‘The End of Oak Street’ and the Top Five 'Twilight Zone' Movies. Plus: Will Poulter!

I'm Sean Fennessy, and this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about dinosaurs, cosmos, and what to do if you're mysteriously transported back to the Mesozoic era. On today's episode, I'll be joined by Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin to discuss the new dinosaur thriller The End of Oak Street, a rollicking new movie from It Follows and Under the Silver Lake director David Robert Mitchell. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Will Poulter, the extraordinarily versatile and gifted actor who stars in a tough and powerful new movie called Union County about a young Ohio man in recovery participating in a county-mandated drug court program. The movie is made with largely non-professional actors and is a fascinating collision of the real world and the created. Poulter is a smart actor with great taste, always looking for material like this. He came here with a great story to tell. I hope you'll have that chat. But first, let's talk about some important movie news that starts with the letter X with Mal and CR right after this. This episode is brought to you by NOS Energy. Every ounce of dirt, sweat, and gears, every checkered flag and trophy raised, every lap, every race, every hard-fought place. They're all jammed inside every can of NOS Energy, high-performance energy for burning the midnight oil in the garage and pedal-to-the-metal human horsepower for the streets. Go ahead, crack open a can of NOS Energy and get after it. This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios, The Dog Stars. Only in theaters and IMAX this Friday, visionary filmmaker Ridley Scott returns with a gripping post-apocalyptic thriller when a mysterious radio transmission shatters a lone pilot's isolated existence. He embarks on a dangerous journey in search of hope. Starring Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Allison Janney, and Guy Pearce. The Dog Stars, only in theaters and IMAX this Friday. Get tickets now. Okay, Mallory, welcome back. Hello, thanks for having me. What a pleasure. It's his show. You should know. Look me in the eyes the entire time. What's up with the big picture turning into inside the actor's studio? I like talking to artists. What's wrong with that? Are we going to do a little bit of tape breakdown on the Ask Sean Anything mailbag? You know, I'd like to share some thoughts. What do you want to get into? I just thought it was an absolutely riveting, astonishing, and dare I say, exquisite listen. And I found it. Where did you listen to it? Inspiring and aspirational. I know why you're asking. Yeah. I listened to it in the car. Okay. Over a few commutes. You mean like in the boudoir? Well, I listened to the watch in the bath. And I think Chris feels protective that I have chosen to consume the watch in that very relaxing, intimate way. Sure, yeah. There's just not like any old Irish guy talking on a podcast and you, you know, you jump in the bath. What is it about the Irish in podcasting? Why do we got it like that? You, me, JFK. Yeah. He would have been a hell of a podcaster. When was the last time the three of us podcasted together? It's been a minute. Just the three of us? Not the three of us and other people. Complete Unknown might have been it. No kidding. Yeah, because Gladiator 2 and Complete Unknown were like very close together. Did we not have a trio pod last year? Is that possible? That's so sad. I feel like that's just a mistake and not something we should allow to happen again. If only we were allowed to make decisions about who gets to appear on episodes. How many times have you and I been invited to the watch together? Zero. Zero. What does that tell you? It tells you it's Andy. He's at Prima Donna and it takes a lot of maintenance to just get him ready at 10 a.m. You have no idea how many shots he takes, what kind of rider he has. You mean like shots like this or like shots like this? Vitamin B, you know, HGH, all the things that we have to pump into him to get him coherent. You should let him know that Mal and I like know how to podcast. I know. Well, you don't watch television anymore. Mostly true. Yeah. What am I up on right now? What am I up to date on? We haven't watched Lanterns. I have not yet seen the finale of. Dragon. But I saw the first seven episodes. Okay. That's pretty good for you, pace-wise. What did I just finish? What did I just watch and finish? I can't remember. I'm not watching a lot right now. I will watch Lanterns. Did you watch Beef Season 2 recently? I watched Beef Season 2, which I enjoyed. Did you watch any. Which I thought a little bit went off the rails, but I enjoyed it. No, but I will. We need your Lanterns dates. It is actually literally. I'm going on vacation this weekend and we are going to. Eileen and I are going to watch Furious. And I have been deleting episodes as soon as you and Andy start talking about them. Hey. Hello. Thanks for being here. So you just came back from Anaheim? That's right. I was just there on Friday night. That was enough. You were there for D23. What is D23, Mallory? D23 is the Disney convention to announce and celebrate all sorts of Disney things. I had never been. And I decided this year after San Diego Comic-Con, assuming that I did not come back from San Diego Comic-Con with COVID, which is what happened last year, that I would go. I would make my maiden voyage. I would make my maiden voyage to D23 this year. And I was committed. Chris saw me last week. We had some wonderful podcasting experiences together last week with the Talk the Thrones finale of Rewatchables. And he was like, you seem not well. And I was like, nothing will keep me from D23. Not my psychic break. Not my debilitating exhaustion. Nothing. I will be there. And then I went and I was like, I don't need to go again. That said, that said, we got some big news. We did. We got a lot of news. Sean and I got it the same second you did. Yeah. We were sitting together drinking beer in my home and you were in Anaheim. That's right. Getting COVID-20. So we got an X-Men cast and you have been podcasting about X-Men. You have been podcasting about X-Men. I just podcasted about X-Men last week. You sure did. We all love the X-Men. I think we're all very excited about the forthcoming X-Men movie. And some of the casting announcements were made. We know that Jake Schreier is going. He's going to be directing the movie. And we knew going into this that Samara Weaving would be playing Emma Frost. We knew Kit Conner would be portraying Cyclops. Yeah. And of course we knew Sadie Sink would be portraying Jean Grey because of Spider-Man Brand New Day. Everything else, I would say, was mostly rumored and unconfirmed. Right. And there was one thing that I think it's fair to say could be considered surprising. But even then, this is a person that we knew the MCU had been targeting for a very long time. So I'll give the list and then I want to get your reactions to this. This roster so far of Charles Xavier's X-Men. We'll start with Charles Xavier, who's going to be portrayed by Christopher Abbott. Yeah. Probably best known for his work on Girls, but I think a very exciting and very adventurous film actor. Very serious man. Very serious actor. Great work on Broadway. Made a lot of independent films over the last 10 years or so. I saw him off-Broadway. Not a big deal. We can just skip right past it. Did you see him in theaters in Kraven the Hunter? I did. As the foreigner. Day one. I was there as well. Didn't work out great. He was fine in it. He was pretty interesting, actually. Not as interesting as Kraven's abs, obviously. In addition to Professor X, we've got Indian Avaready is playing Rogue. We've got Maya Boyd as Storm. Yeah. And the most significant news, I think, is probably Adam Driver is portraying Nathaniel Milbury, a.k.a. Mr. Sinister. Yeah. You say what? So the Midnight Boys Pew Pew talked about this on their pod. Joe and I podded this morning. We were talking about the D23 news and the excellent Lanterns premiere. And I think all of us had the same reaction to being in the room for the announcement, which was just a very weird, anticlimactic, muted response. It's like they're where the NBA draft is now, where it's just like five minutes before the pick. They're like, the Hornets will be taking Conk Nibble. Yeah. It was just a very quick progression of saying the performers' names. They came out. They said nothing. And then it was over. And there was like genuinely no joke. Way more excitement in the room for Bluey and Camp Rock 3. Not a thing that I knew about or understood until Joanna explained it to me. So that was strange. I think that the driver, the Adam Driver, because he was on video. That was a clip that they played a fun little bit. Like I thought, you know, when everyone said to be there, they meant on set. Right. And he's alone. They pan out. And he did the Magneto bit. He like leaned into the rumor mill that people had speculated that he would be playing Magneto. I will say that without. Without naming names, multiple people around us were like, wait, so is he Magneto? Because he said Nathaniel Milbury, not Mr. Sinister. And not everybody knew that alias. So people were like confused. It was a little bit weird. There's the reception in the room. And then there's just the excitement for the cast. And I think this is exciting casting. I will say I am a. Joanna introduced me to Heartstopper a few years ago. And I think it's excellent. And I. The second I saw Kit Conner, like in one scene, I texted Joanna and multiple friends. This guy's. Is going to be mega famous. Like, I just think he's an incredibly talented young actor. I love Sadie Sink. Charlie on Girls is one of the more formative. Yeah. A problematic male boy. Heroin Charlie or prep Charlie? They're all kind of interesting, right? Part of the experience of loving Charlie is the journey. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And so, yeah, I have not seen Obsession because I'm scared. But obviously that I understand that that is very exciting. Maya Boy. A Broadway performer, but new to a movie of this magnitude. By far the least known of the crew. Yeah. So I think this is a really exciting young cast. My expectation certainly is that we have more news to come. I don't know if you believe that the Charles Melton turned down beast thing is real. I was very. It certainly seems like it. I was. I am obsessed with Charles Melton. So I was really hoping that he would be in this new franchise. Anyway, I think that the cast is very promising. More to come. How many more reveals to come for the first film is an interesting question. I assume you and Andy talked about this. we did yeah you know you don't have to repeat yourself here necessarily I'll say something different than what I said on the pod which is something I was saving for the big picture nice sometimes I do this yeah it's special the casting is secondary to the way this movie winds up looking and the way this movie winds up feeling to me like they could have cast this with the collected cast of Heat 2 and it's not gonna matter if it looks like Doomsday and I think that this is almost more crucial to me than Marvel turning the page on the V1 Avengers like the Mark Ruffalo era you know Avengers and the Hemsworth Avengers is turning the page on how these movies maybe get made and how they look and how they feel the best example of that going forward I think the touchstone should be Brand New Day which by no means is is you know licorice pizza in terms of its feel for human life but if only it had a little bit of that energy in it yeah if I if I was like the one thing missing from Brand New Day was an age gap romance as it was coming out of my mouth I was like that's interesting that's the first movie you thought of that's not a superhero movie is that because that movie made you want to visit a high school no do you know what I think it was on some level subconsciously it's that Cooper Hoffman had been rumored to be an X-Men it might have been that and it might have also just been like Michael Bauman shot that Michael Bauman shot Tony I'm just thinking about it's just a lot of spaghetti up here yeah well okay you're making an interesting point to me I'm very excited for X-Men and I really liked Thunderbolts and I think Jake Schreier's good so like I'm probably gonna like this movie I hope so yes X-Men I feel the same way I thought Thunderbolts was great X-Men is is very sacred to us I really I'm in the middle of X-Men 97 season 2 that is the show I was watching that I couldn't think of good show and I'm loving it yeah and I loved the first season and it is tapping into a very primal teenage me version and now I like I literally pulled out the graphic novels over the weekend when the news had to show to Alice like here's Days of Future Past here's you know what I mean like here's like here's Dark Phoenix so I'm very invested in that in that very kind of adolescent way that with that said this casting feels very much to me like a sop to Gen Z and I think what they're doing is looking at the success of the Spider-Man films since Holland came on and one of the reasons why the last two movies have been so massive is you've got young people who've been on the journey with these actors since the beginning so if you were 14 when Homecoming came out you're at you're at the stage of life now where a lot of these characters are going in these movies and there's something very shrewd about that that is going to make I think this version of the X-Men feel dramatically different from Bryan Singer's X-Men movies and really more like YA and I don't mean that maybe I don't mean that pejoratively but this is a younger cast it's a very it's a relatively unknown cast and the things that they are known for are things like Heartstopper which is appealing to Stranger Things Obsession like these were hot Gen Z things I would say there's nothing more millennial than girls and both Adam Driver and Christopher Abbott are girls tentpoles there's a counterpoint to that which is if you look at the two hyper-seasoned actors that they've cast here they're like they're credibility boosters they're very serious figures you know they both take their work very seriously we know that about them they both present as they're going to be the grown-ups in the room quite literally in these stories so it'll be interesting to see how those two worlds kind of interact yeah I just have a couple of questions about like the mechanics of how they're going to do this version of whether it's phased storytelling or not like they're probably not going to use Disney Plus as a spackle for plot so there probably won't be a Hellfire Club series to introduce these people right? I have some thoughts on that but keep going they're probably if I had to guess these characters will be relatively well introduced in the two Avengers films and so the first X-Men movie I don't think so you think it's going to be like I don't think so I think you might get in Secret Wars a little bit I think that gets to the younger cast and the meta quality there of like not only leaning into the ability to grow with the Spider-Man comp which I think is exactly right and great and you know ultimately very appealing for the idea of like creating and fostering a new generation of fandom rather than just continuing to make movies for a bunch of increasingly fatigued and beleaguered moviegoers who are like this isn't as good as the thing I used to love there's a natural element to the Secret Wars post-Secret Wars reset of saying okay the universe is taking shape and form anew and we're doing that with characters who are figuring out their powers as the MCU is figuring out the next stage of storytelling so I think that's appropriate and exciting it actually feels to me like it gives me more confidence than the idea of continuing to try to like layer on and connect to these extra strands of threads of a tapestry that has now existed for guys we're a couple years away from 20 years of the MCU it's 2026 Iron Man came out in 2008 like we need to move on to the next phase of things and so I that I think is actually a good choice me too yeah I'm curious to see with Mr. Sinister being the lead villain how much of this is really an X-Men movie because Mr. Sinister was very Gene and Scott focused as a character we know Gene and Scott they're announced here we are have already been introduced to Gene in these movies and but no Wolverine no Nightcrawler no Colossus no Angel no Iceman forget about Banshee or Bishop or