The Movie Business Freak-Out Mailbag and ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,’ With Rian Johnson!

28:34And the great thing about what they're doing is that most of the films that they're identifying are films with no distribution. So I've watched one movie on the app so far. It's called It Ends. It premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival. It's kind of an existential, very grounded sci-fi drama about four friends in a car who are on a road trip or who are actually just going out to get some food. And they start driving and they find themselves on an endless road. And the road only runs in two directions and all they can do is drive. If they get out of the car, crazy things start to happen.

29:06Really interesting, promising, feature debut kind of a film. This is like a net positive. This is a movie that otherwise you would just not be able to see because who knows if anybody would ever buy this movie. There are a handful of other movies that are like this. They also are going to clearly kind of refresh and redistribute some older films, probably more foreign language films. But I think this is fantastic. And there was a question in here originally, at least about kind of like the future of independent cinema. I don't know if it's necessarily rosy, but this is like a nice opportunity for filmmakers who are trying to get their films more widely seen.

29:42In terms of the ease of use on the platform, like I think they're still working it out, but I thought it was relatively clean. Like if you can just do it on your laptop, if you just open up Letterboxd, it's very easy to just input your pay info and it'll start streaming for you. I think used via Vimeo technology. But if you put Letterboxd on your set-top box, like on your Roku or on your Apple TV, it works really well. And it was just like renting a movie from any other streaming video rental store. So I thought this was great. I liked It Ends. I know Chris, CR liked It Ends. He watched it this weekend too.

30:14And yeah, I mean - Oh yeah, the rare, he both shared the Letterboxd thing and then like he wrote a comment being like, this is amazing. Yeah, which like Chris never does on Instagram. So that caught my attention. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a very cool film that otherwise wouldn't get to be seen. So I love it. I mean, if they start distributing Avengers Doomsday, I don't think that's great. I don't think that's really useful. But as everyone knows, I think Letterboxd is doing great things for film fandom. So it's a nice thing. It can be a way station for that. And I think making films available to people is like the one upside of the streaming age.

30:48And this is like a cool way to capitalize on that. It's not Avengers Doomsday. It's things that otherwise would not be seen and making it easier for a wider group of people. I mean, it's all we have. It's all we can do with this stuff. I know, I know. So good on them. Yeah, it's a droplet in the ocean, but it's a tasty droplet. All right, I'm going to read this one. This is fun for you. Aiden writes, It's a recurring point on the show that the Oscars telecast sucks and loses viewers because of its poor quality and general bloat. Not sure about that. I agree with the ideas you bring up around potential improvements, fewer live song performances, actual funny famous people for award presentations, more clips, etc.

31:25I'm curious why you think the Oscars producers don't follow that advice and ram their heads into the wall with the same shit year after year. Who's making these decisions? Why? I think every question should just end with why. Sure. Take it away. Okay, so why the Oscar producers don't follow our advice? Because they don't know who we are. That's correct. Well, yes. The Academy knows who we are. The producers of the show do not give a fuck. Well, I was going to say, if any of the producers do know who we are, they hate us. So, with the exception of Steven Soderbergh, who was an Oscar producer one year and has spoken to you several times.

32:04So he knows who you are. And I don't think he hates you. As far as I can tell, Steven and I are on good terms. And I, of course, believe he is an American hero. As do I. Um, I, I, I quibble a little bit with the characterization in the question. Because one, we were pretty positive about the last telecast. Yeah. And one of the reasons why is even if they weren't distinctly listening to us, I did feel that the shift to Conan O 'Brien gave the show a new energy. Now, Conan O 'Brien is coming back as the host this year. So maybe we won't have that kind of first time, first date excitement around the way that he presented on the show.

32:42but I thought last year's show was pretty good. What we liked about it, he did some bits in the Billy Crystal 90s fame. I mean, we, like everyone else, are just trying to get the Oscars back to the Oscars of our youth because that's what people do is you just try to recreate things from your childhood when they were quote unquote better, though they really weren't because there are plenty of Oscars telecasts from the 80s and 90s available on YouTube and you will not believe what those people got up to. but also in the 80s and 90s they were more watched so some of it is I agree with you like it's not losing viewers because it's bad it's losing viewers because of YouTube and TikTok and nobody watches TV movies don't matter as much live TV ratings except for the NFL just kind of aren't where they are you and I have different opinions about what makes a good telecast we do You really like more clips.

33:41I get tired of montages after a while. Do you like the musical performances? I mean, I think in some occasions, I thought it was wise to open with Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo last year. That was smart. That was a way to kick off. You know, I don't love that movie, as you know. But that was a smart way to draw in crowds and their great performers. And so that made sense. And, you know, the Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, like almost make out. Like sometimes those are moments. Yeah, I'm just Ken by Ryan Gosling. That was a great moment. And then, like, you know, there are really, there can be really good examples of live performances.

34:12The thing that you don't want is that feeling of perfunctory. Like, all five of the nominees have to perform today, even though three of the five nominees are not songs you've ever heard in your entire life. That doesn't really, that hurts the show, in my opinion. What we want are, like, the memorable moments. And not just because we know that then they'll go viral on the internet and that will make people care about movies, but because that's what makes a good TV show. We want them to, we want the broadcast to be good and not bad. We have some understanding of what makes that, which is people who are experienced at standing in front of a microphone being engaging, either hosting or presenting awards.

34:47A little more thought put into what's going to be a dead moment versus like what people will be excited to see, which is both the live song performances or the 45th montage about, I don't know, flying in movies or whatever. And I say that as someone who spends a lot of time watching montages of flying. I just love when you're getting a plane and there's a camera on the plane. And they're showing you the world from the vantage of the plane. We love it, too, in my home. And we watch it a lot. Yeah. It's fucking awesome. The Great Waldo Pepper. When it's 11. Mission Impossible. The Final Reckoning.

35:20When it's 11.15 p.m. Twilight Zone, the movie. And you're like, I just want to know who's going to win Best Picture. And then they also won't take our fun advice. Like, they won't reveal the voting counts, which I understand why. But that would be cool. Yeah. But they're cowards. Right. I still think the countdown where one is eliminated every 30 minutes. My best idea of all time. It's really good. It's literally my best idea of all time. Yeah. Okay. I think the people making these decisions are people who are trying to wrap their heads around a new reality of television watching, a period in which the Academy Awards were frequently the second or third most watched show in America in any given year behind the Super Bowl.

35:58And that's just, you know, it'll still be close, but that number is halved, if not a 30 in 10 years time. That's fine. It's not, you know, we spent years, I spent years trying to problem solve this, trying to not freak out about the best way to nominate the right movies to get attention on the show. It's just different now. It goes along with every other thing that we've been talking about over the last 18 months with the whole movie business in general. Like, it's actually just better now, fully, in my opinion, to just celebrate movies. That that should be the entire purpose of the show. Movies, movie culture, you know, That idea that many people have shared over the years, which is like, this should be the biggest showcase for movie trailers.

36:40It should be like the Avengers Doomsday trailer is premiering in the second hour of the Oscars telecast. Like on air? More people would watch. During the, you want them to. No, no, during the commercials. During the commercials. I was going to say, let's not. But they should treat it like the Super Bowl, where it's like the ad rate for that show will matter more and the ratings will go up if you give people more about movies in this time. Like lean deeply into the people who actually care about this stuff. You know, whether or not they'll do that, that's over our heads. Okay, what's the next question?

37:09This is from Georgia. My question for the mailbag. Which actor, actress, or director are you buying stock for in 2026? Whose stock are you selling? I made a list of some filmmakers. Okay. These are early buys. Yeah, but you took mine. You can have the second one. Yeah. Three horror movie directors. Yeah. that I'm going to put on people's radars. I haven't seen their films, but I'm very intrigued. Kane Parsons, I actually spoke about this with Bill Simmons and Van Lathan on Bill's show, but he made a movie called The Backrooms. He is in his early 20s. He was a YouTube kind of creepypasta video maker and he made a real film with a real cast, you know, adult actors, like well-known stars.

37:56And I've heard the movie's really good. So I'm excited about that. It's an A24 movie. Curry Barker debuted his movie, Obsession, at Toronto, and it got acquired by Focus. It's coming out this spring. I've also heard that movie is really good. I haven't seen it. And then Sebastian Vanacek is making the new Evil Dead movie called Evil Dead Burn. He made a movie that we did talk about on the show called Infested a couple of years ago, a spider horror movie that is also really good. For the horror fans on this show, three names to watch, three younger filmmakers. Okay. Yours is a little bit less under the radar.

38:29Well, it's burgeoning. Charlie XCX. Yeah. It's not under the radar in the music, but in the film space. You're buying stock. Yes. The Wuthering Heights soundtrack, The Moment, her letterbox. Also her sub stack, which is a little bit about films, but you know, Charlie is blogging. Yeah, what'd you think of that? I thought it was great. She's very talented. I'm a huge fan. Should we do a check-in on her letterbox? Yeah. What has she been watching? Where did we leave off? I think you read all of November because that was the Wicked for Good episode. I don't think I got through the entire month. Okay.

