How Much Higher Can ‘Slow Horses’ Climb? Plus, ‘Landman’ S2 and ‘Jay Kelly’ Trailers.

22:22Andy Greenwald:And your departure from the United States is very convenient for me as I get through TLD dubs. Okay, all right, that's fine. I think that it's also a product of having a podcast run by two people pleasers. I just want you to be happy. Thank you. Thank you. um what i i think to me what landman is to me jay kelly is to you i don't really have any observations to offer about the second trailer for this noah bomback film teaser and now we have the full i feel like the teaser was very explained the plot yeah um but why don't you talk a little bit about why this movie is beckoning you to you i love movies about show business baby no i love movies i mean i love noah bomback movies i love emily mortimer as an actor but also as a writer I thought her show, The Pursuit of Love, she came on the podcast to talk about it, was just one of those.

23:12Andy Greenwald:We should at some point just make a list of things Amazon did that I don't know if Amazon knows it did. We saw that Peter Freelander went back. He went from Netflix to Amazon. Oh, we should talk about that news. Let me just finish by saying... Why you love Jay Kelly. Side unseen. I'm just psyched for this movie. I like movies about aura. This entire movie seems to be about George Clooney's charisma. charisma yes and uh he's very very good in movies where he plays slightly bruised versions of himself that's basically his best iteration i think what would you say is another example of descendants michael clayton the american i i think those are like playing against type right well no movies in which he is valued for his face or his charisma right but his soul is uh broken okay yeah you see that I think you're talking about like a slightly different version of George Clooney would be like this guy has it all it's Danny Ocean you know what I mean oh right well actually though I guess he doesn't have it all because he doesn't have Tess in the beginning of the first movie so it's just like yeah so anyway it's a great cast I don't know what you have against it nothing you're just mad that I'm seeing that instead of weapons I am mad that you're not seeing weapons am I going to see weapons cure this for me I guarantee you you're going to start weapons on a flight and you're going to be like, this is fucking awful.

24:36Andy Greenwald:No, what? Oh, because at the beginning? Was it beginning with a bunch of kids dying? No. Okay, well then I can handle it. I can't spoil it. I'm not going to watch it. I've remained unspoiled. I intend to watch it, but I'm trying to figure out, I'm still just trying to like, it's the best way to get me through this, you know? I did think theater was best because I couldn't leave. Movie theater. Oh, to see weapons. Yeah. I haven't seen it yet, but I'll have a lot of time with my hands coming up. So, the The little news item that we just mentioned, which was remarked upon, I guess this happened like two weeks ago about, I think.

25:09Peter Friedlander left Netflix about six weeks ago, right? A month ago? A couple months ago? And Peter Friedlander had been, you know, Andy and I had gotten a chance to chat with him a little bit around the time of Black Doves, I think. Season two filming now in London. Season two. Well, tell him good luck for me. I genuinely will. But he had overseen Netflix's scripted TV offerings, correct?

25:31Andy Greenwald:He was one of the earliest employees of that side of their business and had grown with it and had a hand in a lot of the Netflix shows that we covered. And so we developed kind of a friendly rapport. And left the company and was a free agent for a few weeks and then... Very short amount of time. Very interestingly. So he is replacing Vernon Sanders? Essentially. At Amazon now, the moving and comings and goings of executives may be of little interest to our listeners. But what they do mean is the kind of programming you get. And to me, Amazon is one of the strangest. We should actually do a history of Amazon Prime Video original programming one of these days.

26:14It's a fascinating story. in the beginning it was literally subsidizing like great art for seemingly like no reason whatsoever whether it was like the romanoffs now whether all these shows were great that's for the viewer to decide but like the idea of just being like matthew winner here's a blank

26:36Andy Greenwald:check to make your project the shows that they did at the beginning whether it was transparent or luring Woody Allen to make a TV show. The Roy Price era is absolute creative chaos in a kind of interesting way. And it bled into subsequent years where, whether it was 0-0-0 or Too Old to Die Young, the Nicholas Lending the English, there were still remnants of it. I would say that this last year has been the like, okay, so this is what is success. I sometimes struggle, frankly, with understanding the new version of like what we call ratings, which is stuff that like Julia Alexander writes about really well for Parrot and Entertainment Strategy Guy writes really well about in his newsletter.