Cable or any of those other characters I had not forgotten about Bishop and Cable by the way if you really like Bishop and Cable you need to be watching X-Men 97 season 2 they're getting a lot of energy and I wonder if they're going to keep the team a little smaller maybe Beast will come in maybe Angel will come in or maybe we'll get a Wolverine near the end of the film but no Wolverine would be really bold the biggest questions obviously I think are Wolverine and Magneto is Magneto not going to be cast in this first movie I don't think they should I agree it's what Joanna said this morning I think I'm coming around to this this was not where I was initially I also really liked the way Brand New Day was like here's the star of the movie here's the co-stars of the movie this is the pyramid of importance within this plot there's not a D-plot of two people doing a MacGuffin journey to bring something back to Spider-Man that doesn't really matter like they need to get away from that kind of storytelling which they box themselves into because they have 12 actors and Avengers who all need like plot service and they wind up acting against tennis balls in Atlanta and saying like no bring it over here you know but well they do it in London now but sure sure but like my point being is like if they were to start as a love story between these two kids who get fucked up by this guy that's where I think they're going that is exactly where I think they're going even just I don't know how much of how they spend the first 30 seconds of a four and a half minute D23 panel really matters and what does that tell us I don't know but they did introduce Gene and Scott before Charles which felt like it was signaling something and then to end on Sinister I agree it felt like the bookends of the announcement were you know that character set and that pairing and the idea of building your new franchise initially around young charismatic stars like Kit Conner and Sadie Sink I think makes a lot of sense um I don't know that you can wait too long to bring Magneto and Wolverine into the era of X-Men and the MCU but one movie is interesting it's a fascinating choice I was thinking about what you said with there not being a Hellfire Club TV show for example so we know that next year there's only one Marvel movie it's just Secret Wars in 2028 when this X-Men film is coming in May that will be followed in succession by Ghost Rider and then Black Panther 3 and then we'll be back on the three Marvel movies a year schedule and it was the expansionist mentality that I think really felled the Marvel Enterprise and I'll be very curious to see because I think it's not hard to imagine a world where Doomsday and Secret Wars and X-Men are all big hits maybe diminishing returns on the Avengers films relative to the previous two Avengers films but still those movies are going to be very very big and then all of a sudden Marvel will be feeling itself again and then they'll be like well what if we do need to do the Colossus origin story in animated form on D Plus like these things always come in waves and cycles and so I'm kind of curious to see I don't think there's any way to make those movies in a cost effective way or make those shows in a really cost effective way I think that's what they figured out that even something like Wonder Man which had all this affection for it critically and I think even among the fans who found it but ultimately like Disney decided not to do it because it was a real excel sheet for them where they were like this show costs too much for the amount of people who watch it and it's not germane it's not essential to have this as a building block going forward for our plans for Marvel I think they could change their mind again just the same way all of you know entertainment could be like we're diving back into streaming TV as a platform to connect theatrical events and especially if movies become more and more this sort of like not boutique almost like luxury live experience of something and they're and then like TV is kind of where the grinders are I don't know if that's ever going to happen but it's almost like the dynamic amongst podcasters as well that's right just gotta make that rent money uh Kanish over here I always got that bread truck for you if you want it uh my point really was just that I could see a world where they're making Ghost Rider Black Panther X-Men movies and they don't have that much to do with each other they're like Like, we are in a post-post-credit sequence world. stories are maybe a little hermetically sealed. Like, I'm sure we'll have team-ups. I'm sure, you know, but I could see a world in which we're not doing a lot of, like, you better stick around for the second post-credit sequence to see Charlize Theron who's never going to show up again. It's probably a good idea to at least take a break from that after Secret Wars, which is kind of the ultimate, like, the team-up story. Yeah. Do you think Vision Quest will be, like, the last TV show we see for a long time from Marvel? I think you're both right. I think what Chris is outlining feels currently like the plan, and I think you are right that the impulse to go right back to the thing that worked before until it didn't will be really strong if the overall enthusiasm is at a fever pitch again. I, again, I don't really know why I'm putting so much stock in, like, these Feige presentations at these conventions, but I was really struck at Comic-Con for the Marvel Hall H panel when he came out and was like, we're not here to talk about TV. Literally said that. And I just thought that, now, again, he's, like, trying to muster enthusiasm for Endgame on Core, and then, of course, Doomsday, and, you know, they had the Ghost Rider and Black Panther 3 announcements at that panel, a little Spidey tease before people had seen that movie, so it was a, there was a lot of film-centric footage and conversation to highlight, but we're not here to talk about TV felt like a signal of intent about where Marvel is right now. I thought the Vision Quest trailer that they showed at D23 was one of the highlights of the entire night. It looks wonderful. WandaVision was great. Agatha was great. There's a version of Marvel from a couple years ago where the third piece of that trilogy is, like, really central to how people are talking and thinking about Marvel, and I would say this is very much being presented as the conclusion of a thing, not the continuation of a thing. Now, that said, like, Wiccan and Speed are in the MCU now and will be a part of things moving forward, so even the installments that are positioned as conclusions or, to Chris's point, as separate still present characters, if not maybe as many active plot lines that connect to other things because it is inherently a connected universe, I don't know. I mean, I think that there's no question, you're right, that Doomsday and Secret Wars will be huge. The question is whether they'll be good. I think we can pivot that conversation into the second trailer that was released. Now, you guys got a chance to see this at Comic-Con, correct? Yes. And this is the one that was communicated to us as a huge improvement on the first one. And I ask you, Chris, is it a huge improvement on the first one? Emotionally and dramatically? Yeah. Yeah. I was interested to find out what they are yelling about. I'm seated. You now are interested to find out. Yeah. I mean, I didn't know the first one is. Did you do this? Yeah. Well, fucking. If it's important, start screaming about it. I'd like to see. They have been doing kind of the inert, like, I don't know really what I'm looking at. A lot of posing. Yeah. And now, even though it looks like it is, I think Andy said it looked like it was shot in Harrenhal. It is. I think that's generous. Wow. It at least had dramatic stakes that it was suggesting. Isn't that the whole Victor Von Doom thing, right? His relationship to his mom? Yeah. That's a big part of it. Yeah. For sure. I'm kind of about that. Isn't that one of his motivating forces is he can't really live up to the expectations for him? He's always second best. That's Victor. I always want to call him VVD, but that's the nickname of Liverpool's beloved center back, Rachel Van Dyke. I think Victor Von Doom preceded him. He did. In the VVD power rankings, if I had to guess. Perhaps. I thought this was a little better. I don't know if it was, like, some dramatic improvement on what I saw before, because it was shot in front of a giant fucking green screen. I guess the throne room scene is, like, a real room that had furniture in it, but, like, the movie definitely has me interested in what the story is going to be. Who's the guy who did Marty Supreme? Jack, what's his face? Oh, Jack Fisk. Yeah, Jack Fisk marvels the Avengers Doomsday. And it was nice to see Pedro Pascal acting. Oh, yeah. And not wandering around like he's on Ambien, like he did in Fantastic Four. That was, um, you know, I was interested in that. It does make it seem like, obviously, I like the theory, maybe it was Van who said this, maybe it was you who said this, that it feels, there's just, like, this looks like maybe the first five minutes of the movie. Yeah, I just think that all this, like, the Fox X-Men are back! It's like, come on. Yeah. In all likelihood, many of those characters will be annihilated fairly early on. I would think so. And the, what did you do? Did you do this? was all about killing many, many heroes, presumably. Um. Channing Tatum's gambit. Uh, yeah. And we will mourn him on this show. But, I don't know. The Russos, you know, they have a visual style. It's not the greatest style. Um, and they don't have the same level of anticipation, at least for me, that they had going into the previous two films. Sure. We'll see how it goes. Yeah. It's gonna be a popular film. Oh, no question. But. No question. Will it be good, as you said, is really the big question. I mean, I hope so. I really want it to be. I, I'm, I'm. I thought that this trailer was a market improvement over the first one, which I considered quite worrying. Uh, I. I don't know. I heard Downey break out the Latverian accent, and I felt like possibility still existed in the world. I felt alive. I don't think that was your reaction to it. No, I thought it was very silly. Do you think we'll get any no-mask Downey? Or is this a Mandalorian situation? You know, they're giving us so much, like, eye, so much eyeball in the trailer. Maybe. I do think they will find it very difficult to resist having our Avengers, who know Tony, see Downey's face. Like, I don't think they'll be able to resist that. That's a good point. Right? That is, that feels inevitable. Yeah. Will it be, will it be Cap? I know they're not, like, saying that Peter's in this movie. Will it be Peter? Uh, I think that that seems very likely to happen at some point. How scarred will the face be? We'll find out. We'll find out. Yeah, it's, it definitely is like a, it's like a Fantastic Four movie, which makes sense, obviously, given Doom. But because they had to, you know, change the plan from Kang to Doom, it doesn't have the, like, Thanos equivalent of we built across the Infinity Saga to this thing. So it makes sense to. Feige tried to walk that back a little bit, though. He was like, everybody's always like, you guys, you guys pebbled Thanos across ten movies. He's like, Thanos would show up for, like, five seconds, sit in a chair, and everybody's like, what great storytelling. Uh, yeah, it wasn't all, like, I mean. It wasn't a perfectly orchestrated plan, but there was a plan. This is, like, we have to fix a problem. Yeah. Um, and that doesn't mean it won't turn out to be good. It's a little interesting to use Doom now, in a moment when they are, they feel a little up against the wall, because he is kind of, like, there's a case that he is the great comic book villain. I agree with you. Um, and. Until they make Apocalypse, right? That's right. Well, again, watch X-Men 97 Season 2, you know? There you go. They're, they're, they're doing it all there. But you see that, to your point about Doom as a great villain, you see that moment, you know, I think when the, the RDJ is coming back news came out, there's the, like, you know, inside us all, we have two wolves, and there's the, okay, Downey, like, is the MCU for many people exciting? I think also it felt like the most morally and creatively, like, bankrupt decision in the history of cinema. It's the sweatiest thing of all time. Right. Those maybe could both be true at once. You see Doom, uh, stick his hand out and stop Thor, stop Thor. It's like, this is sick. Maybe this will be sick. So, there were a couple moments like that in the trailer that, that did get me hyped and get me jazzed. I agree with you guys that visually it looks, um, appalling, and the fact that it will be coming out the same weekend as possibly one of the most visually astonishing movies we've had the pleasure of watching. Yeah. Doom Part 3 is, you know, that's not a comparison that I think is gonna benefit Doomsday, but at least we get to see it in Infinity Vision. I think there's a lot of cap maintenance going on right now. A lot of cap maintenance? Yeah. These two movies get them all off the books. Right. Then we got all these young kids. Right. Sure. Oh, yeah. Because you can't make these movies for less than $200 million because of everybody's quote. They were like, we can make Eternals. And you're like, no you can't. You're gonna be in cap hell for the next five years. And, you know, now here we are. We're gonna get cleared out. Next year, only three superhero movies. Beyond the Spider-Verse next summer. Can't wait. Man of Tomorrow next summer. Also pretty excited. And Secret Wars in December. And that's it. Hope it's great. That's the only time you'll have to hear us talk about superhero movies on this show. I think Secret Wars is gonna nail back-to-back years like that. They're not gonna delay it at all. They can't delay it. I don't think they can delay it. Okay. Starfighter. Yeah. Did they show a trailer to you? They showed a teaser trailer. Okay. And it was fucking electric. What was it? Is it a joke that it looked like Drive? No, not a joke. Not a joke. It looked like Drive? Be real. It's very much a trailer about the Starship. Like, it is very much framed as. So we learn Ryan Gosling's character's name is Cade Oberon. Cade Oberon? Yeah. Exciting stuff. Great name. Sick name. Cool name. Pitch for the Mariners? Yeah. You know, he's gonna be right there. He's gonna slot in after Brian Whittle, I think. Incredible jacket. I love George Kirby. Love. I've had Logan Gilbert, Kirby, and Wu on the AL Only Keeper League that Jeff and I co-managed for the last few years. It's been a delightful experience. We've yet to win a title. And most of those tweets are about his AL Keeper League now. Well, he has Cade Anderson as a keeper, which is, like, unbelievable. So annoying. Is Cade Oberon, is he in the bullpen? Or, like, where does he put. Yeah, exactly. High leverage reliever? Yeah, exactly. He's a set-up guy. So he's got this sick, like, leather jacket with this kind of skull sigil on the back. And the kid. Does he seriously? Yeah. The kid who I thought from the initial image they released looked like a young child. Their aura farming are youth. That's my shit. This is incredible. Get your own shit. I thought the kid was much younger based on the image they released. Page? He seems to be like a teen. it was a quick trailer and it was very much like you know fastest starship ever built can it be flown kind of a kind of a vibe what's your favorite Sean Levy film I like a few of his episodes of Stranger Things quite a bit I enjoyed obviously Deadpool and Wolverine okay that's number one for you quite loved the pegging joke in Deadpool and Wolverine thought that was inspired yeah why is it funny when Olivia Wilde does it and not when Sean Levy does it Chris answer me that what's the one that went straight to Adam's song what was that about The Adam Project The Adam Project oh yeah I'm sorry I kind of like Real Steel did you ever see that one Hugh Jackman based on a Twilight Zone episode no written by Richard Matheson yeah we will get into that shortly okay so you're a pump for Starfighter I thought it looked great I mean we didn't see much and I was also hoping that they would play it again they trot that kid out there no okay no Gosling was out there he like switched jackets he was a good kid yeah the kid the kid who was like supposed to be his you know lone wolf cub kind of oh that's and I thought he was going to be much younger but he