The Best Movies at Telluride and Venice, and the 10 Most Anticipated Fall Films

28:51It is the most beautiful-looking movie that he's ever made. He's not really well-known for his visual dynamics. Shot by Lena Sangren. Yeah. Shot on location in Italy. There's some stuff about it that is really nice. Yeah, it was very beautiful. That was a nice hotel. I'd like to go there. Wow, look at you. Three drinks in, just blaspheming our Lord, Noel Bombac. Like I said, it's really just this drink. because I left most of them floating so I could do my work. I also, at some point, the bathroom situation. I mean, it's Europe writ large, but like, so the main palazzo del cinema, sure. We're talking to you, Kelly, and you have pivoted to bathrooms.

29:32That should tell you how you feel about the movie. They have, it seats a thousand people, and they have five bathrooms. Like five stalls for women. Like not like five different bathrooms, like five stalls. Like what are we doing? I think anyway, so I can't drink that much because the bathroom thing becomes like a real, you know, you can't get there. Also, they're like tiny little airplane seats. I'm sorry. I know I sound so American right now. Like I am. I hate myself. I need to go home anyway. No, I need to say, I need to see I need to see it again. You will. And we'll talk about it again. We don't want to give anything else.

30:07I love him so much. Yeah. Okay. So the next the next from my favorite director is Sophia by Mark, which is a Mark Jacobs documentary directed by Sophia Coppola. Once again, I extended my trip to Venice, Italy longer than it needed to be in order to see Sofia Coppola in person debuting one of her films. Always worth it to me. She looked great. It was very fun. It premiered this afternoon. I would say there is absolutely no tension in this documentary whatsoever, which is quite a choice.

30:38However, it is beautiful to look at. And it's just it's about him preparing for a show. and so you know and she uses a lot of archival and it's kind of like and like a lot of good music and their interviews are funny i had a nice time you know i don't i think if you if you care about the the title of the film which is marked by sofia then you will like this film but you know it's not it's not hearts of darkness so that's okay uh there was a recent big takeout piece about A24 in The New Yorker. I'm not sure if you read that story. I did. But in that story, very near the end, Sophia is quoted about why she wanted to make her Marc Jacobs documentary with A24.

31:24And I believe her quote was, because they'll let me do it how I want to do it. Yeah. And she did. And that sounds like she did. Yeah. I would like to at some point discuss some of the music cues with someone else, but I had a really nice time. She was wearing Marc Jacobs. Marc was there too. It was nice. I had a nice time. It's time for you to talk about After the Hunt. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So let me start by saying this, and I'd like to explain why. And I think that it's important context for the festival as well as my experience. I had to leave After the Hunt early. Oh. So I had to leave After the Hunt.

32:04I mean, I don't really know early because I needed to get to the J. Kelly premiere. And so here's what happened. After the Hunt already started off a little weird because it is not in competition here at the Venice Film Festival at Luca Guadagnino's request, according to the festival. This is, of course, the new film by Luca Guadagnino starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield and Iowa Dibri. Um, so because it's out of competition, the screening times were a little weird and it's been a little bit, it was a little harder to see. And so the only way I could see it was a right jammed up. I was, as I texted you, I was going to have to sprint from after the hunt to Jay Kelly.

32:49So that would have been okay. Had there not been torrential rainstorms in Venice that day and, and, and also had the screening not started 20 minutes early. So we, I mean, sorry, 20 minutes late. Got it. Okay. So we, the press, the people who had tickets to the screening stood outside in thunder and lightning for 20 minutes waiting for the screening to begin. I listen again, not to be American, but like, I think it would have been a liability issue in the United States, but there we were just standing outside holding umbrellas like lightning rods. Um, and then when we got in, there was speculation and I have heard that it's all speculation.

33:39I cannot confirm this in any way, shape or form, but there was speculation that perhaps it was a sound test by a certain someone that left us out in the lightning and the rain for 20 minutes. And I mentioned this to an usher at the screening area, and he just laughed and said I wasn't there and walked away. So that's all the reporting that I have for you. I think that might inform the reactions to After the Hunt. I would just put that out there for everybody. Oh, interesting. I have not heard this. So it was just an unfortunate setup leading into the screening. We were all soaked. And it was miserable.

34:22This stuff matters. This context weirdly matters. And you never see this in the trades when you're reading the review. But festivals are usually fun, but they can be pretty anxiety producing and a little bit frenzied. Right. And so I think that everyone was in a very bad mood when this screening started and not willing to give the film any belief. The benefit of the doubt. I also mentioned that I, so that's why I had to leave early. I had to leave early so I don't actually, I can't speak authoritatively on where the movie's politics net out. I think I have a pretty good idea. I also had many people, I did like my own Rashomon and had everybody I saw reenact the last 20 minutes of the movie for me, which was fascinating in its own way.

35:11But this is, it is tar, but we don't have tar. We already have tar and we don't need another one. And it is about cancel culture. It is about sexual assault. It is about believing women. It is about Woody Allen because it literally starts the very first thing you see is a title card that said it's a prologue. And the title card says it happened at Yale in the Woody Allen font, which frankly, I thought was really funny. I was amused to learn that as well. It's like, and the whole prologue is funny. I think I personally, from what I saw, felt the movie knows what it's doing and knows that it's trying to provoke people and even knows it's going to piss people off.

36:00It is like a little bit of like, you know, Gen X yelling at Cloud and or Gen Z. But I think intentionally, and I wonder if maybe it's been not quite getting the benefit of the doubt on that. That said, I don't know how it concludes. And or at least I do. But that's secondhand. And number two, it still is a lesser tar. And there are, there are scenes that are almost like there, there is a scene where Julia Robertson is a blazer, like yelling at someone younger than her about like, but, you know, sexual politics and power politics. So we've seen this before and we've seen it better. So it's kind of, I still, I kind of had a good time.

36:50I, the way that Julia Roberts dresses is like an actual attack on me. Um, it's, it's like, you'll see and you'll just laugh because it's how I dress, but like better. And also it's Julia Roberts wearing it. So that is something I'll be working through personally, but I don't know. I'm excited to see the rest of it. I'm excited to talk with you about, or maybe I'm not, maybe like we just shouldn't talk about it because then all the young people will be mad at us and we'll, you know. I relish the opportunity. I cannot wait to watch a prickly provocative movie about how Gen Z doesn't get it. Like maybe it's not provocative, ultimately.

37:27That's like, that's kind of, again, I, because I had to leave because it started late because of, you know, things I can't confirm. I don't know how it ties up the, the bows or if it does. So we'll see. Did you have a good festival? It did. It was, it's really fun. I mean, it's amazing to get to be here and to roll in to all these great movies. And then there really are spritzes everywhere. You know, they're just like, here is a here. Do you want a Campari spritz or an Aperol spritz? Like, like, here you go. It's beautiful. It's yeah, it's an absolute privilege. I got I got to see our friend Tracy Letts, which is an amazing privilege.

38:13I did. I'm working through the Bombac stuff, but I'll get there. We got time. We got time to get into it. I'll just spoiler alert. J. Kelly was not in my top five from the festival either. Yeah. With some caveats that we can talk about when we get there. Okay. Telluride. So if Venice is all about spritzes, I feel like Telluride's a little bit more of a beer and bourbon town. And was very happy to be back there. It was my sixth time in the city. And I think it is the best place in America. It is, of course, like a very wealthy enclave, a small town, but it opens itself up a few times a year. It has like a number of festivals there.

38:50I'm learning more and more. There's like a bluegrass festival. There's a horror movie festival later this month, which I did only recently learned about that Alex Perry has been trying to get me to go to, which I don't think I could go to Telluride twice in one month. My wife would have my balls for that. But I had an amazing time. And having been there so many times, I just know a lot of people there now at the festival. I have festival friends. I have friends from the press. I have friends from, you know, the movie business, but just people who go to the festival every year that you wait in line with and hang out with.

39:20And there's not as much of a craziness as the one that you described at Venice for me. There is a lot of walking back and forth between the theaters across town. Love to walk. Well, I mean, it's a gorgeous place and we had perfect weather all weekend. And so it was magnificent. And then the other thing that happened is, you know, I've been encouraging people to go to this festival since I started going in 19. And people go. And like, I would say half of the conversations with people who stopped me in the street were like, I'm here because I heard you talking about it. Now, there were a couple of people who said that they were mad at me for telling the young people to come to the festival because now the festival is full of young people.

39:56This was a historically older festival, but I have no regrets. And shout out to all the 27 year olds who were like, I'm going to Telluride, Colorado to watch movies. That's fucking awesome. Can I tell you, I met an 18 year old listener of this podcast. I wish I remember his name. I also met him on the water bus. Was it like Marcello? No, no, no. He's an American and he has a, he has a full scholarship to UNC, I believe, starting, but, and because. Chapel Hill, tough loss last night. Sheesh. The Bill Belichick era off to a tough start. Okay. Well, that's, that's, that's on them. Sorry to Jordan.

40:30That's what you get when you hire Bill Belichick. Anyway, he had a full ride and also they were covering like travel as part, you know, like a, a great scholarship. congratulations to him and he's been listening to us for several years which means he started as a teenager and he was using part of the scholarship stuff to come to venice and see movies which i thought was so amazing and i was i just i'm so sorry i don't remember your name i hope you had a great festival um i was very proud of him yeah thank you for participating um yeah our young listeners are honestly genuinely all so sweet and nice yeah they're really cool uh so yeah telluride as usual like an amazing place to be for four days i got to spend time with just a lot of people that have become good friends and so that part of it is really nice this much like venice was incredibly star-studded um much more so than i can remember maybe since i first came in 2019 which was a really big year that was a year of uncut gems marriage story parasite ford versus ferrari there are huge movies here that year that of course being one of the best movie years ever but this year in part because the movies that were playing there just on my plane margot robbie Colin Farrell Jodie Foster all sitting right in front of me Margot Robbie didn't have a movie there she was just going just to go watch movies and apparently to scout I guess a little bit yeah yeah yeah because she has a production company yeah so that was cool and then you know just like Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Springsteen and Sandler and Emma Stone and Oscar Isaac and all 7 foot 12 of Alexander Skarsgård who was just everywhere oh yeah you would have been quite taken with him as well as Harris Dickinson and Paul Meskel who were also there I saw all the photos, you know, of them all palling around in their jackets.

