‘L.A. Confidential’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Andy Greenwald

This episode is brought to you by Sleep Doctor. Let's say a good sleep is wildly underrated. You can do everything right, eat well, work out, sleep seven or eight hours, and still feel exhausted. If you snore, wake up tired, or crash during the day, it might be worth looking into. Sleep Doctor offers an at-home sleep study done in your own bed. They accept most insurance plans, so you can pay as little as $0. Visit sleepdoctor.com. Before we start today's show, I have an announcement. It's been a while since we've done a live Rewatchables on the road. That's my fault. I'm just lazy, I'm sorry. But we are finally, it's never happened before, we're coming to San Francisco. We've never done a live show in San Francisco. And that's all about to change, because I am bringing CR, I'm bringing Van, I'm bringing Mallory, and we are doing a live episode of Basic Insights. Basic Instinct, which we did a million years ago, I think during COVID. We're running it back. It's gonna be way more fun, we have more categories, and one of the more fun movies to talk about from the last 35 years, for a variety of reasons. I'm not even sure it's legal to have Van and Mallory in the same place talking about Basic Instinct. We'll find out. We will be at the ACT's Tony Remby Theater, Wednesday, April 8th, and you can join us. Tickets go on sale Wednesday, April 1st, 10 a.m. Pacific. All you have to do is head to theringer.com/events for more information, theringer.com/events, and you can see us Wednesday, San Francisco, April 8th. There's a Giants game that day. There's a Warriors game the next day. We're right in the middle of it. We're gonna see you in San Francisco. This episode of The Rewatchables is presented by TikTok. The online world moves fast. That's why TikTok is so important to me. TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind. From the start on TikTok, teens get over 50 built-in protections right when they join. Their accounts start private by default. For those under 16, direct messages are turned off. Only friends can comment on their videos. When safety comes first, discovery can follow. Learn more at TikTok.com/guardiansguide. The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network. We are in a new studio we have. We have in Hollywood, which allows us to have four people on the Rewatchables again. Four people who have never done a video podcast together, even though we have all worked together really since the early 2010s. Sean Fennessey, host of The Big Picture. Andy Greenwald, Chris Ryan. You guys did a little podcast called Hollywood Prospectus in the Grantland days. And now we're here. You do the watch together. Greenwald's always doing stuff. It's the end of CR month. We couldn't have CR month without you, Andy. I really appreciate that. This is the only thing I wanted. This is the quartet. This is really meaningful to me. This is my LA quartet, actually. I have to say, there are not three men on God's earth who have done more to celebrate the greatness of Chris Ryan publicly than these three men. We have really gone above and beyond. It's like a CR celebration. I wanted Vanna Mahoney when you guys were around. Chuck Klosterman, he loves you. This trio. We love Chris Ryan. You're my guys. Are we bringing Bernthal in now or after this? Well, to go back to the start of the rewatchables, the first, the early seeds of the ringer, which was basically my back house, 2015, and we started my podcast and we started the watch with Chris and Andy, and it got to the point where they would just kind of go through my house. My dogs wouldn't even bark anymore. You made the codes. You were doing the watch. And that was also where the rewatchable started because we did the anniversary heat December 2015. Yeah. And now we've all circled back. Yeah. Which is the last episode of CR month. What did you think of the choices, Andy? I thought they were amazing that they were representing the man himself. I thought it was a little, we were just discussing, it's a little chalk at the end. Yeah. We could have gotten a little more creative. What was the one you really wanted that you didn't get from CR month? Like what would have been the craziest wildest one for you that would have been realistic? Rise of Skywalker. Just run it back. That'd be good. Some of your favorites. No. I mean, I, I think we all thought you were going to do heat again. Yeah. But I don't know if there's anything left to say there. No. We'll save it. I'm developing some thoughts. There's plenty to say. I have a lot of thoughts. I have more thoughts than I've ever had. Was the live show that you did about heat considered? No. No. No. That was. That's not canon. That's not canon. No. Okay. That was just an excuse to have Chris do Pacino impersonations for an hour and a half. Which was just me screaming. Like, I think I, I think I have to go back in the lab with Pacino. Do you think you're going to take a step back for the next month? I asked him about this and he was like, what are you talking about? You know, I was like. This is your month, really. Yeah. Am I getting put out to pasture? Money never sleeps. Right. This isn't, this isn't the gold watch. This wasn't like. Are you going to be petty if you're going to be fellas? No. You guys are the gold watch. I mean, come on. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Well, coming up next, a request from CR, LA Confidential. 1997, Sean. Titanic, Boogie Nights, Good Will Hunting, LA Confidential, and Jackie Brown. We used to make things in this country. I'll have you know, I have the exact same list right in front of me. 1997 movies, Boogie Nights, Jackie Brown. I have others, but we can talk. But those five specifically just feels very rooted in '97. And then this one, Greenwald, there's the revisionist history of '97 now is that they should have won the Oscar and not Titanic. So why don't we just start there? For sure. Yeah, this was definitely the critics pick. It was definitely the burgeoning college student who wished they were critics pick. We all felt very smug for loving this movie and caping up for it. But I don't think there was ever a moment when it seemed like it was like, I mean, it was never going to win against a juggernaut like Titanic. But it wasn't even like a hit, was it? It was more of a critically well-regarded modest smash, the type that they don't make anymore. It made 126, which I was surprised by. That's better than I thought. Yeah. It did pretty well. But it just was up against the most successful film in the history of movies. Of all time, yeah. So by comparison. But you were in the Academy at that time? I mean, I was a huge Titanic supporter. I think my work speaks for itself, the way I whipped votes during that time period. Big call girl guy. So this movie resonated with him immediately. Yeah. Why this one? Why did this have to be in CR month? I think that this is kind of a perfect Hollywood movie. It's interesting because I have a kind of different relationship. Than people may assume, or you might assume, which is like, I love it, but I love it conditionally because I come to it from the novels. I come to it from the Elroy books. And it's quite different than the novel. Elroy has like a weird relationship to it. I think he knows it made him a lot of money and made his name go even further than it already had. But I think he also is like, they left out a lot of the plot and a lot of the sort of soul of the book and kind of sanded down the edges. But that being said, like, we said with Fargo, I think I was like, Fargo is a five tool movie. It's like, this is a five tool movie too. Where it's the acting, the writing, the cinematography, the direction, and the music are all like completely in sync, completely in harmony. There's not a bum scene really in this movie we can nitpick about it. But like, you're watching this and you're just watching the best that Hollywood can make, I think, at this era. Do you agree with that? It's like an amazing plate of chicken Parmesan. In a good way? In a good way, yeah. It's like, it's not that complicated. Like the Dantanas chicken Parmesan? I love Dantanas chicken Parmesan. It's gone downhill a little bit. It's my favorite. I'm sorry. The protein to sauce ratio. I'm coming in here. I'm coming in here throwing you. Andy, no. Save that for hottest day. Dantanas chicken Parmesan is wonderful. All right. It's just, it looks on the surface like it's going to be simple. But then when you cut in and you look at the layers, you look at the depth, the way that the sauce meets the cheese meets the chicken, there's a lot going on here. There's a lot. It's deeper than it seems. And it's only $29.95 on the menu, you know? Well, we also have. Not at Dantanas anymore. We have chicken Parmesan prices for Crow and Pierce. Yeah. Which is one of the things that really helps us. Crow's not even Crow yet. He's barely Crow. Knew him from the one Denzel movie. Didn't know him from anything else at the time. I think it's Romper Stomper, right? That was his biggest movie to that point. Yeah. Have you guys done that yet? Romper Stomper? No. That's a good pick. That would have been the final. Yeah. The final edition for the show. CR 27. That's a fun one. And you wanted to do an entire Nazi month? Is that what you said? Nazi adjacent? The Believer? What else could you do there? That's right. Yeah. Coming out of this movie, would you bet on Pierce or Crow being a bigger star? Because that would have been on Crow. But Pierce is, it's a great movie for him. I thought that they would both be big stars. Yeah. And Pierce is actually a little bit weirder. Like the parts of the character that, the reason why he gets the part, right, is because he has the cheekbones and he looks like a leading man. Straight jaw. Yeah. And he's kind of a freak on the margins. And I think that that served him well in the later part of his career. But I thought that he was like, yeah, he's going to be the more handsome leading man type coming out of it. I guess I thought Crow, the movie really loves Crow. Yeah. It's really, really interested in Bud White in a way that I find even the book isn't as interested in Bud White. And you can tell, and Curtis Hanson, the director, talked a lot about how most of the executives wanted the movie to be Bud White's movie. Yeah. And they wanted it to be like. Yeah. Like, almost like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like the toughest cop in 1950s Hollywood. And obviously, he wasn't going to let that happen. But, I mean, Crow went on to have the bigger career. I don't, I'm not sure if this is true. this isn't my hot take or what, but Pierce as an actor is just a fascinating guy. And his career is really, really interesting and where he's gone. And the fact that he's still cooking, like he's still doing his best work right now says a lot. Crow is in a way different place. So the legacies are kind of perfect, right? Because one guy really went up, the other guy did fine. Yeah. And then they kind of traded places somewhere along the way. So it's really interesting in that way. He's a little bit, I don't even know if he's a little bit older. How much older than DiCaprio is he? Like maybe five, six years, right? For him, it's not L.A. Confidential that's always the big question mark for me. It's Memento because I think it would be relatively easy to project him into a number of Christopher Nolan leading roles going forward. And at which point you start to get into like, could that guy have been Batman? Well, there is like, there are a bunch of Bale movies you could have thrown him in and he probably would have been able to drive the car. He's a great comp. That's it. We can save this for the casting part, but this was a question I had too because obviously the casting makes this movie and the casting was kind of, not controversial, but more challenging because, as Curtis Hanson said, he wanted unknowns so that the audience didn't have preconceived notions. But if you think about, I'll defer to the film experts here on this, but like, who are the other 30-year-old people that they may have been trying to put in this movie? There's some, it was kicked around. McConaughey was the one. The casting what-ifs weren't what I wanted. McConaughey was the big one. It's funny, it's a perfect Damon part. But he was a little young, right? The Guy Pearce one, it's basically, he plays that part in The Departed nine years later, right? Guy Pearce is like, almost 10 years older than DiCaprio. I don't know if I would've bought McConaughey as Exley. I think that would've been a bad move. It's coming off Time to Kill where it would be pretty much like an extension of that character. And they're wearing the same glasses as in Time to Kill. Because Pearce had a certain energy. It reminded me of when Sean got to Grantland where he's like, I'm just here to do good work, but he was secretly scheming who he could take out. Listen. That's the Guy Pearce energy. I don't want to bogart this, but I did come into this movie realizing why you picked this group. Because if you had to do it, there is a hothead who can hang with everyone in the street. He's strangely popular with the ladies. There is a cerebral power broker who is very, very moral. There's another charming power broker who knows where all the bodies are buried in a senior role. That's me. So is he Dudley? And I'm committing cramps. And then you had to get a semi-self-loathing guy who moonlights in Hollywood and kind of forgets where his bread and butter is and gets called back. So it kind of works out. Yeah. Okay. Hollywood Andy. We've got a beautiful Lynn Bracken over here too in the producer's chair. Craig's going to be like, it's all hush. That's a Simon Bacon character. He's showing Matt Reynolds the business. They're all bad. Come on, Craig. It's just acting. Yeah. I think that makes Gahow, Johnny Stompanato, of course. Oh, yeah. No question. Well, I wrote this down. L.A. is a beautiful, seductive, fucked-up place that's really here to break your dreams and steal your soul. Is that what we told Sean when we wanted him to move for Grantland? I believe it was. I'm so happy that I'm here. Honestly, I love it here so much. And this movie is a good reason why. I think most people have this weird, awkward relationship with the city, and I'm like, I love it. I love that it's a shithole. I love that it's full of people who are doing terrible things to each other every day. I think that's fascinating. It's way more interesting than you would have it be understood when you're watching movies in the 90s, and you're like, oh, this is the city of dreams. Dispense with all that. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the nastiness of the city, and this movie is all about that. Really? Oh, go ahead. No, just worth noting, because Curtis Hanson is from here, and I feel like you could, he's not as interested in the narratives or presenting it a certain way. He's just like, well, yeah, this is also a place. There's something kind of melancholic about watching this and watching Boogie Nights because I think they're both, you know, obviously period pieces made in the 90s about earlier eras of Los Angeles, and one thing L.A. had, I think, even up to maybe the point where we moved here, was still those bones were still there. Like, you could still probably shoot the outside of the Formosa and not have a target next to it. Right. And now that it's kind of, I think, fully changed. I think you can still find it in different neighborhoods, but it's wild watching this movie and thinking about how little they must have had to do when it came to Hollywood. You know? Yeah, in the 90s. Because if you're shooting Hollywood in the 90s, I mean, it doesn't look that much different than Swear's, you know? It's 45 years between when the movie is set and when they filmed it, and it's 30 years. 30 years since they made it. Yeah. One of the great themes that we've talked about in other Rewatchables episodes about L.A. that everybody comes here wide-eyed with a dream, right? And sometimes it really works out. Sometimes it kind of works out, but multiple characters say this in the movie. Like, Kim Basinger says at one point, like, basically says, I didn't obviously come here to do this, but it's kind of how I ended up. Right? Some people try it, try it, try it, and they leave. And we knew, you know, I'm older than you guys, but we had a bunch of people when my kids were younger that could keep the parents in schools and one guy's trying to be an actor and another person's trying to be a director. Eventually, it just doesn't work out. You moved here for a job in show business. Right. I moved here to write for a TV show. But this is, this is kind of how it goes. And sometimes the city chews you up. I mean, the corruption stuff, which I think we've seen in the last 30 years has morphed into different, more public versions of this. But that underbelly of what was going on, that was always part of the romance of LA. Like, right? It's like, could make you, could break you, be found dead. You don't know who the good guys and the bad guys are. Yeah, a lot of people who don't want to know how the sausage is made. Godfather, Jack Waltz. That's right. Cartoon. Listen to me, my crap-micked friend. Jack would have been great in this movie. You could have easily thrown him in. But, there were two quotes in here. One was, life is good in Los Angeles. It's paradise on earth. That's what they tell you anyway. DeVito says at the beginning. And then, how can organized crime exist in a city with the best police force in the world? Which seems to be, you're big on these Elroy books, but this seemed to be a huge theme in these LA books in the 40s, 50s, 60s. Yeah, so he writes this quartet of novels, the LA quartet. It's Black Dahlia, Big Nowhere, which is my favorite, LA Confidential, and then White Jazz. And like, they kind of get increasingly Byzantine and hallucinatory as he goes on. And he would later take on the Kennedy assassination, one of your pet projects. You just recently talked about that. Wait a second. Yeah, and they try, we saw the Kennedy assassination. No kidding. Wow, congrats. That's great. Are you going to visit the White House? What's going to happen next? No, it's done. Yeah, it's done. They don't even need me. Yeah, they don't need him. He basically tries to write a secret history of Los Angeles in these novels. And some of them are fictionalized versions of real characters. So in the novel of LA Confidential, a lot of stuff is happening at what is basically Disneyland. Yeah. But is not in this adaptation. I think one of the things that really, really struck me about watching this and refreshing myself with the novel is it is an incredible adaptation. It's an incredibly brave adaptation, but it's also like two guys, Brian Helgeland and Hanson sitting down and just drilling like what is this movie going to be about? And every scene needs to be about one of the three cops and hopefully more. So initially it was eight, right? And they narrowed it down to three. It's got like eight characters. So many characters, so many different spinning out. And it spreads over eight years, right? It's like a much broader canvas. It's three years in this movie. And more real people in the book than are in the movie as well. The movie is trying to balance the truth of Hollywood versus this created world. It's an incredible book that I voraciously read right before the movie came out and was kind of shocked by how different it is. Yeah. But it has this like really readable but also awkward style where it's like all staccato. Like the writing is like five word sentences over and over and over and over again. So you almost like can feel the words coming out of the typewriter as you're reading it. It's a very unusual and it's different from his other books. His other books are not like that as much. I feel like they're a little bit. White Jazz is a little bit. It's like weird. The movie