(upbeat music) - I need supports to have to clear the room. - Stand up and walk now. - Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at TheRinger.com and joining me in the studio. My secret Robin Hood project is Andy Greenwald! - But secretly, I'm the bad prince, the whole time. - Wald, it is Thursday, which means it's kind of chaos menu. We can just do whatever we want. Today we've got some holly weird news that we're gonna go through from the world of television and beyond. We were gonna talk a little bit about adults, which is the second season of which is airing the first two episodes this evening on FX, which is a show. - They're not dumping the whole thing? - They're not dumping it, dog. And that's funny that you should bring that up. Good segue. - Thank you. - Because there's also some new statistics out, some new charts out from in the world of people who make charts about this stuff. - That's perfect. - That about the return of the weekly release model. - I can't wait. That really allows us to play to our strengths with you as the Brad Pitt and me as the Jonah Hill of the podcast. - Oh, in terms of money ball. - No, I mean socially. - Okay. - Why, what have you heard? - Well, I am off the wagon, so. - It's true, and I love jujitsu. - I just wanted to ask you this off the top before we get too deep into it. The joke we made at the beginning of this podcast is, oh, you can hit us up at
[email protected] and the watch pod underscores Instagram and the Ringer-TV is YouTube. - Right. - And then you can watch us on Spotify or listen to us wherever you get podcasts. And the joke was. - Okay. - There's this movie called Uprising coming out from director Paul Greengrass. Director of several of our favorite and not-so-favorite porn films. - That's fair. - And recent years directed The Lost Bus with Matthew McConaughey, which went straight to Apple. - Did they ever find it? - It was a true story about fires, so. - I keep doing this. - Yes, this is my one-aid. (laughing) - Beep, beep, beep. - I didn't really- - Back out of that one. - I had a really good one of those at dinner last night, but I don't even remember what it was. - Yes, you were making fun of someone whose parents had died. - Now, hold on. - Before this goes viral. - Not, you weren't knowingly doing that. I made, I was like, I poked some light fun at a celebrity I'd never heard of. Perhaps suggesting that she had nepotism. - Yes. - And I was informed and said she had family tragedy. So I regret that. - What do you think that your kids are gonna think when they're working in a lime mine somewhere? And they're just like, I would have been nice to have been a movie-vote who wrote a book. - You weren't about television, but my father pulled down the- - I pull up the ladder in all directions. I'm completely alone, there's no ladders, no shoots either. - Yeah. - I'm just floating above. Do you think they're gonna be really mad like that they couldn't even get an interview for the fourth reboot of the Harry Potter show on HBO Paramount Raytheon network? (laughing) - But my dad consulted it. - This time we're gonna get the Hogwarts Express right. I was bringing up this Paul Greengrass movie Uprising, which stars Andrew Garfield, because it has had one of the most hilarious-- - Tsar. - Marketing pushes in recent memory. And I'll tell my listeners, my listeners. - My listeners. - No, no, I think that's correct. - I'll tell our listeners straight up. This is one of those stories that it feels better just to have surface knowledge of. - Right, yeah. - You know how like sometimes you're like bond markets or what happened there? Like, it's better just to kind of, when you're reading about like the economy, you're like, I feel like I need to get in deeper with this. So I fully understand the picture. This is not one of those things. So I'm gonna give you a, I'm not reading anything about this right now. Straight off the dome. - Okay. - Uprising, I believe it's set in the 14th century. It was supposed to be about like a farm. - Well, apparently it is about. - Yeah, I saw the trailer. - We all saw the trailer. - And it's about like a, peasant uprising in England and some time. - An actual historical event that peasants revolted. - Let me just get through the set up here. - I just wanna make sure to people know that in the peasants revolt, I'm on the side of the peasants. - And this movie, it's been advertising. I'd seen people even say that it might be pretty good. And it's coming on like a week. - I think it's being released on Friday, September 11th. - Oh, interesting. A big day for Paul Greengrass, 'cause he also did you know that in '93. A big day for Paul Greengrass, yes. - And recently, in the most recent batch of press, we're not pressed but marketing materials for this movie. - Yeah. - They just slid something in there. It's a Robinhood movie. - Yeah. - It's the true story of Robinhood or something like that. Here's the best part. We don't know if that's true, because it doesn't seem like anyone involved in the movie is acknowledging this or being like now that the cat's out of the bag or the Robin is, we can talk about the fact that yes, this is a backdoor Robinhood movie and backdoor Robinhood movie, that, okay. That probably do quite well. - Special Debock's office. - And now there's like in England, they've pulled the Robinhood nomenclature off of the posters and stuff. Like there is seemingly some walk back of this. In any case, I love this. - Oh, okay. - I love like, hey, you know, we're only tracking it, like 62% audience awareness score. - Yeah, so here's what we're gonna do. - Take a public domain piece of IP and just slap it on there and see if anybody notices. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Now this is kind of like what happens with Tony, which is at the very end of Tony. - Oh, at the very end of Tony. - Is this like, I'm Anthony Bourdain. - Yeah. - No, at the end he says he's Tony Stark. - That's right. - We can spoil it now. - That's right. - That's an incredible bit of. - But I don't know. I just wanted to say that Hollywood you guys, you guys are the best. - Well, first of all, we should have prepared more for this. I mean, that's a blanket statement for this podcast, but I think that their ways, I think there's a good conversation to be had about ways this could have helped other recent box office bombs. Do you know what I mean? Like what if, like Supergirl, for example, okay, what if Supergirl at the end, she's like, and that's why I'm going to run for Congress. And then my name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. - Yeah. - And I was like, oh, oh, this was always an AOC or even story. That's where she's from. - She is the woman of tomorrow, yeah. - Are there any, like I, any other recent, you just did a flopstraft. - Yes. - I know in the big picture. Are any of those movies you think could have been saved if they just made a hard pivot right before it was released? While you think about it, I do want to say that I love the reporting on this incredible slight of hand because this is where we are as a culture. The studio was like, you don't like what this is? Okay, what if we told you it was this? Are you more into it? And then the trades are caught so flat-footed by this that this is actual reporting from the Hollywood reporter. The decision to release this element so close to the film's debut and not keep it as a plot twist or simply begin its marketing run by saying it's a Robin Hood movie has it seemed confused social media users. Notoreously, the least credulous people alive. Quote, this actually kind of, so here's the thing, there are two wolves inside of all social media users. Here's one. This actually kind of bums me out because as a history nerd, I thought someone was actually tackling the peasant's role which is a time in history that could make for some epic films we never see. Wrote Andy Greenwald on X. (laughing) The other person they quote. - The other person. - The other person that you wrote. - I have parked on that. - Fucking history bought for parts. - I've parked on that. I just keep it my options open for the next renegotiations. The other person they quote is this. Quote, it's a fucking Robin Hood movie. (laughing) This is the industry. It's like, I mean, I imagine if you were reporting on Hollywood, you might be able to like pick up the phone and call the studio and get a little more about it. - Curious about it. - Yeah. - I would imagine Robin Hood is in public domain now. - Who do you think was parked on that copy right for years? - Nobody, I mean, this is what happens. Is after a certain amount of time, like the copyright or whatever. - Yes. - Reverted all of us, like Kai and Kaya could be editing a Robin Hood movie right now. - That's the real peasants revolt. - That's right. - Am I right, guys? Let's do it. - Anyway, just keep pumping out these Robin Hood movies, guys. - But that's the other, here's the weirdest thing about it. I get almost see the logic in this. Had the June release, what was the movie? The death of Robin Hood, which was released earlier this summer. - Yes. - By A24. - Completely tanked. So it's not like they're trying to sketch on some cool Robin Hood vibes that have permeated the culture. You saw his death, now check out his birth. That's not working. - Right. How do you think is the health? Should we do a temperature check on the Robin Hood IP generally? - Well, I don't think anyone really cares about the real story of it. - Right. - They've tried to do the origin story. They've tried, you know, the casters done it, Taren Egerton's done it, we have had the death of Robin Hood. - Recently. - We've tested every permutation of Robin Hood. I think we're good. - There's one permutation that I think is overlooked. - Robin Hood, all offensive coordinator. - Would you like to do some character work? - No, just like, what is it? Is it like Friday night lights reboot, but Robin Hood was seeing it? - Robin Hood O.C., where he steals from Sean McVay and the other rich from their playbooks. Yeah, but we can't afford Ben.