42:12I mean, that's the thing with this festival that is cool, that is very different, obviously, from the experience that you've had, is they're just hanging out, you know? And sure, they're hanging out at the parties and the screens, but they're also just on the street. They're usually all really approachable. People are just, it's very relaxed. Everyone's wearing T-shirts and baseball hats and jeans, and they're just there to go watch movies and to go drink bourbon and eat free food provided by movie studios. So it's just an incredible vibe. And I've given you this spiel many years in a row now.

42:41It remains uninterrupted. I did share with you before the festival that I was a little concerned about the programming slate, in part because of how strong it seemed like yours was. I would say I was only half justified in that concern. Right. Because I saw a ton of good stuff. I do think that here's an observation before I get into the movies. Movie culture has shifted to the international world, right? Cannes and Venice are most likely going to be the places where, for example, Park Chan-wook's new film is going to premiere. Park Chan-wook is unlikely to premiere a film at Telluride. And so that's a kind of a corridor of movies.

43:22that are more or less not available as premieres at that festival, and probably not to TIFF either. So Telluride has to contend with that. So they have to fight for their own premieres. So the two really big premieres this year were Hamnet, which was good, and we can talk about it, and Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, which I thought was less successful. Those are two big movies from two big American movie studios, but they have to be strategic about what they can get and what they can't get. I think aside from that conundrum of like, what is the really super noisy premiere? The programming otherwise at Telluride is still fucking amazing.

43:59Both like the festival carryover stuff and then the smaller stuff and then the nonfiction is all really good. So it was generally like a better than I expected, but not great slate of movies this year. There were a lot of themes. My old pal Ezra Edelman was the guest director this year, so he programmed a bunch of older movies. I haven't seen him in years. we were talking at the festival that I think he was the second or third ever guest on this show in 2017 but he programmed Network All the President's Men The Insider and Malcolm X as a testament to how the world is going yeah which is it's not a good time that happened to map neatly onto a bunch of movies that were here including Cover Up which is a Seymour Hersh doc which is also in Venice but I know you didn't get a chance to see yes I know I missed it I'm very I'm sad about that a great film The Secret Agent Begonia it was just an accident all these movies kind of all fit into the theme that Ezra was vibing on.

44:52And then there were like a lot of weird micro themes and a lot of movies, as a lot of people were saying in the theaters themselves, like these movies are all talking to each other. So like two movies about bad dads in Hollywood in Sentimental Value and J. Kelly. Three Hamlet movies. There was two monster movies. There were two movies about sort of like the mystery of identity. There were two Linklater movies, Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vogue. And there were three films about Hollywood and filmmaking. Jay Kelly, Sentimental Value, and Neuville Vogue. So there was a lot of like, hey, did you see that?

45:28It reminded me of that going on in the room, which was really interesting. I'll give you, you want to hear my list? Do you have any questions? What are your? No, I want to hear your list. Okay. I'm jealous, mostly, you know, because we didn't have any of those. Venice does not play any of the Cannes movies. Right. So, and I was traveling, so, you know, I haven't seen any of them and I'm jealous. So here's the tricky thing is that three of the movies on my list premiered at Cannes and I saw four of the movies on my list before Telluride even started. That's between you and the mountains and God, you know?

46:05Okay. Do you think I shouldn't share that information? No. As I texted to you, like after, you know, the fourth movie review you sent me on vacation of films that were going to be at Telluride. Like I said to you, like, go on vacation, you know, and that's how you go on vacation. You love to do it. I went to Hawaii. It was great. I know. And that looked beautiful. But when you decide to see the movies, whether you see them at home before you go or end Telluride, that's up to you. Yeah. Well, you know, I was looking back at last year when I did the episode about Telluride and I missed a number of movies.

46:44I didn't get to see like 12 movies that I would ultimately go on to see that were, you know, they weren't awards contenders per se, but they were stuff I just wanted to check out and I didn't have time. So this year I tried to pre-screen as much as I could, which means I saw pretty much all the Cannes films and a couple of other films. And I even saw one that was premiering a little bit early. And so what that did was that it did something that you said you couldn't do, which is it did allow for some discovery. I got to just try some stuff that I didn't feel obligated to see because it's such a short window in Telluride.

47:11You can't get more than 13 or 14 movies done in four days. So I got 12 this year. I came in having seen 10. so 22 films on the slate i already got to see and i only a couple do i really feel like i missed out on but anyway i'll start with my list number five is it was just an accident which won the palm door was acquired by neon this is jafar panahi's new film he was honored as one of the uh medallion recipients at the festival and this is a incredibly striking film that is simultaneously like dread induced and very funny and another film that's hard to talk about without giving anything away but it has a lot in common with a couple of the other movies on my list.

47:53And it's weirdly the most commercial movie that Panahi's ever made. It's like a, it's a thriller. It's a proper thriller about identity or is it mistaken identity? And the way that a community comes together to reckon with whether or not the person they have encountered is real or not real and has like one of the best endings of a movie you'll see this year. And people should see it. We will get into it this year. It's interesting that it won the Palme d 'Or. I think it has been noted that Julia Binoche is a big supporter of Panahi and the struggles that he has had with the regime in Iran and his struggle to be a free filmmaker.

48:31And so there's another movie that was at Cannes that I really liked a lot that I'll get into in a minute. It seemed like people liked this movie. It didn't seem like it was the outrageous fervor that you might have expected for a Palme d 'Or winner playing at an American festival. But I didn't have as many conversations about it, which I thought was interesting. Number four I mentioned was Begonia which I just liked a lot and I thought was very funny and very clever and had great performances and was honestly pretty modest in scale when you think about Yorgos and poor things. True. It was, you know, it's more or less a three-hander with the exception of Stavros Halkius who I thought was very funny in this movie.

49:11Stavvy baby. Don't want to say anything else about Begonia. number three is the i think the headline from the festival by far which is hamnet yeah so i saw it in july i texted you about it you did i said it was very very good you did you asked me did i cry and i did cry twice yeah so we should say hamnet is the chloe jow adaptation of a maggie o 'farrell novel that i liked very much very popular novel about william Shakespeare and his partner Agnes and their family. And if you haven't read the novel, you don't want to spoil anything, but this is, I'm certain you've heard it described as an old school weepy.

49:58It is a period weepy. It is a very tremendously emotionally powerful movie, very tough movie as a parent. And I didn't talk to a single person that disliked it at the festival. It doesn't mean that it won't have its detractors, But it does something that Chloe Zhao has not previously necessarily like demonstrated, which is that she has a real handle on strong narrative filmmaking with momentum. You know, she makes a much more kind of glacially paced, ethereal, emotional, psychological kind of film. And this is a movie that in the first hour I was like, ah, this is kind of moving slow and I don't really know where it's headed.

50:32And then the second hour just kind of sweeps you off your feet and also has an absolutely like thrilling final 20 minutes. and the end the ending of the novel is unlike a thing that i've read it in some time it's just it's amazing so if if they if they get close to that it seemed like they did and i heard from a lot of people who read the novel about the way that it was adapted and how some things were shrunk down that worked really well too so it's paul mescal as uh shakespeare and and my beloved jesse buckley as agnes um and i don't did i text you that jesse buckley will win back then that she'll win best actress okay you think she will i do i mean it's an interesting slate and we can talk about who's who would be among the contenders i guess emma stone is in the conversation there in begonia yeah um and amanda seifert as well but uh god damn she just took my breath away and she is just an amazing actor and she does so much in the final 20 minutes of this movie so we'll talk about it when we get to it but this was the talk of the festival this was the movie that took over that everyone was thrilled about i have some doubts about its best picture contenderdom um i do think obviously chloe zhao has already directed a film that won best picture right but and it it seems small and you know emotional and also i'm just imagining when you tell people yeah it's about shakespeare and his family you know we also we already did that once and like that was a pretty ugly Oscar campaign.

52:01That's true. I think in 1998, this would have won pretty easily. Sure. It may still. And I think Chloe has like a good story to tell about having survived the Marvel machine and come out the other side. Maybe even having picked up a couple of things, having made a movie like that. Not that there's any CGI Thanos in Hamnet, although I would have appreciated that. But it's a very good film. Number two is The Secret Agent, which is Cleber Mendoza Filo's new movie The Brazilian Filmmaker who we've talked about a couple times on the show this is his new movie starring Wagner Mora from set in 1977 that is one part character study one part espionage thriller that is very much a companion to I'm Still Here the film that was nominated for Best Picture last year the Brazilian entrant this movie to me is far superior I was really like mixed down on I'm Still Here because I thought it was so standard in terms of its narrative this is like a movie that goes in wild places that features like an amazing central performance that feels much closer to me to like those movies that Ezra programmed that is like the parallax view and all the president's men and it's like a conspiracy thriller wrapped inside of a sincere story about a guy trying to get back to his son I thought like an exceptional film and I'm hopeful is like more than just a Wagner Mora Best Actor Showcase I hope like a lot of people get a chance to see this Neon pick this one up as well as they are wont to do with international contenders we were speculating on Thursday night at dinner at Telluride that Neon could have all five international feature nominees oh that's funny okay right because they've got the Park Chan-wook film they've got The Secret Agent they've got It Was Just An Accident they've got I think they have Surat which is a Spanish film that was not at either of these festivals but it's fantastic and they've got the film that I'm going to talk about next which is Sentimental Value yeah which won the Grand Prix at Cannes it was a new film from Joachim Trier starring Renata Rensve Stellan Skarsgård Elle Fanning and is a kind of like emotional continuation of The Worst Person in the World about a young woman the daughter of a famous filmmaker who was an actress herself and then her sister and the actress who was participating in her father's next film and the home that they grew up in and the way that all of these things converge on each other and it's just you know I'm personally very much on Trier's wavelength but it is exceptionally moving and smart and funny and I I thought right after I saw it this is your best picture winner and I sent that to you and a couple of other people texted me yeah yeah and and you were like oh interesting and some other people were like you're an idiot shut up but uh this movie just worked really well on me there's obviously a bunch of films we haven't seen yet.