39:09You want to just spend some time on December? Yeah. Okay. Charlie XCX Letterboxd check-in. December 1st, Zootopia 2. She left a heart. December 6th, five-day gap. Got to bump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers, Charlie. The first film she watched was Last Days, which is Gus Van Zandt's sort of shaded portrait of the last days of Kurt Cobain's life starring Michael Pitt. No heart, no rating. Okay. December 6th, she watched another film. Yes. The Weekend Away, a film I've not seen. Stars Leighton Meester. Great. Here, I'm going to read you the logline of the film. When her best friend vanishes during a girl's trip to Croatia, Beth races to figure out what happened, but each clue yields another unsettling deception.

39:55Ooh. I would watch that. Is it filmed in Croatia? Unclear. Okay. Because that would make a difference. December 7th, she left a review of the film that she watched. The film is Before Sunrise. Okay. Here's the review. OMG, this chemistry. Okay. This feels like a first time watch for her. Yeah, I was going to say, is this the first time? Well, welcome, Charlie. Five stars. Great. December 10th. Yes. Pillian. A movie I love. I know. Charlie Lighten's BDSM. gay rom-com drama starring Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling. Actually, the movie that our guest talked a bit about later in this episode.

40:36December 11th, The Voice of Hindra Jab, which was at the Venice Film Festival, which is an incredibly tragic and sad movie. Five stars and a heart. December 13th, Wake Up Dead, man. Hmm. Okay. No notes. December 13th, Predator Badlands. Sick. We like to see that. Okay. I'm not seeing a heart or five stars. Okay. Or I love that episode with Sean and CR. I'm not seeing that here, anywhere. It's expensive to have opinions, okay? Yes. Charlie knows that. She does. December 14th, Year of the Fox. Another film I haven't seen and haven't heard of. 2023, a 17-year-old Ivy who was adopted as an infant into a wealthy and notable Aspen family is navigating the fallout of her parents' bitter divorce.

41:20Aspen, Colorado? I can't say. Can you be a notable Aspen family? Is anyone living in Aspen long enough? You know, are there enough year-long residents of Aspen to be notable? I simply don't know the answer to that. Okay, I don't either. December 14th. Mountain culture, not for me. Just yesterday. Yes. Charlie XCX watched Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice. Five stars? Heart. Oh, okay. Just a heart. Just a heart. Okay. Anyway, this has been Charlie XCX watches movies and we talk about them. Okay. Back to people we're shouting out. So Christopher Borgley is the director of the drama. Yeah. We saw a teaser for the drama.

42:00The new film starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson about a couple who everything is perfect. They're cool. They have, you know, stylish clothing. They're beautiful. They live in a cool New York apartment. And then something's wrong. What's wrong? We don't know what's wrong. I don't want to find out. There's a big twist. Don't spoil the twist. I won't.

42:22this movie is in the materialist slot from last year for A24 right well we had a nice time and everyone was very normal about it one of the best easily one of my favorite episodes of the year that we've done and a fun movie going experience for a movie that I think is deeply flawed still thinking about the Shrek meme where he just sinks down in the cake that's so good that was good that was good can we talk about Anne Hathaway? yeah Ah, it's her time. This is, I'm nervous. Well, this is risky. She's got six films this year. And it's not, she doesn't schedule them. Nope, it's not her fault. You know, it's not her fault.

43:00But exposure for anyone at this level is tough to maintain, as we're seeing from Timothee Chalamet right now. And that's just one big film. Individually, in different ways, I have interest in all six films. The films that she's going to be in, The Odyssey. Yes. in which she plays what's what's what's Odysseus' wife's name? Penelope. Penelope. Thank you. The Devil Wears Prada 2. Do you remember her character's name in that? Annie? Andy. Andy Sacks. But Miranda calls her Andrea. Is that actually her name or did she invent that for her? I don't actually know because the first time she says Andrea and she says Andy everybody calls me Andy but then How do you feel like Andy for a girl?

43:43It's cute. A-N-D-I or A-N-D-Y? I have always... A-N-D-I-E? I've always spelled it in my head, A-N-D-I-E, like Andy McDowell, but I guess I haven't seen it written out. They don't show her bylines. What about A-Y-N-Y-D-Y? That seems complicated. Next, Verity, which is the forthcoming Colleen Hoover adaptation with Anne Hathaway and Dakota Johnson. You will not see this without me. Like, we will. You will not. I will not go alone. Okay. This is like a major Kim Crawford date. And I think we'll have an incredible time. I want to see this movie inside of a bar. That's the only way I think I'll be able to enjoy it.

44:22Then David Lowery's Mother Mary, long-awaited two-hander apparently that the streets have been waiting for. We got a trailer for that movie. Also, speaking of Charlie X, wrote the songs for Mother Mary. One more Charlie thing. Flowervale Street, David Robert Mitchell's follow-up to Under the Silver Lake, which has been long delayed from Warner Brothers. have some concerns. I was going to say. Very excited about it, but have some concerns. And then I didn't realize this, but I just read last night that she's also appearing in a new film by Ron Howard called Alone at Dawn. That's just a robust year.

44:54Yeah. Are you holding your Anne Hathaway stock? Selling? Buying? Holding. Holding. What about The Rock making Jumanji 3? Are you selling that? We checked Jumanji out of the library, the book, the other day. Or, you know, I tried to, I was curious whether it would take. Didn't take. So, just not. With your child. Yeah. Okay. not with you alone okay if i was just sitting there it's an image who knows what happens after bedtime um so what else is he gonna do it does feel like a bit of a retreat um it does and is live action moana also next year it is okay so you know i you gotta do what you gotta do you You know, we did.

45:41What do we have to do? 35 over 35 next year. Is that where it is on the cycle and pinging back and forth? Did we do 35 under 35 this year? I can't remember. You do it every 18 months. Is that true? That's what you told me last time. OK, so it was. I remember that we did it for challengers and that was April. So I've got seven months till the 44 year old cliff, you know, when I fall. I can't talk about that piece. I'm sorry. Just listen. It is a thing that existed. Sure. There's science, but it's fine. And I have some thoughts for you. You're going to be fine. I'm going to be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

46:20I'm happy to hear that. We're going to work on your mobility. We're going to work on your, you know, vitamins. Vitamins. I think that you could use an infusion or two. Not like the IV drip. I'm not doing that. It's really a classic thing where if I just eat an orange, I just feel a hundred times better. that, Sean. You know, just a hundred times. I am familiar enough with your diet at this point. And I think I actually have like a very normal body. I'm just going to say that out loud. I'm a normal man with a normal body. And if I treat it as such, I'll be fine. I do. I think that we can, as you approach the 44 cliff, we can just like uptake, you know, up the care just a little bit.

47:02Here's what they don't know about me. I'm wearing a parachute. It doesn't matter. Send me off that cliff. I'll be flying gracefully. Okay. Next question. Yes. Yes. No, this is, I wanted you to ask me the next one. Okay. Can I ask this one? Yes, go ahead. Okay, I'll ask you Emma's question. You read me Jeff's. Emma asks, my question is, which movie on your 25 for 25 was hardest to pick come to an agreement on? Whether that be to include it on the list or its placement on the list. Well, Frances Ha has been a recurring source of frustration and disagreement for us. I think I personally, I, you know, I still don't feel good about the Christopher Nolan pick.

47:40We went all different ways on that and we did what we had to do, but I would have liked to come to a better resolution. I don't, I think we actually had a very friendly and warm and actually encouraging for our pod relationship experience doing the 25. Yeah. where you put a rough draft together after we did the cut down and then I kind of tweaked it a little bit, but didn't tweak it that much. No. Not dramatically. So that part of it was good. I think in... And even, I mean, we haven't listened to the selection episode, but that was like kind of nerdy fun for us. It was not contentious as people might imagine it.

48:20I think that for me personally, there are a couple of movies that are just not Amanda movies that undoubtedly would have been on my list. Like Almost Famous and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind just would have been on my list. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're not. They're not on the list. Yeah. So there were a couple that were like, but not a lot. Not a lot where I was like, this is, I don't want to fight with you, but I would fight with you about it, you know? Yeah. I mean, it is also hard to fight with me. You made like a, you made a last minute offer about. I did. And I was just like, absolutely not.

48:51Like, I wasn't even going to engage with you. You're not the coolest negotiator, I would say. I don't negotiate. Yeah. Like, you don't negotiate with terrorists. Yes. I don't negotiate. But you know who says that? Yeah. terrorists I just it was a terrible offer and I wasn't going to take it if you'd made a good offer I would have said yes well there are a few movies where I'm like I can't believe that this isn't on the list I agree Tar is also a new movie I tried five different times there just wasn't a place for it I know but like I would say three or four times during this year I've texted you being like okay but what about Tar?

