relationships and the only people who would know about them are the people who are in the house and even then what you keep from your kids what you keep from your spouse we saw there's that one sequence where Chris Sullivan's character goes outside to have a phone conversation on the balcony which is like riveting even though you have no idea what he's talking about yeah he's calling like a lawyer friend to be like hypothetically if X, Y, or Z was happening there's so many scenes that essentially build this statement that if this is a horror movie the horror movie is being a family yes the horror is you're in this house trapped with these people and how much can you actually ever really know another person?

1:32:29So the son who's supposed to be a star athlete seems to be something of a sadist. The daughter who while is like in recovery from a friend of hers losing her life to a drug overdose also is still using. The mom who is like this alpha driven lawyer has like borderline inappropriate affection for her son. and then the father is just bouncing around trying to make sense of it all and basically living a life of utter loneliness. And it's like a pretty staggering portrait of a family made all the more so because of the brevity of the film and also the visual language that it's speaking in because you're not getting the traditional, oh, this is this guy's standalone monologue scene that's on his face and this is his award reel.

1:33:19It's just, it just makes you think so much about film language and it makes you feel, Think a lot about family and death. Yeah, it's very sophisticated and very simple at the same time, which has become really Soderbergh's trademark over the last 10 years in particular. And I asked him about this, and I couldn't tell when I asked him about it whether or not he had seen these movies, but it made me think a lot about Nickel Boys and Here, which are also movies very much about perspective that are shot in confined circumstances for the most part. And Nickel Boys specifically is also a first-person movie.

1:33:50These are not the first two first-person movies ever made. but they're both really audacious and upend our expectations of a traditional narrative movie. It's not your usual whodunit the way that The Lady in the Lake is. And to me this is kind of charting a path for what movies for adults can be which is that this movie was made very modestly. He shoots and edits these films. As he goes, yeah. He did it clearly in less than a month. They need a good script and a solid cast and you need to just be able to execute. He talked about the shoes he had to wear to walk through the house while wearing it.

1:34:28That's amazing. There were very specific choices that were made that you'd really have to think hard about. But it's a movie that I think does reward thinking hard about it. The actual mystery of the movie I think is fine. It serves its purpose. If you're going in expecting jump scares and a deathly presence with a ghost story, it's not quite that kind of story. So you should adjust your expectations. No, but it does have a pretty cool twist. It does. It does. anyhow really good yeah I was gonna ask you I mean I'm sure you discussed this with him to some extent but where your head is at on this period of Soderbergh this I think he'd had his straight to streaming era of like The Laundromat and High Flying Bird High Flying Bird or High Flying Bird The Laundromat No Sudden Move yeah the Meryl Streep film which is escaping me People Will Talk People Will Talk Let Them All Talk Let them all talk.

1:35:23And then Kimmy. And Kimmy was his first movie with David Koepp. And I think the question, I think the new conversation starts with Black Bag. Yeah. Black Bag is coming out in less than two months. It's a spy thriller starring two huge movie stars in Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. You know, also written by Koepp. And it focuses putting it out. This is his first theatrical release in since, is it Logan Lucky? I mean, is that possible? You might be right. that's a long time. That's almost 10 years that he hasn't been in movie theaters. So I'm curious to see if that begins a new stretch. Yeah.

1:36:01Well, also, I haven't seen it. I can't wait to see if he, knowing it's going into theaters and knowing it's getting a wide theatrical release, comes back to the middle formally a little bit. I mean, we could use him in terms of those kinds of movies right now. But I don't know if that interests him. And maybe he's just like, actually, I'm out here and I'm creating a new kind of visual language to make narrative films here. Not a new one, but one that I'm teaching people to these odd lens choices and these kind of doing away with certain aspects of coverage and the crutches you think you need to get through a scene.

1:36:38I don't have them. I'm not sure. I mean, the thing that we can say is that since he came out of his retirement, I guess Unsane was his last theatrical release, by the way, which is in 2018. So since he came back with Logan Lucky in 2017, he's made 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 features in seven and a half years. He's also made Mosaic and Full Circle and Command Z. So three TV series and these films. Yeah. So I guess Magic Mike's Last Dance was a theatrical release, so I'm misspeaking here. But it was commissioned to be a streaming-only movie that they decided to put into movie theaters. I don't know.