54:49But I think Trier's balance of formal daring and sincerity is very exciting. And so I'm looking forward to you seeing this movie. I'm really, really excited to see it. It's like, it's, I mean, there's one other fall film that I'm also greatly anticipating, but like, but this is it. This will be a holiday. Yeah, it's worth it. Refresh your good vibes with Tic Tac. Mit den richtigen Vibes wird

55:21to

55:41I'll talk about some stuff that was there that I hadn't seen before because I saw most of those movies. Jay Kelly, I liked, as I said. I think it's not in the A tier of Baumbach, but I really love all of his movies. And he was honored as well with a tribute at this festival. And he was interviewed by Rojendra Roy from MoMA. And then afterwards, Adam Sandler and Laura Dern came on stage and gave him like a roast tribute where they talked about their experience with Noah and how much they love him. And Dern and Sandler were so funny and so great. And these theaters are very intimate. They're very small.

56:14You know, the Palm Theater where I saw it is like, oh, it's like less than 500 people. So you're watching Adam Sandler basically do stand-up comedy in this presentation. But they did a clip reel of Bombac's films, not unlike something that happens in the film. Yeah. And watching the best moments from all of his movies strung together. You know, one of the ideas of the movie is that making movies for Jay Kelly is the story of his life. He charts the progress of his life across the movies he's made. but you and I could chart the progress of our life especially from adolescence into adulthood from watching noah baumbeck movies it's very true you know and like he's basically always five years ahead of us in terms of the arc of the story that he's telling he's told all of these stories about the years after you you know go to college and graduate and don't know what to do with your life and the years when you're turning you're in your 30s and you're like are things slipping away from me and the years when you're in your 40s and you're like gosh I'm not cool anymore how do I feel about that.

57:07So it was exciting to be a part of that experience and think about how much I like what he's done. And I'm sure that probably softened me up on Jay Kelly a little bit too. Yeah. Having had that experience. Other movies, I mentioned Cover Up, which is Laura Poitras' new documentary about Seymour Hersh, who is the extraordinary investigative journalist who broke the My Lai Massacre story during the Vietnam War and has gone on to an extraordinary career. Cy was there. He was interviewed by Ezra Edelman, who was his neighbor growing up. Ezra Edelman grew up two doors down from Cy Hirsch, which is an extraordinary coincidence.

57:40Wow. So they talked afterwards with Laura and Mark Obenhaus, the other filmmaker. Very cool conversation. If you care at all about journalism and the naturally occurring deceit of the American government, amazing movie. Definitely one of the best things I saw. It probably would be right outside my top five. I laughed so much at Pillian. I think you'll really like this movie. This was a canned film. Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling, who people may know from the Harry Potter movies. This is maybe not the first, but probably the first BDSM rom-com since Exit to Eden. Do you remember Exit to Eden?

58:14I do, yeah. That was not a very successful film. This film was very successful, super funny, very sweet, very, very graphic. Lots and lots of sex in the movie, but very entertaining. And it was a big hit there too. if I had legs I'd kick you is um

58:34a very intense portrait of motherhood. and I saw the movie before the festival and I raced home and I said Eileen you have to watch this trailer but maybe don't ever watch the movie okay because it is harrowing this this is on my anticipated list but you know and I'm gonna see it professionally but I am also possibly stressed out about it yeah it's Mary Bronstein who has not made a movie in many years and is married to Ronald Bronstein who is the filmmaker himself the editor of the Safdie brothers movies and it's a a movie about a mom played by Rose Byrne. It premiered at Cannes, or no, it premiered at Sundance, I think.

59:15And the camera is on top of her face for like the entirety of the movie. It's about a mom who has a young daughter who is struggling with a physical ailment and a father, a husband who is out of town and things are starting to fall apart around her. And we've all been there. We've all been there. I've never been a mom, but Byrne's amazing. She's also in that conversation, I think for Best Actress that I mentioned. I also saw Kelly Reichert's The Mastermind. Delightful. 70s art house thriller with Josh O 'Connor sat next to Josh O 'Connor during the screening. Lovely chap. Oh, cute. Yeah. Okay, that's nice.

59:51Did he sit through the screening? He did, yeah. And then did a Q &A with Kelly afterwards. Oh, that's nice. And, you know, very quiet, very downbeat, very classically Reichert. Don't expect fireworks. It's not, it is not, it's a character study, but it's a really good film. I think you'll like it. Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon loved loved one of my favorite performances of the year he plays the Ren's heart one half of the Hart and Rogers musical team he's kind of at the end of his life reflecting at Sardi's on everything that has come before wild transformation for Hawk it's very stage like very play not super cinematic but I liked it I liked it a lot more than Duval Vogue which is the other Linklater movie which I didn't click with as much personally which is a story about the making of Breathless the Godard film which you know i thought was a little too this happened then this happened as opposed to having like an emotional arc uh the surprise of the festival was this movie called tuner which i tweeted about um daniel roar who is the documentarian the documentarian of nivaldi i'm sorry for tweeting um this is his first feature film stars leo woodall and havana rose lou and dustin hoffman It's about a piano tuner who has extraordinary hearing.

1:01:03He has hearing addition as opposed to a hearing loss, which means he is hypersensitive to sound. So this makes him a very good piano tuner. It also makes him very good at safe cracking. So this movie that starts out like a musical drama, like a character study of a guy who loves music, very quickly turns into a thriller, like a heist thriller. Cool. It was really cool. I really enjoyed it. It was just fun. And it was that feeling that you were describing about House of Dynamite. I was like, this is just kind of a conventional movie movie in a good way. You know, it was not an exploration of the deep pain inside of our souls as men and women.

1:01:43and then the last thing I saw that was a very sincere and sentimental thing was a documentary called Cycle of Love about an Indian man and a Swedish woman who fall in love and the Indian man's journey to go and find and meet this woman again in Sweden. It was a documentary but it's like entirely recreated and the trick of it is that the recreations are basically real where the actors who are hired are traveling through the world and all the encounters that they have with people across this journey are captured on film in documentary form. So the conversations between the man and the woman are actors and they're performed.

1:02:18Everything else is real. Really cool movie. Really sweet. Huge crowd pleaser, especially among the older folks at the festival. So is it based on real people? Yes, it's based on real people who speak into camera during the film, who kind of like narrate their lives. And then we see these actors go through their lives. Cool. It was cool. It was nice. And it was the kind of discovery that you don't always get at a film festival if you don't pre-screen like a maniac. Okay. I missed a bunch of stuff. The number one thing I missed that I feel bad about is Man on the Run, which is the Paul McCartney documentary that Morgan Neville directed.

1:02:50You didn't see it? It just didn't match up with my timing. Yeah. You were just gloating about it. Well, I was so pumped and then it was like opposite Jay Kelly and opposite... The other movie I should mention before we move on is... I saw Frankenstein. As did I. And it wasn't good. I didn't think it was good. and this is Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of the film I'm a fan of GDT as you know and I thought this movie was like kind of a mess it was a late announced you know post premiere from Venice it was a late screening on Saturday night or Sunday night at the festival and it was two and a half hours long it's very faithful to the novel the Mary Shelley novel which is important to you as a teen or whatever it wasn't I mean I'm not a huge Frankenstein guy more of a Dracula guy as you know Oh, that's what it is.

1:03:41I'm sorry. I was misremembering. But I like Frankenstein and I like Frankenstein films and I love the James Whale films. That all matters to me and it obviously matters a lot to Del Toro. Oscar Isaac plays Dr. Frankenstein. Jacob Elordi plays the monster. Mia Goth plays two parts in the movie. And I thought it was pretty turgid. I was surprised by how much CGI was in the movie. Thank you. That was I was really taken aback by how it looked and how it was shot. And, you know, and they go to such efforts to, like, make the sets and make all of the you know, there are a lot of physical effects. And then there are just some CGI wolves and a CGI like it's shot very weirdly.

1:04:26I was really, really taken aback by how visually poor it looked. Well, I mean, he's arguably the greatest craftsman working in film. You know, like he's renowned for his sets and costume design and the tactile nature of his movies. And it felt there was obviously a lot of effort put into it, but there were just a handful of choices that just made it look not good to me. The performances are OK, and I have no problem with being faithful to the novel, but it just had no propulsion whatsoever. I thought Elordi did pretty well with what he was given as the monster. I know you thought he did well with his physique he's very tall he's very tall, he looks good the creature design I didn't love for him, the makeup and the way that they did it but it just kind of bummed me out seeing it I obviously didn't care for it I wasn't surprised that was the rare case where the vibe out of Venice was accurate to me two other big premieres that I saw quickly, Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere I didn't really like this movie very much it's kind of the same thing in terms of how I feel about it as how I feel about all these movies and people have been hearing me for years talk about these music biopics this is a music biopic that presents itself as different because it is Bruce Springsteen during the creation of a less iconic album than say Born to Run or Born in the USA and it's about Nebraska, the making of Nebraska and how his experiences in his life up to that time informed the writing and creation of Nebraska and the challenge of getting Nebraska on tape.

1:06:08Jeremy Allen White plays Bruce. Jeremy Strong plays John Landau, his longtime manager and confidant. Odessa Young plays a woman who is in his life who is apparently a composite of many women. character development uh i would say she is not the strongest characters i she didn't do anything wrong here but you know it's a scott cooper movie i'm not the biggest scott cooper fan i had some concerns going in they were more or less confirmed after i saw the movie jeremy allen white i thought was like borderline remarkable as bruce nails the singing nails the singing there is a sequence where he sings a song in a studio where i was like if you closed your eyes and we say this all the time about actors but like he nailed it and i know that that is something that you think about when you about these performances.

1:06:51No. The movie itself, I just thought had like no juice, no energy. Bruce's like struggle with depression is real and the movie is very sincere about everything that Springsteen has endured in his life. I have empathy for that. I just found it to be not a good movie and I'm pretty excited to talk to Chris about it because I'm very curious if he has more time for it because I like Nebraska, but it's not my favorite album of all time or anything and I know that's a record that Chris really likes. Yeah. It's going to be around though. There were a lot of people who liked it at the festival. How was the other Jeremy?