49:24yeah I know it was tough it was tough it's a really tough one Tar and Almost Famous are very hard for me to not, for those to not be on the list because of how much I like them. Even though I need more time with tar is something I'll say about tar. Okay. I'd like to see it a couple more times. I'm wearing my tar blazer. I didn't even realize. And giving tar energy. Well. Okay, you read the next one. Okay. Oh boy. Yes. Given the potential acquisition and the threat to physical media, this is from Jeff. What are the Warner Library, including one's license to Criterion 4Ks, we should be asking for this Christmas?

50:00Let me just say that you've put a list together. Haphazardly. No, no, no. It's fine. It's just like if you're collecting 4Ks, you should have these. These should be on your list if you don't have them. Well, I generally agree with that. But I think it's worth locating for people who maybe aren't thinking about. A lot of people have clearly started collecting in the last few years. Like, hopefully in part because they're listening to the show. But just in general, there have been like 15 trend pieces in newspapers and magazines and websites over the last few years. that like something is kicking up, obviously.

50:31Yeah. Well, I mean, you know about trend pieces. It's that you gave them an idea, but that's okay. That may be true. I think there's just like some existential dread stuff with I want to own my stuff. So this is very basic. This is like starter kit to me for the Warner Brothers and Warner license stuff. Wizard of Oz. Before they put David Zaslav's face in it. Yes. Do not buy the AI-induced sphere version. Wizard of Oz, there's a beautiful steelbook 4K. Buy it. It's a must. Citizen Kane from the Criterion Collection. It's a must. Buy it. The Bogart Classics. They've been collected on Blu-ray. But not on 4K?

51:09Slowly over time, they're being added on 4K. Casablanca is available on 4K. To Have and Have Not, I believe, is not. Treasure of the Sierra Madre, I do not believe, is on 4K yet. The Big Sleep. The Maltese Falcon is available on 4K. I may have gotten a couple of those wrong, but, you know, Bogart made a great many movies in the 30s and 40s that are all-timers, But the best known ones, I think because they were made by Warner Brothers, and so they have been a legacy studio that has been able to continuously promote those films, are these movies. Two recent Criterion 4Ks of Stanley Kubrick movies, Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut.

51:45The Eyes Wide Shut criterion is anybody who's serious about owning movies should buy it today. Blade Runner, Mean Streets, all the Christopher Nolan films, up to Oppenheimer. and I guess not Memento, but almost all those films are Warners. The Tim Burton Batman. Like we could go on and on. There's a, you know, all the Clint Eastwood movies. Dirty Harry just had a 4K. Outlaw Josie Wales just had a 4K. Like a bunch of these movies are all available now. I'm sure there's like roughly 500 more that people should hunt down, but it's worth spending some time acquiring those. That's a nice question from Jeff.

52:23Congratulations, Jeff. I hope you get what you want for Christmas. Okay. Kyle asks,

52:43I quibble with the premise of this question as well. I think that the Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning was an acceptance. We didn't come on this podcast being like, yeah. No, we didn't celebrate the movie in the episode. Yeah. We celebrated the sequences we liked and then were disappointed. We wanted to find what was good about it. But I wouldn't call it a total turnaround. There was an emotional process that I needed to go through to fully get my arms around how bad it is. And that's just called podcasting. I don't really totally turn around on things. This is not your style. This is not your style.

53:22Well, I think this is a really interesting thing, right? because I will tend to turn around on things when I've been persuaded by strong writing about something. Very rarely in conversation will I be persuaded. I also like a direct confrontation, but I vividly remember liking Birdman, seeing Birdman in movie theaters and liking it. Maybe not loving it, not being like it's my favorite movie of all time, but being very easily persuaded by the technical wizardry, that feeling of like the way that Inaritu is moving. I think I was at a stage of disinterest in his work at that point because I felt like the trilogy of, you know, deeply intense, painful, Amoris Perro's 21 Grams, Babel, like that stretch of movies.

54:09By the end of it, I remember coming out of Babel and just being like hating that movie. And I liked that in Birdman, he kind of like turned it around. More comedy, a verve, ton of actors that I really, really like in that movie. you know great Michael Keaton Emma Stone Edward Norton like a lot of great stuff about it I didn't like the critic scene I remember vividly with Lindsay Duncan in the bar I remember that feeling very overwritten but I did like the movie and then I started reading more and more about the movie and I was really persuaded to kind of see why it is actually more in the lineage of the previous films that I was not as crazy about and that even in a zippy comedy about an existentialist movie star superhero there's just a kind of like depressive self-satisfaction in a lot of his work that I don't like.

54:56But that's the one that jumped out to me the most in terms of like, now when I look at Birdman, I feel a lot of disinterest. But it happens from time to time. I think like on this show, we often get held accountable for things that we say in the moment. Like the one I think of most is like, we both had a pretty, a very positive conversation about Green Book. Right. We were charmed by it. Yeah. And then everything that came out about the way that movie was written and produced was made clear. And I was like, oh, okay. So I have some questions and concerns about this. And also the scale of it going to winning Best Picture, which I don't think in the context of our first conversation we were like, this movie should win Best Picture.

55:35So that kind of shatters your perception of something a bit too. I mean, we were maybe a little bit nervous about it. I remember saying this was a crowd pleaser. And this made a lot of people feel good. But no, I don't think that we thought it should win over Roma. I think that my appreciation or understanding of movies does change over time and that I can see and it's usually with, you know, my age and experience and things. You know, different life phases. But I don't find myself being like, oh, yeah, this gave me the ick or I didn't connect to this. And now I can really connect to it five or ten years later.

56:18There's something like fundamental about it that just is my reaction. I do think that there is there's definitely like a putting away childish things feeling about some movies I liked as a kid or, you know, it was interesting even firing up the Princess Bride this morning just to kind of get back into the feeling of it. And I didn't have a bad experience with it, but it felt different. You know, to see a movie like that when you're six, that world feels so real and so big. And then when you watch, you know, you're watching a giant screen in your home with amazing sound. and it's like, okay, I can kind of see the cracks in the production design, like some of the artifice of the movie.

56:57And that's another way that your kind of opinion can change about things. Okay, next question. You want to read this one? I'd love to. This is from Sam. I really liked the end of Hamnet, but I was taken out of the movie and rolled my eyes big time when On the Nature of Daylight started playing to double underline the emotions of the scene. Can you think of any songs needle drops that take you out of the movie the first one i thought of as kind of random but um the pretenders angel of the morning plays in a moment where a demon is vomiting on a kid in chapter two i remember just being bewildered by that angel of the morning gets used a lot it does as a pretenders when we were growing up were licensed all the time yes love the pretenders but as a needle drop to kind of draw your attention also.

57:46I think it's kind of overused. The first one I thought of was that weird cover of Skinny Love in It Ends With Us, which is I literally burst out loud laughing in the fan screening. It was like you, me, and a bunch of 20-year-olds on dates. And I couldn't stop laughing. That was the... It was transcendent. They couldn't have played anything else in that moment. but that woman whispering skinny love. Yeah. I can't do better than that. That's a really good one. Okay. I was not taken out of it in Hamnet for the record. I wasn't either at all. It worked for me. It's been so interesting to hear people talking about this movie and how much they love it or don't love it.

58:33It really is an interesting lightning rod this year. Okay. Another Hamnet question. Just finished. Oh, this is Jim, by the way. Thank you, Jim. just finished the Hamnet and top five Epsom got me thinking Hamnet didn't make anyone's top five but Buckley still feels like an Oscar front runner if slightly weaker than a few months ago what are your thoughts on riveting, towering, shattering, beautiful performances and films that didn't quite hit for you? Should that devalue the performance or its awards potential? What are some of your all-time favorite performances in movies that were just meh? I wrote down something that now I'm rethinking after riveting, towering, shattering, and beautiful.

59:12Okay. Which is an incredible, you know, movie poster pull quote. But, you know, Joaquin Phoenix was very good in Joker, a movie I think is stupid. But he's really good. And it's like performance, not just of like presence, but the movement. We all know how I feel about the dancing. Very pro. Yeah, but that movie sucks. He was good in it, but it sucks. I liked Joker. Okay, that's fine. There's a whole pot of me saying that I kind of liked it. I mean, I think in retrospect, the culture around the movie I thought was incredibly annoying. I think it's fascinating that it made a billion dollars. Joker 2.

59:52Nightmare fuel. Still haven't seen it. But I really enjoyed your and Vance podcast, which I think was the first podcast I listened to after Cy was born. Because Cy was like, Cy's due date was that weekend. I mean, that's touching to hear. and I, you know, it's too bad that he couldn't still be inside you while you were listening to that episode. That would have been even more powerful. I wrote down Marion Cotillard and La Vie en Rose. This is a good call. Which is a movie that I never really cared for, but you cannot deny the way in which she transforms and is just the towering, riveting, shattering quality is there.