Johnson, but we can steal his play button. That's what I'm saying. No, I'm saying that like, you know, my older daughter is 13 years old and so she definitely has crushes on some like actors and some of these teen shows or like outer banks or whatever. But her number one is Fox Robin Hood from the Disney Robin Hood. Oh, you had a cartoon, right? I think that that guy is like, that guy is a sneaky heartthrob. Yeah. He has his wrist. Incredible wrist. So I feel like we could bring that guy back and it would do better than this movie. Every once in a while, I will notice that not, not like words that I don't understand, but new words will enter your lexicon. So like you've been saying things rip and that they own a lot recently. Is that from your daughters? Um, boy, uh, you noticed that I, those aren't the words that I would say that I took from, from their, okay, chats, no, I think that I think the, uh, it's also, there's a lot of like, that's crazy, bro, bro, you're crazy for that. There's a lot of that. And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm workshopping some of it. I'm like, they're like, what's for dinner? I'm like, I made chicken and you're like, you're crazy, bro. That's crazy. And then do you say like, it's actually the most common dinner in America? Like, you know, pull up the charts that I put on my Peter Brand and Moneyball outfit. I'm like, actually, we can't make a, a proper dinner, but we could create an aggregate with chicken parts. Uh, now this, this line thing is, is a roller coaster. Okay. It's a roller coaster. All right. I just wanted to get to the bottom of some of psychological motivations behind the things you said. But you said, Riz, where did you get? Where did you pull that from? That's actually from you. Like, uh, from you telling me that they said it, but now they don't say anymore. It's time. It's not cool anymore. Let's just move on then. Like seven joke the other day and they looked at me, like, that was crazy, bro. I can't keep up. Because you're holding two chickens. Some news, some real news beyond that was interesting. Robinhoods. All right. We got a pick teaser for season three, which will be with us early next year, um, as is the custom. The, uh, just of this is it's Robbie's first day back, first of all, wow, what a blow to the Robbie truth. There's, I can't believe it. But the Robbie truth, there's like people being like, Robbie's never coming back. He came back. I think there's one thing we don't know. As at what point in the season does he return? Oh, so you think that the first few episodes might be night crawlers run in wild. I do. And then the morning, I do think I do believe you. I think that is a, I believe you. I think that is a correct read that this season might start a few hours before Robbie's arrival. I do think that is the case. I just wonder. I mean, because like they've done night crawlers, the Sean had to see Dr. Abbott crew really didn't come in until the very end of the second season. Well, he was, he was freelancing. He was kicking around a little bit with the SWAT team, but that's basically like when you record with Van in between recording the watch, you know what I mean, you just do that for fun. That's like crawlers. Yeah. It's gonna be really weird if they have the first episode and he's just not in it. But I could see some world in which he shows up like an hour or two into the season. Yeah. Also, because he's so intimately involved with every aspect of the show, he's, he's written in episode every season. He's, I believe directed at least one episode every season. Yes. Maybe that's what he, maybe that's how he wanted to begin the season this year. So his acting commitments would come later. They have not tipped their hand as to what the catastrophe of the season is and perhaps there won't be this season. Maybe it's just a really chill day. I actually just watched an Instagram video where you're not supposed to say it's pretty quiet today in an emergency room if you're working there. Why? Because they just, you jinx it and then it just becomes chaotic. So do you believe that? Sure. Yeah. Television's taught me there has never been a quiet day in an emergency room. I do think that would be quietly radical. That's true. If it was just fine. Slow TV emergency room. Oh my god. Wait, I would love that show. No, like what do you want to get from a ponytail trying to choose which granola party? Yeah. I love it. But then we are all like is she going to choke on the granola bar any, any other addition, like any other info from this, it just seemed to be, I mean, this is, this is the brand of the show. It's just, hey, there's, we're back. There's going to be more trauma and emotional outpourings and I think some people were curious about whether, uh, Dr. Alshimi was going to come back. She's there. And she there. And what capacity? I don't know if she's, she's still rolling with Robbie. If she's on Abbott's crew or what, like she was, well, I think secondary attending, right? In theory, she was doing Robbie's job while he was on his vision quest. That's true. But then he was like, I don't think you should be doing that because of your condition. And then she was like, I think you shouldn't be doing that because of your condition about being too sad to ride motorcycles. Did they resolve that? No, he was like, you have to report yourself or otherwise, I will, right? He did say that. Yeah. But I don't know that they were like, did you do that? That's, you know, temporarily, we just left for the day. That was my major observation, obviously, Dr. Santos and, uh, Dr. Whitaker seemed happy with each other in terms of being roommates. That was cool. I think that's fun. Great. I think we did a great job summarizing a 30-second trailer. More news. Kate Winslet has joined in Netflix series. I wasn't briefed on this. What do you mean? Called Unheard. And it's from the adolescence team. Okay. And it's written by Jack Thorn. Okay. So there was a rumor that there was going to be a second season of adolescence that she was joining. But in fact, it is maybe from the, uh, from the creative minds of ACU, the adolescence cinematic universe. Right. Are we all living in that? Yes. Yes. Every minute of the day. Uh, this one's written by Jack Thorn and it's about two sisters on the run after committing an act of vengeance and co-stars, Maxine Peek, who we loved and say nothing. Oh, great casting. That's exciting. It's, it's always cool when, and it helps when we like the show. It helps. It's always cool when you see a show that maybe didn't get recognized in its moment, but obviously people within the television community watched it because Lola Patakrew currently crushing it, crushing it on Furious and Maxine Peek. And Anthony Boyle was just announcing the cast of the Netflix show. And Anthony Boyle was fucking everything and House of Guinness got renewed. Really? Yeah. I want to jump ahead to influencers standing outside of the Devon chair, splitting the G. Like, is it just going to be a TikTok season slow pub TV? Not slow. No, it's not slow. Not slow. They really put them away. Wait, that's cool. Wait, but is Philip Barantini directing it also? Is it really an adolescence reunion? Uh, I didn't see if Barantini was, was directing it. I was really more breaking, bring it up because it was, uh, it, they did specify that it was five episodes. And, uh, I just want to renew my battle cry that we can have TV seasons of any, any length. Um, the, the, the, one of the coolest things about when I first started watching TV from England, I don't know, 2010, 11 when that stuff started like floating around the internet a little bit more freely. If you know what I mean, what was your website again? Iraq goals.net. But that was for soccer highlights so, specifically an only for some, no, for sure, nothing else pop ups. I would get why I watched, you know, like a Europa League match. We're fucking diabolical, but I could have gotten you an early on Bitcoin. If I paid attention to those, do you think that's mostly what it was? There was some of that. There was some of that like early, like I was like, what is crypto, you know, and then it was also like, let's be honest. We're still like that. Yeah. Um, yeah, I just think that I, I would love to see two things happen. Okay. I would love to see shows like Regdenkins or adults, which we're going to talk about and, and shows that seem like they have the structure to which to support more than 10 episodes in a season to grow in that