1:37:29It's a fascinating stretch, but it never felt like he was really in the zeitgeist with any of these movies. And I think that's maybe the thing he doesn't care about as much. Yeah. Yeah, it's also been cool to think about how we're going to look back on this era of movies in general because I feel like I bang the drum for a few of these films pretty hard, but none of them have the cult classic vibe that Haywire does. It's true. And I don't know why that is. I don't know why it is that a film that was released straight to max or a movie that's, let's just say buried somewhere in the Netflix library that was really provocative, like The Laundromat or Beautiful.

1:38:09I mean, you know why. It's because most people don't know these movies exist because they went straight to streaming. But wouldn't, conversely, like they're just at people's fingertips. Like if you have, if you have the service that shows White Lotus and the service that has stranger things, like, I know. You know I feel very strongly about this. You got to put the movies in movie theaters to make them real movies. I did ask Soderbergh about that. I think if a movie like Kimmy had gotten a month in movie theaters and gotten commercials during the NFL playoffs, there would just be a different idea of it in people's heads.

1:38:36Yeah. And it would be more likely to achieve that cult status that you're talking about. Now, it doesn't mean that all of them do. Magic Mike's Last Dance did get in. I think people were kind of like, this doesn't feel totally fleshed out. It's okay. Yeah. It seems like you guys wanted to do these three dance sequences and then built a movie. Exactly. But Kimmy, No Sudden Move, Let Them All Talk, High Flying Bird, Laundromat. These are all good movies. They're all interesting. They're all dynamic. They're all different. They're not the same. And yet they don't have this big weight. It doesn't feel like Presence is necessarily going to have this big weight either, but it's very much worth people's time.

1:39:07So, you know, Soderbergh, he's in his 60s. He's still as interesting as a filmmaker as he's ever been. Yeah. Any other thoughts? No, let's get to your conversation with him. Thanks, Chris. To be continued, Sean. Let's go to my conversation now with Steven Soderbergh.

1:39:33Steven Soderbergh is here, back on the show after a few years. Steven, presence is your 35th feature. I'm not sure if this has been announced to you or if you're even aware of that. Yeah, 35. How do you feel about that? I'd have to go back and see how that's being calculated. Okay. Is Chang one movie or two? I think I counted it as two. Okay, that's good. Did you put Behind the Candelabra on there? I did. Okay. Can I tell you some famous filmmakers 35th films? Please. There's not a lot of examples here. Bergman's, I believe, was Cries and Whispers. Hitchcock's was Notorious. John Huston's was Escape to Victory.

1:40:13Jean-Luc Godard's was King Lear. What do you make of 35? Not a lot of people get 35. It's a huge accomplishment. Well, you know, I'm in the volume business. So it works for me. But I think one of the reasons that I've been able to work at that rate is the internal philosophical debate that a lot of young filmmakers have to engage in about whether they are writer directors or whether they are directors. And I decided that I was not a writer director that I had written, but that I was not a writer. And when I realized that and accepted that, Everything got better. The work got better. My life got better.

1:41:07And so if that wasn't the case, Bergman being the exception, but he's a freak, you know, nobody's well is that deep. Like you can't come up with something good every nine months. So I just decided I want to work with writers. And, you know, that's why I can move quickly from one thing to the next. It's an elegant segue to my next question, which is that this new film, Presence, is the second of three David Koepp scripts that you're adapting into a feature. You both worked in Hollywood for decades, but you had not worked together, right? Up until Kimmy? Yeah, we knew each other. We've known each other since 1989.

1:42:01David's movie, Apartment Zero, was at Sundance the same year as Sex Lies. So we've known each other a long time. And I knew who he was before that. He already had a very strong reputation as a talented young writer. And I'd read scripts of his before Sunday. So we became friendly after that, almost worked together in the mid 90s on a ghost movie, strangely, that we abandoned because we couldn't figure out the third act and stayed friends. And then a few years ago, he was living in London and I was visiting London and we had a drink. And he said, hey, I've got this idea about a woman who's a voice analyst for one of these companies.