seems to be like a full on teen so I don't know just haven't tried that before we just did this min learning yeah I don't know the visuals looked looked good they really barely showed anything obviously this is set in the future of the timeline five years later apparently yeah post first order so that's new that's exciting to get to play in a different slice of the canon a different slice of the timeline and how do you feel about the theory that it's all leading back to the big Rey-Kylo story down the line that like they're not going to do the the search for Ben Solo the hunt for Ben Solo but they will bring all them back Dave Filoni was like that's not happening yeah yeah I mean that seems completely possible I don't know they can't stop making movies about the same characters we are old yeah next year's 50 years of Star Wars 50 5-0 50 how do you feel I feel pretty much the same yeah dead inside yeah I mean I I don't I mean like it's funny to just kind of just be sitting here at nearly 50 years old talking about this thing that's been in my life the entire time but I guess in some ways most people would say what a lucky what a lucky guy what do you think more people will be celebrating next year 50 years of Star Wars or 50 years of CR why not do it the same do it the same day on the same day yeah should we get a big what's the biggest movie theater we could possibly get to pile in and watch A New Hope together why don't you get me the Millennium Falcon you want me to purchase it who owns the Millennium Falcon well there is one at Galaxy's Edge but that was a re- Decree as they say but we could we could still go and sit in it to celebrate Chris's birthday I don't think would you enjoy that I really don't care for Anaheim very much that's why you weren't a D23 a couple news and notes out of D23 the Bluey movie announced for August 6th 2027 thumbs down by Andy Greenwald's younger daughter oh no that's upsetting I've never seen a second of Bluey the different rendering of it oh yeah it does have the heightened we have a slightly different animation style that differs from the TV show which I'm not sure I totally understand but I have a lot of faith in Joe Brum the creator and writer and director of this movie has that come into your life yet hardcore Bluey yeah oh been for years oh before pre-Alice you were just rocking Bluey episodes no no I mean Alice is five years old we've been watching it since she was like two years old I wouldn't say we watch it very much now but if we popped it on she would be wrapped okay you know the fascinating thing about Bluey of course is that every episode is eight minutes long right so the idea of a 90 minute film is sort of antithetical to the magic of the show interesting we shall see that movie will make 500 million dollars easily it is that is one of the most encoded things for all parents of the last 15 years that exists Tangled live action huge news for Alice horrible news for this podcast I'm gonna have to do an episode about this movie which I'm sure will be terrible but Catherine Hahn is in it so that's exciting she rules she's great Diego Luna is great Katrina Balfe is great will you be on that episode March 31st 2028 I'll be here you'll be 50 by then Pixar four titles this was the highlight of D23 by I think a comfortable margin the Pixar presentation we already knew Gato was coming next year it's about a mafia cat a cat in the mafia that's correct about a cat who was in the cat mafia in Venice Italy and when they when the Pixar presentation started I just kept I was like Gato Gato Gato a while ago I texted Sean Mahoney and Joe Gato first pick in the the 2027 House of Our Hype Draft nobody replied but I'm on the record and you know what I love about you is that you you don't take disinterest as a side of hostility like so you you text it just means I have to work harder to make this a shared experience you text a thread with literally zero other Baltimore Orioles fans on it updates about like an Orioles yellow reliever it's true and nobody responds we don't even heart it I find it comforting I will never respond to it but I find it comforting three unanswered texts of like screenshot of the standings screenshot of a guy's batting average and it's just like I don't know here's how Gunner's doing who gives a shit I don't care you did respond once this season actually twice it was about Pete and then Pete Alonzo you sent me a very rude very rude follow-up about Gunner's OPS and I think I took a brief pause from sending Oriole updates but now I'm back now I'm back Gato looks amazing they showed an extended clip and a trailer just looks great just looks great just looks tremendous and the hand-painted animation style looks beautiful looks lovely I will see this film in theaters you will I can't wait will you be looking for my wife likes cats a lot but will you be looking for an underage wife figure a la Apollonia from from The Godfather that you can admire I was on the the sort of like more safe side of that I wouldn't say so spectrum of opinion I think you were? I think so I think Bill was the one who was like Jack let's play the tape Godfather rewatchables episode let's run that clip that was also a time when I don't think we understood maybe people were listening to that podcast I think what you said on the episode was I would frequently whip it out and stare at myself in the mirror during those scenes yeah that's right is that what you said? it is I remember I remember listening to it Incredibles 3 wonderful news that's coming out Peter Sohn directing not Brad Bird who has a movie later this year for Netflix called Raygun and then a film called Ghost Market it's like amazing I like the the logline the idea yeah they showed some footage from this as well it looked fantastic the kid who I believe was described by Pete Docter if memory serves here I'm going off the dome the kid is a the protagonist is a content creator from Chicago and he goes to Hawaii and winds up in the Ghost Market looked great what's the Ghost Market? a market dark web run by ghosts well I'm asking pointedly because I had had an unanswered pitch supernatural in Pixar called Wet Market that was about a bat wet market wet market it's a joke what about yeah Wuhan got it will you be going to Coco 2 in 2029 I haven't seen Coco 1 so I would be lost should we sing Remember Me to Him right now let's not will they flag the podcast for copyright violation copyright infringement wouldn't that be fair use Disney is litigious in that respect only if we're commenting on it as we go we used to be Imagineers Coco is a wonderful movie and seeing Miguel aged up as a teen in the in the little glimpse of the animation that we got was very emotional great film Disney animation I guess confirmed Frozen 3 in 2027 similar to the Bluey movie this will be one of the biggest movies Chris and I were talking about how 2027 is an interesting year for movies and there's a lot of stuff but it feels very adolescent many of the biggest movies especially like that summary like Minecraft 2 movies like Frozen 3 like they're they're going to be very big but it's not going to feel like having The Odyssey for example in the center of the culture Zootopia 3 also announced as incoming and then you know on Hulu we're going to get Romy and Michelle 2 for the olds how does that feel? it's crazy that like Fox doesn't it kind of doesn't exist yeah they're mostly an IP engine yeah with the occasional original story you know they're putting out Whalefall the thing that I noted that was Whalefall you in on that? you know about that? yeah yeah yeah yeah yes I'm excited the big thing from the Fox side that I noticed was that I know that Alien Earth is doing a second season but that there is no current alien film planned because they've basically shelved Romulus right the Romulus sequel because they can't figure out the director's relationship to Ridley Scott apparently allegedly we'll talk about that more very soon on this show Romulus was great I agree you saw Romulus I did yeah oh yeah as you know my tolerance for horror when it is in a genre of rapper is much higher I don't know why and if no cats are involved I don't like seeing the Harambefalla cat yeah that'll be this is a problem for today's discussion excellent segue before we talk about The End of Oak Street I thought we could talk briefly about The Last House yeah this was homework you added on Saturday yeah and I appreciate you participating I know you're a very busy woman CR of course had already watched this terrible film the movie though is fascinatingly timed because it is a somewhat similar premise to The End of Oak Street and The End of Oak Street made me think of The Twilight Zone and this is a very Twilight Zone-y kind of movie it's directed by Louis Leterrier who most recently directed on the big screen Fast X which is an absolute travesty I got the Now You See Me franchise rolling among other things he made a Hulk film and this is a Netflix movie it is the number one movie on Netflix right now it stars oh my gosh Greta Lee and Wagner Mora and Wagner Mora and it is about a family of four who are suddenly sealed inside their home with no way way out. Family of five. Don't forget the dog. Family of five. sure, not a human being, but alright, must work together to survive against both their dwindling resources and the mysterious looming threat that is keeping them trapped. Were you happy that I asked you to check this film out? I mean, I thought this movie was quite poor. Quite poor. I was worried it would be too scary for me and that was not my experience with it, though I did find it. We're going spoilers? Yeah, who cares? Great. Chris, and we're already spoiling End of Oak Street or do we want to. We wait for that? Let's wait for that. Okay, I'll keep this very general. Chris, who is a good, good friend of mine. This Chris? This Chris. A person who I have worked with and known and loved for 13, going on 14 years. I would say the same about you, except there's a notable distinction here. You asked me to do the pod. Chris knew that we were doing the pod together. You who had seen Oak Street did not tell me that cats were. In peril. Eaten by dinosaurs in the movie. But Chris did. Is that confirmed? Yes. Oh yeah, dinosaurs are eating a cat on the porch at some point. A lot of cats run out of houses and we don't see everything that happens. I thought one of them was happening behind the. It's just being eaten. Oh yeah, right. On the porch. And Chris, when I saw him for Rewatchables last week, and these are not while the cats are very meaningful to me, they were not primary characters. So I think it doesn't count as a spoiler. There's just a lot of chomping and eating in the movie. Chris said to me, second I saw him, walked in to record Rewatchables and he said, I want you to know that I saw the end of Oak Street and some bad stuff happens to cats. I don't have the exact time stamps for you, but here are the scenarios. You did not share a similar warning with me. The reason I mentioned this in the last house discussion. How old are you? I am 39. I'll be 40 years old next month. I know. What are we going to do to celebrate? What are we going to do to celebrate you? What spaceship are we renting out for you? I wouldn't have brought that up. The cats are the 40 years old. No, I'm glad that Mal said it. Okay. You got to own it. That's the whole thing with 40. You got to own it. That's fine. I'll be dead in a few months probably, but. It's not true. Don't say things like that. Here's the thing Chris didn't tell me. Not only did he not tell me. Okay, so I didn't tell her about something that happened to a pet in the last house. He didn't tell me about the dog, and I specifically asked him does anything happen to the dog, and he said he didn't remember, which I find shocking given the level of. There's a new phenomenon. It's not even new. I just am ready to start talking about it. It's a phenomenon where instantaneously, everybody in the country watches the same two dumb streaming movies every weekend and doesn't remember a single thing about them. That's correct. Prior to The Last House, a great cinematic achievement called Devil's Mouth. The Devil's Mouth starring Catherine Watson? Nope. Catherine. Newton. Catherine Newton. Who's Catherine Watson? I think you're thinking of Catherine Waterston? No, I know I'm not thinking of that, but that's probably why I got the name screwed up. And Lana Condor from All the Boys I've Kissed Before? All the Boys I've Loved Before. They play two chicks who go to Thailand. She's turning 50. But. I can still rap all the lyrics from Rock M's Know the Ledge. That's true. They go to Thailand to go swimming in some caves and get attacked by sharks. And the night it came out, like, several men in my chat were just like, I've already logged this. Yeah. And that's happening with The Last House, too. Do you remember what happened to the sharks? I do. I do. I don't remember exactly. I had so much more fun with The Devil's Mouth than I had with The Last House. The Devil's Mouth is not good, per se. No, but it's like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade compared to this. It is. Oh, my goodness. What a comment. There's significantly more esteemed actors in The Last House, and that's part of the fake out. And it feels like old school streaming bad movie thing where it's like coming off of, you know, award nominations. Greta Lee and Wagner Mora are cashing in by making a Netflix movie that has an $80 million budget and kind of looks like shit and is boring. It felt so COVID-y to me. Very. And I think there's something in the idea about it being COVID-y. Like, it does seem like premise-wise there's something about social distancing that's part of this story. Where you can't leave your house. You're trapped inside your house with your family. And how much do you really love your family? And can you survive when you're in these circumstances? But that also is something that we don't want to really be thinking about. And I wouldn't say it's an Eddington style, like, searing portrayal of the challenges of social distancing. Put that on the poster. I wouldn't say this is Eddington. To some people, that might be appealing. But it's just a dumb streaming movie. And what I didn't realize when we can spoil it is, like, this is just like a big Kraken, Lovecraftian monster movie. And I thought it was going to be more drama. Than CGI monster movie. But it's not a good CGI monster movie either. It's not terribly creative. It had a little bit of that feeling of, like, the third act of War of the Worlds, you know, when they go into Tim Robbins' house. No question. Very similar. And just, like, a real budget version of that. This movie's. It's not good. And it is actually lowering the standard in a way that I find unfortunate. It doesn't mean that there can't be bad movies that we can enjoy all the time. There can be, but the low effort required to get across the line in a movie like this kind of bums me out. It wasn't, like, fun bad, right? It wasn't leaning into and embracing being bad. It thought it was doing something actually, like, interesting and dramatically compelling. I thought, to the COVID, like, social distancing point, I mean, it did come up against just a couple times doing something interesting, like the conversation that Anne and Jason, the husband and wife, the Gretel and Wagner characters, have about you know, and past lives is maybe one of my ten favorite movies of the century, so I was like, let's go. Greta, and this was just a bit of a letdown on that front alone, obviously. But the moment where she's like, you're happier. Like, we are trapped in this house, the world is over, and you're you're happier now. And he's like, yeah, kind of. Like, there are interesting ideas inside that if maybe explored more fully and teased out or more centrally positioned as the focus could have been compelling, but it is actually just really weird voiceover taking us into the sentient rain locked us in our house. Also, I think Chris's point about the way people are engaging with a movie like this, and maybe you're looking at your phone, you log it, did you even remember that Cass, the beautiful golden retriever, ran out of heart pills and had to be shot in the fucking head? I didn't remember. By the Jason character who had a secret gun and then chopped up into pieces and put in the freezer? So that they could have the meat on hand in case they needed to eat him one day because their homegrown tomato farm might not be sufficient? And then that meat is taken out and cut up and cubed up for the animal