27:20But I honestly like it's kind of like slash lines in baseball. I'm like, is there a batting average anymore? Like what is, how many people are watching it? Is it popular? And I've kind of almost thrown my hands up, but I kind of feel like what we've seen from Amazon in the last year is like, this is actually what people watch. Yes. This is somewhat prestigious procedurals, Bosch spinoffs, Special Forces shows, and YA.

27:50Andy Greenwald:Reacher and YA. Yeah. And what's interesting to me about this is it took a long time and took a lot of money, and Amazon certainly has no shortage of either, to reach something that most channels in the old days, streamers in the current world struggle to find, which is clarity. they aren't the majority of the offerings aren't what we, we don't cover a lot of them or it's not necessarily prestige but it's stick to your ribs or punch until you break ribs kind of mainstream programming and then Fallout, you know, being like a it's elevated but it is also I think you could say it's the same for Rings of Power you know, like that's a massive genre adaptation But really, I feel like it's Terminalist and Reacher that kind of clarified their strategy.

28:42And Bosh and Ballard and like that whole like...

28:45Andy Greenwald:So that works. What's interesting about bringing in Peter is that like whenever we had spoken to him or had any interaction with him, he's advocating for the Black Doves of the world. The sort of the B-side to maybe the headline story on Netflix's slate. and I'm very curious if he can go into a place that is famously fractured. I wouldn't on the outside say dysfunctional because I don't have any insight necessarily into how it functions, but the stories you hear about how Amazon makes decisions is very, very, very much like tech world, not necessarily Hollywood. And sometimes you see that in the results where like the shows we're talking about, the English or Pursuit of Love or 000, you had to like really search for it to find.

29:29Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Like Amazon has the ability, like Apple does, to be like, okay, sure. and then move on from something without investing a lot of marketing into it if they don't believe in it or if it doesn't fit with a larger paradigm. Hiring Peter could mean they just need to replace a trusted, steady hand in Vernon Wells with someone else. Sorry, Vernon Sanders, who is trusted and has good relationships. Or it could suggest that Amazon feels, for whatever reason, whether it's prestige, whether it's relationships, whether it's Emmy hunting, or whether it's diversification of their slate, that they want to pursue a strategy that Netflix has really perfected, which is Netflix at this moment is incredibly good, if not like pathologically, relentlessly, assassin level expert at programming for 18 different people at the same time.

30:17Andy Greenwald:Yes. Whereas if you like a certain - But they have not turned their back on, and in fact, I think pride themselves in adolescence. This is what I mean. And if you go to Netflix to watch adolescence, it will say suggested viewing and it will be something else highbrow, high minded for the greater good intellectual. You could also go to Netflix for as you know, the easiest joke in the world, like floor is lava or whatever, like, but they will service that audience to the best of your ability. And so you can be a Netflix subscriber and you can be one of 30 different algorithmic types and feel fed.

30:54Andy Greenwald:You know what I mean? Whereas if you go to Amazon, if you are a certain type of person, you probably have to sift through a lot and maybe find something. So I wonder if there is some, if they're interested in some of that, which actually gives me hope both as a critic, as a fan and as a creator, because more diversity of programming is good generally for the industry. I would imagine. I don't know how many of the shows that we talked about that are sort of the staples of Amazon's current lineup, like say Terminalist or whatever. Some right term pretty. I don't know how many of those that Skydance participated in, but you would imagine that Paramount is going to become the new home for some of that stuff.

31:35Andy Greenwald:Yeah. That's a good point. You need to diversify the portfolio, especially if Paramount's like we're super charging dad TV procedurals, military dramas, etc. Which I don't know that that's what they're going to do because Cindy Holland who runs Paramount TV now has got a hugely widely diverse set of tastes and relationships in Hollywood. But I don't think Amazon's ever going to go back to Joey Soloway adapting Chris Krause books. I think what they're going to go back to or try to find is A, a lot of good international TV out there to be bought. Amazon Prime should have the gold season too, not PBS.