1:42:51And here's something that she thinks is suspicious. And I said, please write that. And that kind of got us going. You know, and and it's it's a risk when you work with someone that you've been friends with for a long time. I've seen relationships not survive a movie, but we we we we managed to sail through the first one. And so I pitched him a second one presence. and when that was finishing up, he said, I just finished this other script. What do you think? And I said, I want to do that too. I'm very anxious about the fact that I'm going to have two movies in the marketplace within six weeks of each other, both written by David.

1:43:48And even though they're radically different films, I just, I'm concerned that for the, But for the niche audience members that are aware of my presence as a filmmaker, one a year they can handle, but like two in six weeks is just really pushing it. I haven't seen Black Bag. I'm really looking forward to it. I do suspect that there's a kind of a theme of surveillance in all three of these movies. Is that fair? Well, in the case of presence, there is certainly eavesdropping and you are certainly a voyeur. Um, the difference I think is that is the intention behind that, that point of view. And in the case of presence, um, it's clear very early on, it's not threatening and it has, it has no intention to harm anybody.

1:44:54and so you sort of take it on. Your concern about your complicity is altered a little bit because it's clear this thing is vulnerable and this thing is kind of afraid also and so I hoped it would, you know, not make you feel as uncomfortable as you might if you felt like this had bad intentions. When you say you pitched it to David, Did you pitch him this concept of this kind of perspectival ghost or was that his construction? Where did that come from? I gave him a handful of pages to read that basically just set up the idea and described how the point of view would work. And that was it. I said, this thing is in the house.

1:45:45We are the thing. And it starts out vacant. a family moves in and the family is really fucked up. And that was it, literally. And he built out all of it. I didn't know who it was. When I got to the end of the first draft that David wrote, I was surprised. So when you're thinking of a concept like that, are you mapping in your mind already specifically how you're going to technically execute on that concept when you up with it? Or are you waiting until you get to the script to say, okay, here are the challenges and here's how I'm going to physically, you know, um, realize this, this script. It's rare for me to know exactly how I want to shoot it in its, in its, you know, larval stage.

1:46:34But in this case, there was only one way to shoot it. So that was kind of hardwired into the idea itself. And I liked that it's a real movie idea. This doesn't work in any other format, even television. It can't be a play. It doesn't work as a book. It's a real movie idea. And those are rare. But normally, if I've responded to a piece of material and I decide I want to do this, there's then a process of how do I approach, who, who, what director do I need to be to execute this in an optimal way? What are the rules? What's the toolkit? Um, what, I'll start watching things that are in the same space, uh, to look for ideas about what I want to do or what I don't want to do.

1:47:33But this was rare. It can only be this. I'd love to hear more about the actual physical making of it. What kind of camera are you using? Is this the iPhone with lenses? Are you holding the camera and moving through the space as you're making it? It's a Sony a seven, which is, uh, which looks, uh, which has the sort of form factor of a still camera. It just looks like a still camera. Um, but it's got a, it's got a big sensor and it's the same sensor that they use in their, their high end movie cameras. Um, it is attached to a Ronin, uh, stabilization device, which looks like a U basically with the camera sitting in the middle of it.

1:48:22Um, and I'm walking around with this and my little like ninja slippers that have a rubber grip on the bottom, uh, which was weird. And I had a question about what shoes you wore while you were making it. I was genuinely curious because you can't make noise. Yeah. I had to be as quiet as I can. And I, and I really did need grip, you know, cause I'm going up and down these stairs a lot. Um, and so it turned out to be, you know, the perfect tool for the job. It looks, it looks stunning. I just, uh, I just came back from checking, uh, a print at the Dolby, uh, theater here in New York. And it's just, I just can't believe how good the image looks, generated by this camera.

1:49:14And so, you know, for me, this emergent developing technology is, I mean, I just don't know how I would execute the film without this specific gear. Like I don't, anything any bigger than that, I can't get back into the closet or I'm going to fall down the stairs. and I wanted it to have a certain visual quality. I did not want it to look like something that was shot inexpensively. I wanted it to have a very velvety kind of feeling. So it's just, it's, I feel so lucky. I've seen this gamut, you know, of going from only film to this. Like, it's incredible. It made me think a lot more about the physical act of filmmaking, knowing that someone was holding something to execute making it.