traps that they're using to lure all of the wild animals who have reclaimed the earth? This brings me to is it okay to watch a movie like this and not think about it to this level of detail? Sure, but I had a hard time doing this. Drove me fucking crazy. Why are they able to get through the chimney? The little kid, when she goes up, first of all, if you're I'm not a parent, but if you're the foundation of your house and the chimney are crumbling, don't send your daughter up. Yeah, but you gotta get out of the house. You mean just the logic of it not being sealed like everything else is sealed? Exactly. Her hand breaks through right away. Adam and I paused it and had like a 20 minute conversation about why is the hand breaking through? And then, of course, it has to do so that they can procure food and work the traps and the fishing chair connecting to his prior life as a free fisherman out in the wild, etc. They use the fire poker to bash the window open. You drill holes in the door. Any breach immediately seals. This is the mythology of how the world works, how the sentient rain works. But they could just go in and out of the chimney. The rain doesn't seal the chimney. You know what? It's really interesting to hear you talk so passionately and detailed in such a detailed fashion about this film because I do think that this is a lens through which you view a lot of stuff. So I'm fascinated to know whether or not you applied the same discipline to Oak Street and whether or not it lived up to your scrutiny. I just can't believe you didn't remember what you said. That was not a segue. I was just. Can't believe it. A couple of closing notes on The Last House. I can't do better than David Ehrlich's review of this movie, which is so wonderful and IndieWire locating the fact that this is a literalization of the chubby rain idea from Bowfinger. This is the idea from Bowfinger, which is maligned as a dumb sci-fi concept in a movie that was made over 20 years ago. Sprung to life. The review is very funny. I highly recommend it. And it's hysterical that they only have two DVDs in their house. That was good. That was good. Yet another Netflix movie extolling the virtues of owning a lot of physical media, because you might be stuck without any internet, and you won't be able to stream movies anymore. Crumbled up the old Netflix red envelope. Good little bit there. The problem for me would be it may not be Annie that we were stuck with, but it would be 85 movies about an Italian police commissioner who walks around with his shirt off. Yeah, but then your son would know what it means to be a man. That doesn't sound like a problem. That sounds awesome. Okay, don't watch The Last House. It's not very good. But it is interesting that it is coming, it came out the exact same week as The End of Oak Street, which is a movie that I have been anticipating for a very long time. Card-carrying David Robert Mitchell fan. Love, it follows. Love Under the Silver Lake. Love the myth of the American sleepover. This is also a movie that has been redated multiple times. Yes. Tale of bad test scores from audiences. Tale of reshoots. It's been in the ether for a very long time, and it's a movie that got kicked out of Warner Brothers' very successful 2020. Twenty five into twenty twenty six. It feels extremely inspired to me by a lot of Twilight Zone stories, especially the Odyssey of Flight 33, which is the one where a flight from I think it's from New York from London to New York is traveling overnight and it crossed some sort of jet stream barrier and all of a sudden is transported back millions of years. It's this great like establishing shot where the plane lowers and we see dinosaurs right underneath them. This movie stars Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, maizey stella and christian converee um it's about a mysterious cosmic event that rips oak street a suburban anywhere town into someplace unknown the platt family soon discovers that their various survival depends on sticking together as they navigate their now unrecognizable surroundings which are of course dotted with dinosaurs yeah because they go to prehistoric times yeah yeah chris i'll start with you what did you think of the end of oak street well i was terrifically entertained by it um it has a couple of gear shifts and twists and turns that i think are few and far between and major blockbusters these days and i've been fascinated to read about the film it's a movie that has kind of grown in my estimation the more i've thought about it because there's so much discussion about like that was good but was it kind of like a ton of effort put into a movie that's kind of you know like why did we need a 1980s amblin porn dinosaur movie and if you believe in mitchell as a filmmaker and and you believe in his project and what he's been kind of interrogating like you have to ask yourself with him why did he do that right and that's been a really cool question to not only ask myself but to read other people's takes on and i so i think it's a really uh aside from being just like a pretty pretty whiplash fun summer blockbuster is very thought-provoking i agree i had a good time at the movies you know it definitely was more i think when i saw the i was intrigued by the concept and then when i saw the first trailer i was like oh i don't know if this like looks very good actually it's not a very good trailer yeah and my enthusiasm really diminished after that and then i started to get excited again uh as we were talking about doing the pod and then i saw the runtime and now i am never ever my my enthusiasm has never diminished by seeing like a two and a half three three and a half you know i like to watch like the four hour lord of the rings extended editions every year my podcasts are three hours runtimes don't scare me but i was like oh like this is basically an hour and a half like when you factor in credits right so that was interesting and it changed what i was expecting the movie to be in terms of pace and flow and then the movie was exactly that it's very much a concentrated little adventure to the point where actually it takes a few minutes to i think get into it because it opens as a family drama before the action really picks up it ends with some really thought-provoking questions that made me like it way more so i think the fact that as a dinosaur film is an adventure family chase uh can we escape our reality is suddenly swapped out movie but also is a kind of in a couple ways not not is its primary uh ambition intention but as in a couple areas is like a kind of existential and philosophical question about what sort of life you choose to live or grant to somebody else i had a good time at the movies i enjoyed talking about it with a couple people after um and i think it's a good time to talk about it with a couple people um and i will like happily re-watch it again in the future and there were little touches inside of it like the way that the dinosaurs were furry or had their feathers that i thought made it like feel i don't know very much connected to a certain storytelling history and tradition but also like specific it felt like its own rendered thing yeah i i really like this movie and i'm fascinated by it and there is definitely a part of me that also wants to see the clearly extant two and a half hour cut of the movie not because i think it's a good movie but i think it's a good movie because i think it will be better it probably won't be better yeah but i can feel some of the ideas that mitchell is trying to project and hold on to and then i can also feel very smartly a movie machine making a very entertaining movie and both of you guys are like this is like a fun movie yeah it's like a good time at the movies and it is that and it does have some underlying darkness but you can see the way that it's pitched from the very beginning of the movie it shows us a block party in anytown usa and a man turns to ewan mcgregor who plays the patriarch of the family he's like you have a beautiful family and then we see very quickly in short order that like actually this family is kind of falling apart you know that anne hathaway's character is working on this erica young as novel about wanting to flee and find her own personal freedom away from the family structure in america we see that ewan mcgregor's been characters been laid off and that you know he's delivering pizzas to make ends meet we see these sneaking drinks yes he's got a drinking problem we see he's got a lot of shame yes two young kids in kind of crisis about who they are and what they're doing and what they're doing and what they're doing and what they're whether or not they're like they fit in and they feel good enough and you know are they bullies or are they the bullied or and like how do they fit into this ecosystem so it is like very much the myth of the american suburb right like it's a continuation of a lot of the stuff and then the movie a little bit dispenses with that and it's like actually put all these foibles aside this is what's going to bring this family family together and then the movie takes on a very amblin spielbergian tone right where it's all about a family in crisis getting over that to combat dinosaurs in their in town yeah i i will say that one of the things i admired about this movie is that for as many camera moves as it might crib from spielberg or even the spirit of spielberg's visual storytelling i think maybe more than any one camera you know movement or um split diopter shot that that comes up a couple of times i thought it was an interesting critique and or variation on the idea that like these things are not wonderful creatures who are themselves as disoriented as they are and i think that's a really good point i think that's a really good as us in this new world like they're killing monsters and so it turns into pretty much a broad daylight horror movie for uh for most of it and there's a little bit of night stuff but it's a lot of like oh the woman at the barbecue just got eaten and oh this you know this guy who you know there's a lot of random and concerted moments of like real violence that i kind of admired the movie for because i could feel the roller coaster that the crowd was on in the in this is what this this movie is about how they're going to learn to love each other right oh fuck it's the best component of the movie there are a few shocking moments there's one in particular and we will spoil the movie but there's one in particular very early on at the discovery of the dinosaurs where anne hathaway's character and ewan mcgregor's character after a blackout power outage throughout the neighborhood they learn that the water is no longer running the morning after and they're trying to figure out their dog has gotten off his leash starbucks starbuck and shout out battlestar galactica they start roaming the neighborhood in a way that you could in a neighborhood where you knew all your neighbors and you could comfortably cross over through people's backyards and things where a dinosaur is discovered it's a bird-like dinosaur covered in feathers and this is a very feral violent creature yeah and it starts chasing them and while it's chasing them it pivots and attacks a neighbor and it's one of the great hardcore mean kills i've seen in a movie in a while just eats her head like a fucking milk dud it's just shocking when it happens in a great way racked up yes like i so we adam and i went to see this on saturday and the theater was full completely full and the crowd was having to your point chris a great time now that kill like it made me laugh in a really kind of like rib deep way and like when we were driving home adam was like it was pretty weird that you were like maniacally laughing as all these people were being eaten but that was the i don't know there was something about the surprise of the heightened violence that i just found incredibly entertaining i like how you mentioned earlier so the surprise of a moment like that you mentioned earlier just kind of like dispensing with the myth of this america this like a seemingly picturesque american family you think of something like the way that they have to in order to seek shelter right away from that these threats that are becoming clear and apparent in they have to literally like tear down their house right this this symbol of the life that they've made they have to use the pieces of it much like in the last house which they're connected they have to close themselves off from their community you know they're not working together they have to pull the the planks of wood off the wall in order to board up the windows etc very clever it is it really is yeah there's a lot of stuff like that throughout the movie that is very clever and to me at first i was like oh he's going for spielberg the michael g aquino score is very john williams yeah and then the thing with amblin that is great to me is that it's both it's also joe dante sure also gremlins like there is a those kinds of movies they tend to leaven the outrageous with the warm and this movie's trying to do both of those things i don't know if the original version was a bit more cynical or downbeat or harder than the one that we get because we do head towards a slightly sunnier divorce movie as many spielberg movies are divorce movies but it's told more explicitly from i think the pov of the the wife yes very much we're the one we're going into rooms with her so you kind of watch it from anne hathaway's perspective and she's you know she's throwing 99 in this movie she's great uh what a summer but for my gal what i really liked about it both in the human moments like the you know hathaway losing her book in the basement to the flooding or um her reaction to her husband's optimism that they're gonna figure out i look that's that's a great piece of writing yeah that they're gonna like it's okay we're just gonna sit tight and it's gonna be okay and it's gonna be okay and it's gonna be okay and it's gonna like what took us here and will take us back and she's like what are you talking about and like and he's like god will abandon us and she's like you only go to church once a year like why are you telling them lives i like that stuff and i also like the fact that the reactions that we were feeling from our theater mates were based on a subversion of expectations as much as it was spectacle so 99 percent of versions of this movie would just be like check out the fucking fucking dinosaur. We CGI'd it to an inch of it life and it's so incredible and its scale is amazing but they wouldn't have the stones to be like and then the dinosaur did this and now where does the story go from here it would have just been such a linear storytelling exercise and i felt people reacting not just to like damn that's a big dinosaur to oh i didn't they built up this character and took them away or we you know didn't think that this character was going to be a bad guy or a good guy and like that that's old school nuts and bolts and that is also amblin which is just like guys who think really really really hard about the mechanics of screen stories absolutely i i like with um uh with with denise that the ann hathaway character the way that like someone so you get one of the great dinosaur kills is mel the neighbor on the roof and you know we see them pecking and pulling but then when we kind of we should bang it's the next morning i love that yeah the shot of his roof covered in blood incredible stuff but again very mean spirited and well done yeah well before then well before then denise is like if you threaten my dog if you look at him the wrong way i'm gonna fucking kill you so there's the violent intent and the little like kind of heartbeat of some nefarious element between the people in these seemingly happy houses well before you get to the actual tearing apart limb from limb via dinosaur even something like when denise and greg are uh one of the stretches where the the t-rex comes knocks the car in the fire catches the fact that they have to escape there's peril in that moment it's a very tense you know your heart is pounding are they going to be okay but you're not done with that the whole fucking neighborhood is on fire they're like there's a little brief comic beat of did we do that maybe and then there's a moment where brian is like mom like where are we gonna go what are we gonna do they're coughing the air is getting thick they're being choked out there's the threat of the dinosaur but also the thing that they caused trying to escape and stay alive another brilliant idea about the mess that humans