1:07:29He was good. You know, like in a slightly self-parodic zone, I would say. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems that way. Okay. The movie is being pitched as like a love story between these two men and I wouldn't say it really fulfills that promise. Okay. It does fulfill the promise of John Landau trying to protect Bruce Springsteen, which that is a manager's job. And a friend's job in some cases. Yeah, but it's like, I don't really want to go see a movie about a manager. No offense. I mean, it is in large part a movie about a manager. Right. And an artist, of course. An artist writing a record.

1:08:01But yeah, there's a lot of talk about... I mean, there are scenes of Jeremy Strong alone sitting in a high-rise office thinking about his client. So, you know... It's a form of love. It is. It is. I should get a manager and someone really loves me. It's a love of something. Yeah. The other movie that I saw that was a bit disappointing was Ballad of a Small Player, which was one of the big Friday night premieres. Oh, sad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Colin Farrell about a high roller in Macau who gets caught up in a web and loses everything and has to get it all back. And, you know, on paper, very much a me movie directed by Edward Berger, who was triumphant last year with Conclave at the Telluride Film Festival and went on to, you know, that film was Best Picture nominated and was a hit.

1:08:46This movie is just way less successful. and what I suspected was also confirmed which is the script is just no good. Colin Farrell's really good. Cinematography's great. It looks beautiful as all Berger films do. Great score from Volker Bertelman but I don't know. It's like it's five different movies at once pinging around in genres. Didn't really work. Colin Farrell was at a lot of movies and was around all weekend. Seemed like a lovely guy. Seemed like having a great time. I sat three seats down from him at this premiere. Felt that was tough. It was tough. That is tough. It was a little it was quiet in the room during the movie, which is really not ideal.

1:09:19Yeah. So that wasn't great. I think those are the big ones. I don't think I missed anything. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I saw that didn't really work. Frankenstein, for sure. I mean, there are a couple, but I don't really think anyone needs my thoughts on LaGrazia. I thought it was so dull. I really like Sorrentino's movies, too, and I thought it was very dull. I mean, you know, I know I say this a lot, but like I, the West wing did a really good episode that was like this, but you know, 45 minutes and written by Aaron Sorkin. So, you know, I liked the rap stuff was funny.

1:09:58Um, I, I sort of liked the disco music. It was, I kept waiting. I mean, this is the new Palo Sorrentino movie about a president in the final days of his term, trying to make a couple of decisions before he leaves office. And it has this kind of amusing techno hip hop motif where, like this very young music is starting to strike this older president who's played by Tony Servillo. And I feel like the movie is almost like almost the music is a metaphor for the movie which is like there's a lot of buildup and no delivery. There's no like catharsis. There's no it doesn't hit. So that was the that was the patron screening at Telluride where you know like they give you a press orientation.

1:10:40Julie Hunsinger who runs the festival who does an amazing job every year. She kind of breaks down what's on the slate. And then the patrons come in who have lined up and they get a special sneak preview. It's more or less the first movie of the festival. And that was, this was the movie this year. And, you know, the patron screenings are a crapshoot and this one wasn't great. I mean, it opened the festival here because this is Italy, but, you know, it was fine. And I did see Wizard of the Kremlin. I was late. I missed the first 20 minutes. It didn't really matter because Jude Law doesn't show up for an hour.

1:11:12So this is the Olivier Assas movie adapted from a French novel in which Jude Law plays Vladimir Putin and Paul Dano plays like his fixer, you know, like the titular Wizard of the Kremlin. Alicia Vikander plays his love interest. Jeffrey Wright is there. And that's what I missed, actually, is why he was there. Jeffrey Wright? Okay. Yeah, but I was always happy to see him. And it has, and it really documents, I want to, from late 90s-ish until the present day. Okay. And Putin's rise to power and Russian, you know, political maneuverings and oligarchs and all this sort of stuff. but like with a typically assay-ass like, you know, like blunt force, like philosophical dialogue at you plus narration.

1:12:18And it, yeah. And like Paul Dano's doing a ton of voiceover in a questionable British accent because it's another thing where it's people from all over the world. And so they're all, you know, they're all speaking like differently accented English. Not ideal. The dialogue, like with his movies at some point, you know, like you just, it keeps hitting you and you get in a zone where you're like, yeah, actually you're right. You know, like it does, it does all add up and I do kind of see what you're saying. And I, and I think I did even quote a conversation from this movie, like in reference to another movie.

1:12:58So it's not without merit. I also kind of thought like Jude Law was pretty good as Putin. I had a fun time, but I wouldn't say it's a successful movie. bit of a cold streak for us yes yeah that's not ideal gotta go back to the carlos days um okay so i asked you to put together most anticipated movies of the fall list yeah and our lists are really funny because we share two movies and then the other three movies are the three best movies at each person's festival so that kind of makes sense listen it's very self-selecting here we do our jobs right sure sure i was given an assignment i pay attention okay what's your what's your number five we can just go do this do this quickly um my five is if i had legs i'd kick you the the rose burn uh mom movie which i'm nervous about but you know i got to challenge myself it is um it's very safties inflected okay i say that with love you know we deserve a safties too you know that's exactly right uh okay my number five is a house of dynamite which um yeah i'd like to see soon i'd like to see soon yeah yeah that sucks uh What's your number four?

1:14:07Marty Supreme. Yeah. This is my number three. Yeah. This is Josh Safdie's new movie. Which is not currently on a festival slate. The trailer came out while we were on vacation. I've watched it six times. Okay. I'm not watching it. I'm just going to go see the movie. Yeah. I'm pretty pumped. Timothee Chalamet plays a table tennis wizard circa 1950s. Yeah, of course. Gwyneth Paltrow plays his potential love interest. I noted Fran Drescher in the trailer great a couple of other notable people in there I'm very very very excited about this movie this is like the last movie of the year you know what I mean where it's like it's coming out on Christmas we'll kind of be like leading up to this movie through December looking forward to it okay what's next my number four is No Other Choice which is the park film that I'm pumped for I've seen it I know.

1:15:01Stop rubbing it in. My number three is Hamnet, which you liked very much, as did everyone in Telluride. And you could tell from afar that this was the Telluride breakout. I mean, I do think that, you know, Paul Maskell posed for just like a tremendous amount of photos in his Carhartt, but he looked great. Yeah, and he's very good in the film, but he's not the story of the movie to me. My number three, as I said, is Marty Supreme. What's your number two? Okay. My number two is Sentimental Value, which you've seen and I have not, and I would like to. Yeah, I'm not rubbing it in. It's good. Yeah.

1:15:34My number two is The Testament of Anne Lee. Yeah. She's one of your faves at the festival. The Seifert Heads, the stock's been hitting pretty consistently for about five years. Yeah. Ever since Elizabeth Holmes, she's been just nailing it on. And one of the things I was going to say is when her Oscar campaign really happens, we need to do the I Finally Watch Mamma Mia episode. Yes, you do. Also, you have never seen the Tom Hooper Les Mis, right? No, I haven't. Yeah. Yeah. Which another, there's like two shots where she's singing and like intense close up. And I was like, oh no, we're getting into Les Mis territory, but they get away from it.

1:16:12And she's really good. So it's going to be quite a ride for you. Have you seen Mean Girls? I love Mean Girls. She's very funny in Mean Girls. She has ESPN.

1:16:25No, I love her, but it's funny that I've not seen her two biggest movies. yeah um that's okay we'll catch up uh number two for me i said testament of ann lee number one for you it's the same as for me what is it one battle after another still haven't seen it no festivals coming out in three weeks so it's so soon as soon as as soon as i get back we got to jump into that's not true actually i have to go see caught stealing really jet lagged that'll be interesting we're gonna talk about caught stealing uh later this week on the pot along with highest to lowest Before we do that, before we take off, let's try to hash out Best Picture.

1:17:00Okay. This is really hard right now and really fake. I think we actually got 8 out of 10, maybe even 9 out of 10 at this time last year. Wow. But this year, we just haven't seen nearly as much. So let's just like, can we just list them before we start trying to rank anything? Yeah. Okay. So number one, Sinners. Sinners, yes. Which we know at least is out in the world. People love it. It's almost certainly going to be nominated for Best Picture. Although not definitely. as more films start to come across. I feel strongly in saying Hamnid, you know, is there. Yeah. I believe sentimental value will be there.

1:17:35I think that that seems right as well. How do you feel about House of Dynamite? I think I, yeah, I think it could. You think so? Now, do you think this is the only Netflix movie that will be nominated for Best Picture? Well, I, I, Jay Kelly is probably, the Academy has never given him an Oscar, but they really liked Marriage Story. You know, I, I feel like he's on the radar and it is such a, as you said, like slightly older voter. In a Hollywood movie. Right. Though, like we say that every year and I feel like that becomes less and less true as years goes on. It's really just because the Academy gets more international.

1:18:22But I think that it's still American enough. Yes. Okay. J. Kelly. Sinners, Hamnets, Sentimental Value, House of Dynamite, J. Kelly. One thing I wanted to ask you, you know, there's a big, there's a lot of movies on Netflix's Slate, which we talked about on our auction episode. Do you think there's room for Train Dreams to come back in because Frankenstein, J. Kelly, Small Player, these are much more muted receptions than we were expecting. And I was wondering if that means that there's a Train Dreams opportunity there. Yeah. I know you haven't seen it yet yeah no I haven't seen it yet that's a Sundance movie that and Joel Edgerton and logging am I getting this right even though I haven't based on a Dennis Johnson novel they always have a late breaker you know they always figure something out but I don't know whether it would be train dreams or whether it would be I mean it's pretty open yeah there's another I'm not saying no.

1:19:19Yeah, there's another film called Left-Handed Girl, which was produced and edited by Sean Baker, which I think is directed by Shi Chung-tu, his longtime producing partner and collaborator. And that could also be a late-breaking Netflix movie. It's not as big, but I'm fascinated by Netflix having like six eligible movies. Whereas like three months ago, you'd be like, yeah, Frankenstein, probably pretty good. like Nightmare Alley got a Best Picture nomination you know you'd think Frank and maybe Frankenstein will be better received outside of the festivals maybe regular audiences will like it but I don't think so yeah I don't think so either okay so how many do we have we have Sinners Hamnet Sentimental Value House of Dynamite Jay Kelly that's five okay we have a few that we haven't seen I'll throw Marty Supreme one battle after another at you I think both are likely feels or at least you know possible right now okay they always come through for PTA you and you were not super high on smashing machine right I think that I I mean I'm not in the like the MMA UFC like wrestling world at some point is just kind of like I actually thought all of those um the footage of Dwayne the Rock Johnson pulverizing people set to beautiful music.