1:50:14But also, it made me think a lot about how you, the sort of like blocking and choreography inside of one space like this that you have to do. Was it meaningfully different from how you would do it on another feature because of the way you need to see the frame? Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm usually operating the camera, so I'm used to having a somewhat intimate relationship with the cast, but this was next level. And, you know, all of the busted takes, all of the takes that are NG as they're written on the script notes were because of me, because I made a mistake. And so that was new, is feeling that sort of level of performance anxiety.

1:51:05But it was also really pleasurable because it was a real dance. It was choreography. And that's kind of fun to figure out. Um, I wish normally I come out the other end of, of making something and feel like I picked up a couple of new things that I can bring to solves, uh, that I can bring to the next project. I mean, that's, that's, you're trying to learn. You're always trying to learn as of right now, I'm not sure what I can take from presence to use going forward because it was so specific in its demands and its requirements, and they don't really fit most things. And so I don't know, maybe two years from now, I'll be trying to solve a problem and I'll go, oh, I can steal from what I learned on presence.

1:52:08But right now I feel like it's kind of a one-off. I thought of two other 2024 movies while watching Presence. I don't know if you've seen either of these movies, but there's Ramel Ross's Nickel Boys and there's Robert Zemeckis' Here. And they're both, they're different executions from your film, but they have some things in common as well. And like, other than Lady in the Lake, I couldn't think of another movie that used a similar strategy that was a studio movie, basically, in the last hundred years. I'm sure there were some that you looked at. But it's interesting to me that it does feel like form, even in mainstream movies is kind of changing pretty dramatically right now.

1:52:46And the way that the camera moves and what the audience sees and how they see it, like there's still somewhere else to go here. And your movie really revealed that to me. Like, what do you think accounts for that and these, some of these changes in the last couple of years? I'm not sure. And I'm also not sure that there isn't a sort of a line or a tipping point in terms of film grammar beyond which you start to lose people. You know what I mean? Like you take, let's just talk pure staging. Like there's nobody on the planet who has the pure staging ability of Steven Spielberg. If you made it any more complex, it would become incoherent.

1:53:33He is right up against, you know, how far you can go in terms of visual complexity and still have people understand where they are and what they're looking at. So I do think there's a sort of narrative equivalent of that. I'm just, that's a purely visual, you know, context. But I'm wondering in terms of story, form, and all that, if there isn't, it's sort of like language. It's like written language. There have been people who've experimented with it. But basically, you've got to, for the most part, put sentences together that people can understand. You know what I mean? And I do think it's sort of similar with film.

1:54:17Now, that being said. I think it's absolutely mandatory that we keep pushing at that line, because I don't think I do think there's always a little bit of wiggle room and a little bit of a workaround. And so I hope everybody will, I hope filmmakers will still continue to push like, well, what's possible? You know, the line is whether the audience taps out or whether they lean in. You know, that's really what it comes down to. And the good news is, you know, we have we have a few markers to judge, you know, where people are tapping out and when they're leaning in. Part of it is economic, is box office.

1:55:07And part of it is cultural, you know, how people write about films and what the people who write about films think. You know, so I like I like thinking about that and and trying to place myself somewhere within it. you know the limey I'll never make anything I think as purely abstract as the limey and while I'm happy that people that have seen it seem to like that film nobody saw that film it's not a commercial movie it's just not yeah it's interesting that you say that though because you are able to maintain genre elements often or at least narrative frameworks within all of these experiments that you do over the years?

1:55:59And I think maybe people who are film fans are more willing to go on journeys with someone like you or someone whose name they know and say, well, at least I'll be willing to see something different. Do you feel like you are actively leveraging that at this stage of your career? Oh, well, I mean, not consciously. That's not something I would think about. But I'm very... It may shock some people when they look at the list of things that I've made to hear me say, I'm very, very conscious of the audience. And I think about them a lot. And you talk to anybody that I work with, you know, if we're trying to make sure that we're doing the best version of something, I will often invoke the audience and say, I don't think the audience is going to understand X unless we make that more clear.

1:57:00Or I think we're going to lose the audience when that character does Y. And we need to or how do we feel about that? You know, at the same time, I can't be completely driven by what will give them pleasure, meaning if I see the thing a certain way, and I think it has to be that way, but it may mean sacrificing a certain section of the audience. I will sacrifice that section of the audience to make it the way I think it should be. You just have to be smart about the scale of the thing. You know, when I think about Solaris, which which I don't feel for me creatively is entirely successful. One of the things that frustrates me about it is we should have made it for really cheap.