make of the world great touches like that i don't know and there were little details like i thought the kid who played i thought both the kids were great i thought the kid who played brian uh christian convoy was like he had just such an expressive face he was he was wonderful i also like the fact that he was somebody with some unchecked violent urges or whatever it is that's happened between him and this other kid in the neighborhood and also that like they give him this stupid bow and arrow that is completely useless throughout the movie more or less and he can't shoot it yeah he doesn't know what to do with it little touches like i don't know the initial when the parents break back in through the the front door and shot it just in time to escape the the first potential um death bite and he like pisses his pants and it's of course you would but nobody there's no discussion nobody stops to comment little choices like that i think made the urgency of the moment feel really heightened it's like we just have to get out of here we can't talk about the fact that you need to like change your pants yeah no it's a great point i think um there are constant like a series of moments that show you know kind of man's um inability to combat this to your point about them just being straight up monsters that if we were in a encountered dinosaurs it would not be jurassic park it would be it wouldn't be the brontosaurus is so cool it's eating a tree i just showed alice that scene the other day and she was like this is incredible and i was like we can't watch any other scenes from jurassic park yet you can only watch this one because she saw the trailer for oak street that's why she wanted to see it but so in this movie you know you mentioned the bow and arrow there's a there's a gun that plays a prominent role though that gun is mostly useless and there's a notable sledgehammer that we think is impactful and in fact is not at all and you know full spoiler warning here because i think we have to talk about a very critical event in the movie so if you haven't seen oak street you want to you can forward maybe 10 minutes but um ewan mcgregor's character is shockingly and i'll say thrillingly killed about two-thirds of the way through this movie after we have finally become fully invested in this story and we feel that this family is finally working together and maybe transcending some of the challenges of the first act of the movie at a moment in the movie where you probably i had a little voice in my head being like are we really gonna do 90 minutes of them just avoiding injury from dinosaurs and how many other neighbors faceless neighbors can get bit their heads bitten off so i was delighted to see this um they also it truly explains that the pitch that ewan mcgregor is at throughout this film which is like yeah i don't really care if this guy dies you know like not in like a callous way but you're just sort of like this guy's not helping you know he's a little ineffectual yes and uh also the instant he dies you're like well he's gonna come back in some way you know like this movie did you think that i actually thought that they were gonna pay off him dying in a way that that's where i with all due respect the bad robot part of it kind of comes in and like with inability to ever let anything go you know yeah we should talk about that any thoughts well one i just want to say with no disrespect to ewan mcgregor i don't think he's very good in this movie i think he's also opposite ann hathaway who's just in the zone right now i know i know you love him i know he's very important to you he should just stop doing parts as americans like he's not american and his american accent is not it was strange it's distractingly bad yes it was strange it doesn't mean he's not an incredibly gifted actor because he's in the patrick wilson part yeah that's right right that's right um and i understand like he's they needed more of a star right than a patrick wilson type somebody who can put on the poster and be like oh fucking obi-wan yeah um which i get i think he's kind of the weak link and yet i still was emotionally affected by his death scene i thought it was very impactful um anything you want to say did a good job of you know you used the word shame earlier conveying this and like there was an interesting dynamic inside of the family too of like the mother and daughter and father and son are more often the uh the allied pairs inside of the family unit i love that scene when he comes home from the deliveries help me take this off they take it off he's like why are you still smoking like all that stuff is like that's also very specific real stuff like it's in it's from a bigger movie with more stuff going on into dynamics but it's specific in a way that i appreciated yeah and even like you know the um the mentioning the god thing earlier and like you only go to church on sundays but then brian the son is like well i believe i believe in what dad is saying so they captured a lot of that well and i thought that he convincingly played the dad to that son most of all um and a husband who you can see you know he's handsome he's wearing the hell out of that terrycloth polo and short shorts and you understand maybe the spark that that he and denise once had uh-huh and believe that when he you know throws himself on top of her to cover her in the back of the car that they could like find that again if she just saw a little bit of something the the confrontation the the i think my favorite beat from his character in the movie before the leg chomp into full body chomp was actually the moment where he's like i read your novel because that really deepens the sense of what he's keeping it what he's not sharing he's not only withholding his own shame and i got laid off and i'm not enough of a provider for the family it's i know you think that too but i'm too embarrassed to confront that and tell you and you're too embarrassed to tell me and that makes me more embarrassed that felt like really true to life in a way that i thought he actually and they as a um as a married couple could you know conveyed to us quite well but then you have the other parts that he's bringing of like oh buddy there's the sweetness with the kids about the dog but he's also like leave the dog you kind of have to be like wait this isn't what they need from you um i thought i thought it was probably where the rest of the movie was was this like to your point like this juxtaposition of not only that opening barbecue scene but everything that we bring into these 80s nostalgia movies of like man it's just so much better back then you knew your neighbors like you know this you were out till the street lights went on that's all a big lie and it's all bullshit you know and these people were all miserable with each other and way too armed and probably drinking too much and you know uh trickled on down economics were starting to impact the ability of guys like this to have jobs or whatever it's not a social commentary per se but subterranean i feel like there's more of that in there and if you've seen something like it follows which has like a folk horror not folk horror but like a folklorish horror uh element of in terms of like an urban legend that comes to life but also in an urban setting like a kind of bomb down detroit where is this and like what happened here that something like this could permeate yeah it's yeah so it's a question of the same thing silver lake is like we're all being controlled by insidious forces and we're being made to feel crazy because we can't figure out who these forces are but they're there but the the sort of rabbit hole the you know mouse maze is the whole problem of this thing is you get caught up with them with the maze and you don't think about the wider question so he has a lot on his mind and this movie it kind of kind of like skips through it at the end and i just want to cite the eel oh sure sequence before we talk about the ending really quickly which i just thought was like very visually inventive and fun and exciting and scary and silly all at the same time a moment where everybody was like she is stabbing that fucking yes and very visceral right um speaking of your laughs eileen i saw it with eileen again on friday and she was laughing really hard during that scene because hathaway is just going so hammer on that eel um i really enjoyed that the ending yes so we learn after a little tease about carl sagan's cosmos from az stella's character at the beginning of the movie that in fact this is a kind of wormhole time portal scenario the entire neighborhood has been transported to prehistoric times by a wormhole and wormholes are They're propping up in this town, and the only way to get back, seemingly, is to jump through one. McGregor and Hathaway's characters opt not to jump in to one they spot earlier in the film without their children. Right. And then at the end, after McGregor's been killed, they go to the roof of Mrs. Valcourt's house. Yeah. Hardest I've laughed this year in a movie is when Convery jumps off the roof and misses the portal and falls and breaks his ankle. Hysterical stuff. Incredible. Just a great movie moment. I loved it. Yeah. They find their way back up to the top of the roof. Mrs. Valcourt, R.I.P. She gets killed by some alligator, crocodile, dinosaurs. Tough one. And they jump through. And they jump through, and they land back in 1982. Yeah. What, an hour before the event? 20 minutes before the events? Yeah. Right on the precipice, yeah. And Denise, smart gal that she is, has a strong idea, which is that she's going to call as many people as she can to try to evacuate them from the town before the event. That's right. And have her husband deliver the pizza to them on the outskirts of town. We don't see any of that. We just see it presented as a possibility, and then there's a flash forward at the end. And we show that Denise has not just saved members of this community, though not all of them, and I wonder how many of them she did save. How many phone numbers did she have memorized of her neighbors is an interesting question. Well, back then. Different time. Probably at least eight or ten, right? Probably. She's also written a successful book. That's right. Called The End of Oak Street. about her experiences at the end of Oak Street. She has grabbed alternate universe Greg and brought him into their experience. But this is a Greg without the PTSD of the events that were portrayed in the film. This is a simple man who was a bad husband, who was unemployed. But witnessed the white light thing. He knows that like. Something happened. And he saw dinosaurs, but mostly on TV. Right. And in addition to that, a character who we have not mentioned is Jeanette, who is a young girl who has been orphaned during the dinosaur onslaught and joins the family in this film. And she also escapes. And her family is alerted by Denise at the end of the movie. Jeanette went to get her family. Oh, Jeanette, that's right. Jeanette raced off to get her family. And we learn in a very, very fast moment at the end of the film that not only did Jeanette save her parents, but she saved alternate universe Jeanette. And there are now two Jeanettes in this new version of Oak Street. So it's a lot to take in in a very short period of time. I feel 100% certain with no actual factual knowledge that this is not the way the film ended the first time around. Oh, okay. Interesting. I found this ending very amusing. It did leave me a little bit like the film we'll talk about later this week, that there's a little bit of the market tested. How can we make everybody a little bit. happier on the way out the door? It felt kind of JJ-ish to me. Uh-huh. It also opened up a Pandora's box of narrative and ethical questions that you could ask, which is essentially that Denise has gone through a loop, right? Like she escaped the lost world to get back to her suburban town outside of the blast radius. Saved some people, but not everybody. Including herself and her kids. But. Yeah. She does. No. Right. This is the thing, is that what she doesn't do is create like a chain reaction where it's the responsibility of each Denise to bring more people out of the zone. Like she's just like, we'll do my neighbors, we'll do my husband, Jeanette's family, Jeanette's guy. But it seems as though they stop with that and allow a world to be decimated by dinosaurs and environmental change or whatever. And then the government gets involved. But she wasn't the only one. She wasn't the only author of the ethicist column. She was just a woman trying to survive with 20 minutes to go. I'm just saying that that is something that modern storytelling usually pours over. And that this is like, there are two Jeanettes. It's pretty cool. Yeah. The prestige TV version of this becomes like the Apple TV Plus show, Dark Matter, where like every version of the alternate history with your family is something you get to glimpse in this. But I think that, I actually thought it was interesting that the movie kind of allowed, yeah, allowed you to consider the question. But thank you for this not being a fucking TV show. Yeah. This is the exact kind of, high concept premise that would be dragged out over three seasons and be fucking unbearable to me. And the idea that it's like, it's a 92 minute movie full of gnarly kills and it's fun is, this is almost exactly what I want. The movie is not perfect, but the fact that it chooses to be this is a great relief to me. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Yeah, no, no, no. So I obviously would welcome and love the six to eight to 10 episode version of that that does really like deeply mine all of those questions or the nodding, the novel version that would spend a lot of time parsing the ethics and the existence and just the quantum mechanics of it all. I thought inside of this movie, the fact that we just are like, huh, I have some things to think about now was very effective. Of course, they want Greg to be there to complete their family. But in order to bring Greg to them, they deprive the other versions of themselves of Greg. And they deprive that Greg of being with his family. Right. So do they make it? Do they make it out this next time? Does that Denise, Audrey, Brian set and start making out without Greg? It's really not because it's two years later. So they have not, there's not 20 Denise's at this barbecue. So they stopped saving people the first time. Well, who knows? Who knows when they jump through the portal where it takes them, right? Like who knows? Like what else is different in that world? Well, yeah. Or like where they pop out if they go, you know, is it like a, like the TVA with your timelines and stuff. But what chance do they have without Greg in the sledgehammer moment? These are all interesting questions. I think they're all interesting questions. This guy doesn't care. I don't, I really don't. It's just interesting that she sent herself and her kids back in because in order to spare them, then they'd all be sharing Greg. Fascinating. Seeing the two Jeanettes at the end, I thought was a great touch. The fact that Jeanette saved, of course, her parents and her family, but also herself. One of those Jeanettes is with Audrey. They have hit it off in the course of the movie of escaping the dinosaurs. I was waiting for a moment. This is romantically. Oh, yeah, definitely. Pretty clearly indicating that, right? Yes, they're like holding hands at the end. And the kid, the son is like, oh, I guess I'm out. Exactly, yeah. Exactly, exactly. Another L for Brian. Tough one. L after L for Brian. Tough scene for Brian. Breaks his ankle. This is not in the movie at all, obviously, but I do wonder if like, does the two and a half hour version? Not actually. I don't actually think this was ever in the movie, but like, is there a stinger where Audrey, who goes to Cornell to study with Mr. Cosmos himself, Carl Sagan, is like in the future? Here's the thing the movie doesn't try to answer at all and in fact goes out of its way to say, there are no answers. Where'd the fucking portal come from? Who's doing the experiments? And I'm like, is it Audrey? Did future Audrey create the tech that opened that portal? We're in House of R territory here. I don't need that, though. No, we didn't need it. What Sean and I would do if we had this scenario is we would be like, Denise one gets Denise two out to saddle her with Greg so she could go to New York and become Joan Didion. This is literally the plot of Dark Matter. Are you? Are you watching Dark Matter? Literally. How are you watching