32:18Yeah, I agree. Why are you kicking PBS when they're already down? Not kicking PBS, but I think Peter Friedlander has shown an ability to scout internationally for TV. And B, there is a middle ground between Terminalist Dark Wolf and Joey Soloway. And trying to find that something for people to watch. It's also interesting, Amazon has not really exploited the MGM library the way I think we thought they would.

32:46Andy Greenwald:Since they took over. Now they've fully taken control of James Bond. I would think that inevitably there will be like the Money Penny TV show or whatever or like a, I imagine that they will now start to try to derive revenue out of that universe in a way that the Broccoli family was always very protective of. But it's It's notable to me that, you know, there is not a Creed TV show, right? Not yet. It's worth hitting on lightly since we're doing industry talk, not the show industry, which is, I think, coming back in January, but just like the current Hollywood industry. The moves Paramount has been making are not, I don't mean this in a political sense, but they are not ideological.

33:32Andy Greenwald:Like, you don't necessarily get a sense of the type of programming that Paramount writ large as a company wants to pursue from what they've been doing, what they've been doing is stamping their feet and making a lot of noise. So that included signing the Duffer brothers, um, for all of their post stranger things, including like theatrical releases, which I think was a problem for them with Netflix. Exactly. Um, which is like buying, um, like the hottest, the town's hottest R rated comedy spec script and being like, you know, outbidding everyone for it, proving your real players. Well, they did that with the James Mangold, Timothy Chalamet motorcycle crime movie.

34:06Andy Greenwald:They also bought, they came out on top of a big bidding war for a Mangold Chalamet movie and then doubled down on it yesterday by signing Mangold to an overall deal. Yeah, but like that, Mangold makes the kind of movies that, generally speaking, 55-year-old men love watching. So I have some ways to go before I get into them. No, but like when you look at 310 to Yuma and you look at Logan. Complete unknown. Complete unknown and Ford versus Ferrari and whatever else he decides to make. And, you know, all of these overall deals are kind of ridiculous because it's like James Mangold's also making a Star Wars movie for Disney.

34:40Andy Greenwald:And, you know, like it's a way of sweetening the pot. Yes, basically. And and building relationships. And it is interesting the way that even in this diminished version of the entertainment industry that we're living through, the one thing that can rearrange the tides and the weather is a new player in town. paramount obviously not a new player but the skydance takeover has made it such and so there is an attitude of excitement and optimism that i haven't seen in a while mainly because once someone once once a whale comes back to the table all the starting bets go up yeah uh i'm very curious to see over the next 24 months if not only do we if we have some more um mergers some contractions of networks or at least, you know, moving and shaking going on between, you know, people leaving some network to go to another.

35:38Right now, I routinely open Apple TV and I'm just like stunned at the star power that is on shows that are so un-star-like, you know? Like what? It's just kind of crazy to look at like Jessica Chastain's making like kind of a really high-end, like procedural, like, spy drive. delayed yeah the one that got to delay the the savant you know um but she's also making a an apple show about the art world yeah mcconaughey and and woody are reuniting for a show that's coming on apple soon um maybe there's that a little bit of like there's now a renewed kind of like yeah but it's tv famous do you know what i mean like well with all due respect is can jessica chastain like open a movie like nobody can open a movie anymore it's like there's no rhyme or reason to that.

36:28Andy Greenwald:No, I do think one of the most influential careers of the last few years is Reese Witherspoon. Yes. Nicole Kidman certainly is in the mix as well for being like, you know what I like to do? Act. Let's go. I like to work and I like to play the parts that I want to play and the place where I can do that is TV. But the Reese Witherspoon arc is so fascinating of like seeing the moment, like doing what, she got an Oscar for Wilde, right? I believe so, yes. And that's like, okay, I've reached the pinnacle again or even if, I don't remember, I think she won. But regardless, like that was, she reached it, she did it, and then she's like, okay, now I want to build an empire, right?

37:04Andy Greenwald:And so, going to TV... She's pretty fired up about AI. This is the thing. Picking projects, producing the projects, starting a production company, selling the production company for untold millions, if not billions, and then hard pivoting into just whatever tech is coming next. Yes. I'm personally a little cynical about it. I think I'm cynical about it where I just I don't really understand the need to be at the forefront of all this stuff. Like empowering women's voices in AI. The same thing with Matt Damon with Bitcoin. You didn't need to do it. Did you give all that money to build wells? Maybe you did.