way. Yeah. I don't know that we'll ever get back to 22 episodes a year, um, but I think it would be cool to have some shows that ran from, from fall to spring like that. I think Abbott is the one that I watch that is the closest to that. Yep. I think they're at like 15 to 20 episodes a year. I can't remember. I mean, they're still on a broadcast schedule. It's not like a broadcast schedule. Sometimes Abbott's just not on for three weeks. It's, you know, because various Monday night football, whatever happens, but I, I would love for that to happen. And I would love for shows to go back to or series to experiment with here's a three episode season, like Sherlock or here is a five episode or six episode season. And not everything is like, well, this is probably four hours of story that we've stretched to eight hours. Yeah. It's very odd that when, I mean, one of the main differences in tell of, like, here's the best example of it was the office. The British version, the original version of the office was, I believe, two seasons and a Christmas special of six episodes each. I believe something like that. Yes. Again, no way of knowing, but we could find out to get the exact numbers. And then one of the major lifts was how would they make it in the American model, which six, six, two, good job, which, you know, I knew that they made a ton of those episodes, but I forgot that the Aaron, which the Aaron, which the office was thriving was also the Jeff Zucker soon to play himself in the movie Primetime was in charge of NBC and was doing things like super sizing episodes and also super sizing seasons. So there are seasons of the office where they made 25 episodes, which is insane, but we were at a moment when the two across the Atlantic, the two sides were looking at each other being like, what the hell? You either make six or 25 and instead we somehow ended up meeting in the middle where we We now both do the exact same thing in lock step where I said it last week, this is
actually something people are saying that eight is the new 10 than the that everything is shrinking. And you know, we don't need to talk about this today, but downriver effects of all that aren't just for the audience. It is shrinking the income and stability of all creative careers in the industry and causing mass chaos. I randomly got served. I think I was telling you about this, a Neil Patrick Harris interview where he was talking about the schedule that they used to have for how and that your mother famously the best schedule. And he was like, this is the best job that you can ever have. I worked for an hour on Monday. I went in briefly on Tuesday and Wednesday to rehearse and do blocking. And then we shot Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And if you weren't in scenes, you just didn't have to be there. And they would schedule it as such. And he was like, he got paid $250,000 a week or whatever. And you had every fourth week off so that the writers could catch up. Yep. And we fucking killed the Golden Goose man. We had something beautiful. Everyone who's ever done a multi-cam sitcom says that it is the greatest schedule working schedule in the entertainment. Twenty-two weeks a year? Something like that. Half the year, probably. Everyone I've ever talked to about it has said that. Do you remember years ago we had Laurie Macketh come up? I'll never forget it. And I think her description of working on Rosanne was like, I would drive over the hill into Hollywood, go to Fort Knox, take my giant gold bar at the CBC and go back to the Valley. Yeah. And we would just like laugh with John Goodman for now. Yeah. And then I would go do Steppenwolf like and whatever like when I had free time. It's pretty good. Yeah. We broke it. We do seem to be seeing some signs of things going back to the way they were though. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this. I think remarkable development and television. So this was from Axios. They do like a media newsletter. And then Parrot Analytics contributes to it. And Parrot we've mentioned before. Julia Alexander who writes for the town occasionally or for not for the town, but for Matt Belenese what I'm hearing newsletter has done a lot of, she used to work a parrot. So I think that there's, I'm aware of what they do. And they try to like give some metric statistical understanding to what is a very vague and opaque system now of what do you streaming minutes really constitute and like, you know, subscriptions versus time spent and all this stuff. This is from a quote from that Axios and Parrot report. For the first time last year, the supply of streaming shows in the United States more than doubled that of binge releases. A testament to how much streamers have changed their strategies since the binge show show drop first became popular in the late odds. Now, I must say that it was chilling to think of the late odds as time immemorial. But it is the case that I, you get sometimes, you know, with the case of the bear or something like that, you still get your binge drop outside of Netflix. Most networks have gone to a, we'll put two up and then it's once a week or we put the three up and it's once a week after that. And I think it's working. I think generally speaking and anecdotally, so not Parrot Analyticsly speaking, we're seeing a lot more shows that are developing a traditional slow burn. Have you seen this? Have you seen this? Have you seen this? You have to catch up with it kind of a kind of audience. Do you agree with that? Yeah. I mean, the caveat we always have to say is obviously as podcasters, we would prefer a weekly model that serves us. But I genuinely think and have I think always thought that the binge model does it disservice to almost everybody except the shareholders of the tech company that is attempting to launch a profitable streaming service, which is why it started to begin with. It was both an attempt to disrupt and break the model and surprise people, but also an attempt to flood the zone for attention and interest and give people a different kind of relationship to the service, much like the introduction of Reels on Instagram to just basically get you into the ecosystem and get you locked in and wanting more and expecting more and not turning away. Fundamentally, I mean, I don't know the numbers of it, but even Netflix that still does mostly binge releases, just the library is so large now that the new releases don't have to have the same cadence as everything else because you're likely going to be there and find that other binge relationship anyway. I know I lean on this too often as my like in the same way that our beloved Thomas Friedman in the New York Times always leans on the cab driver in Karachi that told him about how the world economy really works. That's how I use my children on this podcast, but I promise you they are real. And I was really interested that this weekend my older daughter was saying that she, because I've said before and I believe this to be true, that their relationship to TV generally is so different from ours because it's like the it's more like the way movies had gone in the sense that like for event shows that our cultural touchstones for I'll use my older daughter for her generation. So Stranger Things or Wednesday won't get her to be like when's it coming out, you know, let me watch it. But otherwise, like I was saying last week, she's on a steady diet right now of modern family and the OC, all of which finished their run quite some time ago. That said, this weekend, she was saying that she preferred the way some right turn pretty came out because it felt momentous. It felt that same way that we talk about those healthy on late ought days of the end of breaking bad, for example, late teens. Yeah, mid teens. Anyway, that's the way she was talking about it too. Like it was a nice event to have over a period of time. And it just strikes me as one of those things like, you know, three years ago, everyone's writing off the movie experience as outdated or not meeting the customer where he or she is. And then suddenly we have a couple of years where people are like, no, actually, it's pretty good. We like it. It actually works. It maybe there's a way to even connect it to your point about, you know, the episodic model, which is we just keep breaking stuff because we think we need to iterate all the time when maybe people like the way it is. Yeah, I also would ask you from a creative standpoint, from a development standpoint, whether or