is way closer to the way like Robert Town writes in Chinatown than it is Elroy's novel. But the scenes are short in this film for the most part. And I feel like that replicates the feeling of page turning. Like where you're like, I gotta. I just gotta keep going. But you're right. I mean his. Elroy's authorial voice is. You can't replicate that on screen without an extensive. voiceover. But can you think of another example of an adaptation that is respected on both sides of the aisle like the way this is? Because I think people who love the book understand that it's a different beast and respect how well it's made. Midvis and Cruisin' are the only two. Was Cruisin' a book? I think it was a book, right? Was it a. It was a novel. Yeah. I've got it in my bag. Wow. Yeah. You've got it memorized. Andy's trying to adapt it right now for a remake. You want to be on the re-cruising? They're gonna cruise again. Andy was with us on the cruising. We'll definitely cruise again. Andy, have you ever. You're a guy who's written some scripts from time to time for the last, I don't know, nine, eight, nine, ten years. Yeah. Have you ever tried to adapt a book? Yes. How hard is it? What are the things we don't know? Well, it's very hard. I think the hardest thing is the fidelity issue. Like, when I did Briarpatch, I basically just took the characters and the plot and changed everything because, A, it's not a beloved. I mean, I love it, but it's not a very well-known book so you have that liberty to do it. But I think the most important thing is. when adapting anything is that you have to, as the adapter, try not to be too precious about what you know other people love and zero in on what you love because the enthusiasm is the one thing that you can carry from the book to the screen and I think that that's what these guys did to a degree that is almost unprecedented. When you see. When you watch Curtis Hanson on Charlie Rose from promoting the movie 30 years ago and he brings the same pitch that he brought to Arnon Milchan and the producers to Charlie Rose Rose, where he's like, here are six images that I found about coming to Los Angeles in the 50s that remind me of a place that I grew up in that is no longer that no longer exists and I showed him a picture of Aldo Ray and I thought about how I love these characters even though I hate them and those were the pillars of his adaptation and for whatever reason maybe it's ego or whatever he felt comfortable throwing everything else away yeah I think that if if I were trying to adapt to James Ellroy book I would just completely lose myself being like well we can't have this without this we can't have this without the Disney character we can't have this without Inez being a bigger character it's like a metastasized tumor everything touches everything and these guys are just like no we're fucking screenwriters and we need to like make every single scene go into the next one and every action has a consequence and every single thing needs to be about the theme of these guys and it's just a really really impressive piece of work in that way I think it's notable that of the LA Quartet only two of the books have been made into movies and the other one is a really bad De Palma movie and the other I always wanted to see White Jazz and Clooney wanted to make White Jazz for the longest time and you heard about like Smokehouse is making White Jazz for like five years and it never happened and that book is so cool and fascinating it's about like a cop who is also a hitman for the mob and then he has this like kind of confrontation with himself over how the city really works and he's also really hot for his sister incestuous crazy book they never happened but they're just they're really hard to do so I think Andy's right on like this is an amazing way of like kind of calling something that's very big like I feel like a 500 page novel down to two hours and ten minutes yeah it's just like there is a central mystery that we are going to solve it's ruthlessly efficient yeah I feel like I know you probably all noticed it when we were re-watching it like looking for a scene looking for something to either make a joke about or point out and it just rolls almost to the point of you just get lost in it and I stopped taking notes both times watching it yeah there's some stuff that I'm like this wasn't as electric as I remembered but there's nothing where I'm like you could just lose this really yeah it's a structurally almost perfect movie I noticed I watched it two times in the last week I was like man they're just this is like a big ass bone-in filet with like no fat at all yep just zooming through it I think if I adapted I would be more in the Kubrick um camp like kind of like fuck this guy with the writer I'm gonna get some moon landing stuff in here and uh I almost think if the author's mad at you when the movie comes out maybe that's where you want to be yeah but there's a difference between like the guy who writes Eyes Wide Shut who's like you know dead and like James Elroy going around being like this is a fucking turkey these guys are communists Kubrick does the same thing that Andy is talking about though which is like he just picks what he likes like in Lolita he's just like this is so funny to me and I'm gonna make this like a broad comedy about a 45 year old man who wants to fuck a teenager and that's you know there's a comic aspect of Lolita but it's not Peter Sellers doing bits you know yeah that's true so I think it's like it's kind of brave but also I think there's some like industrial design to the way that Curtis Hanson did it too where he was just like studios don't want to make period pieces they don't want to make noir movies because they never make any money I'm not gonna shoot this in black and white like every choice I make is gonna be so this movie can get made so that it can be commercially successful and that I can also make something that I think is artistically interesting it's a pretty like slick move by an old studio directing hand his run here where it's like Hand the Rocks a Cradle River Wild this and then Wonder Boys in 8 Mile kind of like culminating after that just the tour de force in her shoes erasure in her shoes right not at this table but it's kind of like the dark twin of Ron Howard you know what I mean like that incredibly safe pair of hands save that for your one man show that's a good one dark twin of Ron Howard yeah it is I John Howard what if the Apollo 13 crashed anyway he's just like this incredibly professional like maybe there's nothing in this that's like super flashy like holy shit Scorsese camera move or something you've never seen before but all of the jigsaw pieces wind up coming together that's the thing when I was watching it there is no even some of the questions that I know were categories we're going to get through about if it could be improved in certain ways like every single piece of this movie is in service to the movie it is the type of like buttoned up industry forward professionalism that we do not do anymore it kind of reminds me of Apollo 13 in that way where it's just like oh you're watching it and it's like oh man and then this and then this and then this and there's no ego in like Dante Spinotti he's like yeah I know how to shoot this and Jerry Goldsmith is like I get it I'm already 75 I've been 75 forever it's just a bunch of grownups who are like we got a really good idea for a movie this is how we're going to do it let's make the picture yeah well he did the opening credits wasn't that part of his pitch yeah he had all the postcards that was like literally how he made the movie yep yeah Hand That Rocks the Cradle is a great example that movie's been made 17,000 times it's being made now you could go on Netflix and probably find five of them right now they make them on Lifetime every week and for some reason that's probably the best one of all except for maybe Fatal Attraction we're doing it we're saving it for From Hell Month it's just so well done but what's the movie it's like Nanny's mad at the family and she's just getting her revenge like that's every Lifetime movie for some reason that's the best one it is I popped it in last night after watching LA Confidential just to be like what was Hanson's style to your point like trying to figure out what is it that he does like with the camera how the movies look the colors of the movie and it's a totally different looking movie totally different feeling movie but even though it is a bonkers script do you remember the premise of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle where it's like a woman is assaulted by her OBGYN and she goes public on him and then he kills himself and his wife his widow then gets a job as the nanny and then seeks revenge that's DeMornay's part yes so it's like it's a nutty Lifetime movie and the only person who's on tour is the special needs gardener who she frames oh that's right I forgot about the gardener the movie's amazing Julianne Moore's in it she's murdered in it like yeah it's a it's a bizarre movie Julianne Moore's Hall of Fame smoking performance CR just just smoke burring from every but it is like it is the ideas in it are Lifetime movie level you know like it is really dopey in a lot of ways but it looks so great and it feels so professional and you watch these interviews with Curtis Hanson and his heroes and some people he actually interviewed because he started as a journalist visiting sets as he talks about like Howard Hawks Sam Fuller and it's just like the thing is the thing and speaking of great shows where people talked around a wooden table I did watch this Charlie Rose interview and he's like well Charlie you know every movie has a simple concept behind it and you should just say it in a line you know and he's like so he asks about Hand that Rocks the Cradle and he goes every movie has a simple concept Charlie leans in and goes is it the hand rocking the cradle and he goes no it's just be careful who you trust when you turn around but intellectualism patented Rose charm what's the L.A. confidential your OBGYN kills himself and you say what so maybe that could be a new CR character Charlie I've tried it in my before what is L.A. confidential in a sentence city of angels is full of devils right sounds good there's a good good line in it I think it's I think it's Jack Vincenzo who says everybody wants something this is a real everybody wants something I wrote down some themes including tabloid culture still prevalent police brutality haven't gotten rid of that yet racism still exists good and evil sure seductive and beautiful L.A. that's here to steal your soul still exists how about using blackmail against the rich and powerful to advance your political and financial interests no no that's a bridge too far what else anything I think it's a really good movie about the real and the fake and how they coexist in the city very comfortably that like you can see Michael Jackson having a dance off with Spiderman on the streets of Los Angeles and that feels normal that you can step on the walks of fame and that feels normal that you can walk past the Chinese theater that you can go up to Beverly Hills and look at homes you can go on tours of people's homes in the city and also you know there's like a lot of crime and there's a lot of sadness and poverty and terrible things happening in the city on a daily basis and that like they all are just kind of coexisting in a way that is very unusual even for metropolis standards but to that point maybe and well I'm sure we'll talk about it later but maybe the most important scene in the movie is the scene when Exley insults the real Lana Turner who is actually dating a real gangster all of which was true John Stampinato and Lana Turner were dating by the way that was its own movie incredible you could have just detoured into a separate Stampinato movie I don't think they ever made it successfully because of her daughter right yeah her daughter Johnny Stampinato are you worried about spoiler alert there on the murder of Johnny Stampinato yeah don't worry about that Sierra what you said though when I moved out here to work for Jimmy's show and we were at a Hollywood Boulevard and would go out to get coffee and Spiderman and Superman were doing and it took me six months to get used to to it how weird everything was the man theater where the premieres happen the stars just the weirdness but you do get used to it you do and I don't know for everybody it's different for me it was like six months in I wouldn't I wouldn't blink I think that I start every single day here the same way which is like it's too bright it's too hot and then I get to 6pm and everything turns purple and it's the perfect temperature and you're like oh I'm never leaving you know it's like it's that kind of weird like you can exist in heaven and hell at the same time sensation that Elroy writes about incessantly well Greenwald mentioned the three types of police officers in this movie aggressive rule breaker star fucker personality builder and straight arrow idealist and they do a great job within 20 minutes of like okay I get I get your type I get you I get you Cromwell hmm what's he up to and it's just well the genius move that they pull is that they all have to go before the police commissioner and respond to a the same question which is are you going to rat on your friends right and actually says yes. says maybe and bud says fuck no one of the ingenious ideas of the book that is also really well preserved in the movie is that like those three characters are three very clear male archetypes post-world war ii right there's like the gi bill college boy there's the world war ii grunt right who's in the trenches who's like all muscle and then there's like the very cynical like i just want to get what's best for me person in the 50s is trying to kind of get fat as he heads into the second half of his life and those are like those set up i think kind of an archetype of masculinity over the next 75 years in america that are really smart and the idea of using them as like this triangle of trying to solve something together is really really fascinating you know they kind of do represent like one person ultimately they kind of feel like the totality of a guy living in a city well so each one of them during the course of the movie tries to overcome the limitations that they realize they have placed on themselves yeah like bud's whole thing is that he's not smart enough to do it until someone tells him to do it and he's like yeah they all want to be the thing that they are not like like actually wants to be his dad jack wants to be thought of as moral even though he knows he's not and bud wants to be smart even though he's don't forget all the call girls who want to be various stars yes they get cut yeah they get cut that word cut to look like if you could be cut to look like anyone who would you be cut to look like chandler big that's perfect rolo tomasi yeah one of the greatest stealth plot ideas of all time because i was thinking like they're the big ideas like where the kaiser it's like ironically spacey kaiser soze awesome oh holy shit what's in the box oh again spacey yeah you know the the six cents we all know like the huge ones the stealth i don't know what this is and then it reveals itself in a very small way but you're like oh it's it's way up there i don't even know what it's competing it's a movie invention the rolo tomasi idea is the is hansen and helen like coming up with themselves there's such there's elegance and efficiency and play throughout the entire movie because you're thinking about these different archetypes the movie does i think people can watch this movie and be a little confused the first time potentially it doesn't really hold your hand and yet if you watch it again you realize that it does do the chyron of the character's names it does show susan leffert's face when we first oh yeah it nudges you and then when you get something like rolo tomasi you can imagine helen and hansen for months beating their heads against the wall being like how can we combine these moments how can we educate the characters with something that is clever with something that is gets us along the track fast you couldn't have called it john malone like the rolo tomasi was really smart it's a memorable thing my son i watched it with my son he missed it he didn't because well it's the two and then when when cromwell says that them you really have to be paying attention to pierce's face so i i don't think he totally got it and pierce does such a great job in that scene but just because he does a lot of draw bone yeah but it's like that's the way it usually looks so dudley wouldn't pick up on actually looking like he has to take a shit anyway like it's always kind of how his eyes are doing craig did you had you seen this movie before no was it hard to follow and did you get the rolo tomasi i did get the rolo tomasi but to andy's point i had trouble sometimes there are so many last names just being thrown around throughout the entire movie that i had to kind of stop and almost like go to another tab and be like wait which one is has this last name that's the last name that's the last name that's the last name part was harder but i did catch rolo tomasi okay it's funny it's like there's two things that jump out at me when i watch it one is that buzz meeks is the one of the main characters of the previous novel so like his his life and death in this book is much more significant kind of um and then the heroine which kind of is a runner throughout the plot of like somebody stole the heroine from mickey cohen and it's like that is a major animating factor in the book and it kind of gets yada yada at the end of the movie i think he's never said it but i think it's one of the reasons why elroy is very hot and cold on the movie is because it cuts out that part of it which he's that's like the way the drugs started running through the city is a big theme of all of his novels and the movie is not really super interested in that yeah same thing with the freeway yeah like the sort of the the actual spine of what was changing and how it was going to be changed is kind of yada yada yeah yeah do you miss heroin as a big plot in a movie feels like we're not getting it as much lately well i mean we live in a time where you know like a different kind of drug i think dominates these kinds of movies too like opioids is really yeah it's just a different thing but like i remember vividly talking to my dad when he was literally on a heroin task force for years and then they like kind of paused that and shifted their focus onto more fentanyl related cases when he was working because everything in this country changed it doesn't mean heroin is gone but it just doesn't hold this this is the rise of heroin you know like this is the rise of yeah you know coming up next take heroin or fentanyl what's a better movie drug in that what sean was saying chris it's like the rise of skywalker yeah that makes sense yeah yeah uh you mentioned the screenplay and how it came from the 1990 james elroy novel where um basically hansen said he was talking about the apparently golden era of the 20s and 30s which had been basically bulldozed i was trying to think of other movies and tv shows that kind of hit that a little bit and i was like i don't know i don't know it madman when they went to la which i can't remember i haven't i gotta re-watch my madman's my next sauna show after i'm done with thrones your instagram followers after i get out of the 1300s and go to the 1960s um but uh but madman was in la almost for the whole season right and didn't it tap into this i'm i'm remembering vaguely he would go he would go occasionally and then then it's certain then one season pete is living out here and it was the only time they um exteriors because they shot la for new york the rest of the time so everything was which kind of helped the show because it was kind of hermetically sealed but i think it definitely