Dark Matter? Your life is so fascinating to me. I had read that book, so I wanted to watch the show. And Jennifer Connelly is one of the great loves of my life. Is it Jason Clarke? Is he the star? No. It's Joel Edgerton. Yeah. But he does play a character named Jason. Jason one and Jason two is part of that. Is Jason Clarke in an Apple series of some kind? Yeah, he was in one that came and went. I can't remember. I think it was about like a hostage negotiator or something like that. There sure are a lot of those shows. Yeah. Apple, they're making a lot of shows. Ted Lasso, you guys caught up on that? Haven't started the new season. Saving it for myself, like to binge the whole thing. So long-time listeners of this show know that I'm a huge fan of The Twilight Zone. Twilight Zone is the, I think probably the entry point for me into science fiction, fantasy, storytelling. My dad was a big fan. He showed me a lot of episodes when I was a kid. Of course, the Sci-Fi Channel has run a marathon of Twilight Zone episodes on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day for many, many, many years. They still do it, I believe. And I love movies like this, where they're just like really high concept sci-fi fantasy thriller stories that can be explained in one sentence and often lead to outrageous circumstances with a real moral underpinning. A real, and I think this movie has that. I think maybe it doesn't always land the plane, so to speak. Sure. In terms of what messes up the story. It's just trying to convey. But it's been interesting because, you know, you many years ago, when we were all working together at Grantland, put me on to Black Mirror. You were watching Black Mirror when it was airing in the UK. I was watching it illegally. I'm not too proud to say. Well, Statue of Limitations is up. Rule breaker. You're free. Yeah. And that show, obviously, heavily inspired by The Twilight Zone and brought a point of view about technology into the storytelling there. Yeah. And that show is still going. It sure is. Three to four to six new episodes every, what, 18 months to two? Two years at this point. I was explaining that to my dad when I was on vacation and he was like, I never heard of it. I was like, never heard of Black Mirror? Did you boot up San Junipero for him? I don't think that's one we would watch together. Great episode. But these movies are coming back, I would say, in a big way. These kinds of stories. And just thinking about what are some movies that would be eligible for this kind of conversation, a bunch have happened in recent years, including It's What's Inside, which was on Netflix, The Invitation, Bird Box, Vivarium, Don't Worry Darling, companion nope I'm thinking of Ending Things, Barbarian, Black Bear, Begonia, Back Rooms, other films with B titles. There's a lot of movies like this. I mean, Obsession is a Twilight Zone episode. Very much so. Guy gets what he wishes for. Yes, he gets a magical object and uses the magical object to make something that goes terribly awry. So it's so interesting, because this movie did fine at the box office, but it was kind of buried in mid-August in the aftermath of two of the biggest movies of the year. Yeah. And I would say it sunk my spirits just ever so slightly, the fact that it didn't really work. Your box office high. Yeah. Tough time of the summer. I mean, it's just like. School is starting for a lot of people, or it's like the last week of summer. It was pandemonium at the AMC that I went and saw this at, and it was pandemonium for like Paw Patrol, Spider-Man. I'm writing about this in the sub stack this week about like, what is the right time to release a movie? Well, also, because there's so many movies that have come out. The idea of this like trickle-down effect of movie theater. Like. You know, do they need to have a movie in between. Because there was a couple weeks ago between Spider-Man and Odyssey, and I think people were like, how is there not a new fucking movie? Everybody's so used to going to the theaters right now. And now it looks like it's just like, yeah, they were probably right to just steer clear of Brand New Day entirely. That's exactly right. I mean, this was two full weeks after Spider-Man, and Spider-Man is still going super strong. And I think also the Odyssey only went down like 25% or something. So, obviously, they've encountered these two big movies, but there is a real appetite for movies like this, generally speaking, um, any general thoughts on them before we share our list? We can do our list quickly, one through five. I was curious about, uh, whether or not there was something to the easy-to-explain-but-high-concept premises for all these films that I think seems to be very in vogue for almost any genre right now, even down to romantic comedy with the one-night-only thing. Yeah. Where you're not going to get a lot of, nor have you ever really, because it's a misunderstanding of cinema history, to be like, Mikey and Nikki is what we used to call them. But, like, saying, what is your movie about? And be like, ah, it's two guys, and they're having a tough night. That's not enough anymore. You gotta be, it's like, two guys, but they have a robot maid. You know? That would be the 2026 version. Mikey and Nikki and Companion? Who says no? Would watch. Yeah. Um, so I wonder whether or not there's something about the slick box that Twilight Zone episodes come in, that. Jesus, Mallory. That's just disgusting. I'm leaving that in 100%. She'd cut that out and make it a social clip. I agree. What's your slick box hall of fame? One through ten. Yeah. My microphone just went straight in. Hey-o. I'm glad this is a brand new international symbol for you to have my physical attention. Oh my God, I can do the entire thing. entire Ned Ryerson spiel if you want me to do that, but I can't do. You know, watch out for that step because it's a doozy. Yeah. Needle Nose Ned, Ned the Head, come on buddy, Case Western High, don't tell me you don't remember me, I sure as heck fire remember you. Wow. Tough scene there where we had, we did Groundhog Day rewatchables with Issa Rae during COVID. Oh yeah. Me, Bill, and Issa, which was really fun, but I didn't feel comfortable enough with Issa because I didn't know her to do all the Stephen Tobolowsky bits. So I'm happy to do more of them here with you if you'd like. Great. The floor is yours. Okay, I'm done. Groundhog Day is really, really funny and very affecting. Oh yeah, absolutely. And the character does feel real change. Okay, what's your number four? Oh, jeez. Okay, my number four, I don't know how strongly I feel about the exact order. These could go in any order. That's fine. I have Get Out next. Have you heard of it? I've seen it. You picked some hitters today. It feels like a PL movie has to be on the list, right? Yeah, I mean, very clearly inspired by The Twilight Zone, so much so, that he attempted to reboot it. Exactly. Felt like The Sunken Place needed to be present on the list. Did you consider anything from the appeal canon on your top five? I had Us on my long list, which I think feels the most Twilight Zone-y to me of all of his movies. This sort of like, what if doppelgangers arrived and what they would tell you about how the world really works. Like, there's sort of like underworld of that movie, which is such a thorny movie and is like maybe not totally narratively thought through or like executed or explained properly to your point about Oak Street earlier, but has so much invention. I mean, Get Out and Nope also have just an incredible amount of invention. My next film is one of my favorite movies from the last decade, Arrival, one of my favorite Villeneuve movies. He's my probably favorite filmmaker right now. Is that true? I think so. I've been thinking about it a lot with him and Nolan because doing the whole Nolan rewatch has been such a joy and he's obviously at the top of the list as well. I just love Villeneuve's movies. Absolutely love them. And I think Arrival is gorgeous. I'm like reluctant to say why I picked it because it is a spoiler, but I guess what I will say without getting into how can I do this without spoiling this wonderful movie for people who haven't seen it. It's not just, oh, the aliens are here. There is an element to it about how we perceive how a certain character, Amy Adams' character, perceives time. And when all of that clicks into place, and you realize either when you're reading the excellent Ted Chiang short story on which the film is based or watching the movie, it is a really gobsmacking, gut-wrenching examination of the choices you make and the decisions you make about your life when you have a certain degree of awareness out of time and sequence with what other people know. It is really just great. It's just great. I don't know if it's his best movie. I really go back and forth, but it's among his best films. It's among the best films of this century. Yeah, what would you have at the top of the list right now? Doom Park 2? Of my favorite Villeneuve? Yeah, you're a big Enemy head. I love Enemy. I think Sicario is the best film he's made. No, of course you don't. Eileen and I re-watched Blade Runner 2049 the other day. That movie's great. And that's a movie that I was not very big on for a very long time, but I really liked it on a revisit. And that movie's really good. It's very cult-y now, I think, among young people who are younger than us. That's a huge film. Love that movie. Enemy on day one, I was in line saluting it. And yeah, the Doom movies, we'll see. I think how three turns out, I think, will impact that conversation. I don't have a single doubt. Yeah. Not one. We saw, Amanda and I saw the first seven minutes and it was beyond. It was absolutely thrilling. I will be astonished if that's not my favorite movie of the year. Astonished. Okay, number two. Another one I don't want to spoil. I don't invest, it makes it difficult to explain why it's on here. My number two is Moon from 2009, a movie that I absolutely love. Incredible Sam Rockwell performance. Really, really great. We actually, we recently had an opportunity to talk about this, Chris, on the Space Movies draft that we did for House of R. This is a Duncan Jones film. How do I talk about this without spoiling it? I kind of have to spoil it. It's really hard to explain why it's on here otherwise. It is a movie that presents an interesting, very compelling twist about identity. I'll leave it at, I'll say that because I don't want to, I don't want to blow it for people who haven't seen it, though I bet most listeners of this podcast in particular have seen Moon. Confronting a different version of yourself and learning about that version, about you, and about the larger apparatus that allows things like that to happen. Very Twilight Zone-y and just a really great piece of science fiction. I think it's fantastic. And then my number one is The Truman Show, which, again, the order of this list could change, but I knew Truman Show had to be in the top five here. You know, the idea that your life is being filmed for other people's entertainment. The reason I think it ends up being really high on my list in addition to just being on it is because not only does it, I think, really honor and meet the prompt of something that could be the premise of a Twilight Zone episode but is also kind of right away really its own fully realized thing that then becomes a reference point in its own right. It's the one that, like, got in my head the most when I was young. This came out in 98, so I was, let's see, I was 12. So I saw this when I was, like, in middle school. I watched it a bunch of times and I constantly, for, like, years after that, this is a really incredible, like, Loki-esque seismic narcissist thing to say, but I would just walk around being like, are people filming me? Is my life a reality television show? I'm looking at you now. Exactly. It kind of is now. You know? Lots of people at D23 just being like, world star. World star? Look at you. You know who that makes me think of? Matt Borkus. He used to say world star a lot. Did he really? Yeah, Miss Sucka. Wow. A name I've not heard in a long time. Okay, CR. Top five. Let's go number five with a movie that's coming out in theaters in a couple of days, but premiered last year on Letterboxd's newfound video store shelf or whatever they were calling that where you could stream films from Letterboxd and it's It Ends, which is a young director named Alexander Allum's foray into a very, very beloved subgenre for me which is road trip horror or loop and also sub-subgenre time loop horror. Have you seen this? No. Pretty cool. This is about a group of friends who are on a road trip before they all go off to different points in their young adult lives and the road trip never ends. They wind up on a loop and they have to figure out what the rules of this looping road are and why they're there and how they get out and what their options are for dealing with that and it's it's very much like what if your road trip went awry. Number four, not unlike Groundhog Day. It's a great pick. I picked Field of Dreams which is a very, very beloved and sweet movie. Mallory and I share this film being among our favorites obviously. The best. The Field of Dreams classic in Iowa just relaunched the Phillies season so I'm very grateful. Relaunched the Phillies season? Yeah, rebooted it. I think it rebooted it. Is Bryce still playing right field? I mean, he's just working through some stuff. Is he playing right field? Uh, they're moving him around a lot. Okay. Yeah. You think that's a good choice? He just has like a lot of pain that's difficult for him to manage, I think. Yeah, I can relate. Same. Field of Dreams has a Twilight Zone premise. It's like, what if a guy was out in a cornfield and heard a voice that told him to build a baseball stadium? So I should have picked this as a great, didn't occur to me. Or is it merely the representation of a delusional man slowly breaking as he reaches his life? There you go. An acid casualty from the hippie days whose excesses have come back to haunt him. I think that's a reading of the film. You know, there's that, God, what is the movie that is a very upsetting thriller that is cut to seem like a charming romantic comedy? Is there like a version of Taxi Driver that's just like, he's the taxi driver. Oh, right. There's a version of Field of Dreams that is cut like Zodiac. Yeah, where he's like, his daughter's like, Dad! Yeah. Field of Dreams, number three for me is 1968's The Swimmer. This was sitting at number one on my list and I took it off at the last second. Happy to see you put it on there. An adaptation of an adored and hallowed John Cheever story which we will be discussing. No, Amanda, we will talk about Cheever as much as we damn well please today. Short stories rise today. Today. Okay. Well, right now. Well, my 50th birthday is already going to be a celebration of the American short story. Did you hear about this? I heard about it on this podcast when he did declare. I listened to this pod, just FYI. Do you think men and women should read Cheever stories? Of course I do, yeah. I hope to be invited to participate in the grand reading of the short stories to celebrate Chris's. That would be rough if you were not invited to Sierra's 50th. What would that say? Chris's life. That would be very hurt. Very hurt to not be included. I'm going to have a rave. I've decided. A rave? Like with like ecstasy? Starts at midnight. I won't be there. No. Number three, The Swimmer, directed by Frank Perry, who's a director I've just kind of gotten into, honestly, with The Last Summer, which got released on 4K recently or on Blu-ray recently. The Swimmer stars Burt Lancaster as this guy, Ned, who's at a pool party and he's like, in the suburbs. This is very mad many if you're interested. Have you seen this on Reddit? And he's hanging out and he's like looking out at the suburban landscape, the suburban lawns. He's like, I bet I could swim all the way home just jumping in people's pools. Eight miles. Oh my goodness. And it turns out to be something of an allegory for the experience of life and then perhaps literally Intriguing. goes through some sort of transformation as he does this. This is a rare case of a thing that I read and I'm like, when I was 15, and then I watched the movie and had completely forgotten gotten that I'd read it and then halfway through the movie I was like oh yeah I know exactly what this is wonderful movie awesome movie very upsetting though number two Shutter Island you know what it's a fucking awesome film yeah and this is Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lane's thriller where Leonardo DiCaprio is going to investigate a crime at a mental institution on an island off New England where is he the criminal this movie rules this movie is great one of the great twists so very sad movie very very sad truly one of the saddest movies of the 2010s awesome Ruffalo performance and finally my last Twilight Zone inspired film is The Game David Fincher's how fucked up are yuppies movie about a rich man in San Francisco who has everything so his brother gets him an experiential night of excess and violence for his birthday so real that he forgets and or disbelieves that it's a it's a game at all Mal I think I've asked Chris this before but would you do the game oh yeah of course you would yeah for the experience no you wouldn't no you wouldn't the first thing I would do if I was doing the game with you is I'd be like make your own food that's a wrap make your own food that's a wrap I can make my own food I just prefer not to you know what I tried to do the other day what do the homemade ice cream thing with the frozen melon and the heavy cream that you pour into it because I've been served a lot of Instagram reels oh you got TikTok filled for your food and I did it with the pineapple and it was it was delicious but it was a lot of work for one spoonful I know this is the thing with cooking for one and cooking for two is very tough because it's a lot of effort it's a lot of effort to be like in the time that it took me to make this eat it and clean it up I could have just gone to I feel like the trick there is and I say this is a person who doesn't really cook very much anymore but when I did in my 20s I cooked a lot more before Eileen learned how to cook I try to make things that keep you always you pretty much only make meals you invented meal planning no obviously I learned from someone else who told me this but it was always like make food that you can eat for three four five days in a row after that but this is so contrary to one of the famous Sean Fennessey mantras which is I work too hard to eat leftovers I don't eat the leftovers but other people enjoy the leftovers so the food's not going to waste do you consider it a leftover if it just hasn't been prepared yet if it hasn't been prepared yet well there's a big trend in like food content right now of like making stuff to be frozen and it's like now you have your burrito filling right here and you just throw it right in the pan do you consider that leftovers I don't think that's leftovers no let's just get ahead on the week because it hasn't been fully baked so why don't we start our own food delivery service called Slickbox Inc and it's just like people get frozen burrito fillings from us and we would put little box stations around and they reach into my box exactly see what's inside slide right in I think this is a billion dollar idea genuinely no need to grease up seed investment indeed it's wet inside why don't you give us your list Rod Serling you know Rod Serling lived in Ithaca and first of all Alan Sepinwall has a great book coming out about Rod Serling very soon Biography of the Man and there was a documentary that premiered I think at South by Southwest about Serling called Serling but I don't think it has been acquired yet I would encourage people to look into that Serling of course didn't just write the Twilight Zone he also wrote movies like Planet of the Apes which might be the single best Twilight Zone-esque movie I didn't pick it but I wanted to honor it my number five is The Vast of Night which we talked about quite a bit during COVID came out in one of my favorite movies that came out that year 2020 Andrew Patterson who has a new movie back out this week called The Rivals of Amziah King starring Matthew McConaughey did you like that film I thought it was less successful than The Vast of Night which is about two teens in New Mexico who find themselves on a radio program maybe or maybe not making connection with life beyond our own you haven't seen this movie no you'd like it a lot terrific movie incredibly well made even though it's very modestly budgeted and really feels like a totally original voice highly recommend for you Mel interesting number four is a movie that I think our friend Brian Raftery put me on to or maybe it was Tracy Letts or maybe not I can't remember who put me on to it but it's called Repeat Performance it's from 1947 it predates The Twilight Zone it's a film noir it's about an actress who the movie opens with her at a New Year's Eve party and she's just murdered her husband okay and she goes to the party and pretends like nothing has happened but she knows something is wrong and she somehow sort of magically enters a time loop and we see variations on the experience that she's had this is an extremely modern movie made 80 years ago features great performances by Lewis Hayward and Joan Leslie as the woman at the center of the story it's based on a novel that came out in the 40s sounds great relatively anonymous director Alfred L. Worker but I've never heard of this movie it's really really good and I highly recommend you check it out number three is The Quiet Earth another movie that I got put on to recently New Zealand film directed by Jeff Murphy about a man who wakes up this is not on like many many stories like this and effectively an apocalyptic scenario everyone is gone no one has survived why is that not unlike Night of the Comet is like this there's a lot of movies that are the 28 days later obviously is like this this one being set in New Zealand you see some like particular cultural differences that are portrayed but really chilling and very very well made movie my number two is Groundhog Day of course and number one is Seconds which is a science fiction dystopian melodrama it's John Frankenheimer directed it it is stars Rock Hudson it's about a man who receives a phone call from a friend who he thought was dead and the man says there is a procedure that you can get that will put you in a new body in a new life and you can be happier more beautiful and richer than you ever possibly imagined and Rock Hudson says sounds great sign me up and he signs up and there are devastating consequences for this decision very traumatic it's sort of it is sort of Shutter Island before Shutter Island in a lot of ways but I thought I would just try to give a couple of recommendations that are a little off the beaten path fantastic but you know there's a whole host of movies M. Night Shyamalan's career is indebted to this you know Edge of Tomorrow is a great version of this Memento to your point about Nolan is very much one of these kinds of movies The Invitation The Invitation yes many Stephen King stories you know The Mist to me is a very specific version of it Palm Springs a rom-com that has a very Twilight Zony premise and I also wanted to give a quick shout out to directors I know you like a lot Benson and Moorhead who you know somewhat unfortunately to me have been subsumed into the Marvel machine and now only seemingly direct episodes of Daredevil and what was Moon Knight but they had a run of five movies in the 2010s they still come back to it though I feel like they haven't like completely left they haven't made a movie in four years which is the longest gap that they've had because they've been making these TV shows but they made these films Resolution Spring The Endless Synchronic and Something in the Dirt that are all terrific ground level high concept sci-fi movies that I highly recommend people check out those are the two best I agree with you I think that's it great stuff thank you both for being here let's go now to my conversation with Will Poulter Will Poulter is here very excited to talk to him I want to start a little bit early in your career before we get into Union County because I think it might inform some of the choices that you're making now so you started working as a teenager before you were a teenager really and I always ask actors and filmmakers what was the first thing you saw that made you want to do the work do you remember seeing something and making you think I could do this wow yeah that's such a good question it was probably if I'm being honest it was probably kind of like a series of black and white kind of westerns I can remember as a kid sitting like irresponsibly close to the TV and watching black and white westerns just non-stop and I think maybe at the age that I was watching them I wasn't even necessarily sure what was real and what wasn't if that makes sense I think that was probably my sort of earliest form of kind of like inspiration I guess do you have family members who like that kind of thing I don't even think I did necessarily that like primal cowboys thing that you see on TV yeah yeah and obviously like you know I think in fairness there's a lot of there's a lot of messaging within those films that is you know retrospectively quite problematic and isn't necessarily accurate whatsoever but I think if I'm honest that's probably the first sort of exposure I had to film before I even necessarily knew that it was film and and then I think you know within that I sort of started to kind of admire different performances and gravitated to ones that felt more kind of authentic and whatever else and then I think you know I've spoken about this so many times before but I think the first film that I was very aware of being a film that was probably the biggest influence on me was Hook which remains my favorite film of all time wow yeah what is it about Hook that clicked for you you know I just wanted to be a lost boy or yeah I think so a little bit a little Rufio energy I got yeah I know that's the best thing that anyone's ever said to me. I think I did want to be a lost boy i think that being a kid at school who didn't necessarily gravitate towards traditional kind of academic subjects um certainly didn't excel in any of them and then seeing imagination and play being celebrated so much creativity being championed in this space that was neverland and by this group that was the lost boys i was like oh i think those are my i think those are my people over there um so it was a little bit of that um there was also some stuff i think you know in relation to uh peter and his relationship to his son jack that kind of mirrored me and my dad's a little bit and and so yeah psychologically i could have a field day on that on that film but um it was it was definitely the one that kind of grabbed me grabbed me by the heart from early this was something i thought about thinking about you choosing to make union county which is when you're a teenager and you're working mm-hmm how much were you thinking about not just how to learn about the craft of acting even before you're maybe you're studying it in school but also how to have some agency in your career where you're getting to do things that you want to do when maybe you're not even old enough to know what you want to do yeah yeah that's a really good point um man still kind of figuring out as i go along yeah to be honest and i think i mean i can't speak for anyone who's trained um because because because i i'm not i wouldn't want to speak for anyone who's trained anyone anyway but i everyone's experience is different but i think regardless whether you've trained or not my my understanding is that you don't necessarily have the blueprint or um a kind of guidebook as to how to handle the career side of things you do put that in the hands of agents and managers and and often your family play a a you know influential role i know i was very lucky that my family sort of didn't really have an interest in entertainment and media but were very supportive of me doing it because i was very lucky that my family sort of didn't really have an interest in entertainment and media but were very supportive of me doing it because i think they took one look at my grades and were like well he's not gonna he's not gonna do much else and uh but did you raise your hand and say i want to do this was it that active a choice i think so yeah yeah i i did really um and my family for the most part are in sort of um like health care sector in caretaker roles or like full-blown medics my mom was a nurse and my dad is still a professor of cardiology and so they were very much in that direction and i think they just saw at a young age that they were not necessarily showing signs of following in their footsteps but i had this like passionate interest in drama i mean like nauseatingly so like i was that precocious kid who was just always performing all the time and doing impressions and this that and the other so they were like okay he wants to do drama big big shock and i just got very lucky that when when the first opportunity rolled around which was son of rambo which is my first film my mom and dad were incredibly supportive and you know they they allowed me to do it and the school that i was at were kind of cool with me taking that time off and it was during my summer holidays to be fair but it worked out um and then the next thing i did that sort of required i guess some kind of disruption to my family life was was narnia and my mom came with me so did my little sister and i'm so grateful to them forever for doing that um my dad did like a sabbatical in australia like so all of these things you know required i guess my family to make really major sacrifices and i don't take that for granted either and and between them and agents that i've been with basically ever since 2010 the same team they've just been incredibly helpful and supportive and um i am very very fortunate with the system i have around me i'm curious about that right now then because from the outside it seems like you you're very adventurous in the kind of things that you're trying to do very varied your filmography film and television is kind of all over the place seems like you have real interest in filmmakers but maybe you can do demystify the process at least for you because we hear that actors they get scripts from agents and they read them and they decide that they want to make a movie or not like is it just that simple for you do you go hunting for talent that you like and try to connect with them like how do you chart a career in your 30s when you you have you know some clout you're accomplished um that's kind of you i mean i i don't know i mean you know if i can use you know union county as an example um which uh written and directed by adam meeks that that came to me um in sort of short film format together with the screenplay for the for the feature and adam at that point had not yet made a feature film and so inherently just on paper you know in the context of things that might you know arrive on your desk so to speak there's already certain like risk attached to that right and so you're you're you're reading the script trying to uh analyze it you know kind of in isolation of the director's sort of uh level of experience and just like what is the quality of this script and it was so beautiful and so then what the short film did i think was provide something of a kind of proof of concept for how this very uniquely kind of crafted story would would work and the short film union county by the same title really was you know an exhibition of just how um adam might go about making the making the feature of this story and i think the combination made it a sort of undeniable kind of opportunity for me and sort of the last remaining question even though i had a strong instinct based on how it was crafted the last remaining question for me is how is this story that is going to be made in collaboration with a recovery community and involve the contributions of real participants of this recovery program you know how is the director going to go about that is he going to practice the sort of sensitivity and respect and you know how is the director going to go about that and uh level of care that i think is required and within about five minutes of talking to adam i i knew that was the case the other thing and i've said this to adam as well the other thing that i really appreciated is that yes he's a first-time filmmaker but there wasn't so much deference that he was going to like kind of willingly just sort of give it away to me he was like i want to meet you and make sure that we're on the same page because adam's perspective i think was i care deeply about this and i'm not just going to hand it off because you've done a few more movies than me and it's my first time i'm going to make sure that you know me and you are going to sort of really link arms over this