1:58:02It wasn't hugely expensive. It was like mid-range budget, but I look back on it and go, I should have made, you know, it shouldn't have cost 40. It should have cost nine. You know, it would have been better for the movie and, and, and people would have, I think, been more able to sort of take it on, you know, because it looked and felt like a big studio movie. But what it was doing in a plot character atmosphere sense was not at all. and so they were kind of confused and I so you know I try to be smart about that because if you miss too many times in a row you know it starts to get difficult I want to ask you about that but then one other thing kind of more formally in the movie that I thought was very interesting that I want to hear you talk about is the editing style which is not typical you don't have your typical dissolves or match cuts or things that you see filmmakers deploy to kind of get the narrative momentum of the story going.

1:59:07It has this kind of abrupt style cutting from sequence to sequence. Why did you make that choice? It seemed like the easiest and simplest way to indicate the passage of time. And if you were to go back and analyze the length of the black gaps between scenes, they're calculated very specifically to give you a sense of how long it's been since the last scene. Some of them are very, very fast, which means we're talking a couple of hours. And some of them are long, which means weeks. And so it was sort of problem solved where I felt, yeah, what are the transitions between scenes? Like, I got to figure that out.

1:59:58And then once I decided, okay, I'm going to cut to black, I thought, oh, great. That's an opportunity to actually help the audience understand the grammar of the filmmaking and the storytelling here. At a certain point, whether they can articulate it or not, they will begin to understand that the length of the black has meaning and it will help orient them. So, you know, those kind of things are fun to think about. Yeah, it was really interesting. Presence is getting a theatrical release, and you've just come out of this six-year period where you're primarily making work for streaming services.

2:00:35Magic Mike's Last Dance did play in theaters, but I believe was not originally intended to. Right. What did you learn about how those films and series were received in the wider world by going to streaming the way that they did? Oh, well, I didn't, but I don't read anything anyway. So my only way, my only, my only method for judging how things are going is the degree to which people say yes or no to me. That's the only way I can tell how it's going. And so I don't, I just don't read stuff. I think it's not, it's probably not good for you. The year of traffic and Aaron Brockovich was, was so, uh, off the chart that I decided this would be a really good time to just stop reading anything that has your name in it.

2:01:30Cause it's only going to get worse. And that's, I've stuck to that and it's, uh, it's working for me. That is interesting. Well, let me ask you this, even though you haven't read this, there's an accepted wisdom that films that get theatrical release have a stronger chance to kind of imprint in the culture because there's maybe a marketing budget. There's the feeling amongst audiences that the movie is quote unquote more real, that it is not a streaming movie that can then disappear in some way. Does that make sense to you? Do you buy into that? That makes sense to me. I think what I did, because it's sort of related to something that I've learned through experimentation.

2:02:10in this case, the release of Logan Lucky, in which we spent all of our money on everything except buying TV ads. Turns out, if people don't see an ad for your movie on TV, as opposed to like on a social media platform, they don't think it's a real movie. And I think this is sort of that thing. There's a kind of legacy, you know, street cred that comes with putting a movie out in theaters. I mean, we know empirically for a fact that a movie that has had a theatrical life, when it shows up on a platform, draws more eyeballs. Um, so what that, what that says possibly, um, is that, that we, we value that we place a value on that experience that we may not be consciously aware of.

2:03:15I happen to think it's really good for us to be in a theater together just watching one thing at a time. That I think it's just good for you. I think it's a good brain reset to stare at one thing for a couple of hours with 300 other people. I think it's good for you. But there must be some value, whether it can be quantified or not, or this wouldn't be true, that people don't perceive movies as being somewhat having some weight that's different than things that don't go out theatrically and the fact that they draw these eyeballs. So, you know, the good news is lately, in the last year or two, in the indie space, but also to some extent across the board, young people are going to the movies.