1:20:43Like it was actually quite beautiful. I liked that. Um, but I was sort of befuddled by, I guess the pacing of the movie. Um, and some of that is just because I'm not as invested in the, like the sport aspect. Yeah. I had a chance to see it a while ago and I really liked it. And it's very much a spiritual sequel to Benny show the curse with Nathan Fielder, which may surprise some people to hear that based on the trailer that they watched of the movie, which is kind of more classically triumphant sports movie trailer. But I've been begging for five years for Dwayne Johnson to make good movies. And this is a step in the right direction for sure.

1:21:22And, you know, I think what Benny's mission is and what Dwayne's mission is is a very interesting, not a contrast, they're working together, but Safdie is into something very strange in this movie. Actually, David Sims I saw in Letterboxd comped it with Lenny Cook, the documentary that Benny and Josh made some years ago about the college basketball player Lenny Cook. And I like that as like a way of thinking about how they think about sports and how this movie thinks about being an athlete. But anyway, we'll talk more about Smashing Machine because it's out in a month. So we'll get to it when we get there.

1:21:53Okay, so Marty Supreme, one battle after another. What else is out there? Let's see. I know we're forgetting. Well, let's do international, okay? Because we get a few internationals every year. Well, and so this is one. I don't know whether I think there's room for both Begonia, which is not international, but, you know, and no other choice. I think that they are twinned or they're not twinned, but they have a lot in common. And they are also out there in the best way in terms of, you know, those directors like to push the audience. so does no other choice get in it's you know it's neon it's i think there's going to be a major push for it i think it's a contender for golden lion you know is it is this the year that it breaks that park chain book breaks through best picture is is a good question my gut says yes that's not really based on anything having not seen the movie except just that we've seen a lot of international films breakthrough in the last few years.

1:23:05I think the appreciation of Park is growing over time. We included The Handmaiden in our 25 for 25 countdown list. You said it's a late capitalism movie. That's a theme that's been fairly dominant with the Academy. You could certainly make the case that Enora is another one of those films. And maybe I'm wrong and they would do Begonia too. It just, it feels like the Academy likes favorite poor things costume drama Yorgos and this is having a little bit of fun at at that audience's expense so I don't know I'll go with that I think that makes a lot of sense then that leaves I think two behemoth Hollywood movies oh sure Wicked part two Wicked for good and Avatar Fire and Ash oh that's right Avatar which of course the first two were nominated for best picture yeah I think okay can I proffer a take I'm not saying I believe this if this were the fantasy football podcast take purge I would definitely pitch this here's my pitch Avatar Fire and Ash will be the best Avatar movie but will get no Oscar nominations okay I don't know if I believe that because it obviously is going to get best visual effects but I feel like oh so that's the part of the take you have a problem with rather than well rather than it'll be the best one.

1:24:31I mean, the best one is... You can say that with your whole heart. I mean, most people don't even seemingly care about them except for the real Cameron heads. Even our own beloved Chris Ryan dumped on Avatar having never seen it. Yeah, no. But I was thinking about Avatar while I was watching Frankenstein because I was like, Big Jim would not let this shit out the door, you know? Oh, I agree with that. It's just... I agree with that. It's maybe not the world that I want to spend all my time in, but when you go see it, like he makes it look good. And like, I don't know. I don't know what that was.

1:25:07There is a handful of other titles that were not, we haven't listed, but I think could make some noise. So rental family is premiering at TIFF later this week. New Brendan Fraser movie directed by Hikari, which has strong word of mouth. I'm going to put train dreams on this part of the list here. Okay. what else is what else do we need to I mean maybe Springsteen hits you know maybe Springsteen oh yeah for a certain kind of audience is a fit you know Bohemian Rhapsody once upon a time was an Academy Award winner so that's not out of the realm of possibility obviously Complete Unknown did very well with the Academy and then we neglected to mention it was just an accident right which won the Palm and has Neon behind it right I think we've gotten I think we've gotten everything I mean there's probably a few things that we haven't seen oh what about is this thing on oh my god we totally forgot about that that's premiering at the New York Film Festival new Bradley Cooper movie sure right so is after the hunt so no listen like I said I don't know how it ends

1:26:22a classic Amanda story I must tell you I missed the last time 20 minutes of my most anticipated movie at the festival. It's not my fault. No one's blaming you. No one is blaming you. I tried so hard. I was in line, you know? Figure out your sound another time when I'm not about to die in a lightning storm. I think that you should put it on the list. I'm not putting it on the list. I'm putting is this thing on the list for sure. Yeah, that's what I meant. Also the testament of Anne Lee we need to add as well. Sure. You know who really, really loves Bradley Cooper is the Academy. They sure do. 14 Academy Award nominations.

1:27:02I know. So. Okay. Gosh, there's going to be another surprise that we don't see coming. One thing that was an interesting conversation point on Sunday and Monday at the Telluride Film Festival, once we had seen everything and we had read the Venice reviews, you know, aside from House of Dynamite, was, is weapons in play? Oh, yeah. So we haven't talked about this, but I am going to have to go see it. I have accepted that. I know that I have to. It's like 40 million plus box office on the first weekend. I was like, what's going on? It's an amazing phenomenon. It's very exciting. I mean, you know, I worked hard to do a competent solo episode, but there was an episode that really demanded a crew having the conversation.

1:27:47So later this month, me and you and Chris, we can talk about it once you've gone to see it and we'll do, you know, a proper look. Like maybe once it hits VOD will be the time to do it. But yeah, man. I mean, look, the feeling that I had in the theater when I saw it at the premiere, I was like, this just works. You know what a movie is just like really working and it's working for an audience. And it is obviously stymied some critics because they feel like it doesn't fulfill some of the narrative suggestion that it throws out there. And you might you might feel that way when you see it. You might be like you might find it a little innervating in that way.

1:28:17But as like a thrill ride, it's just so fun. It's just a fun time at the movies. so you have to see it yeah i agree with you i'm gonna see it um i'm stressed out um already thinking about it my counterpoint is just anecdotal but i sat next to a listener and my flight to europe which was very nice um that's a lot of time to spend with a listener how was that we slept for most of it um you know was it yasi is that who you're referring to no i'm sorry i I can't remember his name. He was very lovely and helped me with my suitcase. But he said, he asked if I had seen weapons because this was forever ago now.

1:28:56And I said I hadn't. And he said that he had seen it twice. And then he had told, I believe, like his parents who are movie people to go see it. And that was not received well by the next generation of movie parents that they weren't there. So I do wonder if there is a generational gap. There could be. Gap. There could be. I'm just passing that along. Then he watched Better Men on the Plane at my sort of recommendation. This is a very crowded year, as you can see from the 17 movies that we just listed. But it reminds me of The Sixth Sense, you know, which was like a you have to go see this movie feeling.

1:29:34That movie was a bigger phenomenon ultimately than Weapons, but Weapons did really well in what turned out to be like a kind of medium summer. It became one of the big stories, one of the smallest movies to do so well. It's in the same year as Sinners. it's possible that Sinners which is from the same studio will block it out and maybe only Amy Madigan will be competing in Supporting Actress which is a fairly weak category this year Supporting Actress so she could you know the movie could just be in the conversation maybe a screenplay nomination is somewhat possible for Kreger but yeah great to have that movie just great to have that movie in the movie culture um alright let's try to just like just help me bang this in order a little bit okay okay alright I'm gonna list all the movies that we just that we just mentioned okay Sinners, Hammit I'm looking at the doc Sentimental Value House of Dynamite J.

1:30:17Kelly Marty Supreme One Battle After Another Begonia No Other Choice It Was Just An Accident That's 10 Right Wicked For Good Avatar Fire and Ash Rental Family Train Dreams Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere Is This Thing On The Testament of Anne Lee That's 17 Okay There's probably something we've neglected to mention just because we're we're flying blind here We don't have a producer right now Jack Come Back Soon I think I think he's on his way Jack Travel Safely Yes Jack Please Be Safe Help Me Put Him In Order what's the number one right now in your mind number one yeah then hamnet is it sentimental value sentimental value i think i trust you on that one i mean i did i did say this about anora you did in the same way very early so my radar has gotten better we've come a long way from the get out for best picture days as you know right um also the academy has changed you they have so So sentimental value, I think right now, based on festival stuff, I think there's more Hamnet, yeah, over any sort of festival consensus around the Venice stuff.

1:31:26But then, you know, you should put House of Dynamite on there. I don't think House of Dynamite is going to win Best Picture just because I think they already did the Bigelow thing, you know? But they also did the Chloe Zhao thing. this is also a year where you could have two women nominated for best director very unusual maybe even three if you get the testament of ann lee wow think about that that never happens it's true i i sitting in the testament of ann lee which i really really liked i did think to myself i was like i don't know if this is going to get the same reaction that But, you know, first of all, it has a lot in common with the Brutalist and it's obviously made by the same team.

1:32:12But the Brutalist is bigger. I mean, it is longer, but it is trying to do, it is more ambitious, at least in the, you know, traditional masculine sense of that word. And it's about a dude. And so I sitting there, I was like, I don't know whether this will get the same level of attention that a movie about a Holocaust survivor architect is going to get. So and that's not the movie's fault. I think that's just the way the voting in the world works. So so I don't know. I would be thrilled if it got nominated, but I don't know. well we're in a tricky spot here because yeah we got too many movies for not enough spots yeah so look at what we have sinners j kelly put wicked for good and avatar fire and ash on there like we know that's gonna happen well i'm not convinced that avatar is gonna make it i know doubting big jim is the costliest bet in hollywood and i'm not and not advising anyone make that bet but I think it's just a little too soon from the way of water.

1:33:20I think it might, and if it disappoints even slightly, I could see a movie like that, you know, I'm fine. I'm fine. We don't have to give it a spot, but I think we could forget. We just got to, you know, yeah, we got to put our head down on that one. Yeah, I agree with you. Okay. Sinners, I think is getting in. I really thought Frankenstein looked so much like wicked. Yeah. Like when they're in the lab, sorry, it just, I was, and then that's not a compliment. No, it's the color grading and the lighting is just, a little off and it has that kind of that Netflix sheen on it that we sometimes complain about.