37:42I have no idea. I don't really, really care about this stuff. There's way bigger problems in the world. But I think that it's been interesting to be immersed in Redford's career because we're doing Redford month on rewatchables and by no means was Redford like um beyond using his fame you know or or just enriching himself sure but the things that Redford did with that fame and riches were like pretty significant same thing with Paul Newman who I think he used as like a model in his career and yeah those guys were like movie stars and they got to like have cool lives but they were also I don't know that Robert Redford would have been like god you know what's great is fucking AI.

38:25Andy Greenwald:I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have been. But I also wonder who's, is it smart or is it cynical? Because, you know, we were, the other day we were talking about one battle after another and how DiCaprio's career is, now it is, he's like the last Mastodon. Like it is completely unique and is celebrated, right? That he doesn't do genre schlock or he doesn't do superhero movies. He does genre schlock. It's just with Martin Scorsese. Well, he works with great directors, great directors only. He doesn't make superhero movies. And he gives advice to the younger generation who now want to try and follow his path.

38:58Andy Greenwald:But can they? Because it's like, Chalamet's doing his best by like, I'm working with great directors and I'm going to try to see my way through the thicket of this era of my fame because I want to do this for a long time. But he also made Wonka, you know, which definitely got burned in my house and I'm very burned out on it. Sure. But is that career even, I don't know. We don't need to go down the road of like what kind of career one can have. But we were talking about like, it is interesting to see some actors use the TV shows as like, like leverage plays for their stability and their standing or just frankly to like cake up, you know, like this, this is going to work for me for two years while I pivot to taking on mom or dad roles instead of the roles I'm used to playing or whatever it may be.

39:43But do you think it diminishes, is there something weirdly like walled off? even though Apple is a popular television streaming service at this point, it has Ted Lasso. I think that honestly, and we live in a very specific environment, but a lot of people we know either are watching or frankly working on Apple shows. It's true. That's kind of the TV business, Quiet is Kept, where it's just like, yeah, man, I like watching Platonic.

40:13Andy Greenwald:Yeah, well, that's me. But they've almost now bankrolled reliable television. Yeah. It kind of doesn't go that too high up, doesn't go that too far down. It just is what it is. Yeah. And you can sit there with your partner and watch Platonic and it's pretty good and then you can go about your day. It's not like I need to get my fucking Franciscan theology books out for this task, but it is entertaining television. And that's where a lot of these people who I would consider to be fucking celebrities are gravitating. Yeah, I mean, that's also Apple's business plan is because it's worth it to them to spend however many billions they spend on their original programming.

40:53To have Lisa and Jennifer texting on that show.

40:54Andy Greenwald:Not just have them texting on the show, yes, but also so that every Apple store, all the screens in unison are showing Jon Hamm in his show or Ted, like, it's just, it's all promotion for the same product as the place to be for everything tech or new or pretty or skinny or whatever the new iPhone is supposed to be. Yeah, I used to think that there was not, speaking of doing like a short history of Amazon Prime Video, like I think it would be useful to do it for Apple TV too because I used to think that there was no guiding aesthetic or storytelling ethos to those shows, but now I'm starting to really detect one.

41:32Obviously, Apple is one of the only places that's like keep making seasons. They could keep making platonic for four or five years. I hope they do. and the same goes for they're bringing Ted Lasso back I'm sure the golf show will come back like stick I'm sure you know if if brothers the Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey show works they would back up the money truck to get them to do another season of that

41:58Andy Greenwald:I think it's an interesting conversation to have but it's strange to see fucking Harrison Ford in a Bill Lawrence show as a supporting actor yeah I think it's I think it's it might be an interesting framing for an upcoming episode or conversation to think of Apple as the baseline in the sense that, not in terms of its cost, which is just wild compared to what everyone else spends on things, but that everyone is responding to it. That like Apple's entry this many years into it, now five plus years in, they are in many ways setting the tempo of the industry in a different way in terms of what the other shows are, what the other streamers are programming, what they're able to put together, what they value.