captured the sense the still the boom times of being out here that this was a place where everything worked and was golden and verdant and full of possibilities and opportunities and sunshine yeah well and pre-sports because the dodgers come late 50s and so do the lakers right and then the angels come and then all of a sudden it's like la here we go yeah pre-wally joiner yeah but but that idea that's in this movie too of like we're selling it we've decided on the dream we're going to sell people yeah but we had to create this too this is everything i mean sean's beloved babylon is also about this it is that's probably the best representation of that period of time that this movie is kind of reacting to it's a tv movie nope it's a feature film directed by damien chazelle starring margot robbie came out in the theaters yep yeah good film i'll look for it but you could also make the point i think it's i think this is something that curtis hansen did as well when he was pitching it around that most noirs that we think of as classics are set in like the 30s and 40s um which was psychologically and physically a different time in america fashion is different intentionally and and the only 40s in this movie is veronica lake then that's intentionally she's as we say cut to look like that um everything else is just an abundant optimistic time and this is still the underbelly of it so hansen held a mini film festival for the people in the movie and she was like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i haven't read your sub stack today can i ask you i don't know if you covered those would the most fun part about directing a film be like programming the pre-film the film festival for the cast that would that would underline the fact that i don't know how to make films but i do know how to program a festival we brought in sean fantasy for film festival um did you have any thoughts on those five i've seen all the movies and i love all the movies i've seen all the movies all of them i think don siegel is like i don't know if you mentioned him as like a director that hansen really likes but that's clearly a you know kind of a for hire guy who can work in a lot of different sorts of dramas but is really good about like guy with a gun guy with a gun who's on a mission who's got a problem to solve a lot of his movies are like that um and then the killing the kubrick movie is really interesting because there's a lot apparently of sterling hayden's character in that movie in the bud white performance that russell crowe looked at him yeah because all the movies are like that um and then the killing the kubrick movie is really interesting because he's like the incredible hulk yeah he's the biggest guy in la in the book i think crow looks pretty jacked in this movie yeah but there's a couple of shots where you're like he's like a little bit taller than dandy devito yeah how tall do we think crow is he's listed at six i looked it up this is like a major league baseball i think he's like an iverson got a couple inches in the the major league baseball heights thing has been my favorite it's funny it's a three inches city he went from six one to five ten what yeah because they're measuring all these dudes for the strike zone a lot of height lying going on wait so everybody this is an amazing story i got billy gill come on and do the whole breakdown of this yeah there's been a lot of height lying um we're gonna take a quick break and then i want to talk about the actors this episode is brought to you by fire tv you've been there settling in for a relaxing evening of tv you waste half the night scrolling 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Tramphya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphya, proper training is required. Tramphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit tramphyaradio.com. The actors. Russell. Crow. So I know this movie got nine nominations, but I look at it as like the starter kit for Proof of Life. This movie walked so Proof of Life could run? Yeah. I don't know, was that part of CR month for you? Absolutely, it went into the math, yeah. Stuff of Legends? Yeah, Stuff of Legends. But you can see it. You can see where the next 10 years are going. Like, he's just a movie star in this movie. I tell you, Caruso could have done L.A. Confidential. So I had that in. He would have been an L.A. version of it. Wow, he would have been good. Can I. I had. I had this in my recasting couch. What about him in the DeVito spot? No. Not Sid. Listen. No, I think Vincenzo. I think he would have been a really interesting Vincenzo. You think it would have been Spacey? I think. I mean, he's a little younger. A little younger. But. I mean, he could do X-League, but he's not. CR is alive right now. Look at CR. Because I'm trying to think of like what I. Caruso at that time, is this pre- or post-NYPD? This is post-NYPD and post-J. So Stensland. Post-J. Pre-CSI and pre-Proof of Life. Yeah. Available. Jack would have been a good one. It kind of fits the book a little bit more. I mean, Jack's a little like washed in the book. And in the movie, it's like. Boy, he could. He's basically like the double for the guy. He's like Dean Martin. But Crowe, perfect. Guy Pearce. We mentioned the Bale thing. I think that's a great comparison. I think this is Bale. They're making this movie in 07. It's clearly Bale is X-League. 2005 range. Because you got to admit. You got to admit. You got to admit. You got to admit intelligence for sure. And that kind of posture, right? That stiff posture. But then there's like. He's got some stuff going on, you know? He doesn't grab Lynn Bracken lightly. He grabs her. No, and also there's the scene that I really caught on rewatch is when the cameras show up outside the Night Owl and Dudley like puts his hat on and actually kind of flexes. He does. What did Wesley call Sicario? He does the gym flex. The gym selfie. The gym selfie of a performance in that moment. And then Spacey, who from 95 to 99 rips off Usual Suspect 7, Outbreak, Time to Kill, L.A. Confidential, American Beauty and wins two Oscars. Yeah. And he's really good in this movie. And now it's like Kevin Spacey, problematic to say the least. I think even to Guy Pearce, especially. Yeah. Yeah. He's just a really good actor. I think this is his best performance. I'm with you. I thought that would be on an island with that. Not nominated. I think he's been more iconic, obviously, as villains in movies and more memorable in certain movies. But given that he's on screen for 25 minutes and is doing a lot of acting with his face and not with his words. That's like some of my favorite lines and line readings in the movie. Also, a classic Spacey performance where it's like, is this guy straight or gay? Is this guy a good guy or a bad guy? Is this guy funny or not funny? The layers to the scene with Matt Reynolds, where he's like, yeah, show business. Even like when he's talking to Exley, it's like, is he flirting with this guy or is he just talking to him? Like there's, it's always, he's like that last level of actor where he's playing it where you're trying to figure out what he's up to in the scenes. And that was with House of Cards. He's basically playing this guy as an older House of Cards as a senator. And everything about the role is performance, which increasingly as he got more rewarded for his performances, that became what he did is he was doing shtick most of the time. Yeah, I don't feel like this. This was shtick and all. There's a moment that I, one of my favorite moments in the movie, this really small moment is after they've told the boxer that they're going to help his brother get freed and they go back to the car and the guy's like, you're going to come see me, right? You're going to go talk about it. And Spacey just has the cigarette in his mouth and he goes, keep it up, keep it up. And it's like, it's such a perfectly choreographed bit that fits the character because the character is always looking for the moment to camera because that's what he admires most. There's a really great Elroy quote about Spacey that I think kind of sums up both his performance, and also kind of how we understand him as a public person and even some of the thorniness without actually coming out and saying anything specific where he says, Spacey is so deft, he is so controlled, is so subtle, is so good at suggesting a character's inner life with a minimal of outward action, he glides. There's something amorphous about the guy. I met him a couple of times. I don't have any kind of rapport with him, you know. I like him well enough, he's not a bad guy, but there's a mask that's up when you meet him personally and I imagine that this helps him when he immerses himself. It's a deep immersion performance. Some of the best self, loathing I've ever seen on screen. Yeah, like I still think that will also come up in other parts of the pod, but like him coming across Matt's body and like the wordless kind of like funeral he has for Matt, but like kind of also himself as he like slides down is like, that's really, really good shit. You know, like that's. The problem with his career, which was, I mean, that run was incredible. He could never, like remember he made that terrible movie, Pay It Forward? Oh, yeah. Tough one. He could never just be a normal person. He couldn't be like, Kevin Spacey is now a high school teacher with a heart of gold. He always had to play these mysterious guys and I gotta be honest, I think he's like a one-on-one. I don't think he exists anymore. This was like a specific type of actor who kind of, you kind of knew what the perfect Kevin Spacey role was and I don't know who's filled that void since. I don't think we've found the person. I think that kind of character forward, mainstream American drama, it just doesn't really happen that much anymore. He did actually pivot to television because he was kind of an actor who could really thrive in that space. But, you know, when you go back and look at the movies and the parts that he took on, it's not unreasonable to be like, there's kind of a red arrow pointing at the unseemliness of this person. Sure, right. And almost the industry telling you by how they're casting him, like what they think of him, that is really fascinating. And what's so weird is, I remember at the time when he was at his apex, he was always talking about how Jack Lemmon was his hero. Yes, that's right. Access to Jack Lemmon. And the thing about Jack Lemmon was that everyone loved Jack Lemmon. Yes. He played in Everyman, whether it's The Apartment or Grumpy Old Man. You're like, I like that guy. So warm. Yeah, Kevin Spacey and The Odd Couple, you would have been like, is he going to kill Oscar? Yes, absolutely. I think the chorus is he gets to like Lemmon. Lemmon is like, in a way, like the Margin Call performance where he's kind of more like Shelley in Glengarry and doing that kind of hang on. Which he can do. But is kind of an outlier. He's right. Like there's a lot of Kevin Spacey performances you'd be like, so you picked him to be the guy in Seven. Interesting. Yeah. No, it's true. He's the kind of guy who'll cut his fingerprints off. Interesting. What's probably worth restating for the younger audience is that he was the star. He was the top-billed star of this movie. And that, speaking of professionalism, with Curtis Hanson, what he could do and what he couldn't do, he was like, my deal-breaker is I want unknowns. And we'll get to that in terms of these other cops so they don't have a predisposition about them. For Dudley, I want someone that everyone thinks is the farmer in Babe so that everyone will like him. So we'll do that misdirect. And then we'll have a movie star play. Jack Vincennes. And he got Kevin Spacey. He said he tried to get him to make it before he won for Usual Suspects. And it was winning the Oscar as I think one of the big reasons why this movie got to go. Because it wasn't going to go just with Pierce and Crow. It was just a certain type of part and he was the best at it. But if you put him in like the ref as like the husband, it's just not going to work. Kim Basinger, there's two separate conversations here. Conversation number one, CR, the Catherine Tramiel, would you throw your life away for this obvious stay-away award? pretty solid. Pretty solid choice. It's pretty, she's operating at a high level, but the Oscar? Well, that's the second conversation. She wins Supporting Actress. And if you were saying, hey, if you knew nothing, who won the Oscar? Would it have been like a kind of a fourth round pick? From this movie? Maybe like the ninth pick if we did a draft? From this cast. From this cast, cinematography, director, adaption, you pick any category. Julianne Moore, I personally would put Bridget Fonda and Jackie Brown. Also, this was the year you were whipping votes for Gloria Stewart. That's right. I heard she was quite difficult to work with. I deep-dived that Oscars year, but before we do, Craig, did you, were you surprised she won the Oscar for this? Shocked. I mean, I would have given her a Razzie. I think she's probably the only character in the movie where I'm like, this takes me out of it a little bit. I think it is like, among the more bizarre wins in recent Oscar history, I don't think she's bad. Yeah, I think she's fine. She just screws up our perception of the performance. I think if she was, if she didn't win the Oscar, you'd be like, she looks enough like Veronica Lake that this is interesting. She's the same character as the natural and the lady that seduces Redford. It's no different. But the Oscar is just like, she has four scenes. They're fine. She's in the same apartment wearing the same gown, having the same conversation four times. First of all, that's a lovely house in Hancock Park. Sure. Which I think we need to recognize. We have a whole place to talk about that. Can't wait. I was confident that was coming up. But I think that like, Hanson is really good with actors, and is very fond of actors, and he gives her her opportunities to show more variety than she had been given in a lot of other parts. And certainly even what this part would suggest, like there's the moment when they're in the theater watching Roman Holiday and Bud whispers something to her and she's a little playful and throws popcorn at him. So he's giving her a chance to succeed. But my question, Sean, as the local Oscar expert, I feel like Oscars like to do this thing where it's like we're rooting for this person who got a chance to show us something and it's time to reward them as the next phase of their career begins. And tip, there wasn't really a next phase for her. Well, is there a precedent for that? Usually it's when someone has made like 10 or 15 all time beloved classics or they've been a part of like something really special about movie history. And Kim Basinger is a beautiful star and a good actor. But like, what are her five best performances? What are the unforgettable moments in Kim Basinger movie history? You know, she's Vicki Vale. You know, she's she's she was a Bond girl. She's going to say nine and a half. She's in nine and a half weeks, you know, which is like a good. Parodic thriller movie. Craig, you should watch out with Liz tonight. Nine and a half weeks. I think you're right. It almost seemed to be like, OK, well, we can't wait to see what you do next. But usually when they give someone like this an award, it's someone like Amy Madigan, right? Who's like in their 60s or 70s. And they can't wait. We got to go through this. I deep dove this. So she beats Joan Cusack in In-N-Out. Wild nomination. Good performance. I think she's good in that movie. She's very good. She's very. She plays the wife of a man who is gay, who like isn't coming out, but is coming out. And it's like. Who's the star of that movie? Is that Kevin Kline? Yeah. How's that movie aged? I haven't seen it a long time. It did shoot in Northport, which is the town next to me. And when it was shooting, it was like Frank Oz and Kevin Kline are making a movie next door. And it seemed like a big deal. And then I think Tom Selleck was the big name at that moment. That was great casting. I thought we'll do the rewatchables for AG month. Mini driver and Good Will Hunting. Sure. Performance. Yeah, she's. I don't think she should have won, but I thought she was good in that movie. Yes, I think she's excellent and I love her. Julianne Moore and Boogie Nights. I mean, this is. What the fuck are we doing? So fucked up. What are we doing? So fucked up. Like we should just put a thousand people at a movie theater, show Boogie Nights and LA Confidential and be like, guess who won supporting actor? It's just insane. It's a good way of putting it. It's a great idea. I think that. Should we do like the Jubilee, like debate style thing with Gen Z kids, but do it for Oscars history? Oh yeah. This one isn't a debate. Like Julianne Moore, her job is 30 times harder in that movie. Yes. I just think that movie had a little bit of a stigma. It's porn. Nineties. It was just, it was on the edge. It was. I had a lot of like a claim for how, but it was a young director and they were just like, fuck that. But Lynn Bracken is also a prostitute. It's not as though it's like. I know. But is there, can you look at this, Sean, and like see the gamesmanship involved? Because people, voters. Do you think Gloria Stewart was, came in second? So Gloria Stewart was the fifth one from Titanic, the old lady. She's still talking about Jack, who she spent a weekend with. Meanwhile, she has this whole fucking family. She's in like 80 seconds of the movie. I'd be so mad if my wife, Van and I talked about this. She dies and she remembers. I'd be so mad. That guy. We lived together for 60 years. She spent 24 hours with him. I don't think that's why Gloria Stewart was punished and humiliated at the Academy Awards when they gave Kim Basinger this Oscar. But do you think that like the thinking person's voter in this case voted for Kim Basinger because they knew LA Confidential wasn't going to win? I'll tell you what I think happened. I watched a bunch of the making of documentaries that are on the Blu-ray for this movie. And in every single. Is that physical media? Physical media. Yes. It's a Blu-ray. Every single interview when they are asked about Kim Basinger, just like she's just like the best person. She's just really cool. And Danny DeVito is like, you know, she just really cares about the work. And she's like a really nice person. And there's none of this weird like talking around Kevin Spacey being a maniac stuff going on in the interview. Kevin, what he did after work, I can't say. Do you think Kevin got a, hey, Kevin's Kevin. But when you go back and look at the year, she won BAFTA. She won SAG. She won the Globe. She won everything. She dominated the season. So really weird. People just like her. There should have been Twitter back then because I think they would have liked been like, let's really interrogate this. Are we really going to do this? I wrote down a couple more. Bridget Fonda, Jackie Brown, Heather Graham and Boogie Nights. Yeah, why not? Sure. Sigourney Weaver and Ice Storm. Yeah, well, that's a good one. Parker posing waiting for Yes. Although the Oscars does do comedies. Yeah. But I think you could make a case for, all of those to at least be nominated. Really strange year. This is a new game I'm playing with IMDBs when IMDB suggests the four movies you know the person from. What do you think IMDB says known for for James Cromwell? This is great. Babe, Pig in the City. Eraser. You still have a named one. Not one? Really? Does TV count? Does it do TV? No, no. It's four movies. Known for. This is it. Wow. This is my new favorite game. It's great. Great game. Sean's going to steal this. I might. There's a couple of animated movies that he did voice performances for. Are there any animated performances? No. L.A. Confidential is one. Star Trek First Contact. L.A. Confidential, iRobot. Oh, iRobot. The Green Mile and The Longest Yard. IMDB