2:04:17That is very exciting. Here in Los Angeles, it's kind of amazing what's happening with young people, but that's a whole other topic. Thinking of the movies you've made in recent years, I love the little callback to the Meryl Streep character's novel that's in presence. That is a great little bit that I didn't realize until I watched it a second time, but it did have me thinking about let them all talk and high flying bird laundromat, Kimmy, no sudden move, all these movies you've made that I'm the kind of guy who likes to like have all the filmmakers movies on a shelf somewhere, you know, so that I can feel like I've got the complete filmography.

2:04:49and even last time we talked, I think we were talking about how like the recut Kafka and a new version of Schizopolis and all like the potential for all of these things to be out in the world. And I look at the Soderbergh shelf and it's incomplete right now. And I'm like, I'm wondering, how do you, do you think about that? Do you care about that? Yeah, I mean, it's, well, I think about it in the sense that I have a shelf too. And I have, I hope it won't make me seem too self-oriented to admit that I have one copy of the films that I've made on a shelf with the other films. And it is, you know, we're filling the gap with the box set, which is coming.

2:05:29But there's these series of films for which there are no physical copies. And it is weird. Like, it is weird. I can't really justify, you know, calling Warner and saying, I personally would feel so much better if you guys would put these out on Blu-ray. But, you know, I can argue the other side, which is, conversely, most of the discs on those shelves are things that either are still impossible to find on streaming or don't exist in that world in the optimal format that I've acknowledged now that almost everything is available and in pretty high quality and that I died when I went through and did a Swedish death clean of my discs because I'm like, if I want to see that movie, I'm going to order it up.

2:06:40Interesting. Okay. Um, my colleague, Amanda is a huge fan of your culture diaries. We've talked about them before, but she had a very specific question, which was you have a real knack or affinity for female authors and seemingly based on those diaries and especially sort of, you know, literary fiction, um, written by women. And she's just wondering like, where do you get your recommendations? How do you decide what fiction to read? It's very serendipitous. Talk to friends, read reviews. You know, sometimes a good artwork can do the trick. Reputation, you know, so there's no real logic to it. But I find novels in particular to be really, really immersive in a way that's unique.

2:07:38I don't know. I get something from them that I don't get from any other form, creative form. So I don't know why. I hadn't really thought about the—I hadn't genderized my list. She did, not me. Yeah, the way Amanda just did. But I'm really just going there. I'm just sort of floating in a direction, but without any real intention. You know, I'm sure you've been asked about this today, so I apologize. But, you know, David Lynch's passing crosses my mind. I think, did you know him at any point in your life? I met him. Yeah, I spent an afternoon with him like 20 plus years ago. He was really fun. It's a real loss.

2:08:30But what a great body of work he left behind for us to continue to enjoy.

2:08:42It's impossible to duplicate, and he was impossible to imitate. And so, yeah, he's one of those people. That's why these shelves matter. This is what I'm saying, Stephen. I've got the shelf at home and now I can go home and revisit the work tonight. There you go. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. You watch things all the time. Have you seen anything great lately? Wow. I tell you, I really liked September 5. Please tell me what you liked about it. I had no notes.

2:09:20I just thought it was, it knew exactly what it was and, and it knew exactly what it was doing. And so when I, when I say I have no notes, I mean, wow, he didn't make a single mistake from my point of view. And, and I was, I found it fascinating and I thought it was just really smartly executed. So, and I feel like that it's hasn't gotten as much sort of chatter as, as some other movies. It's a great recommendation. Steven Soderbergh. Thanks as always. A pleasure. And to be continued, I hope. Hopefully. Thank you, sir. See you soon.

2:10:13thanks to Stephen Soderbergh thanks to CR thank you to Amanda and thank you to Yassi thanks to Jack Sanders and our producer Bobby Wagner for his work on today's episode later this week Amanda and I are going to dig into the Brutalist and we're going to rank some best picture nominees with Joanna Robinson Brutalist yay? nay? yay do you feel like has there been a massive change in best picture ranking since the last time we did? I don't want to give away my hand. I mean, scandals anew bursting every day. So probably by the time we record on Thursday, who knows? What will Oppo Research have for us by then?

2:10:48Yeah. How will Emilia Perez be a failed once more? You know, we'll see. Will you have seen the film by next Thursday? The second half of the film? Yeah. Maybe. Okay. Am I on that pod? Do I have to? No. And frankly, I don't care. See you next time.