1:33:50But there's just like a flatness to the way they're filming that's very confusing. Anyway, yes. Sinners. Sinners, yes. I agree. Okay. Do you think Jay Kelly will make it? I don't know. I don't know. Interesting. Probably right now, yes. The Telluride reception kind of makes me think yes. I'm going to put Jay Kelly number 10. And you've got George. I think Sandler will make it and the Sandler campaign will go a really long way and it definitely seems like he has signed up he flew straight from Venice to Telluride the whole family was here he was also at Telluride I got a chance to say hi to him and he's the greatest I thought he was like pretty brilliant in the movie in a weird part that in the wrong hands would have been terrible because that's another movie that is about the relationship between an artist and a manager and I thought handled that relationship way differently and better another way the two movies at telluride were talking to each other um i thought he was great we'll see we'll see how people feel about it i'm putting it on for now because there's gonna be a lot of weight behind it and i do think there's a good like it's time for noah story to tell absolutely okay so let's let's do non-american okay oh okay you i just saw you highlighted one battle after another i think you should put it in i agree they always come to for pta yeah yeah i i think you know we haven't seen it yet we've got a lot of content planned to cover this movie over the next 30 days we're all really excited we don't want to waste any more breath on it to me we got three spots for five movies i i could see a world where no other choice and it was just an accident get in i could as well i think that makes sense i mean it's really just a question of can like can neon split its own vote like that.

1:35:38That's what it, and that's, that would be an amazing act if they got sentimental value, no other choice. And it was just an accident in, it could happen. That would see it is. I, I know that sentimental value is technically not, it's not American, but how much of it is in English, which, you know, just to, because every season is L fanning and that's it. Okay. Oh, interesting so it's kind of all over the place i'm just trying to figure out because american voters can really you know code in do i have to have subtitles or do i not and as in terms of international but so that's going to scan as international to american voters it has some correlation to the american film industry okay so it's not going to be the same as sitting down for it was just an accident or no other choice which are you know there are no American actors in those films there's no English spoken as far as I know no other choice in those films Marty Supreme, Begonia, Avatar, Fire and Ash for the last spot hmm I don't know I mean it's impossible to know with Marty because on the one hand it looks huge and it's Chalamet and it's A24 and they currently do not have a film on the list and they never don't have a film on the list right you know i'm obviously incredibly biased and i really like josh a lot and love what he's up to as a filmmaker um and i don't think 824 is gonna miss on a movie but i don't know maybe it's maybe uncut gems was not nominated for best picture you know there's no guarantee that the kind of movies that they make that that josh makes is gonna we don't know we just don't know Bagonia, Yorgos is nominated all the time.

1:37:25That's true, but it does feel like people went so nuts for poor things, in part because it departs from the dog tooth of it all. And this is going back a little bit. So on the other hand, if we think Jesse Plemons is going to be nominated or possibly win Best Actor and Emma Stone will be in the mix, then that gets it back in people's good graces. You're right about that. I think there's a decent chance that it gets at least one of those two nominations and not Best Picture, and here's why. Focus's money will be on Hamnet. That's going to be the movie that they really get behind. It doesn't mean they're not going to support Begonia, but their prized pony will be Hamnet.

1:38:17Focus has also never won Best Picture, in its entire history. Wow. Hamnet, you know, it should have been Brokeback Mountain. It should have been Brokeback Mountain and it wasn't. They've had obviously a ton of great movies over the years. Down Abbey, the grand finale. It's in play. Put that in number 10. It's in play. Have you seen it yet? No, no. I had to skip a screening while I was on vacation, but we'll do a solid 18 minutes on it at some point this month and talk about how much we love those movies. Those movies are fucking rock. I can't wait. I'm so excited. right now I'm saying Marty Supreme I am too my gut is telling me I am too I think that's the Chalamet, Gwyneth, A24 the fact that it's like a period piece you know again like the costumes like read a certain way to people so okay here's our top 10 I put the to me like 4 through 10 is not really in any order at this point so please don't aggregate Amanda number 10 is Jay Kelly Number nine is Wicked for Good.

1:39:18Number eight is Sinners. Number seven is One Battle After Another. Number six is It Was Just an Accident. Number five is No Other Choice. Number four is Marty Supreme. Number three is House of Dynamite. Number two is Hamnet. And number one is Sentimental Value. Gut reaction, how many out of the final 10 do you think we got right right now? Seven? I'm going to say eight. Okay, that's good. But we didn't. Listen, it's until this past week, we've been saying it's an incredibly weird year. There are no obvious contenders. We don't know what's going on. So I'm trying to, you know, be kind to us. Here's seven or eight would be good.

1:39:56Oh, that'd be. Yeah, that'd be solid. Considering we do this for a living and get money for it.

1:40:02Begonia, Fire and Ash, Rental Family, Train Dreams, Springsteen. Is this thing on the Testament of Anne Lee, Frankenstein and weapons? We're not predicting to go into Best Picture. not to mention the one or two other movies that hit in the next four months that we don't really know about. Right. So, or at least we don't, you know, I don't think like the Jarmusch film, for example, is going to contend. I don't think Ella McKay is going to contend, but you never know. A James L. Brooks movie. You never know. Die My Love. You never know. Did you see Late Fame? I didn't. I missed it. That's the new Kent Jones movie, which I'm looking forward to, which is Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee.

1:40:42heard nice things about that movie roof man roof man roof man Kirsten Dunst got a town and country cover so I saw that you know all is right in the world well no but in it she said that Sophia is working on the script for the next movie they're doing together so that's it's absolutely gigantic as you would say I'm happy for you okay I think we've done yeoman's work here feeling good i feel oh no but i'm excited to see the rest of the movies i'm excited to come home it's after midnight in italy yes you fly home tomorrow i do do you feel ready to come home i'm i'm really again i i love being here it was fantastic even when i swore i would never come back during the rainstorm but um i do i miss home i miss my children i miss my husband um yeah i'm i miss a normal size shower uh is it too small or too big oh no this one's this one's very small this is like a little like it's like a locker um you know but that's okay um no it's been lovely to be here it's very beautiful thank you venezia and goodbye goodbye amanda let's go to my conversation with alex russell

1:42:06here with Alex Russell feature directorial debut yeah Lurker how are you feeling? I feel very nervous okay about this conversation about the reception of the movie about what? all of that I think I think the exposure I feel very exposed right now talking to you but I'm glad that people like the movie, I think. There's so many more opportunities now for people to not like it, is how I feel. Why? Because you only had it in a festival context, and that's a very warm space for it to premiere. Yeah. Yeah, I do think it's a warm space. People want to like the movie at Sundance, I think. And it's full of, I packed out my screening with people who worked on the movie, so that's a cheat code.

1:43:00A tried and true strategy. But the people who worked on the movie had to like working with you to do that. Okay. So I want to talk about all that and how you came to make this movie. Sure. So my sense from watching it was that it had a real texture and sense of comfort in the world that it's portraying, which is essentially kind of the inside-outside of the LA music scene. Yeah. At least proximate to a successful artist. and I heard you say in a couple of interviews that this is like a world that you knew or know how is that the case? How do you know this space and how do you know these characters so well?

1:43:39Yeah, I mean all of my friends to this day are still in music music managers, artists, producers, DJs I don't know how exactly that happened but it just is my existence in LA and I feel like I've seen these kinds of ensembles and groups and fallouts and dynamics and sort of like the gravitational pull of a new artist and I've seen those cycles play out I think numerous times in a way where you start to see patterns and archetypes and stuff like that so yeah I feel like all the characters in the movie I've seen some version of that guy and And there was some imagination used, I think, in constructing them.

1:44:28But I think knowing that world just allowed me to stress test any of the details, which I think for this movie in particular was key. Because if it felt inauthentic, it's like the corniest movie of all time. And that was my big fear in making it. Yeah, I'm curious about some of the aesthetic choices in the movie too, because it feels very surveillance observational. It feels like we're very close to a natural world instead of something that made by a different filmmaker, this could be a really stylized movie. It is very colorful and loud and doesn't feel invasive necessarily. So was that because you were attempting to replicate the feeling of the scene that you had witnessed yourself?

1:45:19honestly a lot of that came later in the process when I started having conversations with my DP um he uh Pat Scola is my DP he shot that movie Sing Sing um and I think he really brought like a warmth and like a human quality to these kind of darker interactions that everyone's having which I felt really served the movie. I think the first thought for making something like this could have been super finchery, cold, or like a nightcrawler type of feel. But I guess it was nice to establish some contrast there because things will already feel that way because of what happens in the movie. And there's some things that feel more precise as you get into the second half.

1:46:16And I don't know, I wanted you to feel like these were real characters and real people and the interactions they have are very relatable. So I wanted people to understand that this was supposed to be somewhat realistic. Was there like an inciting incident or a moment that you witnessed when you were inside this world before you started writing that flipped a switch and made you think like, this could be, there's the arc of a story inside of this space or with that person or something that they did? Nothing in particular, but so many of the things that happened in the movie are similar to something I've witnessed or an extrapolation of something like that.

1:47:06You know, I've been in rooms like this. But it was more of like a feeling, an overall sort of maybe feeling of disgust that I felt within me that I wanted to explore. And it was very low stakes at the time because it was just like, can I explore this feeling? COVID had just started when I wrote it. And I was like, I really want to explore this kind of like nauseous feeling that I have. And this is what came out of it. Well, what do you mean? Like, why did you feel nauseous? because you've related to one of the or more of the characters? I think it was more of a in a male friendship type of way.

1:47:50Like this is I'm participating in a strange hierarchy you know and it wasn't the first time. Like I'd felt that way when I was in college or high school and sometimes you're one of the characters sometimes you're the other and you know boys will not talk about that kind of thing yeah so you felt like you had been on top and on the bottom of certain social dynamics yeah I think so or it's like it's not binary like that but there's always some awareness of who has something the other person wants socially I always talk about how like you know sometimes you'll get a text from your cool new friend and and you'll on the same day you'll get a text from your old friend and like who do you text back first that's a social calculation uh-huh that if you have any shame might you might feel a little guilt about it but no one sees it no one sees that calculation except for you and uh that was the kind of thing I wanted to get into in this movie, I guess.