gave this for James Cromwell. The Longest Yard remake? With Sam the Warden. Yeah, and the remake. Wow. That's right. Come on, IMDB. We got to do, give us a little. How is Babe not in there? That's not right. Babe was in Goldman. Thought that was. The best movie of 1993 or whatever year. I'm shocked it's not in the top four. Do you want to talk Cromwell for a second? Incredible run by him. Did you? I thought Succession was the exclamation point. That was so good. It was a multiple exclamation point. I'm seeing Big Hero 6 as number two. Maybe that's a personal algorithm. I think that's algorithm. Yeah. I have that. Oh, you're looking at Google. Sorry. I thought you were saying Letterboxd. Oh, no. I was doing IMDB. Oh, IMDB. Okay. Got it. Cromwell, I assume when you watch this, you're probably like. When did you sort of feel like Dudley was not on the straight and narrow when you're watching L.A. Comics? I don't remember how I felt when I saw it in that theater. He is Satan across these four books. Did you know he was the bad guy? And I kind of didn't really until they basically told me. It was the only downside of reading the book beforehand, I thought, because the movie handles it so well. But the casting of him was so great because this is like three, three and a half years after Babe. Yep. And in general, he was always like, oh, I like that guy. It was like when they flipped. Ronnie Cox in the late 80s. Yeah. With RoboCop. Yeah. Like, oh, Ronnie Cox. It's like, nope. I like flipping them. Yeah. That's what they've done. Yeah. That's good. It's like a heel turn. I can remember seeing this in the theater at age 20 and being shocked having not read the books. I absolutely a memorable rug out from under me. The way that they film Jack's death is really, really good. Like, it's really, really good. Yeah. He's really great in this. What do you think with the new strike zone? How would Cromwell fare? I mean, he's he's six, seven, six, eight. It was the biggest flaw of succession that him and Brian Cox were brothers. It couldn't even be in the same frame. It was like a foot and a half taller than him. You would need two Brian Cox's to reach. So nine Oscar nominations. It won for adapted and it won for a supporting actress. You know, the best actor in a supporting role that year, Robin Williams won for Good Will Hunting. Robert Forrester for Jackie Brown. No slander, please. Anthony Hopkins. Amistad. Greg Kinnear. And as good as it gets is the weak one. Terrible. That's like that tire's just wobbling in the back. And then our guy, Burt Reynolds and Boogie Nights. No John C. Riley. I think Spacey. It's kind of insane. He wasn't nominated. The only reason he was not was nominated was because he won. I think so. They were like, fuck him. And two years later, he wins again for American Beauty. Best actor. We've talked about this year before. So it's a weird one where you have Peter Fonda's. And Dustin Hoffman and Wag the Dog. Have you seen Uli's Gold? Do you prefer Uli's Gold or Lorenzo's Oil when it comes to ingredients you can get at Erewhon? They're very different films. Lorenzo's Oil is a very traumatizing film about a family, a couple trying to find a cure for their child's illness. It's really a sad film. Uli's Gold is about a beekeeper who's a kindly old man who's trying to make a connection with his family. I think they could have named it a movie a little bit better. Lorenzo's Oil. Because it makes it sound like it's like a land man, you know, like it's the 80s. We got to start using Lorenzo's Oil. They renamed Fleur de Lis to Lorenzo's Oil. So if you had to say Crow for best actor, Guy Pearce for supporting or Spacey for supporting, and you can only give one nom. It feels like the rare actor-actor for Pearce and Crow. Like two best actors. And that only happened a couple times, right? So who would you go with between Crow and Pearce? Pearce. Probably Pearce too. Yeah. Wait, you'd give Pearce the Oscar nomination over Russell Crowe for this movie? Yeah. I think that's the right call. What? I also think Russell Crowe is going to. Could have done both. Could have been like when we had two guards and all NBA together. But I think it shows a little bit more that he is not. American. Like I think his accent and his manner sometimes comes across as a little like, I'm still on the set of Virtuosity. I think Pearce is incredible. 138 minutes. Craig, plus 38. There's just a lot of food on the plate. I don't think you could have. You couldn't make the same movie for an hour and 40 minutes. That's just like not possible. But this did feel a little long to me. I did have a horrifying thought that you could have easily done this as a six-episode drama. There's like specific cuts. Yeah, but you would. You would need to have… If you were going to… Sorry. Please, anybody. I was just thinking, like, there is, like, natural, like, cliffhangers. They've tried making this as a TV show. Nobody has the stomach. Shut the fuck up about making this a TV show. I'm usually never a TV show guy, but I don't want anybody to do Elroy unless you've got the stomach to, like, do Elroy. Well, we have the evidence. They tried to make this a TV show. Twice. It failed both times. Perhaps what's a better way to do it, to express this. He's so sad. Ellie Confidential! Look what we used to be able to do. There are. What this movie does with, like, ellipses, with, like, just assuming you're going to get there, of condensing time, of showing you the five most interesting moments in this character's journey, is remarkable. And I went into the. I was reading the shooting script to see if there were, like, you know, novelistic disquisitions about whatever. 100% no. The things that got cut were, like, the two things that I have in my nitpicks of what I wish were in the movie. Like, it started with the more stuff about the freeway. Like, it was just more context table-setting stuff. Or you came in. You came into a scene a little bit before. Like, I think it starts with Johnny Stompanato and Bud and Stensland. Johnny Stomps. So there's more of that. And the payoff in the movie where he's like, I don't need your 20 bucks. I'm not a rat anymore. The first scene is him accepting 20 bucks from Bud and Stensland to be a rat. But you don't need it. I think if you told me that the same way that this is a movie made by really, really gifted craftspeople and, like, veteran filmmakers, if it was like, okay, Matthew Weiner or Vince Gilligan are taking on it the works of James Elroy. I'm vetoing it. That would be. I'm at least more open to that. But if it's just like. Can't. Coming to CBS. Sunday nights. LA Confidential. Are we doing this now? I'm ready. No, if the movie's at a certain level, I don't think you can do it. I think it's off-limits. Like, if they made a fucking Boogie Nights TV show. But obviously it is very. Like, you can't. People are very tempted. Like, Dahlia got made. They've wanted to make white jazz. I think Big Nowhere would be incredible. Wouldn't the move be to just do. It's a. Each season is a different. They're an Elroy novel and you just basically do that. You Castle Rock, but Elroy. It would be cool because of the way that all of the characters intersect. You know, famously, or infamously, Dudley survives LA Confidential. And like Chris said, he kind of hovers over the trilogy, the quartet of books. And so if you had, like, one amazing. If you had, like, John Malkovich as Dudley Smith across four seasons of TV, and it's 12 episodes each, and they're each an adaptation of the novels, and all the novels are long, that would be interesting, but it just has to be, like, the most. talented adapter of that kind of work in the world. And maybe it's Andy Green. Well, the other problem would be they'd be shooting it in Vancouver because we have a terrible mayor and a terrible governor, and we can't shoot shit in here because the whole film industry has gone to shit. We're going to take a break and come back. This episode is brought to you by Ethos. 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Visit the website for full terms and conditions. All right, so $35 million budget made $126.2 million. LA Confidential. Roger Ebert, four stars. LA Confidential is seductive and beautiful, cynical and twisted, and one of the best films of the year. No shit. Raj. Raj has been on fire in 2026. This is also like, you could have blindfolded me and I would have said pretty much that. That would be his review. Do your dad review this? I don't know. Probably. I had too many rewatchable scenes. I'll go through, I'll go fast. Crow meets Basinger the first time. Exley shows up at the Night Owl coffee shop after all the murders and then they take the picture after. He's like, hold on. I'll take my glasses off for this. Great shot. Crow goes to Basinger's house. She came on a bus with dreams to Hollywood and this is how it turned out. Thanks to Pierce, we still get to act a little. To be fair, she took a bus from Echo Park to Hollywood. Her mother lives, yeah. I do like you're the first person in five years who didn't tell me I look like Veronica Lake. He's like, you look better, right? Really good move by our guy. The interrogation scene. Can we talk about this quick? Why quick? This scene's a fucking banger. It's a masterpiece of fully, yeah. It's probably my favorite. I think it's my favorite. And just to be clear, where are we putting the parentheticals? Interrogation into Bud going to solve the real crime? You can have that, but it's just actually moving from room to room. Bud with the chair. Dudley and Jack, the sort of deep focus shots. It's just all the reflective stuff that they're doing. It's so awesome. Just quickly, Bud kills the rapist, almost fights with Exley. Exley kills three guys, becomes shotgun Eddie. We have a couple good action scenes. The Rolo Tomasi story. The two Johnny Stompanato scenes, which I'm just lumping together because we get, what do I get if I give you your balls back, you wop cocksucker? You're going to hear the word wop again? I'm half Italian. I can joke about it. And then the she is Lana Turner, and we get to see the Formosa Cafe. Then we get Lynn Bracken seduces Exley. And then Smith shoots Hollywood Jack. And then the Rolo reveal all in a row. Sierra, I have a question. The shocking Kevin Spacey death scene after Cromwell goes heel. The Rolo Tomasi, the way he says it and then dies. Is that eligible for the Jesse Eisberg? That's good. You should be proud of that right there. Don't worry if you don't make it any further award for best line reading. It's funny you said that because that was going to be my flex, but it was a different Spacey line. Oh, we'll save it. Okay. Do you like that new category? I'm excited. There are a lot of, I got to say, it's been a minute. There are a lot of new categories. There's a new category treat. A little bit. Yeah. No comment. I like to have a lot of choices. It's like a big diner. You want a corned beef sandwich? Cheesecake factory menu. Yeah. But like how often when you go to a diner, are you changing up the order? Because like the thing about a diner is you find what you like and you stick by it, right? I like trying to challenge myself to like, I think the thing that you get sushi at a diner. It's like, But you get it at Houston's, right? Sometimes. Sometimes, right? Yeah. You got them. The specials? Fine. Bill should start each pod by reading the specials, which is the new categories for the episode. Oh, that's a good idea. I like that. That's good. I have a cream of broccoli. Can I just add one or two? Well, I'm not done yet. Oh, you're still going. I have Bud finds the photos. Danny DeVito's truck. Yeah. Tough one. Convenient. He thought it was of him. Nope. It's not of you. It's of Exley. That's like when I see a social clip of The Watch, and I'm like, no, Chris. Chris. Chasing him down on the Pasadena commute. And then Bud versus Exley, where it seems like Bud's going to kill him, and then they decide to work together. Bud tortures the DA for answers, which includes the combo, toilet dunk, legs dangle outside the window. We don't get that often. Yeah. We get one, but not both. And then the big shootout at the end. Victory Motel. CRO talks about situational awareness, with action scenes, tight spaces where the camera always can follow where everybody is. It's a good one for that. It's really good. Yeah. And it's, it almost feels a little bit premature. Like when you're watching the movie, you're like, oh. We're doing this now. This is the big shootout. We're done. Okay. Because in the book, I feel like you're like, it's just like, you know, and the Victory Motel shootout isn't quite the same in the book and stuff like that. There's like a train and shit. But yeah. Also, Crow. Some of his gun work in this movie. leads to proof of life three years later. A lot of people don't make that point. I was just having a conversation about this the other day. With Meg Ryan? You know, since the emergence of wearing the tactical bulletproof vest, I think we've seen a different kind of like gun acting going on. Yeah. And it's also like, especially since John Wick. Yeah. But between this and To Live and Die in LA, I kind of miss guys running around with a revolver shaking everywhere. You know, where it's like, now jumping over something and being like, hey! I forgot to tell you, I was watching the first eight episodes of Miami Vice again because they're on Tubi. Pankow is in Glades. Yeah, I know. Couldn't, there was a Pankow, like a Pankow rejuvenation in Glades. I was going to text you about this, but I was like, I don't want to bother him about Pankow. You can never bother me with Miami Vice. It's two guys and one girl. And then the two guys realize they love each other at the same time. And the girl's like, hey, but we're the one girl. Listen. Tubi's flexing it for us. Yeah. Whole series is there. We talking about the Pankow sons? Yeah. Cousin Ira? Yeah. Pankow had a tough pod run to live and die in LA. You gave him a tough time. I think I liked him. I was kind of with Bill. Fantasy didn't have the balls to jump on the Pankow recasting bandwagon, but was hinting. You were more on my side than we are. Did you get a note in your mailbox from Billy Peterson about, he's like, hey, love your work? No. He's just, all he does is just roll in piles of money. That's great. I've never heard of podcasting. $20 bills in it. He just dives into it. He just Uncle Scrooges it all day. Just swims around and watches the bills fly. So what's your. What did you. What scenes did you have that I didn't mention? Well, we mentioned it, but when Exley and Bud and Vincennes go into the DA's office or the captain's office and they're being kind of confronted with, will you rat? The way that those three scenes are cut, another amazing Spacey performance when he is told that he's going to have the show taken away from him just on his face is amazing. And then putting Ed behind the mirror and observing when Jack is being interrogated, I think that whole section is so smart. And kind of like that's when the movie coalesces and you're like, oh, it's these three guys. Like, this is really what this movie is about is these three cops. What did you have for most rewatchable? You named them all, but it's the interrogation scene for me. It's the interrogation. It jumps up such a level and to see. It's always fun when the audience gets put in the same position as some of the characters when Jack says, are you sure College Boy is up to this? And he's like, I think you'll be surprised with what the boy is capable of. And we all lean in being like, oh, I guess we're about to be surprised. And then I didn't. Has there been other precedent of the manipulation of the live mic in an interrogation scene? No. He's conducting it. He's like Dudamel in there. He's a god. Yeah. He's like, he's making sure that the other guys can hear certain things that the other. And really good Foley on the snap of the switch. He's really. I had that in What's Aged to Best is when College Boy was an insult. Oh, yeah. In like the 40s, 50s, 60s. Like, oh, look at College Boy. We just don't have. We've lost College Boy. I don't know what it is now. Like, Master's Boy? Doesn't have the same ring to it. PhD Boy. Heck, I don't know. Just the era where you would make fun of somebody for pursuing higher education just somehow beneath. I feel like it's like that was for a minute people were calling guys libs. That was like sort of, hey, they're gonna let the lib. So that's the most lib thing I've ever heard. They think that's over-lib? Over-lib. They're like, I was at Errol on today and no one was calling me a lib. Libs are back, man. So we all have the. We all have the integrity of interrogation. I have the interrogation. Interesting. I have one other small one which is Bud visiting Pierce Patchett for the first time. That's such a good scene. I love that scene. We have not talked about Pierce Patchett and just like. Yeah, Strathairn. Come on. Strathairn is so good in this movie too. Our guy. Dion. Dion Dave. Okay. I don't want to piss on it. But he's so good and he can do that in any movie. Sneakers, like whatever. One of my favorite IMDbs including he's in the best Miami Vice episode ever. Tire Straits, Brothers in Arms. Yeah. Wow. The third episode of season two. Just to keep you in the loop. Cut the energy. Him and Bruce McCall. Yep. McGill. McGill? Bruce McGill. Yeah. Bruce McCall. Bruce McCall. Bruce McGill. His new coach at Creighton. I was watching Bruce McGill in a really terrible Bruce Willis movie that I like. Can you guess? The Color of Night? The Last Castle? Nope. Is it Hudson Hawk? Bruce McGill. Bruce Willis. Sarah Jessica Parker. Oh, uh. Striking Distance? Striking Distance, yeah. Oh, yeah. This is the boat, right? Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh boat cops. Disgraced cop doing that like Pittsburgh Coast Guard. That was to Pittsburgh what In-N-Out was to Long Island. People in Pittsburgh were like, Striking Distance. Willis was here. Willis was having a promiscuous. I kind of like that movie. Made it all the way to Philly. It's good. The third act where it's like all in that one boat and he's gonna move around the boat but he's being spied. Yeah, I saw it in Dirt Coat. It checks some boxes. I'll tell you. It's not that much. Cops not liking each other. There's. Disgraced cops. Pennsylvania. Come on. It's good. It's right in the heart of the Barry Bonds era too, is it not? It's like early 90s. Oh, it's the Killer Bees? It's pretty good, yeah. Well, Benita was on the Mets at this point, I think. He's still on the Mets, technically. A Philly guy with the most Philly joke of all time. When I'm hosting two big classics in seven years. It's CR month. We'll allow it. The only other thing I would shoot out is like a rewatchable. I have the interrogation scene. You know what's fucking great? Is the post-Exley shootout montage that they do to skip ahead time where it's like Exley gets promoted, Jack returns to badge of honor, Bud goes like, continues to see Lynn, and then you get like, you know, Bud keeps beating up all of the mobsters moving in on Mickey's turf and the tent opens. Those montages can go the wrong way. That one works. It really does. But I think it got, it's probably the worst part of The Godfather when it, Pacino. Oh, it's just the newspapers. Michael kills McCloskey and Salazzo and then it's like, it's like playing this carnival music and they're just showing newspapers. It's like, wow. The other risk you run is like driving the bus past something you actually wish you could stop and get out and spend more time in. Like the Santa Monica Freeway. Well, on the Santa Monica Freeway to Pierce Patchett's gender-bending champagne party. That's right. Which really, like they had a location. Yeah. You know, they brought in the cabaret dancers. Might bring those back. Those parties? Gender-bending parties at your house? Just, I might do have a Pierce Patchett party. Yeah. You should. Like guys, no limits tonight. Just a bunch of chicks wearing clutch sweatshirts. Some of the girls are cut like modern actresses. We'll just go for it. I'm listening. I'm listening. I was like, nothing. Craig's already RSVP'd now. What's the most 1997 thing about this movie? Tough one because it's set in the 50s, but it's got to be Young Crow, right? Would you say anything else? Kevin Spacey on the poster? Kevin Spacey as a leading male like Kevin Spacey on the poster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Spacey is probably very. I had, this is to, not to piss Sean off, but I had that this is a movie in the first place is the most deeply 1997 thing about it. Oh, yeah. This is a TV show. What streamer would this be on? Exactly. I don't know, man. We're coming off Project Hail Mary. Book adaptations are back. Like, this is the way with movies is adapt these really good novels into movies. This was how it was for like 40 years in Hollywood. But this was not a popcorn slam dunk beach read bestseller. True. True. Do you guys want to hear my son's review in the kitchen of Project Hail Mary? Sure. Did I tell you this? You texted it to me, yeah. He was like, how was it? And he said, it sucked. I was like, really? It sucked? People like it. He's like, no, it was good. It sucked, but it was really good. It kept my interest. And I'm glad I saw it in the theater. I was like, it sounds like you liked it. He's like, no, I liked it. I was like, do you think he was intimidated by thinking he was going against conventional wisdom? I think he was trying to zag because I don't know what he was thinking. We're still working on him. I do, to his credit, there's that thing where the expectations are really high for a movie and you're like, this did not meet the expectations. That's where we landed. It's good and I appreciate it, but it's not. The next thing he said was, it wasn't like 2001. That's his favorite movie. That's his next quote. That's true though. Yeah. It wasn't going to be 2001, Ben. So we're working. He's only 18. Work in progress. Special category I threw in, the Floyd Gondoli Butter in My Ass and Lollipop. Lollipops in My Mouth Award for something I just enjoy. I like scared characters with a puddle of pee underneath them. We get two in this. A home run. Huge. Every time. If someone pisses themselves, it means it's a good movie. I didn't think they'd go back to the well, so to speak. You know somebody's scared when they're just, the pee is running down their leg or there's pee under their seat. It's the last level of fear. Craig, don't put the cameras down beneath this table. That's how I felt when you guys asked me if I like Proof of Life. Craig, you like Proof of Life. If you just don't know it yet, you'll eventually realize. My Gondoli was Cadillac Eldorado's driving around LA in the 1950s. It's pretty cool. I just go for it. What'd you have for What's Age the Best, Andy? What's Age the Best? I thought your Floyd Gondoli would be like a group of men being told to go out and like pursue justice without mercy. Like that is just such a slam dunk for you. That is. I feel like watching movies is like that. What's Age the Best? Well, we already said racial profiling is an attempt to project dominance and safety in a community. Going great. I thought audience's willingness to explore twisty morality genre tales just not in movie theaters. You had tabloid culture. I feel like I feel like LA is still a rough adjustment for some outsiders. You don't usually get pulled into the Victory Motel. No. But, you know, emotionally it can be a tough adjustment. That's what working above Herbalife was, Grantland. That's right. That's right. It was kind of our Victory Motel. Yeah, that's what LA was like. What'd you have? Oh, well, my gondoli is when a seemingly kindly old Irishman is the most evil person in the movie. Which is also, we find that in the town as well, of course. There's many such examples. And this one has a great one in Dudley. But what's Age the Best is there was a really good interview with Hanson where he said, I love characters who only have one scene, but they're the star of that scene. And this movie is a great example of that. And there's a handful of actors when we get into some of the other character categories that we can talk about. And that's a really clever idea that I think has been dispensed with a bit over the last 25 years. And he was really good at that. Tarantino bought in with the Watkins. Yes. But it's like the coroner. The coroner has a whole day before Bud White walked into his office. I mean, Stensland is a great example of a character when he's in the scene. He's the star of that scene. Sure. That's a good one. What do you have, CR? For best? Yeah. Pierce Patchett as a proto-Epstein. Enriching himself, exerting control from the shadows, using blackmail. This is more of like a movie thing I think for the novel readers they're a little like, all right, but Dudley telling Exley he'll never be a great cop unless he can shoot a criminal in the back in order to get justice. And that's exactly how Exley kills Dudley. I had that as well. And just like the balls on these guys to do the Dudley, to make Dudley like a twist rather than going into it. We all know Dudley is like the dark prince of Los Angeles. And instead it's like, holy shit, this guy is taking over for Mickey Cohen. I have correct We're up to LA Cops, which you mentioned. I love movies where the police department hates one of their own cops. Oh, yeah. Always works. Shunning him. Yeah, and there's like, they're in groups and he's coming around the corner and they're just kind of stink eyeing him. Serpico, yeah. Yeah, that always works for me. I was kind of like, there's, I don't ever want to use Sora, the AI video thing, but I kind of want to put Inspector Todd in L.A. Confidential. Is that that fucking Exley out there? Just put him in every cop movie? Yeah, just increase racial harmony within the LAPD, yeah. Talking about getting plastic surgery is having you cut? Yeah. Like, we just need to bring it back? God just come back, yeah. You're going to have me cut to look like Nick Wright? Where's Chris been? Why does Chris have so many chiefs opinions? Why does Chris have a QB tier? Is Chris okay? DeVito, I mean, I know it's the 50s, so you can get away with it, you could have now, but when he. Rips off the back-to-back, did you know the DA is a swish, and then he does the Reynolds as an AC-Ducey, two phrases nobody said in 50 years? Yeah. Just, I thought it was. There's a lot of colorful Elroy-isms in the book, too, that are, you don't hear too often. And then Russell Crowe said that Elroy told him Bud White doesn't drink, so Crowe didn't drink during the entire shoot and described it as the most painful period of his life. And not ironically. Yeah, probably why he looks great by the end of the movie. I mean, he legendarily, like, builds his own bar at set, like, he has, like, a pub set up, or he did. Who did, so the best all-time drunk actors, Quentin Jaws is number one. We said Robert Shaw. He died when he was, like, 34. Richard Harris and Oliver. Tom Cruise. Oliver Reed. Oliver Reed was another, he died during Gladiator. Sterling Hayden. Sterling Hayden. Long Goodbye, didn't even look at the script. Yes, famously. Huge drunk. Peter O'Toole in Lion and Winter. Yeah, I mean, throughout his entire life. Peter O'Toole, great one. Robert Mitchum. Yeah. Incredible Mitchum story. I mean. Mitchum wouldn't do Saturday Night Live unless they gave him a case of Jose Cuervo gold that he wouldn't go on. That's over, I'm not doing it. That's pretty great. Nick Nolte was a famous one. That's a good one. I mean, Colin Farrell, you know, our beloved Colin Farrell for a time, you know, he was. Andy, could this be a new Ringer podcast for you, where each episode is just the history of a drunk actor? Sure, yeah. Do we do the full arc of the character? Remember how much time we spent talking about Robert Shaw and the Jaws? Yeah. We spent like 20 minutes. He was daring Dreyfuss to climb up on top of the boat. Shaming him. Dreyfuss was going to do it. Spielberg had to step in because he was going to die. Did you ask Spielberg about that? Yeah, we talked about it at length. It was roughly 50 minutes of our conversation, which is about Robert Shaw being shit-faced during the making of Jaws. What would it be now, Craig? Just somebody who took too many gummies? Who. Yeah, overdosing on CBD. Yeah. Yeah. CBD during a pod. Man, just. Soft. Again, we used to know how to make things in this country. We used to be really belligerently drunk on movie sets. We used to know how to cut women so that they could work in brothels modeled on movie stars. Now, to be fair, Kim Basinger has not been cut. We should be clear. She's not. She's dyed her hair a tiny bit. Dye her hair a tiny bit. Pride of Bisbee, Arizona. Ciara, what do you have for Great Shot Gordo? All the stuff in the interrogation scene, before Exley goes in, there's like a great one of. Jack in the front of the frame, Dudley in mid. Exley is reflected off the glass, and you can see into the interrogation booth to see the kid waiting for them. And it's just like, these guys are spinati. It's funny. I was watching the movie thinking that was like minus 250 on FanDuel, that that was going to be Ciara's Gordo. Did you have a different one? You love reflection shots. I do. You're a big reflection guy. Multiple split diopter shots in the movie. Like three, I think. Name them. Well, one in particular, when Exley and Bud burst into the DA's office, they show Rifkin in the back. Yeah. Yeah. In the background, and Bud in the foreground. Like, it's just, it jumps out at you. Yeah. I think also just the, one of the very last shots in the movie is Exley holding up the badge in the shadows of the cop cars arriving, which is just a beautiful image. I like the cop cars coming over the hill. That's really good. That was good. There's one other one too, which is like the, when Exley and Bud White are about to show down, like have a showdown in the street, and it's one of the only zooms in the movie. And it like zooms in on the two of them and captures them in the frame head to head with each other. This is the thing I wanted to say. Like, it is such a. It's such an unshowy movie in terms of camera work and direction. It is always serving the story. And then when I went through it to consider this category, that's what jumped out. The very few times that they choose to move the camera, you pay attention. So weirdly, one of my nominations for this category is like not even that memorable of a scene. But it's when Stensland walks out of Dudley's office after turning in his badge and gun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And he puts out his hand to shake Bud's hand. And we kind of move the camera around to this just wall of raw beef faces all being like, raw deal, Stens. And then we completely move the camera to see Exley coming down the hall. All alone. And similarly, you called it a minute ago, when Bud shows up at Patchett's house and he's at the top, and Patchett's putting at the bottom, and they're both in frame. And you feel the divide between them. Chess Rockwell, Brocklander's a word for best character name. Hollywood Jack, the big V. A lot of good ones in this. The big V. In two names. He pulled out two nicknames successfully. A lot of good ones. Pierce Morehouse Patchett, which is. P-I-M-P. It's pretty darn good. Yeah, pretty good. What about Buzz Meeks? Buzz Meeks. I would say there's like a shadow version of this category, which is Missed Opportunities, because there are a lot of characters in the film, some of whom have lines and have a role to play, and their names are Chief of Police or City Councilman. I think that's because those guys in the novel, at least the Chief of Police, are like. Real people. Real cops. Like, yeah. It's just, I feel like if you were able to like dine out in Los Angeles in 1998 and be like, guess what? I'm in the. Best Picture-nominated film, L.A. Confidential, and I have three scenes. Who do you play? Councilman. It's kind of a bummer. Yeah. It is a bummer. The Amanda Dobbins Award for Best Piece of Real Estate. Here we go. Shout out to Amanda. The L.A. Confidential House. It's in Hancock Park. It's right next to the 10th and 11th hole of Wilshire Country Club. And this is Lynn's house? This is Lynn's house. So it's basically the 11th fairway. It was for sale twice in the last. Seven years. And the first time. So it was on one of my walks. Went and checked it out. Went and did an open house before somebody fixed it up. And it was pretty beaten up. Yeah. But it was like the L.A. Confidential House. Everybody in the neighborhood knows the house. All that Bud White sperm. Is that what the issue was? Yeah. Keep the black light in the house. But it was cool. Did William Peterson buy it to put his money in there? Well, there's no backyard. It was like mostly a front yard and then a side yard that's next to the golf course. And it was kind of like this is something you'd really have to spend money to fix it up. Somebody bought it, fixed it up, and then sold it during COVID for $7.5 million. Do you think they gutted it or do you think that amazing front room is still there? I think they kept the bones, but I think they had to fix. It was one of those where you walked on it, you could feel the floors creaking. Yeah. It was old. It was buried under there. But it's fucking cool. And that's a really cool street that you basically come off Rossmoor, which is one of the first big Hollywood streets. You take a left and you go down and it curls around. And where it curls is where that house is. So you see it. And it curls right through Coinga. But it's a really cool, distinct house. I don't know how livable it is. It's funny. This is the category I picked for my flex category, but I didn't pick that house. I picked Pierce Padgett's house. Yeah, that's the architectural marvel. So I had some thoughts on the Pierce house because that's the runner up. I wanted it to be even bigger. The inside. I wanted it to be like this, like the fucking Babylon house. Oh, yeah. Yeah. If he's doing H, Sean, he's getting that H money. Yeah. Plus, oh, maybe he's using the product. He's also got to pay for all those ladies to get cut. Getting cut was more expensive than I think. That might not be covered by insurance. So you like the house? I don't. Are the interiors in the movie, the actual interior? I'm not sure. I've never been. I thought it was too modern. It's up the street from where I live. I've never been there. It's in Los Filos. It's the Lovell house. It's a very famous house. Very famous architectural masterpiece in LA that was built like 100 years ago. But it feels like it was designed in the 50s. And it's beautiful. It's a Neutra house. It was built in 27. The great thing about Hancock Park is like these houses have been around for 110 years and like some shit went down in a lot of the houses and you just can kind of feel the energy. But it's like, yeah, definitely. Like Amityville Horror Style? What do you mean? Well, you never know. Ghosts? Yeah. Who knows? Sean Fantasy Award for Stealth Homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. What a pleasure to have Andy here for this category. I'm excited for this. But wait, what about the real estate? I thought someone was going to mention Bob's Market in Echo Park, which is that the, you know, is like the three streets converging where the boxer is. And that's the, that's where Fast and Furious starts, right? Isn't that right? That's the market. Wow. I didn't want to bring that up, but it did look a little familiar. I thought a warm feeling. I thought of all months you would invoke Fast and Furious. Yeah, it's fine, man. I've never seen it. It's a big dead. I just thought you, I thought that was appealing to you, Sean. What do you have for a criteria orgasm? Two and they're related. As Andy mentioned, Bud and Lynn go to a showing of Roman Hollywood. The Andre Hepburn, Gregory Peck classic, Oscar winning movie, released September of 53. So it's right at the perfect time because this movie is December, January, January. And when Jack goes for a drink after the party at Badge of Honor, he goes to the Frolic Room, which is right next door to the Pantages Theater, which is showing on the marquee, The Bad and the Beautiful, which is, as you mentioned, is one of the key inspirations for it. this movie. Frog Room's still there. Still there. My only other criteria orgasm is an oral AU. You don't get to have criteria orgasms. This is Sean's solo category. I'm pulling one in there because it's music-based. You just joined in. It was. It's CR month. All right. It is CR month. Jerry Goldsmith based some of the score off of Leonard Bernstein's On the Waterfront score. That's pretty cool. It's a fact. CR month does get to have a criteria orgasm on CR month. He riffed on it. Do you. Have you ever orgasmed on the show? On this one? Yeah. During Saqqara, you just didn't know. It's a quiet death. It's a time to meet God. Little death. Just walked into the dark. Did you hear on the mailbag a listener said that the Emily Blunt character should have been Tom Cruise? It was an amazing email. Like Tom Cruise, the firm early 90s. Yeah. Young guy who's irrationally cocky. I'm not a soldier! It's pretty interesting thought. Maybe you could do that on Sora. Sure. Tom Cruise and Saqqara. You have a flex category. Let's see. I had Jesse Eisenberg. That's good. Don't worry if you don't make it any further. What was the best line reading? Was when Jack says to Exley, why in the world do you want to go digging any deeper into the Night Owl killings, Lieutenant? Because it's like, did that made you? So yeah, that was my favorite line reading. Butch's girlfriend word, weak link of the film. This will be interesting. Do we have a weak link, Sean? I don't think that it's Basinger, but I wrote down Basinger because I didn't know what to do. Okay. Andy? I, this might be sort of a niche thing, but I think DeVito is the worst on-screen Italian as a Jew since De Niro in Casino. Great take. Like, I, like, This is honestly, yeah, go ahead. I'm fixated by this. Love it. Like, there's a lot of, and we'll get to, I imagine, Cromwell's Irish accent, but like, there's a lot, there's a lot of, certain words are doing a lot of labor for DeVito's performance where he's just like, Come on, boy chick. Like, okay. Yeah, I found that. Maybe, maybe the scales are even because Jason Alexander played a character named George Costanza, so maybe the Jewish-Italian alliance is strong. This is a real hobby horse of yours, though. Yeah, you like to point out great acts of anti-Semitism in casting, yeah. I love it. Come on. Anytime it comes up on the watch, I like it. role of representation, like the muck-ranking editor-in-chief of Hush, Hush, Hush magazine who crouches in closets to photograph the rich and powerful having sex. Ellis Logue at a BJ. This is important for the culture, okay? So I'm just saying that's an opportunity. For sure. That's the weak link. The passage of time in this movie is not super well documented to me, so I think if you watch this movie like the way Craig did, like the first time, like, did you think years have gone by in this movie? It was a little unclear. Is that true? Yeah. It starts in 50, three and, no, 51. Yeah, they flip a newspaper at one point, the newspaper says 53. Oh, I would have said months. In the book, it's like a decade almost. It's eight years or something. Could have thrown a Dodgers game in there. But they do a good job of it, like it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter. It's not a weak link. And I also think like to that same point, like the heroine, it's still kind of hard to track the heroine in the movie. My weak link was Danny DeVito. Yes, thank you. For different reasons? For the reasons you mentioned. Thank you. I just wasn't buying it. He's just an Italian. He's just Danny DeVito. I also, he takes me out of the movie a little. A little bit. His Danny DeVito-ness is just too omnipresent and too much of a history