not the timelines for these shows have changed drastically in relationship to when the shows are going to be released. So my question is essentially like, if you were to be working on on tires or adults, so let's say like something like tires that gets really special passes for both, but thank you. You guys would have to write and produce the entire season and deliver it. It wouldn't be like, we're four episodes ahead. I mean, when it starts airing and we're kind of like iterating off of things and seeing what people are responding to and changing the material as the season goes on. Yeah, I think that I think the issue is more that there are in this brave new world, like there are series that benefit from a different sort of schedule that certainly benefit from if there's only five episodes of story, make five episodes. And if that's the case, and especially if it's a limited, you could treat it more like a film and perfect it and get it right and then deliver it to the network, you know, to do as you see fit. And then of course, there's the other category that just simply didn't exist 10 plus years ago of the massive visual effects spectacle show that requires almost eight to 12 extra months for and that's just always going to be that way. I think one of the real problems, though, is the sort of the virus of prestige and how prestige TV gets made. Infected all shows. So that the timeline and the way things are put together is just it's like really, really incoherent mix of hurry up and slow down. That it's going to take what it's going to take, but also we needed to decide two weeks ago, but also we want to hit this window, but then also we're going to sit on it for a year because our numbers say that our audience doesn't like this anymore until love Island comes back or whatever. So everything the entire industry got fed into the same like production wood chip timeline woodchipper of certain shows that require or even benefit from a certain timeline. I think that's why not just like we every year, we're like, wow, they really did it. The pits are really coming back in January when anyone older than even older than us is like you mean it's a TV show, but it's like it's like some lost art that we forgot collectively how to do and it is talked about that way internally too inside the industry of like, wow, that's remarkable. They shoot in LA and they do it every year. I don't understand why we can't get back to that, but maybe it is because that middle the middle class of TV shows fell out of favor and so it's either, I mean CBS is still churning out 20 episodes of Elzbeth a year, but then you know when you turn to like prestige things on other services, they are, they're in a different business entirely. I saw recently that there was, I can't remember the Netflix show, but it was like something is moving production from North Carolina to Georgia because of the vagaries of tax breaks. Yeah, and yeah, I mean the one thing I, whether or not you believe that everything should be made in LA or that, you know, what the issues are with like shooting overseas, which a lot of stuff does now, it would be nice if like these studios just took a haircut every once in a while and were like, yeah, it's gonna cost a little bit more, but we're gonna get the best people and those people get to live in the city that they make do their job in. I mean, it is so deeply entrenched in every fiber of American business now that, the corporation.
should never, ever, under any circumstance, pay the people who work for them a little bit more. - Right. - Like, and somehow we have all. - I don't even know if it's been paying them that much more. - No, but it's like make it easier for them to do their jobs. And it's like, yeah. - Those are connected. - Yeah, of course. But we're all, but getting to live where you work is the number one thing, you know? - Listen, I completely agree with you on that. I just think that we don't, they've done a really good job. They, like, we cheer for like corporate earnings reports, you know, like, like the whole narrative, even the way the Hollywood Reporter, when they're not busy trolling ex-accounts to see how they feel about the peasant's revolt. Like, definitely, that's probably the only attention they pay to the peasant's revolt in terms of like, why the fuck did this all cost so much? Like, we're not actually interrogating any of that. And then, you know, suddenly this became a completely different kind of revolt. But like, you know, the entire nature of the conversation isn't we should make more episodes of something and we should allow people to live where they work and establish a beachhead of, like, consistency and all that. Instead, the conversation is, David Ellison doesn't get what he wants. He's gonna pull up his whole company and move it to Texas, like Joe Rogan. Like, what? - It was actually 10 to see. I think he was really looking at it, right? - Was he? - Yeah. - Oh, well, Joe Rogan pulled up and went to Austin, right? - He did, man, yeah. - And it worked out. - I guess. - Is he hiring? (laughing) 'Cause I could switch that opinion real quick. - A show that I think is a very traditional show in a maybe non-traditional way, or it's about, you know, it's about younger people who are living together making their way in New York City, even though it's quite obviously shot in Toronto, is adults, which is coming back for its second season on FX tonight. Two episodes drop tonight. I believe it's an eight episode season, like the last season. I wish it was 15 episodes or 12 episodes. I'm not trying to make anybody's life harder than it needs to be, but it is, I find the show really delightful. And I think the second season is a big leap forward. Look, I admit that I have just like a weakness slash soft spot for sitcoms, and I kind of still use it as a reward for making it through another day in America. It's just to fire up like 22 minutes of something like mildly funny before I go to bed. And this is just an example of like a show that just needs a little bit of time to find the rhythms of not only how like the writing works, but also like how the characters interact with each other. It's essentially like a screwball comedy of like, I believe five people who wind up living together and queens as they try to like navigate like getting jobs. - Your numbers check out by the way. - About five people. - I was just back stopping you. There are five members of the cast. Awesome. My favorite actor or my favorite performer on this show is probably Owen Thiel who's also like a podcaster. And I just think he's fantastic in this show. But yeah, I know that you had mixed feelings about the special, the between seasons special that they put up. - I thought it was really interesting that, well, we talked, we touched on it briefly in a different conversation. I thought this was really, really interesting. John Landgraf, longtime head of FX, prides himself on thinking outside the box and zagging and looking for inefficiencies and trying to do things the way other people don't or at least getting ahead of the curve. And many, many examples in the television landscape and in the television cemetery of shows that just felt like they launched wrong. And they wish they could do a do-over whether they didn't, the pilot wasn't the right episode to begin with or, you know, I imagine that I have to believe both because I'm a fan and because I do think this is partially true that the failure of the late great FX show Terriers and the fact that people just didn't like the name. Probably still wrinkles. Like if it was just called ocean side detectives, it would be in season 41 right now 'cause they were doing two seasons a year 'cause they don't want to like this rule. - CSI San Diego. - Basically, cool surf individuals, that's what it stands for. - So they he-- - Probably stories. - Why not? If this is called adult Seraven Hood story, we could see. So if anyone did or didn't check out this first season, it began with a scene that like all pilot stews wants to set the tone, what the comedy's gonna be and who the characters are in a outlander circumstance and in the circumstance our five friends were on a New York subway car and encountered something that all of us who have ever lived in New York encountered which is a gentleman pleasureing himself on the train and then one of the characters, I believe it's Issa. - Issa, yeah. - Response by pleasureing herself in kind and I believe FX has-- - You don't see that on modern