42:36Andy Greenwald:You know, when we first started talking about Task on HBO, I think that one of the first thoughts that I had was, what would the show have looked like had it been developed for Apple? And one of the main things is I don't think Tom Pelfrey would be the other guy on the poster. That's just not their business model. I think the show is better because it has an exceptional actor on the cusp of a certain kind of familiarity or stardom next to The Incredible Hulk, but that's just not Apple's model. They wouldn't do it. They would have cast that at the highest possible level um i have like sort of a closing conversation topic for you okay is it about the um slow arriving season three renewal of lioness it's just they had to get nicole's deal right you know were you were you across that um no but i i you know i kidman also is just it was announced that her marriage is ending okay um sorry to hear that yeah what is it time to shoot your shot i ain't reading all that i'm sorry i'm happy for you or i'm sorry like i don't know whether she she's thrilled let's leave it to ring or dish yeah exactly uh but yes it is going to be a long delayed season three but uh trust in taylor and i just don't want to see a single fucking beard on that show that's all i know everyone's better everyone better be trim af no nordic pagans although i guess those guys are in special operations so they are allowed to have beards according to pizza pete hexeth is that what he said yep i'm just glad do you know this joke do you know not no i joke but do you did you watch any of the speech i found it very inspiring okay um i think all the generals must have been thrilled they're like glad i flew across the planet this seems worth it uh okay you're on your way a little adventure right a long adventure yeah when you go on a trip like this do you pre-plan I'm bringing these books I'm gonna make time for these records like finally gonna get into this fucking geese record it is a geese shirt it's a geese but then it's a cowboy it's like what the fuck is up with that keep going that's the cowboy in the 3D country are you like I got a menu of stuff I'm choosing from as I embark or are you like life just come at me man let's see isn't the tube trains go by you know revealing the landman posters like the last year when i was there i was on every tube stop yeah um i think you're hitting at something i mean this is the that is the crux of modern existence right like we want to be present and alive to possibilities in every moment but also i do not want to leave the house without at least seven hours of interesting programming locked into my ipad yes um there are certain things that are I'm grateful for.

45:20Andy Greenwald:Like one is you're mentioning a show like Platonic. Platonic I have not finished. I've got those in the hopper now. I've got... I finished it. I know you do the work. No. My wife was on a real Platonic Jag. I have the screeners for Nobody Wants This Season 2. So there's a certain light entertainment that works well with jet lag. Sure. That I'm excited about. I think that's Tim Simons show. I believe he's the star of it. Hitmaker is in it. Yes. I believe that's why it's a hit. And the other thing that I do because you know I gotta be me is like I also make sure that I have at least five or six three-hour movies by obscure Japanese art house directors log like downloaded on my criterion app do you really always the mood may strike me somewhere over Greenland to like to to finally delve into like wheel of fortune and fantasy or whatever that movie is called by the guy who may drive my car you know like this this could be this could be my moment Hamaguchi right yes yeah um so yeah what I I guess the, and then to your point, I think this question derived from the fact that you asked if I was rocking the Geese record yet, and I have dabbled, but I also already decided.

46:26I'm really, you've got a little bit of a thing going right now where I feel like you're not unlike Detective Grosso withholding your essence from me. Oh, with this record? Yeah, like you've got me, I'm like, do you want to talk about Geese? Do you want to talk about one battle after another? And you're like, yeah.

46:43Andy Greenwald:I do want to talk about one battle after another. But even on Big Pick, I felt like you were kind of like, it was a very timely film. Well, also, listen, I walked into that little behind the scenes thing. I walked into the Big Pick thing. They've been talking about the movie for all of last week and all of like two hours before I got in there. And I came in cold. I didn't know what they had already said. You know, I wasn't setting the tone. Right. So listening to the big picture is not on your list of things. First of all, let's be honest. Do you know how many, you know, do you know the kind of work Sheil is putting into Feeling Special and the Ring Around NFL show?

47:15Andy Greenwald:literally spend more time in the car with him than my children yeah but also i had only just seen the movie so i hadn't re-watched the episode so i didn't know the conversation so i was more muted because i didn't want to like step on the things they'd already said when it comes to geese i feel like i'm being respectful of of the true art because i love all the singles i love everything about this band up to this point and i also know this this record enough that i am not really locked into it when I'm trying to make the turn at Rowena. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I need to get on an airplane and then be like, okay, boys.