1:00:27But that is ultimately just a musician biopic in many ways. And this does happen a lot in the best actress category. It does. You do see a lot of, and maybe that's just because of the way that the Academy views female performers and the way that they choose to honor them, but it's often not in the films that are nominated for Best Picture. It's often films that are, like, very singularly focused on a strong female figure, but there's maybe not enough attention paid to the rest of the world around them. But, you know, it's not as often as you might think. I went through the Best Actress list because that was my first thought.

1:01:01I'm like, oh, well. And the winning performances it's either I didn't like the performance that much either you know along with the movie for example like you know Renee Zellweger and Judy it's not a great movie but also it's okay it's okay it's a little showy she's okay and I like her but for the most part you don't get that unevenness of wow this is incredible stuff you're doing and everyone's just like asleep around you there's usually just a mediocrity across the board. Yeah. Yeah. I also don't think Jessie Buckley is being received in that way. I don't think people are like Hamlet is a mess except for her.

1:01:43No, no, no. The movie is really, really, really well-liked. Okay, you read the next one. Okay. You both advocate for the idea or institution of the movie star and see it as a positive or virtuous force, something to preserve or advocate for. But I've never heard you explain why. So I am curious. Why do you care about preserving the movie star? What a great question, Luke. I love this question. A couple of very obvious things. One, movies are dreams and they have to be manifested in human form. And the best way to do that is by finding someone who you can feel your dreams through. Like it's just a very simple thing where going back to talking about seeing the Reiner movies at a very young age, when you see Robin Wright in that movie, she is the embodiment of grace and beauty to a young person.

1:02:28Like she is just captivating. And I do think that we need a portal for those feelings. And stars deliver that. You know, Jay Kelly is literally about that. Whether it's successful or not is debatable. But this notion of becoming deeper and more emotionally invested in storytelling by way of a person. And sometimes it's a hero holding a gun and sometimes it's, you know, a person at the most painful stage of their life. But we're at this inflection point with storytelling and artificial intelligence yeah fuck that and I do think that you know I don't think that's the reason why I became really interested in movie stars as a young person but I do think that now they're you know sort of receding in the culture feels tied to who we look to to feel and get excited there's people are still doing that you know like influencers exist TV shows are still popular you know it's not that that stuff is completely shattered but the Disney investment in OpenAI and Sora is genuinely concerning for me.

1:03:38Genuinely. Because it legitimizes something that could send us down a really slippery slope. And I was actually feeling like in the last few months like there was a personal rejection, a very vocal rejection happening. You know, Guillermo del Toro before every screening of this movie saying like there was no generative AI used in this movie. Fuck that. Jim Cameron doing the same thing. Like strong voices in the industry coming out really hard against it, but... they see money and they're fearful of being overtaken. and that's why they're pursuing it. Well, to that point, the investment is really like as in characters.

1:04:17I mean, the investment is in AI, but what it will enable people to do is use Disney-specific characters in makeup. I don't know if they're like sword fighting or whatever. Minnie Mouse and Mirabelle from Encanto can have a cup of tea together. Right, which is cool or whatever. But the characters you can license, But the characters have in many ways in movies and in our culture replaced movie stars as the franchisable thing. And there is like a strategic dangerous part to that, which is everything you just said of that it becomes less human and slips away from us and then just is computerized or whatever.

1:04:59But there is also you are losing like a human element in your movies. and so I think strategically in terms of the industry, you made the point, you know, there are influencers, there are other people, but like we still live in a world that is either characters or people-based, like social media and getting people to care about movies requires like a personality rather than, you know, like I don't know, a screenwriter or like some sort of... Well, you, okay, here's a way to think about it. Think about Spider-Man. Yeah. Spider-Man, one of the great characters, one of the defining characters of my young life.

1:05:42A character that persists. Like maybe the most, Spider-Man and Batman, the most like indestructible franchises to the minds of young people that we've seen in the last 50 years. Spider-Man does not work without Peter Parker. There has to be a kid, a teenager under the mask to get invested in that story. If you try to make a Spider-Man movie that is only Spider-Man in the mask, the movie will not work. So even in the circumstances of the most aggressive IP expansion imaginable, the biggest possible tent, it's still about a person, that character that's been created. Right. I'm not saying that's going to happen for all times, but, you know, Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire have made this work because we like being with them.

1:06:27We like feeling their struggle. Yes, you attach to the person. Yes. Yes. I mean, completely agree. But then artistically, it's the same thing where like the difference between photography and cinema, the difference between painting and cinema, the difference between like a fashion show and cinema, all of like things I love are the people, the actors. They are walking and talking. They are human. You are connecting. How are they moving in this world? How are they manipulating? What you are capturing is a person and a star. And so, and when they really do it and what movies in particular invented is that movie star, that person that is just like a little bit larger than life up on the screen.

1:07:08We always say, you know it when you see it, but there is a presence. and it, but it is the humanity that makes it different from a piece of still art or a piece of music or any other art form that we love. So that's why they matter because it is, it's like the singular creation of the movies. Well said. Last question. You want to read it? Sure. I recently went to see one of my top five favorite films, The Shining, in IMAX and consider that to be one of the best theater going experiences of the year and potentially ever. Are there any other film classics that would raise your eyebrows to see getting the IMAX re-release treatment?

1:07:47This should happen for a lot of movies. It happened for Apollo 13 this year and I missed it, which would have been my answer. It's a tough one. My mind flashed on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly first because of the size and scope of that movie and just Leonie capturing the eyes on the biggest screen possible would be really exciting. But I mean, any film classic. I missed The Shining as well. That would have been really exciting. but I you know this does feel a little bit like backstopping like this worst case scenario situation we're heading into with movie going where it's like okay well at least you can go see blank you know I almost went to go see the Jim Carrey The Grinch Still Christmas Ron Howard movie this weekend with my daughter we ended up not being able to make it but I was like you know I've actually never seen that movie and she loves The Grinch right now we're all about The Grinch we visited you know Whoville at Universal Studios so now Grinch culture, Cindy Lou.

1:08:40Okay, sure. It's a big deal. She has mega Cindy Lou vibes for sure. Huge. I have a wonderful photo of them meeting at Universal Studios. Yeah, big moment. But I was like, it just makes sense to just put that movie on an IMAX screen for five nights every December 10th. Like that, this methodology, this strategy works, but I don't know if there's any individual movies that you really would like to see in this format. Well, going back to classic movies, you know, I was thinking West Side Story, Singing in the Rain, And anything with movement, which for me would be choreography, just as big as possible would be really fun.

1:09:14But like, you know, I would like to go see. I missed the Sense and Sensibility re-release because I have to go see Anaconda instead, which is my life. You want to see Anaconda instead. I want to. But, you know, I don't need that to be IMAX. I would love for that to just be like in a big, beautiful theater. I thought when we did the Inglorious Bastards event, like that print was so gorgeous. So getting to see movies that I love in the way or in the best possible format of how they were made or how they were intended to be made is cool. Like, I mean, that is it's just called a repertory theater, you know, and bless all of those people.

1:09:55so if we could get more work for programmers and get more like again it's not a bad thing I'm open to it yeah go see Sense and Sensibility if you can you love premium large formats you're always saying that this episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime like an action blockbuster the holidays move quick but with Prime fast free delivery means those last minute gifts arrive right when you need them. Last year, while watching Singing in the Rain with my son, I realized a pair of tap shoes would be a perfect Christmas gift and I had them under the tree for him on Christmas Day. Prime's fast shipping is always there for you during the holidays, especially when it's last minute and just can't wait.

1:10:37Last minute holiday magic? It's on Prime. Head to amazon.com slash prime to shop now. Let's pivot. Thank you for your questions, as always. Great questions. Wake Up Dead Man, A Knives Out Mystery. Yeah. This is the third film in the series, once again, written and directed by Rian Johnson. The stars of this film as Benoit Blanc, Daniel Craig Returns, Josh O 'Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Kaylee Spaney, Daryl McCormick, and Thomas Hayden Church. Wildly qualified collection of actors in this movie. The logline is, a baffling death inside a quiet church draws Benoit Blanc into a tense investigation where faith secrets and suspicion blur as a close community turns against itself.

1:11:22All right. What did you think about this? I like these movies. I like, Rian Johnson and I share a huge passion for Agatha Christie, the Agatha Christie adaptations of the 70s. A similar sense of humor. He makes me laugh. I like many of the actors he chooses to be in his films. And I'm never going to say no to hanging out with Daniel Craig and Josh O 'Connor together for several hours. And I think that there's a really delightful buddy comedy in the middle of this. I do not care about Catholicism this much. I just don't care. And listen, I was raised Catholic as well. And I went to a Christian school.