1:49:04Did you feel that before you were an adult in Los Angeles? Yes. Like in high school, you felt that way? I don't think my awareness of it was... I don't think I could have articulated it. But I think it was something that was growing in me and something I do want to emphasize about this movie is that like the setting is a setting. And I think this movie could have taken place in a lot of different spaces where there's like six guys.

1:49:42And this was just the one that I knew about. And the one that I had just so recently been a part of. We're talking about you starting to write this during COVID, but your background before this was writing for television. was your intention always to be making features like how did you even get involved in writing and making things in the first place um i mean i'd done a lot of small amateur stuff for no budget leading up to that point um and then once i was a tv writer well i should say the absolute ceiling for my hopes, dreams, and ambitions was being a staff writer on a TV show. Okay. So the idea of me directing a movie that I wrote was beyond far-fetched.

1:50:38Actually, in this moment, it sounds really surreal that that's real. You did it. Dude. You're here. Yeah, I did it, and it actually is the movie that I was trying to make. which I could imagine a million different ways it could have gone wrong or like, you know, especially going to a festival. I'm sure there's so many people who go there and they're like, you know, I didn't necessarily have the resources or I miscast someone or I didn't totally know what I was doing and I didn't, but like you could go there and just know in your heart that it's kind of. It's a little off. it's a little off or it's like half of what you were really really hoping would end up on the screen and then you still kind of have to stand on and be like it was always my dream to make this movie I would say in this case it really was what I was hoping it could be and I think that's kind of what fortifies me against this time of being exposed is like I actually do really like it and I'm glad when people do too or when they get it it feels it's intoxicatingly validating.

1:51:52I can imagine. I mean, you're having in the arc of the young writer-director, the exciting festival debut that announces the new voice is A. So you also have the perils of the sophomore slump to prepare yourself for emotionally too. So just as you crest out of the positivity of number one, we don't need to go there yet. With this movie, you mentioned it could be a cold Fincher movie. you mentioned that it could be to me a very clear signpost for the movie is King of Comedy this is a world that we've seen portrayed before the established person and the person who's desperate to get close to them I mean All About Eve is a version of this obviously but this feels completely different from that too were you a cinephile growing up did you find yourself accumulating a lot of references or is a lot of this a much more naturally flowing act of creation I don't, like when you say cinephile, I don't think I can compete with a lot of these directors when it comes to all their references and what they've seen.

1:52:56I like movies like everyone else, and I watch them when I have free time, and there's some that I like a lot. But I wouldn't be able to go toe-to-toe with anyone who's been on this podcast. But maybe that's an advantage. Well, it's not a competition either. You know, it's more just like sort of what speaks to you and what are the things that resonated with you when you were watching movies as a younger person. Yeah. I mean, I do historically love a very taut, tense, obsessive story.

1:53:34I feel like the ones that people think of when they watch this movie are not necessarily the ones I was thinking about, but I get it. What were you thinking about? I was thinking the most about...

1:53:50Whiplash. Mm-hmm. Nightcrawler, which people would guess. And Almost Famous. And when I set out to write this, I was kind of like, the first half's gonna be Almost Famous and then the second half's gonna be Nightcrawler. And then it was just kind of immediately dark from the beginning. Mm-hmm. So there wasn't some massive, like, tonal shift in the middle. Um... But those were kind of the primary references. And then there's a lot I stole from Whiplash. Or like some structural things. And it really simplified things to know that this was really just about two people and the tension between them and how that evolves.

1:54:34That helped me write it a lot. Well, when you say it was dark from the beginning, was that a function of just the DNA of the story when you started filming? Was it the casting that you did that made that so? No, I mean the script. Like I think just when I set out to write it, I had these ideas of what it might feel like, but then you could just tell something's wrong at the top. And I liked that more actually. And it's more, you know, you're playing with the intrigue of, well, how wrong is it? How wrong is it going to get? And who do I like? you know it reminds me a lot of I don't know if you care about these movies but a lot of the 1950s Hitchcock movies where they all start and you're being introduced to characters and you can tell one is kind of malevolent without actually doing anything bad and this has a very similar tension yeah you could just you see it in his face you see in his neck the way he's like moving his neck around trying to act like nothing's going on yeah and then like you know in the early stages of after I had sent out the script which again it was so low stakes at the time it was like the fact that I had finished it I felt like such a huge accomplishment to me I was like wow I wrote a new feature length screenplay during COVID while everyone else was baking sourdough I'm ahead of the game and then when we sent it out it was like and I was a very much baby TV writer at that time.

1:56:14I'd barely done anything. And I had just gotten like a manager.

1:56:20And I think in my meeting with my manager, the first one, I was kind of like, yeah, I have this idea for, they were just like, yeah, go write it. Just do it. And I think in the back of their minds, they were like, we don't know if this guy can write. Yeah, yeah. But like, this would be good to - Guy wants to write a screenplay in LA. Yeah, welcome to the party. Yeah, exactly. And then when they read it, they were like, oh this actually might be something and then the more people I showed it to they were like this is maybe something and within a few months we sent it out and why was I talking about this just the feeling of going through the process of writing it you were like it was a very low stakes endeavor it was low stakes and it became It sort of bloomed into, A, my calling card to get TV work.

1:57:17And then B, it was like, now that someone has told me that this could be a thing, I couldn't let go of it. But I was never thinking I was going to direct it until people told me that maybe I could. Why did people tell you that? Just because you knew the world really well? I well I don't know why I was told that but now I know because like you like in the hands of another director it just so many of the subtleties so many of the little details and stuff that would make it feel inauthentic they would just get flattened I think and so much of this movie is just a look or the intonation of a line and I think I really had a sense for what it was supposed to be because I'd written it and that was the primary advantage I had going into directing was I knew what every scene was about and what every line was about and I could you know express that was there any well I don't know how if you had trained to direct anything obviously it's a very technical skill as well as a creative act and it's a it's a lot of decision making and a lot of responsibility and trained no um what i had done was read some books about it okay um and what books i feel like none of them really even made a difference to me what is that like mammoth one oh uh isn't there some mammoth one called like on directing yes yes um and then i you know i read books about other roles like i read a whole book about first ad-ing which actually was really really helpful and you know i'd spent barely any time on set because i'm a tv writer like especially in this era you don't really get invited to spend time on set unless you're showrunner, high-level producer.

1:59:21So I'd spent a grand total if I want to say

1:59:27I don't know, eight days on a set before I shot this movie. This is a miraculous story that you got to direct this movie. This is part of the reason I wanted to talk because I was like, who the fuck is this person? I don't know who, but the movie is so assured and it's so unusual to be, you have a knack for it obviously and you knew the story you wanted to tell. but I had a feeling you were going to be like I don't know how I got here and there is a little bit of that in the story that you're telling I could retroactively tell you what worked and it's that so much of directing is casting and by casting I mean casting and hiring and I use the same methodology for both which is that I would evaluate the person kind of based on their understanding of the script.

2:00:19And that worked really well, I think, for casting and for anyone who did something technical that I really didn't understand that well. So at the same time, I knew all the things that I knew and I knew I could look at the monitor and say, well, does this make sense? Is this what I was going for? And to be only assured in that and not try to... I had like horse blinders in a way in that I couldn't get tripped up by so many of the other things that you can really care about. there was you know most of the time I didn't know what lens we were putting on the camera if I did I don't know if that would have helped me that information you know but what I can tell you is that I spent months with my DP talking through what every scene was about before we even started shot listing and I think I have a good sense of whether someone else knows what they're talking about and that's very important because you I mean as a first time feature director no matter what you're not going to know everyone's job as well as they do So if you have a sense of their, like, what's your bullshit meter on this person talking about their thing?

2:01:34I can do that. The one thing that also really makes this movie so successful is that the world of the music feels incredibly real. It's like a very unique challenge to try to make original music that is inside a world make a pop star believable. this is one of the most impressive examples of it I've ever seen can you just talk about how you worked out the music for Archie's character and what you wanted that to be and so on and so forth so much of it again was leaning on people who knew better than me I had an idea of what type of artist he was how would you describe that type of artist in like a post Frank Ocean world maybe it's like post Frank Ocean world Okay.

2:02:22I was trying to figure out like what it, I used to be a music critic. And so I'm trying to think of like what I would even, how I would even describe. Everything is too reductive. Like R &B is too reductive. yeah like DIY pop post Frank Ocean yeah like and I wanted it to be in a way disguised by that so you couldn't say exactly like oh this is this this is based on this artist so exclusively you know I think it's an amalgam and it was something that I was able to find throughout the process that once we did, I was so relieved. Because like you're saying, that's the thing that can take you out of the movie so easily if I just don't buy that character.

2:03:07And so much of that, the picture becomes clear once you have cast. The picture becomes, maybe I was going to go this way with it. Now that it's Archie, he wasn't written British. He was written as an American artist, but once it was Archie, I was like, oh, that's kind of a, that's a cool element that just adds a dimension to it that still makes sense within the story and like you might not have ever seen an artist that's exactly like how he's presented in the movie but you do feel like he could fit in some spotify playlist yes you know um so again a lot of my friends being music producers and stuff my friend kenny who makes a lot of music kind of in this genre, I was, we had very few conversations before all this music was already done.

2:04:01I was kind of like, you know what it is. Did you have it on the page? Did you just describe what the sound was like when you were writing? No, I kept it a little bit vague because I knew we would have to find it. And there were other things where like in prep, Archie was like, I think I want to dye my hair. And I was like, oh, I don't know if this is like a dyed hair artist. Is that like too kind of like pointing to like a Frank Ocean or something like that? Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, I really wanted to just let him do what he wanted if he was feeling it, if that helped him get into character.

2:04:37And I relented pretty easily. And then once we saw it, it just made everything clear. And it just, I don't know. Like the color he chose was like a rose you haven't really seen it but yeah the whole time I was just like does that work within the realm of you know what is my cringe meter for if this is believable or not so many of the decisions are just that one of the other reasons why the movie works so well is the energy between Theodore and Archie's characters did you rehearse? Did you have them spend time together beforehand? Yes yeah I did and it was very lucky that it did work because Theodore we had was attached to the movie in 2021 so there was three years that passed before we were actually shooting I was afraid he was going to age out of it before I figured out how to get it made but he was I think you know he's very youthful looking so it's still just if it was like two more years it would have been it would have been too much.