family, I'll tell you that. - And I'll, I did see it once on a J-Train. We'll tell you that. Because the streaming era FX definitely has the numbers and could probably show you on the curve when all of the audience dropped out at that moment and never came back. - Really? - I mean, I'm exaggerating. But it wouldn't surprise me if they pointed to that as maybe not the best way to onboard people to the show. - I think you're right, that is probably the sitcom's way of doing a dead body and then saying six weeks earlier. It's like you have to lead with the most outrageous thing that will grab people. - Yeah, and that was definitely encouraged and then they were like, well, we actually think it's also a sense that they were like the creators Ben Cronigold and Rebecca Shaw and Nicole is an EP on it that they were like, we believe in these guys and we believe in the ensemble in a way that we often say like comedy needs time to gel. So they let them make a second pilot and called Marathon Day and they released it a few weeks ago. We talked about it briefly and they dropped it. This was the most interesting part for me. Not like the Gary episode of the Bear, which is a similar outside the box thing. It doesn't exist in its own little box. This new episode Marathon Day is now the first episode of the show on the Hulu menu thing. - And it is canonically, like on a prequel. - A prequel to the show itself. So I admire-- - It's how they meet this character, Paul Baker, who's played by Jack and Anne. It's really, very good. - I admired the moxie of that and the creative thinking of that. I hated the episode and I don't really feel like continuing with the show because comedy is, deeply subjective. - Sure. - For me, the everything about the episodes I've seen are just, it's just, it's really trying, really trying hard, at all times, to make you interested, care, laugh, shocked. And I don't feel any actual chemistry or warmth or-- - Wait, so you watched this special? - Yeah. - And you watched how much of the first season? - I watched 30 seconds. - No, no, no, no, no, no, I'm saying I think that's what they're dating. - Oh, I was just like, no, wait. - I watched the first six, I think of the first season. - I think that you. - I do the work. - Did indeed. I think that they found a rhythm in the second season that's quite delightful. - Okay. - I recommend the show, Andy, does not. And you can hear more of Andy's thoughts on comedy in our tires episode, which I've been saying. It's not all negative for you and me, though, brother. - No. - So I wanted to take a brief minute since we are recording this on Thursday, next Monday, we'll have a little bit of a Frankenstein episode about the finale of Furious, which airs on its Sunday. And then we'll talk about Lantern's, I mean, Lyonus, the following Thursday. - I gotta say that I would be more invested in Lyonus if I could watch you in Van talk about it. - Don't tell me with a good time. - I mean, because you tell me things, and I'm human, I watch that clip. - Well, you showed me the clip. I was like, "Look at this engagement." - I just hope a lot of people are saying that. - Like, why do these views number so elevated? Why are they all coming from one phone? I'm not saying that we are recognized, but we were in the zone of interest, so to speak, where people are more often than not. And there was a moment last night when in that zone, where you are exposed, we are potentially visible, where many people could have seen you holding up your phone, showing me you talking on our podcast. - I was just showing you that Van was very good, and very funny. - And how are you? - I was fine. - I thought you looked great. - Thanks. - But I also thought that, like this moment, when he told me that Joe is always held on you as being tortured, and her torture pauses to give a disposition on what they did to us with COVID. - Uh-huh. - Maybe it is just better if I update you on where we're at on the season, and you don't have to watch it. - I did wanna talk about some things that we had been enjoying. So as it is a late summer, kind of dog days moment, we were gonna do some recommendations of things, we are reading, things we are watching, and things we are listening to. The thing we were watching, we obviously basically, breathlessly account for all watching on this show, but we didn't really talk about Tony. We had seen it a couple of weeks ago, it's had a very sort of like staggered rollout. It seems like it's a hit. - I think people really like it. - But not just critically, it seems like box office, that the slow rollout is really working. - And sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it doesn't. I think the word of mouth was both infuriating, but good for this, because I think people were like, why do people keep saying this is a masterpiece and it's not playing in my city yet? And now that it is finally starting to get out there, I think people are going to it, and I think it's people who cared about Anthony Bourdain, and people who were indifferent, and or didn't care.
at all. You know, and I, because it's a really good movie. And that is maybe what the future of biopics should be thinking about is like, they always should have been. Yes. Yeah. It's like, let's make a good movie first and worry about servicing this person's legacy and story second. Do you think, do you think somewhere in Liverpool, Danny Boyle is hearing this podcast being like, shit. I got to go back to the drawing board of these Beatles movies? Sam Mendes. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Danny Boyle. Why do I think he was making that? I don't know. Oh, because he made yesterday. Yes. He did. I mean, we don't recognize that as a Danny Boyle film. I mean, it's a himmesh Patel movie. I respect it. We all have ways of entering. I apologize for the air. Sam Mendes probably was listening to it from, I don't know, Canary Wharf. Where do you think Sam Mendes is listening to our podcast? We rode, probably. We're shooting those guys walking across the street. Anyway, I wanted to give you a platform to talk about the movie because I got to chat about it on Big Tech with Sean. But I like, what did you think? I love this movie. I've a genuinely felt exhilarated by watching it. And to your point, not really because I read and love kitchen confidential or think a lot about Tony Bourdain or who he was and what he was in his legacy, which we talked about in a special podcast episode a few weeks ago. I thought this movie from the opening frames is so tactile and organic and alive. And in a way that many contemporary movies don't feel to me. And I wonder if this is a hallmark of Matt Johnson who made it. I haven't seen Blackberry yet. I haven't seen Nirvana, the band, the movie, the TV show, the movie. That's it. You got it the first time. Do I get it? More or less. Yeah. That's a Danny Boyle picture. Yes. It was just so evident to me from the beginning that he understood the assignment, maybe even more than the people who gave the assignment. In the sense that this movie, he very much wanted to make a movie about a coming of age story set at a certain time with a certain kind of rough human feel to it. And was able to do something that I think is very hard for anyone in the public eye. But certainly when dealing with beloved stories, he was able to filter out what he felt was irrelevant to this movie he wanted to make. And it just had all these little touches that felt, I keep wanting to say old fashioned. And I don't mean to like disparage movies because I've been enjoying a lot of movies this year. I think good movies are still made obviously. But sometimes I'm watching things and I feel them kind of slip away. Like the fact that the main character of this movie that the version of Tony played by Dominic Cessah is an asshole and is not a great guy sometimes and is selfish and ego driven and deeply fragile. And then beneath that is a sensitivity that you understand and that you can connect to the real person that we saw later in life. And that in some ways was is kind of the skeleton key to understanding his whole existence to private and public. But the permission to do that and not make him a magic boy or a magic saint, you know, who is just needed to be unlocked when the right way was really, really appealing. And then you throw into it just like you populate a world. And it's a period piece that doesn't feel like it's winking at you all the time being like there were no cell phone with the line of the shards. There