1:12:07I've had a lot of these questions, done a lot of investigations myself, know where I am on it, and then sort of unmoved by it. So it's really Catholic. I rewatched it again last night to make sure, like, was I, you know, am I overestimating how much of the time is spent talking about the church and faith and making jokes about it? And it is like really, really, really embedded. And that it's not that it's not well done. I was just like, I don't care this much about priests. I just don't. So that is where I'd edit. I think it will sound odd if I say I do care this much about priests because I'm not sure that that's exactly what's going on.

1:12:52You know, when I was going to church as a kid, I also was raised Catholic. There was a kind of an intonation, an invocation that you would hear priests. And the priests in my church sang. And the priests would sing, let us proclaim the mystery of our faith in a very stentorian tone. And let us proclaim the mystery of our faith. That's the thing you'd hear over and over again in church. Yeah. And I had no idea what that meant. I didn't understand it as a kid. I didn't explore it. I was not interested in it. This movie is interested in that. This movie is very specifically interested in that. I don't think you have to be a person who is undecided about their faith for this movie to be interesting.

1:13:36And I don't think you need to be Catholic or a non-believer to get interested in this movie. it probably helps if you're open to exploring it because as a mystery I think the movie is just okay I think actually Rian Johnson has kind of gotten a little bit like he's very interested in the mechanics but maybe not in the propulsion of the mystery itself and I think that happens when you write a series of movies like this and I think he's trying to do something really interesting and has been mostly successful in this part which is he's trying to make movies that are otherwise meant to be going down easy entertainments which the Agatha Christie stories which are great but are very rarely like thematically deep and rich.

1:14:16They are page turners. No. And he's trying to put big personal ideas into the movies. The first movie is about the sort of like corrosive nature of wealth and what wealthy people do to hurt others and in turn everyone you know in the world. Which is what every Agatha Christie mystery is about. It is always about money and someone needed money or someone wanted the inheritance or something. So the first one is grounded. It's like in its text and genre and what it's examining is the genre itself. And so the further you move away from that and you use the same genre to explore different ideas, you're just stuffing a lot of things.

1:14:56Yeah. And I think the second movie is a kind of an extension of that first idea, which is it's about influencers and the desire for fame and success and technology and the kind of grotesque people that we're presented with in our common life every day. Right. And like the ways in which they fight each other for their share of the pie and we all watch. And there's some cleverness in it. I didn't think that movie was as funny as I wanted it to be. But I thought it got some really good performances. And the same with the first film. The first film has great stuff from, you know, Toni Collette. And that's like the best Chris Evans has ever been.

1:15:29And Ana de Armas. And the second film, Kate Hudson, is really great in that movie. Edward Norton is great in that movie. The third film is more serious than the first two. And it is a movie that is you know, it's a big delivery machine for Johnson thinking through his ideas of faith. And he talked in our conversation, I thought, really sincerely about when you have it and then you lose it. And this movie features a character that has it and another character who has lost it or maybe never had it. And they're in dialogue. And those two characters are the Joshua Conner character, who's a priest, Father Judd, and Benoit Blanc, who's a detective, a man of logic not a person who's interested in the mystery of faith he solves mysteries that stuff in this movie I thought was really cool and particularly the moment when you get near the sort of like the two thirds of the way through the movie almost near the end of the movie when Blanc who takes a long time to get to the film who basically sits out the first 40 minutes of this movie but when he sort of takes over at the two hour mark one hour and 45 minute mark and he's like he's solving the movie and he's doing the thing he's done in the previous two films and he's saying and then this happened and then this happened and then he can't close the loop.

1:16:41He can't figure out the last step of the mystery. And that is a feeling that I have been confronted with about thinking about God and where we come from and why we're here and all those big questions. To put that in a crime mystery movie, I think is very cool. And for him to get stumped and for logic to fail us, I think is a powerful concept. I do think that I was not really as interested in the solution of the crime and maybe in that way it's a success though I think that's maybe inadvertent I was trying to figure out which really famous person only took the movie to do you know because they were the person so I which was like they were the they were the the criminal the perpetrator because I was not invested in the mechanics of the mystery I I was just trying to invest in the superficial layer of like, okay, so it's going to be one of these people because they wanted to chew a lot of scenery and then have a twist.

1:17:42So who's it going to be? Is it this person? Is it this person? So maybe that is also... I was engaged with the meta of the genre as opposed to trying to solve the mystery, but I wouldn't say it was satisfying in that way. Yeah. I felt that most of the folks who were in the secondary cast, the suspects, were all like kind of rough shades of characters. Whereas I felt like Father Judd was probably the most clearly realized character Johnson's ever put in one of these movies. He was wonderful. Like, I mean, Josh O 'Connor has, you know, been everywhere this season. I thought he was used so beautifully.

1:18:18He was funny and emotional. He and Daniel Craig have great chemistry. They do. I, like, I really do hope they bring him back. I would love to have the buddy duo solving crimes. like maybe they don't have to talk as much about their spiritual crisis. But it's just like at some point it was kind of like, do you want to be in a philosophy class right now or do you not? I like I know, but you do. You like that. And it's just it's it's your mileage may vary. I thought all of the other jokes were very funny. It is very there is a lot of comedy. I like hanging out with these people, even though I agree that like the prayer group, I didn't know what was going on with the prayer group.

1:18:57Yeah, I think it's an interesting case of a few, more than one person being miscast in their parts. Right. Like Andrew Scott to me is definitively miscast in this movie as a kind of like fantasy writer who's making a pivot towards right-wing sub-stacking and becomes a zealot for this priest. So, you know, just to put some fencing around the story, Josh Brolin plays this monsignor at this church that has a dwindling flock and the people who are staying are these hardcore believers in his methodology. The Brolin character is a very clear one-to-one projection for Donald Trump. The sort of like invective and insanity that he's preaching from the pulpit, but he still is retaining like a kind of maniacal allegiance from the true believers.

1:19:40Also just has some of the greatest confessions. I mean, it's so funny. Trying to push Father Judd off of his square. Yeah, they're really, really funny. There's some really good stuff between the two of them too. I think Brolin's really good in this too. You know, he's kind of playing like a very,

1:19:55an unsophisticated caricature of this idea that we understand about people in the world. It's not just Trump, but there's a lot of Trump-like qualities to the way that he leads. And I think all that stuff is really fun, but the people who are a legion to him feel more like chess pieces than people. Yes. Whereas you've got this really strong counterpoint with what O 'Connor is doing. And, you know, he's like a he's riffing on some sort of old movie archetype, too, where he's a priest who used to be a boxer and he accidentally killed a guy. And that challenged his faith and pushed him even further into being a person who does good.

1:20:33But he still has this kind of native violence inside of him and he's trying to fight that. All that stuff, I think, is really clever and works really well. I think Johnson's sense of social commentary is usually pretty broad. I don't know if that's a bad thing necessarily, but it doesn't it's like it can be incisive about the right ideas. But anytime you can feel his point of view on politics coming into view, it feels a little bit softer and more obvious to me than when he is really zeroing in on something that is like racking his brain. So I don't know. I mean, I. The Bridget Everett scene is wonderful.

1:21:09And that's also an example that that is about faith. and that is like a really beautiful and beautifully acted scene between two people on a phone that is like almost from another movie but that's okay. Amazing example of what a good writer he is. Yes, totally. And also both people perfectly cast for that scene. So that was really lovely. It has so many great moments. That's what I'm saying. Like the idea of the confession the idea of like why you need someone and something to believe in. It's such a rich idea that like the mystery stuff is kind of getting in the way of some of that stuff at times.

1:21:47It's two and a half hours and there's just, there's a lot. There's a lot going on in it. A lot of people, a lot of plot maneuvering, a lot of, and so I think that I connected to a lot of it, not all of it. But to your point, it's really enjoyable and easy to watch. And does it matter if I connect to every bit of it because many people will watch and really enjoy this. And it's not not successful. You think a movie like this can change the way people feel? Because people don't turn on Knives Out movies to change the way that they feel. I think they're these sort of like velvety, frictionless fun times.

1:22:26But they're all undergirded with heavy stuff. And I genuinely don't know if people like that component. It's probably my favorite component of the films, but I don't know if the general audience does. I don't know whether they consciously do. I don't think that these movies are successful because people are like, now I'm reevaluating my relationship to my faith and the Catholic Church circa 2023 or whatever. But I do think that they're successful movies and that they are crowd pleasers, you know, with something elevated, something that maybe you don't think about. I mean, you know, to like to bring it back to Rob Reiner, there's like a lot more going on.

1:23:07I mean, there's these movies, which are a lot denser, but broad, fair, done smartly that can really maybe just like twist or poke someone without them realizing is increasingly rare and a real accomplishment. Might be getting back into faith in 2026. Maybe not a maybe not a religion. Right. This is the second time that you've brought up your burgeoning spirituality. The first time was like two hours into Avatar The Way of Water. So I just want to do a little wellness check there for you. I'm doing well. I think I'm really thinking about the second half of my life. I'm being dead serious. I have a young child, you know, my dad's getting older and lost my mom.