with him and he's in Taxi and his remains. I can't buy him as a character and I almost don't know if we needed a famous actor for that part. I just, every time he's in the scene. It's such a good Buscemi role or something. Yeah, it's just. There you go again. I know it's CR month, but excuse me. Okay. Are they Italian? Is Kevin Pollak Jewish? Yes. What about Pankow? Yeah. He's right there. Pankow. Come on. Honestly, Kevin Pollak could have done it. Yeah. He could have. I find that DeVito is a great first voice to hear when the movie opens and you're getting those postcards and he's kind of a great narrator, but when he's in scenes and Spacey, who is a big showy actor but is much more subtle in this movie and DeVito is just throwing ham sandwiches at him nonstop. I mean, it's crazy how big he is. That's why they cast a goy. Could be. I just think he's done too much comedy over there. Like, even when he was getting beaten up in the chair at the end, it's like, come on, it's Danny DeVito. Tell this guy to pull his punches. I had one for this for recasting. Is Billy Crystal too famous for that part? Yes. Well, you could certainly make the case Danny DeVito is way too famous for this part. Why is Danny DeVito even in this movie? My point is, if you're going to go famous for that part, I'd rather have Billy Crystal. Yeah. And then, my dream Billy Crystal, my dream choice would have been Larry David because nobody knew who Larry David really looked like in 97. Yeah. This is the big brain thinking I want. Yes. That could have been where we went, but I just. So that's when Larry David walks up to Jack Vincennes and he says, this guy has a jackal in his stomach. I don't know. He took me out of the movie. I had too much history. Anyway, what's aged the worst? Kevin Spacey. I didn't like the Pierce House as much. I really wanted like a Babylon House for him. I wanted like just this house is obscene. We're like in Hollywood Hills. There's no house within. Maybe we're in Malibu. I don't know. I just wanted like a giant kind of like crazy, oh my God, this guy's got to be the richest guy in LA kind of house. Got to no-sell that one. Guy Pierce, Kevin Spacey stuff. That was just in the news. Spacey got handsy with him on the set. Yeah. And he was uncomfortable on the whole thing. I don't. Probably should have just punched him. James L. Roy's relationship to the film is all over the map. Yeah. 97, he said it was a work of art on its own level. And in 2016, he said it was problematic. And in 2023, he said it was Turkey of the Highest Form. And that Crow and Basinger are impotent, right? Yeah. And then when Curtis Hanson died, he was like, it's a pretty good movie. James L. Roy. I didn't have any other What's Aged the Worst. Kind of a weird cat. Yeah. You know. Yeah. I think What's Aged the Worst is hands down the opening. And I quote, there are jobs aplenty and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house. I don't know where any millennials, Craig, do you want to weigh in on that? I don't have a home. Can working men have a home in Los Angeles, Craig? Craig is producing this from an Acura. There's one other quote in the film that is obviously very purposefully almost groan-worthy. But from downtown to the beach in 20 minutes is a heinous note. Which is just simply not true. Unless you're driving a cab in the lateral. Interesting. A couple of What's Aged the Worst. The fight that Bud and Exley have in the records room when he catches Exley like after Lynn. Yeah. He would have fucking killed him. He's like throwing him around the room. He's like slamming his head into a filing cabinet and the guy is like a shiner afterwards. That's also Russell Crowe's audition to be Wolverine. That's right. That's what I like when he throws the chair out of the window for no reason at all. Just to be like ah god damn it. Somebody had to pay. Something else we gotta bring back is just being able to be ruthlessly violent in the workplace. You know just throwing furniture through windows. Yeah that was definitely an HR violation. Is that the day you transition to talent only is the day you make that observation As soon as I can get a window out. Do you think that the LAPD had HR? No. Right. I don't. And then the only other thing that Do they have it now I think is a better question. Lynn Dudley Bud Triangle Yeah. That whole like we're gonna take pictures of Exley with Lynn to make Bud go crazy so that he attacks Exley thing is the one film only flourish that is a little off because in the book Inez the rape victim is actually the center of their love triangle. So you think Elroy saw that part and was like what the fuck? Well I think it's just almost as like why wouldn't they just have Exley killed? If they're doing that to everybody else like why I think Elroy sounds insane but if somebody did like an adaptation of the book of basketball and they had like Karl Malone third I would fucking lose my mind. But you said you said your adaptation would be to forget the entire text. We gotta game this out. Who's making the film? Is it a scripted film? Nobody is. A 12 part documentary? I have an easy category. I will direct the 12 part documentary book of basketball if I can reorder the pyramid in any way. And the film festival beforehand is gonna be killer. The rough low hand of Rubinick Partridge over acting where it is an easy one. It's the old lady who IDs her call girl daughter and then has two other terrible scenes and looks like David Letterman. Looks like David Letterman in drag. Gwenda Deacon? It's just a zero the entire time. Say her name. Come on. Did somebody call in sick? Was there some Oscar winner that at the last second like fell ill and they just had to grab someone? In one scene it's a vibe. Like okay when she's identifying that's my girl and you're like wow that was really memorable you know day player that they found to play that role. Yeah. Of all the people who show up on set and you're like let's reward this person with an entire Two more scenes. Two more scenes. Really bad. I already did it. It's Pierce Patchett and you just shot me down. You said it's not a nice house and it's not architecturally significant and I should stop talking and so I will. I thought it was a nice house. I was saying I feel like his house would have been splashier and more What's his what's his background Pierce? How did he make his fortune? Businessmen. Each slinging. an H. No, no. I think he's dabbling now. But he's in his 40s or 50s at this point. So how did he make his 40? I think he's emerged out of a world of blackmail and extortion. Okay. I had a major nitpick for this that I was going to do later, but I'll do now since Sean brought it up. I just think gambling's part of this. I don't know how he misses it. The guy's a businessman. He got H over here. I got my call girls here. I'm having that. I have like a whole underground casino in my giant palace. He's watching March Madness hitting parlays. Every boxing thing, the guys are going down there. They're taking bets. There's no way he's not doing gambling. So there would have been this vacuum. Big missed opportunity. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford hottest take award. Andy, you haven't done this before. I don't know if I have a hot take. I struggle to find one. I think this is like the perfect modern period film in that it feels really true to life it has all of the sort of superficial like the cars the production design all of it looks like the 50s but it feels like a 90s movie it's cut like a modern film the acting style is decidedly modern everything about like the performance and the editing and the feel of the film is like 97 like you could put this up against usual suspects and it feels very similar but then they take all of the know-how of like how to make a full on L.A. noir movie and push it out there. It's just like the perfect balance. We should we should chat out Brian Raftery our friend's article on the ringer.com about 90s noir. It really talks about why why the deck like the 50s and the 90s were decades that celebrated noir because they were decades after a big conflict where the United States had a very clear like you know self at least the way they thought of ourselves as Boy Scout role to play and then there's kind of a moral morass afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. Take wasn't hot enough. I'm coming in way hotter. Okay. That was warm. I'm just telling you I'm going to be squirching Sean you go. Okay. Set up to fail there. This is you can come in hot. I'm just saying people are going to get burned. The second best adaptation of the Wizard of Oz of all time. That's pretty good. It's a good and wicked and wicked for good are very far near the bottom. There's Bud the cop with no brain. There's Ed the cop with no heart and there's Jack the cop with no courage and then there's the victimized girl Lynn who just wants to escape Oz and go back home to Arizona not Kansas and they all get what they want. And Dudley is the wizard. He is the wizard of Oz with a fantasy. That was really good. Yeah, I didn't invent that take. That is something that has been suggested about this movie. That's really good. It is good. If you play Dark Side of the Moon starting at who invented that and can we get them here before the end of the since the 90s because the archetypes of the characters are so strong and it's like why is this movie feel so familiar even though I've never seen this. It feels like getting trapped by Tarantino in a kitchen somewhere and he's like what you don't know man is L.A. Confidential is just Wizard of Oz. Man. Mine is this is almost a new category. The Pierce Patchett Award for most reprehensible movie plot idea. That was actually pretty awesome. His business of high class call girls being cut to look like movie actors. I think it's kind of a brilliant business. Great job by him. Wow. Yeah. It's ahead of its time. Yeah. Like I think you could do this now. You think you win Shark Tank? You got a Shark Tank right now and be like so we got the Kardashians. We have Margot Robbie. And I don't know. I think in the room I think Cuban buys it. Who knows Bill. Maybe it's still happening today. Craig? I literally had this written down. I was like this guy invented deep fakes essentially. Casting what ifs. We mentioned McConaughey. He turned it down. Said in 2018. Really regretted it. Russell Crowe turned it down. Then they talked him into it. Nothing else interesting. There was a Isabella Skrupko offered the lead female role. Turned it down. I don't know if I believed it. That was in one of the research things. Goldeneye. So one of the things other things I saw Basinger was their first choice. They really wanted her. So who knows? There was a Michael Madsen as Bud thing. I didn't believe that one. Okay. No, I kicked the tires on it. I just think at 97 is Madsen getting a movie like this. What about Michael Madsen cut to look like Russell Crowe? Could I interest you in that? Yeah, this could go both ways. We could start doing guys too. Yeah. Go on. No, you could cut guys to look like other actors. And then what would happen? Look at this Glenn Powell lookalike I have. Yeah. What are you doing with him? Fucking having a catch. I don't know. Don't torture CR on CR, bud. I bet that guy wore this smorgasbord. There's so many that guys. This is the best route to do the Pierce Patchett, but just to make cool friends who look like famous Colin Farrell from Miami Place and go get Mojitos, but he's just some dude from Nebraska got off the bus. Yeah, it's a good idea for Mojitos. I feel like he would do that. Have you seen that video of the guy who hires the Tom Cruise impersonator and just has him come over to his house to make human desire with Pamela Anderson is Lynn. Bracken, did you kick the tires on that? I just don't believe it. Okay. I don't think they're going. This is a year after Baywatch. This is one of the great mysteries of this podcast to me is when you'll decide a rumor is not real. Listen, there's a sniff test to all of these and I just don't think Curtis Hanson was like, you know who should get Pamela Anderson to play? I just don't see it. And I think as the years pass, as we've discussed, I think that people just start adding stuff into the history of the movie. I want to start doing that for recreation. Just popping on the IMDb trivia page or Wikipedia. You can just basically start adding shit. That's that guy. We have a ton. We have for the common man, the Craig's out there. We have Straythorne. I think people not everybody knows his name. Rob Rifkin is definitely that guy. I have Ron Rifkin. Ron or Rob? Ron. Ron Rifkin. I'm going so much deeper. The leader of SD6. We have Matt McCoy, the dad from Hand That Rocks the Credo. Callback. Matt McCoy also, who I will always think of as Nicholas Ard, the replacement for Steve Guttenberg in the later period Police Academy movies. Five and Six. I was like, this guy is going to be a star as big as Steve Guttenberg. That's a 10-year-old first podcast take. And then in one of the TV adaptations, he played Exley's dad. Matt McCoy is Matt McCoy, except for Craig. There's a couple other guys. There's a stealth one. Alan Graff is the wife-beater in the beginning. I feel like he might have been in the most rewatchables even more than Tom Cruise. He's a legendary stuntman, stunt coordinator, and second unit director. But yes, he has been killed in 74 rewatchables. But I know that we have the same winner for this. I'm excited. Do you have Thomas Arana? What part was he? He's one of Dudley's henchmen who's in, he's the fucking guy at the end of Hunt for October and he's Russell Crowe's homie in Gladiator and he's in Limitless. So, great choice, but that was not who I had. There's another one. John Mahone? John Mahone, yeah. That's who I have. John Mahone is always. I assume you're talking about Paul Guilfoyle. Yeah. The guy driving the armored truck in Heat is one of the guys that get in the prison fight with. Wait, wait. Yeah. The first guy who's driving the car. Oh my God! Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. The guy who's like, shit, come out of his ears. The guy who's driving the armored truck and he looks over and sees the truck and does this. Yeah. He's the first guy that they punch. He can't hear you, Slick. Yeah. Cousin Art, you know. I can't believe you didn't notice that. I'm sorry. I mean, this is why you're you, man. I thought you would have been riding with me on this. I'm riding now. I literally don't know that guy's name, but I want to look it up. Hunt for October, Gladiator. That was pretty good. What about John Mahone, though, who only plays chiefs of police? He was the American president, Armageddon, Zodiac. In Austin Powers 2, he was NATO colonel. He was Earth Corp ship commander in something. And famously, he was the LMU coach in the Hank Gathers story. Oh. I just put that in to appeal to Bill. Who was the LMU coach? Wasn't it somebody famous? Who was their officer? Paul Westad. Yeah, that's right. So that guy, he's typecast, but in a good way. And he's telling his wife, yeah, there's this new Tom Clancy. There's this part for the general. I think I'm going to get it. He just kind of knows. I'm either one of the chiefs of staff or I'm chairman of the chiefs of staff. Philip Baker Hall is busy. That's that guy. Who do you have for Dan Waiter, CR? I think this is Strathairn. Adam as well, unless you wanted to throw some Dick Stensland at me. I'd throw Simon Baker in here as well. Early Simon Baker. First Simon Baker, actually. So much so that he has a different name. That's always cool when you see that. Nice movie. Did get my wife's attention when he came on because, you know, Big Devil Wears Prada. Sure. Hard for him. What about The Mentalist? Were you a fan of that show? Mentalist. Never watched it. Recasting couch director of City. Did anybody have anything else for this? I do. We already talked about this. What do you got? I want to talk something out here. Yeah. For Dudley. Possibly. Oh. Actually Irish. Authentically Irish. Yeah. If there's a hell, your mother's in it. Unquestionably fucking evil the second you see him. Nobody's like, what a nice guy. Small, though, of stature. Not of charisma. But is closer to like what Dudley was, which was just like very sinister. You think Postulate communicates evil right away. Yeah, don't you? I mean, I know in the Jim Sheridan movies. No, it's not. Yeah. In the name of the father, he's so moral. But he's coming off the lawyer and usual suspects. Oh, yeah. Kobayashi. Yeah. Coming off that. - That's good. - And then I had-- Cromwell? He keeps growing in my estimation. He's like Victor Wembley. Victor Wembley, yeah. The only other ones I had was, how about Campbell Scott or Josh Charles as Exley? Oh, good choices. Is Bale too young? At this point, probably. I'm just trying to get an American a job. Oh, I see what you're doing. So, Damon. It should just be Damon. Okay. He could have done this, Talented Mr. Ripley, Good Will Hunting, and Rounders all in a row. Would have been like, oh my God, the fucking goat is here. Pretty good. Yeah? I like that. It's one year after Larry Flint. So, Ed Norton is a possibility. And he, you know. Ed Norton. That's a really good one. That's Andy Greenwald. That's why I'm here. So, Ed Norton was American History X and Rounders in 97. So, would not have probably been available for this movie. But would have been a really good Exley. I think so. Ed Burns? You're before Saving Private Ryan, she's the one. Is that 96? Yeah. I don't know. Ed Burns is Exley? Ed Burns was a hard-boiled detective in a TV show like seven years ago. What was that show called? Yeah, what was that show called? Great question. I watched some of that show. Was he a detective? Obviously, Ed Burns, Long Island, it got stocked for life. Andy, you have a flex category. I do. What was his show called? Was it Public Morals? Yeah, my flex category is probably, let me find it, but it was, you probably could have guessed that I would have chosen this. I chose the Big Kahuna Burger category. But I don't know if I did it right because there are a couple opportunities to discuss food and drink in this movie. How much time do we have left, Greg? I mean, generally, maybe this also goes into the Floyd Gundali. Like, I really like movies set in an era when there are no choices in liquor stores. You walk in and you say, give me a box, and in that box, I want gin, scotch, and vodka. And the guy's like, okay. I don't know what the holdup is, too. Like, I feel like he could have been doing this more quickly since there were no other options. It's also just great to go into stores where people are just dicks. to you from behind the counter. Like, where it's just like, don't worry about a Yelp review, man. It's 1950. I feel like Nick from Nick's Liquor's entire performance was 80-yard for some reason. You never see his face. It always sounds like a very strong voice. Also, speaking of drinks, I really feel like Stensland, you know, probably is correctly labeled as a malcontent and maybe not a good cop. Pretty fun at parties, considering his mixology abilities, in which he takes dark liquor and light liquor and just pours them into the punch at the same time. Shout out to Formosa, which still exists. You can sure get a good meal there. I don't think you can, like Johnny Stompanato, have a daytime schlitz there and just with the company of your own thoughts, which I did enjoy. And then the only other food really mentioned in the film is Matt Reynolds' Last Meal, which is pretty iconic. It's a frankfurter, french fries, alcohol, and sperm. Tough one. Tough order. It's a tough order. But maybe, you know, restaurant menus were different then. That's a, that's a, that's a secret menu at In-N-Out. Yeah. Dudley picked that to check panels. Yeah. God damn. I thought it was just they threw the onions. Nope. Can't believe CRM month is ending. Half-assed internet research. No building in LA back in the day was led to be taller than City Hall, so they had to basically cheat