were no cell phones only serial killers. But it wasn't that at all. It was 70s, but other than a few details and like cars and fashion choices and nunchucks, it could be any era. Yeah. And just all the performances. Ben Dara, Samelia Jones, and especially our guy number one draft, Fick Leo would all unbelievable on this. What a great year. Have you seen Tuner? No, he's really, really good. And it's like, it's basically a very down and dirty small stakes like crime film, nine small stakes, quite large stakes. But it's him and Dustin Hoffman. And he plays a, a piano tuner with auditory problems. Sometimes I think you're making movies up. No, it's great though. You should check it out. Did Sean see it at can? Like what? How? Why? It came out in the spring, I think, of 26 of this year. Are you sure? Yes. Okay. Did you see it on a Rack goal's dot net? It's already come out on streaming. It's already on, on the O.D. I'm just going to anyone else in the studio ever hear of this movie? No, get what they have. Every like see the box. You just don't believe that these movies exist unless they like are served right to you. Isn't that a great way to be? I love this film. And I echo all of your sentiments. I think that there are so many sequences in this that have stuck with me. Like the, I don't want to give it away. No spoilers here. But like, there's a specific fishing scene that I love. Yeah. It was shot by Michael Bowman who did one battle after another. And, you know, uh, uh, uh, is, or look, or is pizza and is like one of PTA's collaborators and it just looks incredible. Um, so yeah, I just think it, it just, it's just, it's, it's probably my favorite movie of the summer. Yes. It's so vibrant. I mean, Dominic Sessa from the Holdovers to the, I mean, he is a star. He's super charismatic and fun to watch. But there's this very specific kind of electricity that you can feel when you sit down on a movie theater and you feel like you're in good hands and you feel like you're going to be told a story. And in a way, this is a connected conversation to what you were saying about the problem with TV, bloat, you know, where it's the wrong number of episodes or things like that. Like, this is a story about a specific person in a specific circumstance and a specific place in a certain amount of time. Yeah. And it does not, other than as you alluded to at the beginning, there's a, there's a little bit of off, off-roading, like our onboarding into the future at the very end, which is sort of like a nice little grace note. Yeah. But otherwise, it does not feel any pressure to explain everything or really anything, other than what happened to one guy kind of. I think it's also a great movie about the choices you don't know you're making in your life. At various points in this film, the Tony character is presented with different paths you can follow. And one of them is Leo Woodall character and that's kind of more of a model of self-destruction. One of them is the Antonio Benderes character, who is somebody who seems to have become a little bit, like living within himself now, like he tried once and got his ass kicked and makes four things well. But only four things at a, at a, like, quick serve fish and chips restaurant on the cape. And he doesn't want either of those things. Like he's, there are parts of each that are attractive, but like you can see him formulating his own ideas about who he wants to be by reacting to what other people have become. It's myth making. And I think that one of the things that is underserved in the debate about whether like Tony would have liked this or whatever is that he loved myth making and he loved myths and he loved running at them and challenging them and celebrating them. And some of the best episodes of his TV shows were absolutely just running at, um, no cliches, but tropes of the movies he loved are of the celebrities that he admired, the painters, the poets, and Boston. He made the Pasillini episode. And so I think that what he would have would have, it's a fool's errand to even say this, but I think the version of him that I briefly knew, I think, and observed, I think would have been tickled at the idea that he was worthy of such, um, totemic adulation. And given this movie in which exactly as you say, there's enough of it there to put together something deeper and bigger, which doesn't mean truer, but in some ways, um, it doesn't mean more accurate, but it might mean, it might be more truthful, meaning the Antonio Banderas character, chef, who doesn't really have a name until the very end, um, it's such a, it's a beautiful performance. He's just such an incredible actor and presence on the screen. Tony always in his life, at every moment when he was interviewed, um, at every stage of celebrity would say what he really wanted and what he really wanted was for the first few years. He was going to just unplug and live in Vietnam for a year, write a book that would be inspired by Graham Greene or whatever. He would talk about, in the interview that I referenced that he did with me in 2013. He talked about, you know, his happy place being raising his daughter, um, whether it was in New York or with his wife's family in Sardinia. He was always talking about the father be doing the rather doing in the quiet shack or whatever. And also he loved wearing those sweaters. He loved wearing those same kind of like corded seafarers sweaters that Banderas wore. And the thing about if you're 15 minutes, if you're, if you're anything but 15 minutes early, your late was him in everything. Yeah. He, that's, that was canon and that was my experience and everyone's experience to ever interview him. Similarly, one time for him, did I ask you this? He was there before me. Yeah, I know. Do you, were you on time? I was on time for him. Well, you weren't there that day. You were in California. Yeah, of course. Um, and, uh, and Leo would all character, you know, there's elements. As you said, a self-destruction that he later experienced in his life. Sure. And, you know, for like deep, deep, um, Wikipedia truthers about him, like the, the melee Jones character is Nancy, who is his first wife. Yeah. Who is a, um, a very, very important and very underrepresented and kind of misunderstood figure in his life because she was with him during everything up until the point when he became who he became. Yeah. Um, and that's, that adds an extra level of, of sort of ghostliness to the movie. I, I, I don't know. I just thought it was like, it's an incredibly difficult thing to do, but it was done with such style and personality and, and, and there's an exceptional movie comes with our highest recommendation. And so let's talk about some other things we recommend. Want to do books first since you brought Show and Tell here. I brought Show and Tell. Uh, so why don't you go first? What have you been reading recently that you like. Well, I know that you wanted to save my
thoughts on Solbello for like a special podcast, is that right? It depends on if that's what you think stick the landing should become is Solbello talk. I have not stuck landing a humble gift yet. I will tell you that. That was the wrong book to bring to solbello journey, but that really just means reading some of Humboldt's gift. It just means, you know, there's different reading experiences like the book I'm about to talk about. I read basically in a day and a half. And then there's the one that you sort of chip away at in the background. And you're going to recommend a book, I think, that I said to you, I meant to bring with me for my little vacation that I was on this week. And at the last minute, I decided, no, no, I shouldn't bring that out. I should bring Humboldt's gift to the pool side and it didn't get a lot of burn. But yeah, I'm going to hold up. This is the new novel by one of our favorites, one of our heroes who's been on the podcast before George Pelicanos. As NPR says, a modern master storytelling master. What does CR say? A modern master of storytelling. Pretty much the same thing. Yeah. New York magazine trouble just like remixing the words. This is a novel called the blue flame. It is the first novel starring one of his, he has a sort of a stable protagonist. This is the first Derek Strange mystery that he's written in, I think, probably 20 years. It's a little background. We've talked about Pelicanos before George has been on the podcast. His, he is, he is like the bar to Washington DC. He is written, I think, 23 novels now, all of which