47:48Yeah. What do you have to tell me about Greenland?

47:50Andy Greenwald:Please tell me something about being alive. Keep this plane in the air, brother. Well, please, let's do that. Do you either have suggestions of things you think I should preload in my library, time well spent, or do you... Because in terms of books, you asked me too. So right now, you find me at a moment of a crisis of faith with music. first of all like because you're reading all the spirituality no but the uh i think that my likely undiagnosed adhd uh well i mean it's definitely undiagnosed but whatever it is like cavalier no i think it's just like whatever uh personal issues i have with focus have met a moment now where uh too much shit is available to me at all times so if i'm in the car and i'm like what I'm going to do now is finally listen to the first five can albums.

48:39Andy Greenwald:Now is the time. Yeah. And then I'm like, I don't really want to do this. And then I, you know, and I, you just wind up being like, but what I am going to do is listen to the first five, listen to Williams albums again, you know? And then I just don't even know how to be anymore sometimes with music. That's why when I come across something, whether it's geese or that realized record from earlier in the year, that's the truth where I'm just like, this is all I want to think about. And so geese has been on constant repeat. I will say it has been heartwarming to see geese have left the nest and they are migrating towards fucking big band right now, which is in a way that I haven't really seen since probably, I mean, I'm going to date myself, but I guess like 1975, this happened to, I guess this happened to Arctic Monkeys like 15 years ago or whatever.

49:27but like you can tell like you know that Killian Murphy is like I fucking love geese and my son loves geese you know and like they're they're big now well they made a big record like they went for it they're awesome they made a cool record yeah they did and it's cool that it's their third record and it's not exactly like it's not like they made a record for mass approval they make born in the USA they made it's a weird a fucking weird record that sounds like Frank Zappa and van morrison and you know what i mean like kenny beats on the deck with like real swing do you know the common thread between us and the band geese we all went to quicker schools yeah can't fake the funk if you're if you're still if you're if you're still reading this it's not too late yeah it's the light within um so yeah i i my music listening is all over the place and then i think I just find it really comforting now to try and watch as many of the DVDs that I'm buying

50:30Andy Greenwald:I don't know where you find time for that night night time that's when I'm asleep yeah and then yeah reading wise you bring books or do you buy books there both I have to bring a couple books for work I would say yeah um things that how does magic work things you know about but also things you don't know about but i have to bring those and then um we've we've both been loving we mentioned this in the other show the the spy fiction of uh what's his name oliver harris oliver harris yeah this is a zach barron recommendation a shadow intelligence is the first book in his spy series and i love it so much that i'm savoring it and i'm intentionally saving reading it slowly so i have it with me on the plane and i can get the sequel ascension over there you want me to give it to you or no you're I'll go to Daunt.

51:17Andy Greenwald:I'll walk over to Daunt Books and grab it. It's my new, my other life. If you're looking for Andy. My shadow, shadow intelligence life. But like the thing I would say about this book, and maybe we'll talk more about it. Well, we, it's, it's unfair to do book talk without Kaya because she's an essential part of it. When we do this on the podcast. I think she also is a good counterbalance to some of her tastes. She's given me some good recommendations recently. I know. I know this is a little bit niche and maybe not everyone would vibe to this, but this book, it's about a spot, an MI6 agent. and it's incredibly interior.

51:48Andy Greenwald:Like it's all told from his perspective as he comes in from the cold and then goes back out into the cold like without cover, basically. Literally the cold because he goes to Kazakhstan. He goes from the Middle East back to London briefly then into Kazakhstan. And you're just locked in this guy's complicated head as he walks through sub-zero conditions in like an artificial capital built on the - You may be thinking, I don't know a lot about Kazakhstan. You will. You sure will. The thing that this book reminds me, The two writers that this book reminds me of is Le Carre, obviously, British spy stuff, but also Haruki Murakami, which is such a weird pull for this.