2:05:48Why is this guy still working retail? Yeah. But then it just turns into a different story. It's true. And even my friend Zach, who's in the movie, like, you know, he's like now in his mid thirties and we had to make it a part of the thing that is like, why is this old guy around? Right. Right. But when I first wrote it, it wouldn't have been, you know, it wouldn't have been in the script. Why was I talking about that? Oh yeah. The energy between them. I always knew that Theo was going to just be this unbelievable, like, discovery for everyone when they saw this. The question was, does it really feel like a two-hander?

2:06:30Does whoever plays Oliver come to bat, you know, against Theo? And it would make the movie better if they did. And, you know, Archie, when I first met with him, he was aware of Theo. He was a fan. and he was really excited I think to go up against him as a serious young actor like I think both of these guys you know they're both trained and they both are really hungry for a role like this so I the way the way it happened was I met Archie I was like this could work maybe he's British and then I I flew to Paris. I turned it into a little bit of a vacation. I flew to Paris. This was 2023. I flew to Paris to meet...

2:07:25Or no, I flew to London to meet Archie. And then we took the Eurostar to Paris where Theo was shooting something. And then I kind of like... I want to say they're like Gen Z cusp. Yeah. They're like kind of late 20s. and I had spent time with both of them and I was like, okay, hopefully I can just put them in a room and see if they get along and will maybe casually do a couple scenes and hopefully I can walk away for a sec and just, they'll love each other. And that's the best directing in general is when your cast starts to become friends independently of you. Is there any part of it that would have been good if they didn't?

2:08:12Because obviously there's a slingshot in quality in our relationship in the movie. I thought about doing something like that. That's the kind of thing that I think sounds great in theory, where it's like, yeah, all of us will eat lunch together on set without you. Yeah, exactly. You're like in the 70s, this was a tactic that is deployed by mean-spirited directors. yeah I think for me overall the benefit was largely in the favor of like everyone gets along really well okay and they both had to feel good about getting cast together so they ended up just like playing Fortnite and that was the moment where I was like oh god they're playing Fortnite let me just like take a walk around the block let them have this moment it was very Gen Z yeah and I was like oh they both I've never played Fortnite like that I'll let them.

2:09:07There's only two controllers. We'll be like, get out of here. And then that was that. And like, we, I don't know. We've, we all love each other very much. And we're, I couldn't have asked for a better cast. Like for me going into it as again, the person on set with the least set experience, I was looking to everyone else for a lot of support. Like all I really had to offer was, steering the thing in the direction of what I felt was right. And that's all I had was like my gut feeling about is what is on the monitor working for me? And if not, let's figure out how to make it work. Did you ever have a day or a moment where you felt like, ooh, like I don't have my arms around this or this is in trouble or I miswrote this moment?

2:10:01the last thing yes there were things where i felt you get to the day and like oh i this is way too long i miswrote this this is indulgent or you know i don't think we need like a monologue here that was like me as a early stage writer trying to sound clever to myself you know so that kind of thing was really easy to jettison or rewrite in the moment because there had been so much time between writing it and now directing it. I wasn't hyper precious about the words. And, you know, like doing TV, that kind of thing happens all the time. You're like, well, it doesn't work or location is different.

2:10:51Rewrite the scene right now. And I felt pretty nimble with like, oh, that doesn't work. Let's cut that line or experiment with new lines. But what was great is like both myself and the cast, we all really knew what every scene was about. Um, there was a, there's a simplicity to every scene individually and we could play within that and try variations and sometimes find something that just felt a little more off the cuff or felt a little more fun or felt more right. When you were done with the movie, were you like, this is a great film, it's going to go to Sundance. We're going to do great. We're going to get sold.

2:11:36We're going to be the bell of the ball. We're going to have a very nice September release. We're going to get into Sundance. Okay. No, I mean, these things are very hard to get off the ground in the first place. And I knew there was a version of this that I completely exposed myself to be a fraud and I wasn't meant for this and even if that had happened maybe it wasn't my fault but it would have really knocked me down and I don't know I think I was just so exhausted we had all developed an addiction to Celsius on set and then I immediately stopped drinking them when we were done so I was I was in bed for like a week after and I'm pretty delicately built in general.

2:12:29So getting through that was tough. I've had one Celsius in my life and it didn't go well. So I can only imagine. No, but you build up a tolerance. You start with like a couple of sips. No, I mean, I will say this. There were so many times on set where I was like, this is the scene. This is what I was hoping for. Maybe it's even better. And I could really feel that in the moment. And I would be like giddy. And people would be like, why is Alex giggling? And I think people really appreciated that I seemed excited. Because a lot of people in their little bubble of what they're doing don't necessarily know how it's going.

2:13:11And a lot of people are looking to me like, are you happy? We don't know how to evaluate that. Even actors sometimes are so stuck in the emotion of the moment, like maybe a vulnerable moment, that they come out and they're like, I don't know if that was good, but it's really kind of their vulnerability persisting. and my only real true fear when we wrapped was like when I look at this in the edit will I feel as good as I felt about the times I was happy on the monitor right that was because that's what I was going off I was prioritizing and converging on all these moments that were like I feel it right now and this is totally what it should be from camera to performance to story, all of that converges in the moment on the monitor and I'm like, this is working.

2:14:10When I feel like if it works, that's what we were prioritizing. So if my sense of that was not calibrated, then by the time I get to the edit, we're just left with all this stuff that I was wrong about. But the truth is the movie is made up of a composite of all the things I was excited about on the day. So if I do get to do another one, I will trust that more and worry about it less. Like if I feel good about it in the moment, that's probably the right thing. What has to happen for you to do another one? Someone has to let me. Do you have scripts? People have to listen to this podcast and go see it.

2:14:56Yeah, no guarantees on the former, maybe on the latter. Do I have scripts? Yes. I have scripts I'm working on. Okay. And, you know, the thing you were saying about Sophomore Slump is we want to avoid it. We certainly do. Yeah. But I think... Easier said than done. Yeah. I mean, I have... Do you have a desire to have a bigger production, more money? Or is the scale of this story the kind of register that you'd like to work at? If I were to guess, the next one will be slightly bigger in scope. But you often see someone have some Sundance Darling movie, and then they give you a billion dollars for the next one.

2:15:44Yeah. And you kind of wonder what happened there. I was talking with your Sundance alum, Ava Victor, a few weeks ago, and they were saying they're not going to make a Jurassic World movie anytime soon. But, you know, like that's... I would like to see that. Yeah. Ava's version would be great. But that's like, you're not going to try to trampoline into a large budget franchise film. No, because so much of what helped me make this was the constraints. The fact that it was so low budget and I had... very limited time makes you very creative. You have to solve this problem. And it's much more exciting than writing because when you're writing, you unfortunately have infinite time.

2:16:34And when you're shooting, you really don't. And you have to be like, well, what is this scene really, really, really about? And how do you crystallize this moment? And often making that choice is the most elegant one. Like there's this one scene, where it's sort of the ensemble of the movie on the patio at the tail end of a party and Matthew is like kind of seeing the attention of the group go elsewhere and we didn't have time. You know, everyone was cold. So we're like, okay, what if we only have like one hour right now? Which we did. I feel like if we had all the time in the world we would have shot it like a dinner scene so we get everyone in the ensemble's reaction we get everyone's line on camera but we didn't have and that would have taken hours and hours this was like what is it really about it's about the feeling of the ensemble and then it's about what Matthew's feeling so like let's tag the ensemble and let's feel the group dynamic and let's land on him and stay on him as the rest of the scene plays out And the rest of the dialogue can happen off camera.

2:17:51And that to me worked so much better and was so much more intense than if we had given everyone equal real estate in that moment. So stuff like that, I really enjoy. I really enjoy you telling me, I shouldn't say don't give me anybody on the next one, on this podcast, but like don't. Give me just enough. And that will give me, you know, the constraints and the boundaries that I need to get creative and to try and get it done and not have sort of infinite creative leeway. I think that's what I'd want, yeah. I think that's wise. I hope it works out for you. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen.

2:18:39Have you seen anything that you've liked recently?

2:18:45Eddington? please speak on it

2:18:51I just liked it I thought it was so funny I thought it was so funny I was laughing so much watching it and you know I also I had heard so much about it going into it where my expectations were mixed maybe I had a feeling like I'm gonna like this and it's just it's a fun movie I do want to like There's one thing I was thinking about on the way here, which is both of those movies are period pieces. And one is five years, one is seven. And I have this theory that you need to wait seven years to make a modern period piece. Social Network is one, Uncut Gems is another. Those are exactly seven years apart from where they take place.

2:19:44And so is my movie. It just weirdly feels like the amount of time that needs to pass for a time to crystallize or not in the eye of the storm. And that's why I think for Eddington, with Eddington, you feel like, oh man, that's kind of bold that you would do it right before it would be okay. It's still a little close. It's like, we're not quite ready. I think that's actually a feature and not a bug where it's like, we can't get too far and not realize that this was... if not the start of something, like the apex of something. Yeah, it's just like slightly abusive as it should be. I know, that's his mode.

2:20:22It's like, I'm going to pummel you and make you laugh at the same time. That's my favorite movie of the year. So that's a great show. Yeah, it was good. And I saw The Wind Rises the other day for the first time, which was awesome. Beautiful movie. A lot of guys smoking cigarettes, flying planes. Dude, all the mechanical, you know it's like kind of steampunky stuff in the Miyazaki world is really cool to me it's really stuck with me these are great recommendations I uh I thought Lurker was an incredible debut so thanks for doing thank you so much

2:21:01thanks to Alex Russell thanks to our producer Jack Sanders for his work on this episode later this week Amanda will be back in the United States of America where she belongs assuming assuming she is not arrested on the way out. I was going to say. We will be talking about Spike Lee's highest to lowest and Darren Aronofsky's caught stealing to New York City thrillers. And spoiler alert, Spike Lee was on the pod. Talk to Spike. It was a great conversation. We'll be able to hear later this week. See you then.

2:21:41Thank you.