1:23:50I'm really trying to like figure it out. Even in talking to Ryan, I could not help but think of my mama watching this movie because she was a very faithful person. and one thing that I told him was that she was close friends with a couple of priests, especially in Second Half of Life. So like I would come home from school and Father Bruce would just be sitting on the couch and I'd be like, what the fuck is this? Like, is he allowed to be here? Like, do they let them out of the rectory? It is like seeing your teacher outside of school when you're 12. Yes. So, you know, I don't know that I definitely don't feel a strong attraction to like Catholicism.

1:24:21I have a lot of problems with Catholicism, the church. Like, I'm not really interested in that. but spirituality yes organized religion I'm not so much I'm hard mixed on I'm with you on that yeah okay what about would this movie have made 400 million dollars the movie theater we said that about Glass Onion right we were like if you put this in theaters this would have made so much money now it feels like the movie has been like defined as a streaming property which is kind of frustrating right because I think the next one doesn't have to be Netflix oh they're out of their contract I think they're out of their deal on that I don't know I don't know I could be wrong about that they didn't tell me Who didn't?

1:24:56Ted? Did Ted call you? Yeah. I mean, it's Ted. Look, I'm just calling because I have the details of the Knives Out contract here for you. And I just want you to know, we've just closed the deal. Here are all the details. Right. Yeah. That's the call I'm hoping for from Ted. Anyway.

1:25:14This is a pleasant movie. Yeah, it is. Oscars? I don't think so. I don't think so either. Yeah. Can we leave it at that? Yeah. Okay. Let's go to my conversation with Rian Johnson.

1:25:28Ryan Johnson, back on the show. I haven't seen you in a few years. And I was thinking about something watching Wake Up Dead Man. When you made the deal to make two more Knives Out, Benoit Blanc films, did you know what either of those movies were going to be, even in terms of like general direction? I want to make a movie that is kind of like this or kind of like this. Not really when we first made the deal. but I guess I'd figure it out but I very quickly like with Glass Onion kind of landed on okay I wanted to do something kind of to illustrate that one of the things I love about the murder mystery genre is just all the different things it can be just how different all the little sub-genres almost inside it so I wanted to make something that was very distinct from Knives Out to kind of show what the range of this series could be.

1:26:25And I love Death on the Nile, Evil Under the Sun. I love Last of Sheila. It was in the middle of COVID, so the notion of having an exotic beach vacation sounded really nice to me, and I assumed for audiences too. So it kind of defined itself as that. And then this one, a little bit of the same thing. It was, you know, Glass Onion ended up being a very broad kind of comedic movie, which is exactly what we set out to make. But I just kind of, after doing that, I felt like, well, it would be nice to ground it for this third one and maybe take it to a place that is also very different from the first two.

1:27:10Kind of make it a little more personal for myself and bring it kind of back down to earth a little bit. Do you find that every film that you make is a kind of reaction in a way to the previous movie that you had made or an attempt to kind of do something that you hadn't done previously? Well, yeah. I mean, not strategically, not like sitting down and thinking, okay, how do I? But I think, I mean, for me, because I write these movies also, you know, the process of making a movie is several years. And I like to say it's kind of like having the same thing for lunch for a few years. At the end of that process, I think you're just kind of thirsting for something different.

1:27:51And for me, I'm also like, you know, I've kind of, for me, I do feel like I need to always feel like I'm a little frightened going into something because I don't know how to do it. And the way to do that is to try something new every time, I guess. I have a lot of questions about faith and your faith. But one thing that does jump out to me about this movie in particular is, it seems like a little bit of a confrontation with the idea of like, why do we like stories like this? Especially if we are raised to believe that the things that happen in these stories are wrong. And like you're undeniably drawn to the construction and particulars and motivations of murder mystery.

1:28:36Yeah. And then this is a movie grounded in a world of good deed, right? Or at least the hope of good deed. Yeah. Was that on your mind trying to construct this? I mean, I guess a little bit. It's kind of, I mean, because I don't even know. It's not even specific to faith in terms of that. We're all, whether we're raised in faith or not, we're grouped. Hopefully, we're brought up to think murder is bad. Hopefully. And where do we go? the instant we have some free reading time, we go straight to a murder book. But I mean, if anything, I think that for me, one of the things I kind of wanted to delve into with the movie is I think there's actually a lot of parallels between the structure of a murder mystery and the overall kind of story of faith, I guess.

1:29:25It's, you know, a murder mystery starts with starts with an original sin, a murder, and the universe is thrown into moral chaos. And then the detective kind of, there's usually the kind of patriarchal detective descends from the heavens into the story and listens to everyone's confession and then sorts out the truth and hands the answer at the end and judges the guilty and restores the universe to moral rights. So in that way, I think it actually, these stories snap in very well with someone who was raised in the church and raised religious in a way, but so well, actually, that that's something I kind of wanted to draw those parallels out and explore that.

1:30:13Were those your favorite kinds of stories, the ones that had a kind of moral rectitude, like at the end there, you're just like, okay, well, the evil force has been identified and imprisoned than The Good Detective? Because I feel like there's shades of gray is what makes so many of these kinds of stories so effective. I mean, yeah, I guess it depends specifically which ones you're talking about. I feel like especially when I was growing up, I was drawn towards moral clarity. And then especially as I got older, I think you start getting into movies that were made in the 70s that have a lot less than getting into authors who you start looking a little closer even to works that you thought you knew and you realize, now there's a lot of gray there.

1:30:56But with, I don't know. I mean, murder mysteries, though, and very specifically kind of the whodunit genre, although there's a lot of different gradations of that. I think they do tend to, like I think the word cozy when people describe these, it's not necessarily because of firesides and because of warm dens. you know I think that it's I think it has more to do with the fact that they do always kind of neatly tie up at the end usually I mean Christy did some books where they didn't you know or where they tie up in a way that like I think her best book and then there were none it does very much tie up at the end but in a morally a way that leaves a lot of questions in the reader's lap in terms of how they want to parse the moral outcome of it all so anyway yeah but I do think it's an inherent it is a form that kind of the promise of the premise is that there will be kind of a button put on at the end in terms of the moral conclusion I'm personally very interested in the dissolution of religious practice generationally in America especially and I think that people use that as a cudgel to make arguments about why things are one way or another but there's no denying that But I was raised in the Catholic church.

1:32:18It sounds like you were as well. I wasn't raised Catholic. I was raised Protestant, evangelical. Okay. But it's not just that I was, I don't know how it was for you. For me, it wasn't just that I was taken to church a lot when I was a kid. I was up through my mid-20s, I was very personally Christian. And it was really a big part of my identity. It was how I framed the world through a very personal relationship with Christ. And I'm not a believer anymore. But for that period of my life, it was a really personal thing. But yeah, I'm sorry. Well, I'm interested in that. I'm also not a believer anymore.

1:32:57And I think that for me personally, it was this idea of logic and practicality winning out over something that he couldn't grasp. everybody has different reasons for losing it or moving away from it or even just, I find a lot of people actually just kind of put it on the bench and then come back to it at a later stage in their life. Yeah, that happens. Yeah. And so I'm kind of wondering, like maybe with that, you don't have to be too personal, but I'm curious just about like your journey with it. And then the idea of saying like, I'm moving on from this, but then what in your life now made you confront it again or think about these ideas and plug it into this world that is such a very fun world, that has been this incredible boon of success for you personally that is the thing you're known for now.

1:33:44And now you're using it to channel something that is very complex. Yeah, which was part of the appeal of it. I mean, I think that there's a lot to unpack on what you just said. Let's go back a couple sentences. Let's start with the notion of reason or logic. I mean, for me, I don't know that I would frame my kind of moving away from faith and no longer being a believer as, for me, it was less kind of, although that was an element of it, just literally losing my belief in the reality of the thing that I had believed in up till then. But I also didn't have any, I think probably because, I don't know, my second movie I made, The Brothers Bloom, was kind of in a very oblique way, sort of very much about this.

1:34:42It's what I was going through when I was writing it. It was very much about the notion of how you frame the world around you. And more than anything else, more than some kind of tangible belief in the supernatural or belief in an afterlife or any of the things that people think faith centers on, for me, what my faith was, was a lens through which I viewed everything in the world. Everything in the world got filtered through that lens. and it was a you know not to I don't mean this to to belittle it at all when I say it was a narrative framing device because I think that we all we can't survive in this world without a narrative framing device to me that's just being alive is an active active act of storytelling where you take in the raw world around you and you then you tell it figure out how you're going to tell it back to yourself and that's and that's totally what Judeo-Christian faith does is it tell stories to communicate ideas, right?