are set in the district that he knows so well, which is not the city of house of cards or even V. It is a city of real people, a predominantly black and brown city that has like a deep cultural legacy and history that goes well beyond like beltway politics. And his early books are incredibly important to us. When he was writing about a loosely autobiographical kind of wild child, Greek American investigator named Nick Stefano, so punk rock fan, like like, like jump roping out coke sweats while listening to the replacement's Tim. So I would say that we loved these books. And then he, no one's will understand that he matured into writing these books. I think we're big fans of when we recommend us a jumping off point, always the DC quartet, which is a series of four books that he wrote again over 20 years ago now about a, um, a black and white investigative team, basically, um, Marcus Clay and Dimitri Carous, each book is set in a different decade, um, 70s, 80s, 90s, up to the 70s, the 70s, sweet forever. It's my favorite, et cetera in the 80s. Yep. Um, shame the devil. Oh, and then there's the big blowdown, which is not something the 2000s. It's a prequel, right? Yeah. But, yeah, I think sweet forever is the one we always recommend the most because it's an entire, like, weekend of, like, debatuous violence set against the backdrop of, um, the NCAA tournament and Len bias is untimely passing. And, uh, it's just an incredible crime book. And what's a, and then George went on to you, was integral to the wire and the doose and, um, and the Wayne Jenkins story. We have a city as well. Yeah. So he's done tons of TV and stuff. But what's really cool about this book, I would say, which is a very fast read, is, um, is writing has gotten more, it's gotten slower, it's gotten more thoughtful. It's gotten more heavily researched, like in terms of the attention to detail and how murder police do their job and how cases actually move through the system. But what he never forgets are two things, one, the dignity of the people involved in the kind of cases that don't get covered in the Washington Post. But also, he just fucking loves what he loves. And there are long, like there's, he introduces a murder cop named Angie and then there's just an entire page where it talks about how Angie grew up loving slant six and once played at Fort Reno before she became a police officer. Um, there's a lot of stuff about vintage cars. There's a lot of stuff about old movies. And I think the best way to consider a lot of his more recent books is that they are westerns. And Derek Strange is the aging sheriff called back one more time trying to make sense of a world that's changing around him. Yeah. But the things that matter to him still automatically, which is like a decent day's work, you know, respecting people around you, you know, basically what I do by showing up on time to this podcast every day, but just a, just a great writer who never gets enough flowers, but it's still doing it. Uh, a couple from me that I got via an excellent newsletter that I subscribed to recently, uh, by writer Max Reed, who used to work at Gawker and has a Patreon newsletter called Reed Max, um, and I don't know how I like arrived at this specific element of his work, which is a lot of it is about technology and, and social media and writing about the sort of digital world around us. But then he also has like a tremendously deep reservoir of book and film recommendations. So I highly recommend people, first of all, sonnet for Max's newsletter, but the two books that I grabbed off of his recommendations, one is called declare, uh, which is a by writing him 10 powers. That's the one I should have brought with me. I bought it. As soon as you told me about it. I'm so really curious to know whether you're going to vibe with this. So like I personally have not ever really done much hard sci fi or fantasy and I wouldn't describe either of these books as those, but they have elements of them and, uh, declare is like an epic. I would liken it to, I would say La Carre, but I don't even know which specific La Carre I would liken it to. So I'm going to say Alan first, who we obviously love very much is a writer writes a lot of espionage book set during World War Two. His first one, Night Soldiers is sort of his epic that he wrote if he wasn't going to get to write another one. And then he wrote the same book 12 more times for shorter, uh, and it's basically this arc across, you know, the entirety of World War Two from the late 30s until the end. Uh, Declare is very much like that. If also the Bible was real and like there's like some raiders of the lost arc stuff happening and it's fantastic. I mean, it's, it's dizzying and at times kind of like almost hard for me to wrap my mind around some of the ideas or visuals that he's painting. But it is like a really fun spin on the usual like one perfect spy moving through, you know, 40s Paris and Berlin. Um, so I highly recommend Declare, another one that I picked up off of Max's recommendations is a book I'm reading now called Life During War Time, which is a book by a guy named Lucia Shepard and it is about Americans stationed and fighting a war in Guatemala in the eighties, I think. Okay. And it has elements of like, it's a little bit of Joseph Conrad and a little bit of Jonathan Hickman. Look what you're doing here. I like this. Uh, so John Hickman, obviously a comic book writer of the Andy and I love, but writes a lot about psychological warfare and psychic warfare and I would say that's a huge element of this. I'm so early days in this book, probably about 75 pages in, but again, like another one of those where you get to a scene that you've read a few times before in other books, but then you're like, wait, what? Did he just say? But now it's multiversal. He or whatever, like, it'll be like something slithering in this guy's arm, like what, you know, like, that's cool. Yeah. So I love this and I recommend this before, but the last one I'll throw out there is just London falling. The Patrick Raddenkief book. You finished it. I did finish it. And, you know, obviously it had been excerpted to some extent in the New Yorker or he had written a piece in the New Yorker and then wrote a full book treatment of this, um, this case of a suicide, but it was it a suicide or was it a prompted suicide and what happened to this young boy who leapt off a balcony at Canary Wharf of all places, um, in London. And what's happened to London over the last 25 years or so? Would you like me to weigh in on that? I'm sure you have plenty of opinions. Any records that you're banging right now? I feel like this is the one that you would have brought up, honestly. Yeah. Well, I have. I have a couple I wanted to throw out. Specifically this God of War record. Yeah. You all about that life, right? Yeah. You talk about that. I am absolutely have no right to be the one to talk about this album because this is they're getting a body of water. Well, I had a Doug from they are getting a body of water on the pod. Yeah. Last year. Yeah. And, uh, this is his side project that he has with another band, um, from Philly called Hockey. We're awesome. We're awesome. And it's basically like really glitchy, gorgeous pop drone kind of shoe gaze pop. Yeah. And this is a short EP, you can, you can listen to it on your drive to or from work and it, it rules though. I mean, I don't know if you have any like further descriptions of it. My description of it was, I think all of the verbs and adjectives that you said I was getting from my kids, I used in a text about this record. Rips owns. I loved it. Crazy, bro. I loved it. Um, I also am really into this band called the Tubbs or who are Welsh and they kind of are like, what if the pokes were teenage fan club? Does that make sense? We didn't really get it describing stuff. It's almost as if this was our job 25 years ago, but it's also like, why can't we do this for TV? Why can't we just like knock that out? That's our job. This is fun. Yeah. Um, they have a, they have a new record called hard life coming out really soon. I think it's in two weeks and everything and it's their first record on merge and every song from it has been better than the last song. And I love it. But the other thing that we do have to mention, um, I think I had it, I had it open here was that, uh, being Lauren Laverne, BBC six playlist that she did last week, which is speaking of how London has changed. So Lauren Laverne's, uh, radio, BBC percentage.