52:23Andy Greenwald:But my favorite Murakami books are all about kind of weird blank men wandering wintry environments. Yeah, like Marriott's and looking at the steel paradise of a city that's just been built. I asked for my third beer. And it's like, that might be me. You never know. Yeah. So, God, that was a great wreck by Zach. I love, I love, love, love that book. Um, cool. Yeah, cool, right? Yeah. Uh, I mean, it's very, it's always difficult when you fly to England because the bookshops there are so great. They also have shit on paperback that you're like, you know, it's not out here on paperback yet. You should have seen me rocking Percival Everett's James in paperback earlier in the year.

53:01Andy Greenwald:Yes. People are like, where'd you cop that? That's right. I was like, England. I'm currently reading, I think I've mentioned, I'm reading Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, which is unlike most books I read. Yeah. And I am re-reading, although finding that I have very little recollection for Vineland. Interesting, yeah. I think I mentioned that. And Vineland is fucking hysterical. Vineland was with me in England, as we talked about last time. Yeah. I really, really, really want to read the new Ian McEwan novel. That seems like... What we can know. That might be the thing for us to go on a journey with our listeners on.

53:37Andy Greenwald:I think we're almost ready for that. Which I have to admit was like, warmly endorsed by Anthony Jezelnik, the comedian who really does not lead me wrong with his book recommendations. Are you waiting for Melaney to be like, my recommendation is Ian McEwen. It's a really, it's a hot competition right now for guys recommending books to other guys. I mean, how big can the playoffs be? It's like what the college football guys ask themselves. Is the world that bad when it's just guys recommending books to guys? I know men are a problem generally, but like this seems okay. Yeah, let us have this. This seems okay.

54:15Andy Greenwald:Do you know, I did read I did read Colored Television by Danzy Senna. You did mention that. I mentioned that. I really recommend it. It's very, very well written. It's very, I mean, it is relevant to what we cover and it's about an academic who decides to save her life and her future by selling out and working for television. I did read Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner. If you didn't know a lot about caves, you will. We talked about this, didn't we? I don't know if we talked about how I was a little more mid than you, but I did enjoy the journey. I think she's like, she's the coolest hang. Reading the books are the coolest.

54:49Andy Greenwald:I just, we really didn't come out of that cave, did we? Do you know what I read also? There's a book called Your Table is Ready by Michael Cechiazolina, and it's like the kitchen confidential for maitre d's. Because that's how much I care about restaurants. And it is very entertaining, because what if I told you he was a maitre d' at like at Raoul's and the water club in the 80s into the 90s shit uh people used to get after it in restaurants you know what I mean maybe they will again in vice presidency ours America yeah but it is uh it is quite uh body that is a real that is one that I regret like uh like McInerney body or what is it oh yeah yeah yes it is uh it's like a It's a tell-all kind of thing about a certain era of New York that I'll never get tired of.

55:38Andy Greenwald:And I'll say that I wish I hadn't read it in like a day and a half a few weeks ago. How long is it? Three, four hundred pages, but it flies. It wasn't a day. It was three days. But it's very, very readable. I was just impressed. It's very, very readable. But it is also the kind of book that I wish... I'd mostly read fiction, as you know. But like one of life's great pleasures is holding a book, a nonfiction book, that you know you could just devour for a long plane ride. Like Bill Buford's Dirt about learning how to cook in France. That was an entire France oceanic flight. Yes. I need, like, I don't think you can do, pinching on a flight is tough.

56:17Right? But I think you can bang out some spy fiction or even read some nonfiction.

56:22Andy Greenwald:Do you think this part's going to get clipped for Instagram? Pinching on a flight is tough, guys. We gotta be us. I don't really know what the clip would be from this episode because it's just been a free-flowing conversation between two friends. talking about culture, talking about reading, talking about Pete Hegseth. Yeah. The real lion in the lioness's den. I wish you well. Thank you. This is actually the last time I'm going to see you, so I will see you soon in another place. That sounds worrisome, but I think I know the place. And I will be back on Monday with you recorded today. We're going to be talking about the fifth episode of Task.

56:57I'm not missing Task Talk

56:58Andy Greenwald:as we go forward. Yeah, okay. Everybody be well. I'm still connected to the Muggle world thanks to Kai thanks to Kaya thanks to everybody we'll be back thanks to all my American Baranskis out there see you soon