1:35:40Yeah, and Christ communicating through parables and in the larger sense, I mean, that's also what, I mean, every philosophy does. That's what, I mean, modern society does. That's what, I think that's just, it's so central to our experience, to what our existence is as a human being and how we, you know, how we make sense of this insane world that we're floating in in the middle of space. So anyway, all to say that for me, I don't think I ever had the sense that I was kind of shedding this illusion of faith in order to find some raw truth of the actual logical real universe or something. For me, it was more drifting away and I no longer believe in this.

1:36:21And it actually created kind of a crisis in my 20s of realizing I needed to find another thing to frame the world through. So using it in this film and in this world. And I'm sure you're getting this quite a bit, but the movie kind of hides Benoit Blanc. Like this really does become the story of this priest and Josh's character. And I'm curious about that decision and also maybe what that reflects about the kind of movie that you wanted to make. Obviously, Benoit Blanc comes into the movie at a certain point and is important to the film. I promise Daniel Craig is in this movie. But we spend a lot of time with this priest who is trying to figure out the morality of this world that he is thrust into, which feels like a very gentle metaphor for the world that we live in right now.

1:37:15I assume that's what you were aiming for. Yeah, I mean, you know. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, in a way, this kind of has a much more traditional murder mystery structure to it. This is the way most murder mystery books work is first act is you set up all the characters, you kind of get a very good idea of who's going to get bumped off. They get bumped off and then the detective shows up to solve it. And so I had actually kind of done narrative backflips in the first two movies to not have it structured that way. So with this one, besides just like, okay, well, let's try, let's order vanilla, let's try like the basic thing on this one.

1:37:54Also though, it suited the story very well because Father Judd, who's kind of the central character, is played by Josh O 'Connor. Because the movie is about things that are a little bit more complicated and require a little, and also things that are very personal and important to me and I didn't want to shorthand them in a way that would feel reductive or didactic. I wanted to take the time to kind of actually explore the complexity of what he was, of the conflict of Father Judd in this world. And I knew the instant Blanc came into the story that would detract from that. So the notion of giving Judd that first act in this world for the audience really to get a full picture kind of of what he wants and why he can't get it.

1:38:47And the bigger picture of all the characters and Monsignor Wicks played by Josh Brolin and the whole thing. Yeah, it seemed like it would suit it well. I want to ask you about priests. When my parents split up, my mom became very invested in the church and she befriended a priest and he became a social friend. So she would have parties and Father Bruce would be at my house, which was very disorienting at first. But I think was pretty powerful ultimately to just learn that he was a pretty regular guy. Yeah. And I don't know if you knew priests growing up in Josh's character. I see a pretty regular guy, which is not usually what you see of priests in movies.

1:39:28So like I said, growing up evangelical Protestant, that meant growing up in youth groups. And that meant that, it's funny, I was just reminiscing the other day with like someone I met who was in a youth group kid also. And it's a very distinct vibe. And it's - My wife was a youth group kid as well. Oh, there you go. All right, there you go. So, I mean, and it's a thing where like, you know, the youth pastor was maybe the equivalent of a priest, but it's kind of just with the acoustic guitar, just like strumming. Come on, man. That's a very, very recognizable guy. Let's get real. Let's talk about your walk with Christ.

1:40:05Come on, let's talk. And so regular guy up the wazoo where I come from. The priests though, I mean, also because Catholicism was kind of exotic to me because I wasn't raised in it, the priests always did have that kind of like outer shell. I have an uncle and aunt who are very Catholic who I'm very close to and I love a lot. And they live in Denver. And they were very kind when I told them about the script I was writing. they said well they invited me basically I flew out to Denver and they did a dinner at their place with their priest and Father Scott and he invited like five of his like friends who are young priests in Denver and so I had this amazing dinner with a half dozen young priests and we all just got drunk and it became a big ask me anything session what can you would you mind sharing a couple of the things that you talked about like without betraying anyone's confidence because i'm curious to hear what how they want to be seen in a way well it was interesting it was because as i said we didn't talk about theology or faith really we talked about their lives we talked about what their lives were actually like and i was kind of like nervous to like you know to go into the whole celibacy celibacy thing which today is the first thing you want to add it was the first thing they brought up and started talking.

1:41:30And they, it was very insightful. I mean, just, I mean, first of all, just like, yeah, incredibly insightful hearing from them. And also what you're talking about in terms of Father Bruce just hanging out at your parties. At my mom's house, yeah. At your mom's house. Immediately it was that vibe because they were just like, cool. Yeah, they're just like, you know, young guys and they're like, you know. And I mean, I remember one thing that ended up translating directly into the movie, for example, they're talking about how, you know, when they go to the grocery store, they're wearing, you know, the collar, the clerical collar.

1:42:09And that means they're on stage all the time. So they'll be picking out avocados in the grocery store and a woman will come up and start sobbing to them because her dad has just died. Or someone will come up and get in their face and start screaming at them, you know? And that's something I had never even thought about, the notion that in a way, they're always at work. And that means to an extent, always kind of the way people must look. What you're describing, everyone kind of has that reaction to them in their entire regular lives. Yeah, it's like being a politician, but with no individual identity.

1:42:45It's like you stand for something, but you're not responsible to it for creating it. It's a very odd role in life. And also, it's like being a politician if all politicians wore a T-shirt that said politician on it. Right, right. I am Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, exactly. It's an interesting job. Can you tell me why you chose Josh? We just had a conversation on the show last week about The Mastermind. Oh my God, I love that movie so much. And he's wonderful. And he's in this kind of period where you're watching a person become That very rare, like, brilliant actor, movie star blend where you can put a movie on his shoulders.

1:43:26But he's super gifted and very, I find so versatile in terms of the kind of material that he can do. Maybe just tell me why you chose him, what you'd seen him in that you liked. Yeah, so I hadn't been familiar with him. I mean, I'd seen him in The Crown, I guess, but Daniel actually knew him through Luca. and so they screened Challengers for us before it came out and I mean it was like it was my favorite movie of that year I love that movie so good and I mean he just like popped off the screen but then I saw La Chimera which is such a different I mean almost the polar opposite performance and he was equally as truthful and magnetic in that and I was just like oh my god I think this guy can do anything and then I met him and he was absurdly nice, suspiciously nice.

1:44:19Like you almost can't believe a guy is that cool. And I just thought, I want to work with this guy. I want to be on set with this guy. And we caught him at a great time. I bet if we had gone to him today, we wouldn't have gotten him because he's in everything at this point. He's in so much stuff. He's like working with Spielberg and like Jill Cohen. He's like, and he's so busy. So, but rightfully so. I am really excited to see, you know, over the next five, ten, however many years, how he develops because I think he's the full package. I think he can do it all. Yeah. How about ensembles now? Like, so three movies in a row like this where you have, you know, extremely well-known people in these kind of modest parts, right?

1:45:05So, like, I'm curious about the psychology of actors who want to come in and do this. Like, if you're Kerry Washington, she's insanely famous. It's a fairly modest part in this role. It's a critical part, but it's not that big. So why do people want to do it? And how do you navigate having five movie stars who all get like a real small piece of the pie relative to what they're used to, I would imagine? Well, I mean, it's a great, great, great question. But it kind of answers itself. I think the truth is we've had such a great time with all three of these casts. I've never, not once had to deal with like any movie star ego stuff at all.

1:45:43Quite the opposite. And I think the answer is exactly that. Every single one of these people are people who carry their own movies. The only reason for them to sign up for this is because they want to be part of an ensemble and because they love actors and they want that experience of kind of being in a little summer stock group for one movie. and so they show up on set and we really try and facilitate that by it kind of happened organically with the first two movies but in this one we built like some tents off the side of the stage that were the green room for them all to hang out in together and nobody went back to their trailers everyone just kind of gravitated towards that and it's because that's kind of the appeal of this I think is you're gonna be in a true ensemble with another group of actors and good actors love that.

1:46:35I mean, that's the thing. It's, I don't know, you can see them kind of really feeding off of that when they show up on set. I don't know if I've ever asked you about your sets before. Have they changed over time? Like what kind of, what vibe are you going for when you're making a movie? I mean, I grew up making movies with my friends. That was kind of, I went to film school, but I think my real film school was just in high school making stupid movies on the weekends and that was what we did to hang out. And that's how I want my sets to feel. And I've been very fortunate that all of my set, like even the Star Wars movie had that vibe on set.

1:47:10I saw it in the documentary. Yeah, you can feel it. Yeah, it was really true. It's like, and so that's how, that's the vibe that I always want. And with these movies, that's kind of why it's been, you know, kind of addictive making them is because you got all these great actors, they show up for a good time and it's just primed to kind of have the set feel like we're back in high school again together to make something fun together. And I mean, that comes from a lot of hard work and that comes from being prepared and knowing what you want. And I think that comes from everyone relaxing and everyone can relax when they know that, when they know that I'm gonna make them, I'm gonna make them look hopefully good in a good movie.