who fronted one of my favorite 90s bands, Kinniki. And she did a special for her show on BBC Six Music, called Rave Forever 90s, where she had the drum and bass producer Goldie on the talk. And then they just played nothing but the best drum and bass bangers from the 90s for an hour. - Which you did have a brief but deep and passionate love affair with. - I would say it was passionate and quite expensive. - Yes. - You'd be like, "You want to come to Boston this weekend?" And I would be like, "I would love to. "Unfortunately, I've just spent $40 on LTJ Bookham's "Earth compilation on import, "which comes in a lovely cardboard box." - And the most important part about this was that we weren't going dancing. - Never. - No, no, no, no, no, no. We were very, you know the line of waiting for government where Eugene Levy says, "I wasn't the class clown, "but I sat next to him and studied it." That's what I did with Rave culture. Nothing was more interesting to me than the idea of taking drugs and going to large dances. - Can't say I did much of either at that time, but I found it very interesting and I studied it closely. And yeah, this playlist is, I don't know what other words are. - Where is it found? - Oh, if you google, it's on bbc.co.uk. If you search. - One of your favorite websites. - I mean, it's bookmarks. If you go to, if you just search Lauren Laverne Goldie, you will get this playlist. You can play it off of their website. - I wonder if somebody has made a Spotify playlist at that time. - I'm sure. - When this song "Valley of the Shadows" came on by Origin Unknown, I briefly left my body and saw myself from a far distance jumping rope thinking about Rave. - Yeah, that happens a lot in the books I've been reading. - I know, I looked at my arm and I saw something squirming and it was the youth I should have had, it was so intense. - Do you know what those songs are usually like six and a half minutes long? - Yes. - Do you listen to the entire thing? - Just find out. - Well, no, I'm not like, 'cause my problem with DJ sets is I'm often like, this is the best collection of music I've ever heard. I will now assemble it as a playlist so I can re-experience it. - Right. - Because all this is something like NTS or whatever. And then you're like, oh, all these songs are actually five and a half minutes and it's much different if nobody's mixing them together. - Oh, because you're not getting the best of it. You're just getting like the whole experience. - Yeah, we're just truly fine. But like I think it depends how you're experiencing music. I mean, at this point in your life with the number of screens we have, the number of podcasts you have to do, how many playlists are you really just sitting like, you know, cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed, low-disposition, just experience. - I gotta tell you something. - Yeah. - Not having children is remarkable. (laughing) - No. - Do you know what he tells me what to do? - Oh my god. (laughing) - Do you know how many Midnight's bonus tracks that I listened to on the drive yesterday? (laughing) - A couple of other records I wanted to recommend. The New Afghan Wigs Record. - Oh, hell yeah. - Soft Control is out and it's really great. Greg Dooley, obviously, a favorite of mine has been making records for 40 years. - In it. - Occasional guest on this podcast. His new album with the wigs is called Soft Control and I would say it is a really beautiful reckoning with his age where I think he knows what he can and can't do anymore in terms of what kind of music he wants to make and it's got some really glistening, beautiful melodies on this tapestry of surprisingly, modern R&B rock songwriting. So it's really great. - Can I tell you, I think you probably have your own version of this and maybe everyone has their own version of this, but one of my happiest moments have happened stance of like, oh, I've made it to the other side of something and I'm a different phase of my life was walking into an acupuncture clinic in Los Angeles and Greg Dooley is sitting there and he was like, hey man. - That's like, wow. - Like, did he recognize you or was he? - Yeah, 'cause I was right around when he had been on the podcast and I think once he invited us to the dodge, like he's a very nice man to us. We first interviewed him on his tour bus for the Twilight Singers record in New York in '99, 2000. But just the fact that if you had said to either of us, and certainly to him in 1999 that one day you will be living a very happy and healthy life, getting acupuncture somewhere in Highland Park. I think it would have been like a very much like the novel declare. - Yes. One more record I'll shout out is this band Idol County, which is, I think they're from North Carolina and they have a new record, a new album called Long On Saviors. This is my no depression shit. - Yeah. - This is back on it. - Back on it, this is for fans of Uncle Tupelo and Sunvolt. Jason Ezbell, Zach Brian, MJ Lenderman. It's fucking good. It's a great, great, great country rock record. - I wanna hold up that record. And instead of the NPR quote, it just says, "It's fucking good," Chris Ryan. That would move units. - Certainly, and so good. - The title track I have played like 50 times this week. - I thought you were gonna do, I thought you were gonna do a little gotcha journalism with me though about music. - Oh well, we can talk about West Side Cowboy if you want to. - Do it. West Side Cowboy is a British band who just released their debut album. And I think it's fantastic. I don't even know exactly what I would compare it to. I think it's just like, oh, it's not that much different than Tubbs. - Is it? - It's, I wouldn't compare it to Tubbs, but I think that's very good. - Okay, well, how'd you describe them? - I mean, musically, I think it is, I feel like it's from this. - They kind of feel like Los Camposinos eatin' me too? - Yeah, well, there's like black country, new road, dry cleaning, these are bands that do more spoken words, dry cleaning does more spoken word stuff. It's not that, but it is that kind of like, American influence kind of groovy, percussive, and then with bigger ideas thrown on top of it. I like the record a lot. - Well, my only thing was, like, I, you know, you had lame, our friend Lane Brown on talking about the way the algorithm is cooked and fixed and all this. And I was like, this was served to me, and I was like, cool, this indie band, you know, it obviously serves and also serves my interest to be like, oh, I wonder if I've got the drop on Chris with this one, you know? Like, I've discovered them first. - It's not competitive, man, but a little bit. But then, you know, and I'm listening to them, and I like those early singles. And then I'm like, they're on Island. - Who cares? - They formed two years ago. - Who cares? I just don't know how that, a Wind Horse fingers. I just don't know how that happens anymore. Like, why would you, in the year of our Lord 2026, be a young band from Manchester, and put your first record out on a major global label? - Maybe the majors are so cooked, they're taking what they can get. Maybe they know that like, real bands are back. Who knows? - I'm not trying to diss them. I hope they earn back whatever advance they got, and the record is good. But I was actually bringing it up as a point. - You're like, this is a sigh out. - No, I didn't say it was a sigh out. - I said, actually, you did say it was like, this is more of a sigh out. - It is then Geese. - Neither are sigh ups. But this is more of a potential sigh out then Geese. - Or legitimately great. - We can continue this conversation at the New York Film Festival premiere of Paul Thomas Anderson's Cameron Winter Concert Film. - That's a sigh out. - Yeah. - That's a sigh out. - That's happening. - I know. - Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks to Kai and Kaya for producing, and we'll be back on Monday with a standalone discussion of furious the finale, which is airing on Sunday. Hopefully some guests joining us for that one. And then we'll be back next Thursday for regular schedule programming, i.e. lanterns and anything else that comes across the. - It definitely lanterns 'cause it's gotten short drift from us. - I feel like. - It actually has. - And we like it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - What an ending. We call that an act out in the industry. Strong. (upbeat music)
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