all the camera work so we wouldn't see any buildings at that. So they had the fight scene with, with Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe. It was shot four months after principal photography had ended and Pearce had shaved his head for another movie so he's got a wig on. But I didn't really notice the wig when I was watching it. I'm wearing one right now. Looks great. The cop that congratulates Exley at the end is Daryl Gates, famously of the LAPD. It's a weird movie for him to make a cameo. to say the least. Yeah. Not ideal. Very strange choice. Not ideal. And then you mentioned the rape victim, Inez, in the movie who then disappears after one more scene in the book. She's huge. Huge and with Exley and they just cut all that out. And works for his dad. Yeah, it's crazy. And then the Lovell house is here. That's Patchett's home. It's a famous house as we mentioned. Bracken's house is at 501 Wilcox, which is, which is, we talked about next to the Wilshire Country Club. Which the current inhabitants just had it broadcast to the entire world. Sorry, guys. And then, they can find this on the internet. And then, the Victory Motel was built. Yeah. They just like the location and they built. It's like the Inglewood, like the oil fields out by there. Apex Mountain, Crono, Spacey? This is, I think there's a case to be made there. It's either this or American Beauty, but I like this because it sets up American Beauty and the run is in. Okay. Guy Pearce, it's Memento. Although, it didn't really turn into anything after Memento like we thought. I think he's had a great career. No, but I'm saying after Memento, it's like. I think, post the Brutalist, it might be now. Wow. Interesting. I think he is very well regarded as an actor. Brutalist was a movie? It was a film. Okay. Did you see Brutalist? It came out in 2024. You started Brutalist? I started Brutalist. Listen, did you? I think you made the right call. Wow. So, it's just some shameful opinions here. Not all of us have to watch every movie. We can pick and choose a tiny bit. It was nominated for Best Picture. It wasn't like some obscure piece of shit. It was nominated. But really, it could have been a TV show. Okay. I will assassinate both of you. Tell you what. I have another secret for you. I never finished Babylon. Okay. My main concern, Sean, I'm with you in terms of Guy Pearce being an interesting actor who will age into different gravitas. He should probably stay offline. I don't know if you've seen some of his recent retweets and quotes regarding certain global actions. Let's just say that the tenor of his tweets suggest that he was pro-Democracy. Danny DeVito being cast as Sid Hutchins. I see. And he would not want someone else cast in that role. Oh, no. I'll just throw that out there. Okay. So you want him abolished from society? What are you saying? No. I just wanted him to take his phone away. Stop tweeting. CDLA Noir crime movies? Chinatown? Apex Mountain? Yeah. Gotta be, right? Yeah. Facing her. I really don't think this was Apex Mountain for her. I think it was in the 80s during that nine and a half week stretch. Did she do the getaway after this? What is this movie? Getaways before this. I think it was nine and a half weeks Batman, like that era. What did she follow this up with? Everyone loved her. Some well-deserved vacation. She married Alec Baldwin and I think she scaled back a tiny bit after this. But weren't they married before this movie? They were married during this film. Yeah. I saw No Mercy in the theater with my mom. Her next movie was Eight Mile five years later. Just wanted to throw that out there. She took five years off. No Mercy with Richard Gere and Kim Basinger where they're handcuffed together and trying to escape in New Orleans. And there was. I gotta admit, I don't know this movie. It's bad. I haven't seen it. My mom really wanted to see it. I hadn't been hanging out there. We went and. And there was a point I'm like, wow, this is a weird one to be with my mom. Yeah. I kind of wish I wasn't with my mom. It's amazing that just 90 seconds ago you were like, I don't have to see every movie. But you're telling us about No Mercy. You're seeing No Mercy. Gere and Basinger. Come on. Yeah. Turned out to be legendary. Frolic Room. Wait, hold on. I have a question. Do you think that 8 Mile is rewatchable? I don't love it. It's an interesting time capsule. I don't know if I. No. I'm glad it exists, but I wouldn't like get the 4K. I wonder if my just being a few years younger makes me like that movie a little bit more. You were more of an M&M guy. I was more into M&M. That's right. He spoke to you. Frolic Room. That movie peaks with Bob Deep playing in the opening seconds. DeVito, no. It's a critical part of the film. Evil Cromwell. Has he been evil in anything else? He's bad. He's bad in a couple of things, but not the devil. What's your favorite Cromwell? It's this. Oh, God. Well, he really is good in that Star Trek movie. I think he's very good in that. But Succession was good. I really loved him in Succession. I think that's my favorite Cromwell. He's really good in that. He's hilarious in that because he's. Him and Nicholas Braun are genius together. He plays the president in a Jack Ryan movie? Yeah. Yeah. But I think this is like maybe his. Like Harrison Ford Jack Ryan or which one? No, it's the Ben Affleck one. I think he's excellent in this. I'd probably. I might say this. Toilet face dunking. I still think it's St. Elmo's Fire. Okay. 50s L.A. Maybe. Capture a movie. Dangling a guy out the window to get a tour. Dangling a guy out the window. Toilet dunking Big Lebowski. Pretty good one. Oh, yeah. Good call. Yeah. I've got a special big picture episode. Toilet dunks. That's a really. For a slow time? Like a June? Be like two and a half, three hours. I would pay $10 to watch a man to watch four hours of guys getting dunked in a toilet. Do we have four hours of that much footage? I gotta say, whenever there's a toilet dunk, I always think about the actor. And if I had been the actor, like how many times I would have asked the crew, are we sure it's clean? Nobody's going to the bathroom on this. Yeah. Who cleaned it? Like, I just can't think of anything worse. The St. Elmo's Fire is a good one because it's like a pretty like grungy. Grungy bathroom. Yeah. Hancock Park movie houses. It's probably the. It's the Howard Hughes house in The Aviator, I still feel like. Which one's that? It's on the 8th hole in Wilshire. It's when they land the plane. But he's in that. I feel like that's the best movie location of all of them. Cruiser Hanks. Oh, wait. Can we do one to Apex Mountain here? Yeah. For me, this is the Apex Mountain of guys getting shot in the heart. Like, the dude watching the cartoon, he's like, - Yeah. will live rent-free in my head forever because of the noises he makes after being shot and the attention paid to Kevin Spacey's post-heart shot. It's very good. I feel like they had a shot in the heart consultant on this film. I like when they do this after the. It's like, you don't need to. We're good. That guy's done. You shot him in the heart. A heart shot if it's double-tapped and then a guy gets a head shot after because Wayne Groves is like. That's a good one. When they get him in the hotel room but then he gets shot in the head. And what movie was that, Chris? Heat, yeah. Well, fortunately, we have a future serial killer here, Craig Rolbeck. From shot in the heart, you die instantly, right? No, I don't think you do, which is why when Russell Crowe shoots him and then immediately checks his pulse, I guess he wouldn't have a pulse if he was just shot in the heart, but it has been literally like two seconds. Yes. Because we see Spacey die and he gets 20 seconds to deliver the line of Rolo. Tomasi. I don't think I would have had that. So they kind of fudge it a little bit. Sometimes you die instantly when you get shot in the heart. Sometimes you don't. It depends if you're a ventricle or. I mean, I think your brain still works. It's amazing how five doctors here are not going to answer this question. Well, look, we're all about doing our own research. Feel free to email us the answer. All of us are employed at the CDC, Sean, and we are all trying to. How many games could Jason Tatum play after getting shot in the heart? You know, it's just like right back at it. Don't tempt OG Ananobi is all I'm saying. Cruz or Hanks? Hanks as Hollywood Jack? Cruz as Exley. Cruz as Exley is what I was thinking as well. Yeah, Cruz as Exley was the other choice. So we go Cruz? I think Hanks, later Hanks as Dudley. That would be a great twist. Casting. Hanks would never go heel like that. What's the closest he came? Road to Perdition? No, he did it in. Road to Perdition. What's the Wachowskis movie? Cloud Atlas? Cloud Atlas, yeah. Doesn't he play like nine guys in that? He plays like four characters but he does play a villain. You haven't seen it? No, this would have been good for him. I think for the catalog, him playing one villain in the 90s with all the other shit he did would have been good. Do you think it would be fun if Bill watched Cloud Atlas? I do think it would be fun. Yeah, I think if we could get some report afterwards. How long will Bill last during Cloud Atlas would be a better game. I don't think it's your speed but you're not a Hanks completist. That's something we can say about you. You haven't seen them all. I haven't been happy with the 21st century in Hanks. I've been on the record for a while. I know you have as well. I wish he did some different things. Yeah. He's trying a lot of new instruments that don't all sound good. I think when you fly as close to the sun as he did in the 90s and then with Cast Away, I don't. At some point, it's like, I've won seven titles. What else do you want from me? He only seems happy in the Wes Anderson movies now. He's good in those. He's very good. I think he's good at that. Him and Cranston. Yeah. They're cooking. Scorsese or Spielberg? Clearly Scorsese. Yeah, but I do think it would be interesting to see Spielberg have. The way that this movie excises some of the gross stuff from L.A. Confidential and also makes the characters a little less. I mean, actually, it lies about his war record in the novel. There's a lot of stuff. Like, about these characters that are even worse. But if you kind of, like, gave Spielberg this script, I do think it would be good. That being said. He would have cast DeVito as the hush-hush editor. Thank you. A hundred percent. Dreyfus. Absolutely. Yeah, Dreyfus. That's great. Dreyfus. That's a great pick. Oh, my God. That's great. That would have been great. Sean, for this category, I feel like you have to stand up for, like, the working director like Curtis Hanson. Because, again, if it's Scorsese or it's Spielberg, it has a very different point of view. Okay. Don't you think stylistically? That's not the game, though. Yeah. You have to pick. You have to pick. One thing I will say about Hanson that he said that I thought was really interesting is he was like, I like suspense films. And that's not really a word you hear. Like, we talk about thrillers all the time on the show. This is often called a crime movie. This is a suspense movie. The way that, like, a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films are. Where you just, like, really want to know where it's going and what's going to happen. And you're kind of, like, you're locked in. Like we were saying, there's just not a lot of fat on the movie. And because of that, if you look at almost all of it, The River Wild is the same thing. Yeah. Where the whole time you're like, where is this going? You like that movie? The River Wild? Fuck yeah. I like the remake, too. I watched on Netflix a movie called Gaslit by My Husband. It's right there in the title. We didn't finish Babylon. First of all, it was amazing. It was a lifetime movie. It was number one on Netflix. Had to check it out. And I was just riveted the entire time. What do you think of it? What happens? Or. Gaslit by My Husband? The title is Gaslit by My Husband. Was this. It was everything I wanted. Did anybody appear in it that we would ever have heard of? Didn't recognize one actor? Okay. Will the algorithm on Netflix just roll from this rewatchables right into that film? Can we arrange for that? When we do the. When the after CR month, when Gaslight by My Husband is the next episode. Gaslighting month is a good idea. You could do the film Gaslight. Craig, check it out, Liz. I think you guys would like Gaslight by Your Husband. Yeah, she. She basically thinks she's going crazy, but he's doing stuff to her. And it's. It's actually. It actually would have been a really good movie with better actors. That's my one blurb. I'd like to encourage you to check out the 1940s classic Gaslight, around which this seems to be very clearly inspired by. I'm going to do that, too. Best hang, worst hang. Best hang. Probably Lynn, Kim Basinger's character. Jack. Hollywood Jack? Best hang? Go to the frolic room with Hollywood Jack? Pierce Patchett is the best hang. Andy. Cool house, cool attitude. It's a house of heroin. He's got a little golf. He's on heroin all the time. So he's chill. Yeah. Maybe four hours of golf with Pierce Patchett would be fun. It'd probably be eight hours. I think Jack would be like, I know how to get into all the clubs. I know, like, we would go get a nice meal or something like. Grease the wheels. Yeah. Dudley? No. Best or worst? No. He does like his whiskey from Ireland, though. He had that good line. Knows all the secrets of the world. Where's Tang? Stenland? No, no, no. Mrs. Lefferts. Oh, yeah. That's. There's also a dead body at her house. He's asleep, but he's right. Yeah, you're right. Picking nits. I mentioned the gambling really bothered me that there was no gambling in this movie. Kim Basinger was prettier than Veronica Lake. I did some Veronica Lake research. Hold on, hold on, hold on. No, I just think. Is that your highest take? Hold on. I just think, like, she's right. I just needed to dye my hair and I'm good because I'm hotter than Veronica Lake. That's a subjective opinion, right? Like, whoever's hotter. She. I don't think she looks like Veronica Lake. She doesn't. Nor do I think she acts like Veronica Lake. No. And so she might be the actress who most looks like Veronica Lake at that time who would make sense for the movie. No, I think they would've cast that differently if anyone who went to the movie in 1997 couldn't remember who Veronica Lake was except for, like, the film nerds, right? Yeah, but, like, even just the way that Veronica Lake acts, she's a way more playful actor. You know? She is, like, way funnier and is in, like, a lot of light comedy in the 40s and Kim Basinger is not a funny actor at all. No. No. Do you think the lady who's, they think, is a Lana Turner lookalike, but is Lana Turner, in fact, looks like Lana Turner? I thought that was pretty good, actually. Yeah. I didn't mind that one. Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato, by the way, weren't together until a couple years after this movie wrapped up, which was. They kind of shaved it. Anything else for nitpicks? We talked about everything. I put in what's yours. There's a lot of. It's actually not that fun to go searching for nits for this movie because there's, like, a thousand people being like, actually, plastic ketchup bottles weren't invented until the 70s. Until the 70s. Actually, the glasses were. The books in Pierce's bookcase. The only nit that really bugged me on rewatch was there's the scene where Dudley's like, Edmund, lose the glasses. I've never seen a police officer wearing glasses. And then it cuts to Stensland pouring liquor and the first guy with his cup is fucking four eyes. So I feel like Dudley just left that party. Yeah. Come on. Sequel, prequel, prestige TV, all black cast are untouchable. So in 2020, Brian Helgeland, the writer, said there was a sequel that was in development with Chadwick Boseman who then got sick. And they decided not to do it. Not based on an Elroy novel? It was set in 1974 and Crow and Pierce would have both been in it. What? And it just kind of fell apart. Yeah. And Helgeland said Warner Brothers passed and he said that Elroy was either on board or had been spoken to. Okay. Interesting. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the florist, Zane Lowe, or somebody else? Who do you have, C.R.? I just want to. Like, I just wanted to just shout out the other TV pilot. Oh. Because there were two. There was one in 2003 that you can watch online with Kiefer Sutherland as Hollywood Jack. And the Trio logo during the heyday of Trio. The Trio was brilliant but canceled when they would air pilots. Really good idea, by the way. I wish we could bring that back. But the one that was for CBS 2019 is pretty compelling because it was created by a writer named Jordan Harper who wrote a book we love called Everybody Knows. Yeah. And it was Walton Goggins as Vincennes. It was Shea Whigham as Stensland. Then a bunch of other good working actors. Like Mark Webber was Bud White. And Harper's whole pitch was that he was going to spread out time. And so the Night Owl wasn't even going to happen until the second season. And that's like. You can't find that one. You can't find it. I've heard that it was very good and that also CBS never ever would have made it because it was a very strange choice for CBS in 2019. I just don't know how you can do a show like that on network television. No. It was an era when I think they were taking swings to try it. Like, will we become cable or will we. CBS was like, can you move it to Chicago and just set it in a fire department? And have them never leave the fire department? If you just called it Cops colon Los Angeles, it probably would have been on the fall schedule. Sorry to interrupt. What do you got, C.R.? You have Wayne Jenkins, Fergie the Floor, Zane Lowe, anybody else? We've had Zane every week this month. Dudley, man. Here we are from the streets of Dublin to the boulevards of Sunset, the city of angels, and you, you've always held that badge high. That's your journey, but now you're on the other side of the law, so tell me. Tell me how you got there. Tell me what you plan to do with all that age. the rackets the sin the vice just explain it all to me man it just kills fantasy why why does Zane keep interviewing cops Zane yo if Zane just just launched cop talk and was talking to fictional and non-fictional cops amazing but he talks about their like career high points yeah I mean everything is like as if they're Harry Styles it's like you've just you know all the sounds you feel you're hearing you're seeing you're bracing people Harry I thought for sure you were gonna have him interview the Simon Baker character it's been a rough road for you mate Matt Reynolds last meal a hot dog with a top of semen but here you are man so close to badge of honor I can't it's in the it's in the it's in the Bernthal zone where I can't make eye contact with you when you start doing it to transform it's a full body have you ever watched the Zane interview yeah because of Chris oh he encouraged it to say you know I didn't encourage I didn't tell you you have to watch a Zane interview did I you tell me to do lots of things it's weird it's like I was when when Zane like interviewing Adele or whatever was happening during Cranlin and Juliet and Chris were both so into it they would show it to me and I'd be like this is nothing to me like I don't know what is interesting about this like it's fine it's an interview of an artist they would just walk around the office with a computer showing it to different people hoping to connect but what you've done with it you've transformed and today the return of the artist it's just fucking playing along just one Oscar who gets it Dante Spinotti nah he fucking blacked out here the cinematographer Chris explained it so well I thought which is like how does this movie doesn't look like it's trying to be a 50s movie it's trying to be a 50s movie it's trying to be a 50s movie it looks like it's trying to be a 90s movie Titanic 1 yeah this movie actually won two Oscars and lost seven and it lost all seven to Titanic oof tough beat Dante has an incredible incredible CV where he's also known as working as being the primary DP for Michael Mann and Brett Ratner yes he shot parts of Melania he did Manhunter and X-Men The Last Stand I think I read a Q&A with him about Melania where they were like what are you doing and he was like I'm a working journalist yeah he's interviewed by the New Yorker about it and he was just he wouldn't blink he was like yeah I took the job I'd take it again he is I believe how old is he he's currently um 84? 