1:47:55So that's part of it, but it's also just, it's a vibe. you know so I know you get asked this all the time but you're like how will you make these these films the Benoit Blanc movies like for 40 more years like is that your intention is to kind of keep coming back to this world I know it sounds like you're going to maybe take a break from them at least for the next thing yeah I'm writing something different for the next movie I mean look I would be thrilled to keep making these until I'd be thrilled to live another 40 years God bless you for that well but I would be thrilled 30 years wow let's aim for 37 more years 37 that's a good round number I would be thrilled to keep coming back to these I guess the caveat is just you know as long as Daniel still enjoys making it as long as audiences are still into it and as long as and this this is nice that he and I can like share this as long I think we both feel like the instant it feels like we're turning the crank on another one will stop We have to be able to, with each new one, really do something different that's challenging ourselves.

1:49:05And hopefully that'll translate for the audience into them knowing each one of these is a different novel on the shelf that's going to give you a different experience. And you're not just going to go and see us kind of doing the thing again. Many of your films feature this, but obviously the last three have been so pointedly mysteries. but what having done this now and this is true in brick and even even in the Star Wars film like when you're designing a mystery what is the most important thing in terms of cracking it well I mean I mean there's a few different layers to it there's I mean there's all the setups and the payoffs and all that stuff and there's kind of the but honestly I feel like the most important thing is that you start from the same basic fundamentals you start with with a non-mystery, which is who's your protagonist?

1:49:57What do they want? Why can't they get it? Why do we care? And that combined with hopefully the movie being, for me, engaging with something personal that I'm angry about or thinking about, that I can use to kind of explore for myself to give it some juice. That being the fundamental thing of it and the mystery element of it serving that. because I don't think that, I think that's the spine you got to build everything on. Did Agatha Christie write from that place? Do you know? Or did any of the other great mystery writers? Yeah. Just that personal manifestation of a feeling? 100%. You read Christie and you read especially her best books and they're always, I mean, what she was so good at was character and they're always character based.

1:50:49and you can see there's always a protagonist in them. There's always what keeps you engaged is the personal motivations of each of the suspects even. And also the protagonist is never the detective or is rarely the detective. It's usually somebody who has skin in the game who's actually in the middle of the mystery. But yeah, you think about Death on the Nile and one of the all-time great basic setups and it's this vicious love triangle that you're immediately pulled into. Yeah, but all the great mystery writers did. John Dixon Carr, who we name-checked throughout this, was also fantastic at immediately pulling you in with human drama and with gothic atmosphere.

1:51:35I think all the great mystery writers knew instinctively that the mystery was not something that would bear the weight of entertaining an audience for an entire story. so I was thinking back on other times that we had talked to prepare for this conversation and the first time that I met you was in a Disney conference room in 2017 and I had really just started doing this show and we had a nice chat but I you know I really I liked all of your movies to that point and was very interested in where your career was going and I'm sure I asked you I like fumbled through some questions about like the arc of your career I fumbled through some answers no um but you know from that moment to now is a very is a very unusual right because you are you have worked in like some of the significant modes of major Hollywood through that like roughly what eight or nine year period maybe ten years total including when you started making the Star Wars film so Star Wars film you built your own franchise yeah and then that franchise became part of the biggest streaming service in the world um Is this even a little bit what you thought it was going to be when you were making Jedi in 16?

1:52:53No, you know, no way, man. Yeah, no, yeah, no, right? I mean, I don't know. But did you know when we were sitting there doing that, that you'd be... Yeah, but I'm just a schmuck. You're like a guy who makes movies. No, no, no. No, it's very silly. It's like, I think that, no, I think, and I don't know. I don't know how you feel, but my, not just like, not like a philosophy of how to approach a career, but literally the only way that you can do it, I think that works is, quote Joseph Campbell, you gotta follow your bliss. You just gotta put your foot in the next place where it's most exciting to take this next step to.

1:53:28And that's literally the only thing that I've ever done. And the notion of somehow projecting forward like a 10-year plan or something, like there are people who are maybe brilliant who can do that. I've never even tried to do that. To me, it's all about what is the very next experience that I want to have. What's the next story I want to tell? What's the most exciting next thing to do? And so it's really not looking much further than the next step with each one of these. I wanted to ask you about T Street. Because it's another thing that I don't think was happening in 2017. No, I think we started it like right around or right after there.

1:54:06Yeah, yeah. The impression I get is that you're trying to identify first time or early filmmakers or independent filmmakers give them a little bit more of a boost. Yeah. I don't know what other kind of presiding philosophy you have. No, that's a big part of it. It's, you know, and in the context of finding filmmakers who have exciting voices, who are also, we're also kind of dedicated to finding filmmakers who have exciting voices who want to make whatever you want to call it, quote unquote, commercial films. like are films that are made for audiences to enjoy. And I say that as someone who loves, who loves art house movies and loves, loves, loves.

1:54:51And some of my favorite films every year are always weird art house movies. We're kind of dedicated to, okay, let's find voices that are... that are really interesting and passionate and engaging in kind of commercial filmmaking. Yeah. How are you finding that? Because you've had pretty good success. You've got an Academy Award-winning film on the roster, right? And Cord and Chloe Doman was on the show. Fair play. And Snack Shack, one of our favorites from last year. Some really good movies. Yeah. But those kinds of films are very challenged to get in front of audiences right now. We talk about it every week probably too much.

1:55:29Yeah, yeah. How do you think about that phase of the business in terms of getting movies in front of people? Well, it's a challenge. And in terms of how we do it, I should also say I'm, you know, my producer, Ron Bergman, and then our producing team at T Street is really the, they're the ones who do it. I get to be the cool uncle on these projects. It's not like I'm in there reading a thousand scripts. I'm doing my own movies and I get to check in. So all the credit to them. But it is, I mean, it is a challenge. You also, though, I think you have to operate from a feeling of faith to come back to faith.

1:56:13You have to operate from a feeling of faith that if you make something, I don't know, if you make something that's truly interesting and truly good, it'll find its audience. And it might be a roundabout way of finding it. It might take a while. It might not. But I think that's, I know from as someone who makes movies, you have to have that faith. You have to believe that if you're making something that is good and entertaining and truly interesting and passionate and all those things, the people who need to see it are going to see it. What's your favorite phase of filmmaking at this point? Everything but writing.

1:56:58are you writing right now yes even right now writing's writing's great anyone who writes you know what I'm talking I love having written yeah but but I love it I love and prep is a pain in the ass prep but you gotta do it I mean prep is where the movie's made but I love shooting I feel there's no place I feel more comfortable in the world than on one of my own sets while we're shooting it's bliss I love editing I love the editing process I love the post process where all the technicians come in and start just what the last 3 % of the process does to make it feel like an actual movie is always magic to me every single time and and I love actually the phase with Wake Up Dead Man that we're in I love showing the movie and releasing it and having conversations about and taking it around to audiences at festivals and so I don't know I feel really, yeah, I feel really, really, really blessed and lucky to be able to do what I do.

1:58:02Ryan, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they've seen. You mentioned that you've been seeing a lot of great stuff this fall. I have been seeing a lot of, I think there's a lot of great movies right now. Feel free to recommend a few things. I was going to, I love The Mastermind. I mean, you know, one battle after another is an all-timer, but everyone is talking about that. We've been covering it here. You guys have covered it very well. Yeah, I love that interview, guys. you did with Paul and Leo. Okay, what's something a little more far afield? I actually, I mean, I have friends who have movies coming out like Guillermo's Frankenstein movie is very personal.

1:58:36Edgar Wright's The Running Man is a blast. I just saw it. It's so fun. It's so fun, man. And there's a movie that I don't know when it's coming out. I don't know if it's coming out until the beginning of next year or if it's this fall, but there's a movie called Pillian that I saw. You see it? Yes, I saw it at Telluride. I saw it at Telluride. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny and sweet. So good. Yeah. And just like a great relationship drama. Can you describe it a little bit to the audience? Yeah. So it's a British film. It is, it's basically about, what's the name of the actor, the main actor, and not Scar's Guard, but who plays the nerd.

1:59:11Harry Mellish. That sounds right. Yeah, Harry Mellish. He's fantastic. And he plays kind of like a British nerd who gets into a dom sub relationship with a hot biker played by Alexander Skarsgård. And it's a movie that is very sexually explicit, but all the sex in it is not gratuitous. It's amazing the degree to which these sex scenes teach you the dynamics of this relationship and reveal character. Yes. It's very funny. It's very sweet. It's very human. And I think just a really beautiful relationship love story. And it's a, the director who I wasn't familiar with, he's made shorts, but this is his first feature.

1:59:59And I'm forgetting his name. He was fantastic. I think he's Harry Leighton. Is that his name? that sounds right. It was a really talented guy because it was a really, really good movie. I love that recommendation. I love that movie too. Yeah. Ryan Johnson, nice to see you. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. Thank you to Ryan Johnson. Thank you to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Later this week, we are drafting again. It's been three years. It's time for 2022 with CR. Let's go. See you then.