85? it's a very well shot documentary probably it's wrote questions so you haven't finished Babylon but you have completed Melania I didn't finish Melania either I did watch the first 20 minutes but you haven't watched Gaslit by my husband to completion the first Gaslit by my husband when's the sequel yeah she's gotta remarry have it happen again probably unanswerable questions actually like a whiff maybe gay maybe there's something going on there with him and Bud what does Lynn say you can't fuck Bud by fucking me that was I thought to tell and also like he was really now granted Lynn looks great yeah but it's the only time he's interested in that the entire movie and it seems directly because of some sort of weird Bud thing but I think that's true I don't know it kind of by not having him take care of Inez like it also undercuts a little bit of his white knight kind of like presentation in the book I just thought that whole part was weird and then this is the biggest one to me is it a better movie if Bud just dies do we need to see him again it's kind of related to my unanswerable which was what was Bud White going to do to support Lynn in Arizona or what was Lynn going to do to support Bud the dress store she's going to do the dress store she's going to pay for the he's been shot like multiple times this year's the Watane Award what are they doing in Phoenix he's got a hole in his face this is what I wondered like former call girl is the implication that he can't speak anymore that's in the book he can't talk anymore yeah wow and he's really surviving the two gunshots and then the one right to the face from five feet away that felt like a note it wasn't a note but it felt like what we got to have is like the three good people in this movie handshake at the end were you surprised to see him in the car at the end yeah that was my flex the Clarence Worley should have died I do think he should have died it would have been better for his character go down a hero showing him in the car I think the whole ending I felt a little deflated at the end her line at the end is like some guys get the girl or whatever some guys get the world others get an ex-hooker and a trip to Arizona and then you see Russell Crowe I do feel like it kind of deflated a little bit I think Aaron Rodgers said that to Mike Tomlin when the Steelers fell apart he's coming back so there's a case that this movie could just end at the hotel and we don't even need the last scenes yeah we definitely don't need the psycho ending with him explaining the entire plot in the to all the cops that's that's Elroy every Elroy book is like there's a 5-10 page scene of like they find the one guy who can explain everything and he does is that the all time why did you add this scene the psycho yeah person like just get that scene out of there turn the movie off as soon as people listening who haven't seen psycho during the big attempted murder scene at the end just end the movie I I've gone back and forth and forth on the psycho maybe we can save it for the psycho episode but I think is there gonna be a psycho episode I love that movie that would be great if you want to do psycho I love psycho I like the way you acted as if you didn't just suggest it oh you guys want to do psycho well I never actually thought we would make a film he did the Sean thing he planted the suggestion and then made the other person think they thought of it but it's 1960 we don't do movies that far back historically but I would love to do that but there's two things running out of movies now that we've done CR money Vertigo don't you want to do Vertigo yeah Vertigo we've talked about for a while but that's like horny CR horny Bill Holt is too speaking of cutting women to look like other women that's a part of Vertigo as well that's not like a big pastime of mine is cutting women to make them look like maybe not the psycho thing the thing about psycho is the psychiatrist explaining Norman Bates that part is terrible that's what I mean but the cutaway to Norman at the end with the fly and him like the voice in his head that part is great I was talking about the doctor explaining for four minutes I had a probable answer what do you got do you think it would be more entertaining if Shams adopted Sid's writing style word around the forum is that Lucas Slovenian's sweetheart is taking his kids back to the motherland but while the baby mama is away the cat will average 34 points a game hashtag Shams hush hush again Shams is now portrayed by Robert Loggia which is problematic problematic why is that problematic can Shams can we add Shams to the Wayne Jenkins thing I don't know in low category but Shams Shams Hudgens yeah this is great this is what Shams needed yeah rebrand little boost instead of him like going on first take in these shows he could just that could be his little video thing everybody in Boston is talking about whether the two J's will be able to share the ball and what it means for the two P's Peyton Pritchard hashtag Shams why is this Robert Loggia it's Robert Loggia as Shams as the as the Shams guy that's my Dave DeVito voice is that weird you can do better than that workshop that's good secret handshake club memorabilia one from this movie it's got to be the night owl coffee mug right I had roller Tomasi I guess is that too big for what is what is it though I don't know because sometimes I don't understand secret handshake club no it's memorabilia it has to be something specifically memorabilia yeah night owl it's got to be the night owl you've got to be the night owl we could each share and if one of us is killed that's pretty good we should come up with that there wasn't like was there a matches from the victory hotel I didn't see that I had Jack Vincennes tortoiseshell sunglasses which I think are sick but this is different than memorabilia it's memorabilia but it's secret handshake memorabilia gotcha okay so if I just had a night owl coffee mug and you were like is that LA Confidential it's like one of those like you almost have to like get it so you haven't seen me leaving Florida Lee business cards at your house Florida Lee business cards that'd be another one I got to go on the opening scene of the movie the opening montage they show you a Hush Hush magazine cover that says the line that DeVito says in the beginning of the movie of ingenue dykes in Hollywood you could that would be mine the Hush Hush magazine where would you leave that around your home just among the stack of regular magazines just imagining Bill getting ingenue dykes in Hollywood served to him on Netflix I'm searching for it tonight on eBay just be like alright I was going to watch Babylon but fuck it the brutalist is too long you guys laugh but put on Gaslight by my husband get gaslit give it 10 minutes and see if you're still watching it would be a good bit for you Sean like see it on Letterboxd start logging it is there a sequel to this it would be funny if you just logged it out of nowhere I'll watch it look I'll watch anything I don't care it was number one on Netflix that had my attention Coach Finstock Mr. Miyagi were a best worst life lesson some men get the world others get the world others get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona it's a pretty good life lesson best double feature choice we all have Chinatown who framed Roger Rabbit which is similarly a movie about this period in history post-war detectives trying to solve a big cover up but also a kind of a parable about the building of the highways and who controls the ways and means of the city what noir would you put up with this in a lonely place that's a great one that one's a little Hollywood inside baseball I like Touch of Evil for that one that. That's good. Not an L.A. movie. I would also say. as a kind of museum piece more than an enjoyable movie, the Brian De Palma's Black Dahlia, which there is now legendarily a director's cut. I don't know if that's true or not. Are there Dahlia heads out there? I mean, Black Dahlia is an incredible novel. I'm saying for the movie. I think there are people who are like, there's a secret director's cut that would be better. Holding that hope. Yeah. So I think a really good semi-classic noir, not as seen as some of the best-known ones that would be good for this, is The Blue Dahlia, which features Veronica Lake. Alan Ladd is the star. It's about a guy who comes home from World War II and takes a trip to Los Angeles. And it's the only original screenplay that Raymond Chandler ever wrote. And he was nominated for an Academy Award for it. And it's a pretty good movie. It's not considered on that Bogart class of noirs, but I really like it. I have a double-feature Gaslit by my husband. That's good. Good choice. I'd watch it first, though, and then go in LA Confidential and step up. In Lonely Place. Lonely Place, okay. But you said it wasn't good enough? Who won the movie? I didn't say that. I remember it. No, you guys are turning at each other. I've been praying for it for two hours. Who won the movie? Curtis Hanson. Come back to me. I actually think it's Hanson and Helgeland. I feel like Crow has been minimized. We have not talked about Russell Crowe, who kind of won this movie. Crowe wins the movie because it sets up 10 years, and it matters to Russell Crowe being one of the biggest stars we have. It has to start with this. It still matters as little as it happens where it's like you go to a movie and you don't really know this person. You leave the movie only talking about this person. Yeah, that's true. And being like, oh, this is a new character in my life. It's a breakout. What are we going to do with this next? How are we going to see him next? Who's going to harness this rage in this surprisingly modest frame? I also think he needs it for the IMDb. Like, just a collage of work. This is a good one to throw in there because then he's got Gladiator and, of course, everything peaks with It's a good argument. I just have beautiful mind. The writers just keep going. It's like an unadaptable book and they made Yeah, that's true. a great script out of it. That's fair. All right, here we go. Producer Craig, what do you got? I don't want to get crushed for this. You don't like it. I liked it. I didn't love it. I liked it. I didn't love it. And I do. It's always tough. Every time I listen to you guys, by the end of it, I'm like, wow, maybe that was way better than I thought. But in the moment, I thought the lead three actors were great. I thought the story was really interesting. I don't know. It felt just like a little cheesy to me and I had trouble with a lot of the dialogue and I don't know if it's just great actors, tough dialogue, or if that is kind of the style of the noir 50s world they're building and that's the way it's supposed to be. But when it wasn't Pierce or Russell Crowe or Spacey and it was like the DeVito or the Kim Basinger mixed in with some of the dialogue, I had trouble kind of like fully getting my hands dirty with it. That's when you were on Steward's Mock Drafts? No, I was locked in the whole time. I pay attention. There are a couple lines that are a little clunkier than I remember them being. Like when Exley's trying to get Jack to go and Jack's like, are you ready to pay the consequences? Which I don't think is something you say or do. And then I started, you know, after I watched the movie, I was reading some stuff and then I was like, oh wow, this is Library of Congress is preserving this film and everyone's like greatest movie ever made and I was like, oh, maybe I'm missing something and need to watch it again. I mean, I see what he's saying. I think it's a second watch movie. I think the second time when you don't, you're not so worried about following every single thing that's happening and you're just watching it for the actors and the choices. It's a different movie. But not only is it a 30-year-old movie, but the lexicon of the film is 75 years ago. So it's like basically a Western to you. My thing, when I saw the movie, I was relatively film illiterate of old movies and I hadn't seen the noirs that it was influenced by and so my relationship with this movie has deepened because of what it sent me back to. That was probably how I felt about Chinatown when I saw it where I was like, this is so incredible and then you go back and watch 40s and 50s movies and you're like, oh, it's style of the acting and the style of the performance. One thing that's noteworthy is a lot of people have tried and failed to make movies like this. Oh, like Gangster Squad? I think this is one of the high degree of difficulty. Oh, I could see what they were going for but that just didn't work or they cast the wrong person or they didn't have the feel for it. It's only a couple that have actually made it. Or it tried to be about too much. Like this is going to the TV point. Like the smartest decision they made was the one that was harshest maybe for Elroy Superheads which is, if it's not about these three guys and their journey with this one case, it's not in the movie. What was that one Affleck made? It was in LA but it was in the mid-2010s. They Live By Night? The gangster movie. Oh, the Dead Land. Oh, no. No, I'm talking about it was set in They Live By Night. Oh, Live By Night. Live By Night. But that's an example of like when you go way back and you're really going for it. That's the 30s, right? Yeah. Good book. I like Affleck. I don't know if that movie totally worked. But Hollywoodland would actually be an interesting double feature with this because that's sort of about a similarly, a few years later in the mid-late 50s. This is a movie where I fully just copped to having on my 15-year-old glasses where in 97, you went through some of the movies. Like I made a much longer list of movies all of which I tried to see or saw in movie theaters that like totally switched me on. I was voraciously consuming movie magazines at this time. It was The Game. It was Cronenberg's Crash is that year. Contact is that year. Private Parts, the Howard Stern movie. Night Falls on Manhattan, the Lumet movie. I Know What You Did Last Summer. Wag the Dog. We mentioned In and Out. In the Company of Men was a huge movie that year. Event Horizon, Liar Liar. Like all of those movies, I was really just starting to go crazy. Hit you at the perfect time. Yeah, where I was like, I'm going every Friday. That's like me in 1984. Good year. Same thing. That's why I still support Karate Kid. All those Purple Rain. Inspector Todd. Yeah, 15 I think is the key movie year. I even saw it happen with my son a little bit. So your brain has just developed enough that you can start actually understanding movies and you think you're smarter than you are. And this movie is really a good like you're a grown up now movie. Yes, that's exactly right. But it'll be interesting to watch Ben's taste develop because we had video stores and what was in the theaters. Ben has everything that's ever been made like at his fingertips. When are we going to have maybe Zane can interview Ben. Ben, you fell in love with Q-Bert. So when you see Project Hail Mary you're seeing a copy of a copy. That's it for CR month. Yeah. Wow. We did it. Five movies in a mailbag. Unbelievable. Thanks guys. Frank's favorite rewatchables month I think. A lot of bangers. I'm sorry I couldn't close it out strong for you but it's okay man. I had a great time. What were the highlights? Definitely Matt Reynolds' last meal. The highlights were getting to finally do Sicario and getting to podcast with my guys. Yeah. What do you think of all this? As someone who's known him longer than anybody. What does that mean? Well, no I think it's You should ask that like Zane. What do you think of the oddest? Every month of my life for the last 30 years has been CR month so it's just nice to see everyone else catch up. Did you guys know each other when this movie came out? Yes. Yeah. This is our 30th anniversary this year. Oh. That's sweet. Unbelievable. But we didn't see this movie together. No. He was probably at parties. 97? I was probably going to see later. CR, who would you hold good son style if they're both hanging on a cliff and you had to save you only had the strength to save one? Greenwald and Sean? Yeah. It's a tough question. I've lived a full life. Save him for April. I'm fine. I'm younger. Yeah. Sean has more to give. My mom is furious that we didn't do any in the cruisers. Well, we can still do it. Are you now holding it hostage for the next CR month? Yeah. Will there be another CR month? I think every March should be CR. I don't know why we wouldn't do that. That's exciting. I'll compete with March Madness. Yeah. It's kind of It's Patino and CR. I'm glad that it's a 31-day month. It's not like Women's History Month being like February. This is good. We cram five moves. One of the reasons we did I mean the next when we do From Hell month I think that's going to be the peak of the rewatchables. You do? Yeah. Can you Do you have like a I was scouting Breakdown. Oh, fuck. Can we do Perfect Getaway from Hell? No. Okay. That's noir. Wait, is Breakdown The Timothy Orban? The Breakdown from Hell? Trucker from Hell. But isn't that Duel? No. But Breakdown's different. They take his wife. I mean, I love Breakdown and I love JT Walsh. Breakdown's insane. I'm a huge fan. Another similar Curtis Hanson style guy Jonathan Mostow made that one. My favorite one that's on the From Hell month schedule is Domestic Disturbance with John Travolta and Vince Vaughn. Evil stepfather. Who's who? I don't remember this at all. Who's the evil stepfather? The evil stepfather? Vince Vaughn is the evil second husband to Terry Polo. Oh. And John Travolta is the first husband. And he thinks something's up with this guy. You guys didn't notice that? There's something up with this guy. Is Domestic Disturbance Harold Becker? I think it is. I think that the Perfect Getaway is from Hell. It's the people we meet on vacation from Hell. Oh, you're talking about the Steve Zahn one. Oh, yeah, yeah. I like that movie. I love that movie. It's a good one. Good little You familiar with that one, Andy? No, I love this is like seen under the hood. It's a really good twist. This is how it gets made. Don't spoil it. Good Hawaii movie. It's a good Hawaii movie. Get to go on location. Which one is this? Perfect Getaway with Steve Zahn, Timothy Oliphant, and Mila Jovovich. You've told me about this film. We should go to Hawaii and record it there. Could we do a live show in Hawaii? Get neffed out? Yeah. Sounds great. It's the greatest place on Earth. It really is. It sounds awesome. All right. See you all in a month. Thanks to Craig Horvath. Thanks, guys. Thanks to Gahal and Eduardo as well and everybody else at The Ringer. Great to be in here in the studio. We'll do. Anytime we have three or less, we're doing. we're doing my studio. Yeah. But I thought for four, I thought this was good. How did it feel? It felt great. It's like riding a bike. You can listen to CR and Eddie on The Watch, Sean on Big Picture, and we'll see you in April on The Rewatch. Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh quality food plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details. Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-CONTACTS. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste. 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