and and do this together and that was further sort of affirmation of the fact that he was the guy i wanted to to work with if that makes sense it does so why did he want to make it with the community and why did you want to make it with the community like why was that intriguing to you personally i know adam is from ohio and he's seen it firsthand what is portrayed in the film but for both of you i'm going to ask you a question curious about that yeah it's it's a really good question as you say adam's from the area and he's had friends and family kind of affected by um the epidemic uh the opioid epidemic which was really kind of um taking a hold of folks you know around the time that he was out there visiting family um so his grandmother had got sick i believe in 2017 2018 and he was seeing you know the effects of um how this opioid epidemic was affecting him and how he was seeing the effects of um how this opioid epidemic was you know impacting people and at that time he was you know spending a lot of time in the area and he was at a folk music concert in somebody's house which is kind of actually like more of a typical thing in ohio than than maybe other places and it's it's a beautiful thing that uh is something of a kind of like cultural practice out there he was introduced to annette dio who is the real life um director of this adult recovery program in in ohio and you know i think adam's experience that i was speaking for him but you know we've sat side by side a lot of q a's and one of the things he sort of says is that at that time he didn't have to look far to see how the opioid epidemic was you know contributing to a lot of kind of like devastation a lot of like irreparable damage but in the headlines there was less attention being paid to the recovery efforts and the success that was being had and the way that certain folks were getting back up on their feet and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point and when he was introduced to annette and had the opportunity to kind of walk through the recovery space and see the facilities meet some of the service providers and speak to participants of this program he was thinking this is something of a counter narrative to what is going on right now and there's an opportunity here to sort of shed light on this really workable and really effective program that is helping people get back on their feet and the best way to do that is to you know with the community as opposed to about there's a distinct difference i think particularly in the entertainment industry you know sometimes i think we're all at risk of sort of descending on an area and kind of even inadvertently sort of exploiting or extracting information and not necessarily being as careful or as considerate of what that does to the community who are the sort of subject matter if you like um and adam's approach was always to be very conscientious about making sure that the film was only ever sort of capturing platforming and celebrating the success of the program but not infringing on the process for the participants you know the path of recovery for the participants in this community is hard enough and you know no one needs to be burdened with the responsibility to shoulder narrative beats or invent a dramatic moment or whatever else and so i think his approach was always to make it you know in collaboration and sort of of weave the fictional elements into what is an otherwise kind of uninterrupted disrupted, um, process. And, um, yeah, it was something that I think, you know, he just did with like the utmost diligence and conscientiousness and he did it really in collaboration with Annette Dio who, because she is the real life director of this program and also kind of one of our lead actors, she was able to sort of bridge the two worlds and, and make it happen. And they're sort of our two leaders in that regard. So, but what, why did you want to do it though? Like, what is interesting to you about working with non-professional actors, working within a community that is being portrayed in a, you know, fictionalized, but seemingly very authentic version of that story, because it does feel very different from doing a studio movie, for example. Yeah, I think, well, it provided me with an opportunity to sort of spend time with and speak to people. To people with the lived experience of what, you know, I was sort of being tasked with kind of representing. And I think, you know, I'm very, very lucky that the doors were kind of opened in that way. Annette Dio has such a immense amount of trust and respect within the community. She's kind of heart and soul of her community and, you know, everything sort of orbits around her a little bit. And so there's this sense, you know, in the local area, if you're good by Annette, you're kind of good with us sort of thing. And we were all benefactors. Yeah. And the reason I think I wanted to be part of this way of doing it is that I think the alternative has been done, and it feels a little bit less humanizing on screen. It feels like often it runs the risk of sort of reaffirming certain stereotypes or contributing to some of the stigma that exists. Whereas I think by allowing folks with lived experience to sort of represent themselves, to the audience, to the audience, to the audience, to the audience, to themselves, to the extent that they do in this film, you know, we kind of avoid that to a large degree. And I think that what Adam does really, really well is he wasn't interested in sort of dramatizing or fictionalizing, you know, as much as possible. It was about capturing the kind of mundane realities of recovery. And that in itself cuts against the grain of how we often focus on the subject of addiction. addiction and recovery in tv and film and for me as an actor to be a part of that was just so exciting um i felt like i got a much better understanding of the subject matter as a result i think i got closer to my character and was able to do something that just felt more authentic um and in summary like as a collective i think we truly felt this sense that we all made it together as opposed to this sort of slight disconnect or sense of like segregation between sort of cast crew and and and real life participants it was all sort of it all became kind of one that's not to conflate what noah and i were doing to the difficulty of what the participants were doing in recovery i mean their work was continuous and is continuous and far far harder obviously but the the spirit in which we all made it was sort of shared yeah i had an interesting conversation with paul thomas anderson and leonardo dicaprio about one battle after another and they talked about how in that film more than you would realize a lot of the actors were non-professional especially in the sequences in backed and crossed many of the people that that leo's character is encountering are people who just live there and who they brought in and how it changed the energy and dynamic of the movie and i'm curious for you when you're working in a similar fashion even though it's a much more contained environment focused on this specific community what does it mean as an actor to be working in that atmosphere instead of one that's say not guardians of the galaxy 3 you know yeah you know it's funny before we we embarked on this process like we we had an opportunity to go out sort of six seven months before and and walk the space and meet folks within the recovery community and you know they were very generous with their stories and you know um sharing um and and i think i began to get really really nervous at the point where i was like oh my god i'm not gonna be able to do this i'm not gonna be able to do this and i think i began to get really really nervous at the point where i was like oh my god i'm not gonna be able to do this that i was gonna sort of have to sort of match the level of like naturalism or authenticity when it came to play my character cody and you know you could say on the one hand that you know someone with lived experience kind of representing themselves in a sort of docu-fiction context they're going to be sort of doing something that it's almost like impossible to match and and i'd agree there's plenty of times i was like damn i'm not gonna be able to do this i'm not gonna be able to do this i'm really behind the curve here but oddly and this is kind of the genius of what adam did i think because annette is such a unicorn of a human being both as a therapist of 39 years and being so exceptional at her day job and then also an amazing actor it's like and she has a background in theater right so she sort of understands the dynamics of what's going on here in addition to the work that she does correct yeah yeah she's also she's also you know she studied acting for i think three years before becoming a therapist as well which was very handy but because of all that there was this sort of commitment to a character that we built out well in advance and i think being an independent film having you know the constraints of both time and money very much sort of present at all times we had to prioritize the right sort of things early doors and that was you know story and character and the sort of things actually often with bigger budget stuff falls down you know the list of priorities and sometimes by the wayside we sort of committed to what our characters look like and felt like and then when we arrived to shoot the project it sort of felt less like okay well let's try and match the level of authenticity and realism here and it felt more like let's just like let's trust fall into what is a very real environment as these characters and because it was so immersive and there were so few signifiers of the fact that we were actually on a film set we were able to do a lot of things and we were able to like we we we traveled light you know and we weren't a big crew and there weren't that many cameras and i mean honestly in any given scene there were there were much less cameras and much less lights than there are in this room you know no not yeah not to pull they have to work very hard to make me look human yeah no that's not true this is this is in for me apparently just to make me look human but you know so that is to say that the acting challenge was actually reduced like in a way i had to do less acting than i've ever had to do because i felt very much connected to the character i had been so lucky to be kind of welcomed into the community by the folks i'd gotten to know quite well at that point and there were sort of less reminders that we were acting and we were making a film so the task was made about as easy on us as you could possibly hope and you know credit to adam i didn't do a lot of takes in the sense that like i felt like i'd done it once and we'd got it like i i kind of was like i'm so happy to move on if you are and i hope i never put him under like the caution that way but i just you know i didn't have to repeatedly do things you know that that were like difficult or or trying and often we didn't have that opportunity anyway because for example the court hearings that happen every monday and are part of the program we shot five consecutive court hearings across the 25-day shoot and those approximately run for about 90 minutes and the way we would do it is that the court hearing would as it does in reality and the noah and i as fictional characters in that setting would be called up kind of randomly and we would sort of flip over into the scripted material for that moment maybe some improvisation um and that relies massively on judge brag who is the real judge in that program and is also happens to be an exceptional actor um his voice his voice like still rings out because he's so often off camera yeah when he's communicating and the camera stays so closely on him and he's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry on anyone who is speaking to him yeah in this interesting way but he has this like very resonant memorable tone the way he's engaging and it's like all about personal accountability with his character and seemingly him in real life in a way that it you know it stuck with me i think so yeah yeah no me too it's it's it's um it's quietly very authoritative but it's it's also a reflection of i think how the program it operates which is in a very humanizing compassionate way as well and it's a difficult balance to strike and he does it beautifully but in those court hearings you know they run for 90 minutes and if we went up and made our contribution we'd rarely sort of jump in and shoot it again or or go for more coverage because i think adam wanted it to feel every bit as sort of real and and for it to um be captured in the same way that any of the other participants were being sort of observed um and you know they weren't asked to repeat you know the process and so it almost became something that maybe i sort of took advantage of as well i was like i don't want to repeat it either you know um so all of that is to say it kind of it all helped make it feel more more real um and then importantly you know there was a there was a policy all the way through which is you know for any of the real participants if at any point they didn't want to be filmed or they didn't want to participate it was a raising of the hand and and it was a kind of a non-negotiable situation where you know no one was of course made to be you know filmed if they didn't want to um and and i really mean it when i say like adam was so conscientious about that there's an interesting dynamic too in those sequences they are describing where your character in particular is very taciturn and very withdrawn and you can almost feel him you processing kind of what is at play for the rest of your life and many of the real life participants the non-professional actors are incredibly charismatic and are storytellers and are like given a chance to shine they're humanized obviously but there's all it feels like there's some there's a dramatic strategy at play in a way where we're sort of like we're being kept at bay from you and you don't have some long traumatic monologue that explains things so i'm kind of curious to just hear a little bit about how much you and adam talked about that and if that was a very purposeful choice to try to have both effectively yeah absolutely um yeah i suppose with cody my character you don't necessarily sort of learn all that much about him until he gets a little further along in the program and begins to kind of share in some of the na meetings and then you sort of start to learn a little bit more of his backstory as he you know attempts to kind of reconnect with family members and and and and kind of take various steps in the in the recovery process one of the things i really appreciated about how adam had kind of sought to represent cody and particular in tandem with jack is kind of offer up these two sort of different versions of of people who had had you know similar kind of social experiences up until that date you know kind of relatively comparable sort of lived experiences up until the point that you meet them and yet even though they're brothers by way of the foster care system they are incredibly different while wrestling with a very similar issue of substance use disorder and it manifests in very different ways and you know i think noah plays jack in a way that i think is really important because i think it's really important that jack plays jack with this kind of gregarious infectious charismatic quality that is just amazing and and kind of lit up every room um and then i think cody by contrast you know is very reserved as you said i internalizes a lot doesn't express much as kind of very much a man a few words and the way that noah and i talked about this and adam and i talked about this kind of together is that in a way you're seeing sort of two different styles of avoidance you know jack is someone who will talk about anything and everything except for his trauma and his relations to substance use disorder and cody is someone who i think will kind of not talk about anything at all if he can help it and and and avoid uh in in that way jack is sort of distracting by talking a lot and cody is avoiding by not talking much at all and and really kind of uh not addressing the problem and that was important i think to show different styles of substance use disorder you know i think if we accept that there's a lot of stigma and there's a lot of stereotyping around addiction and folks who do experience substance use disorder it's really important if we're going to be humanizing the subject that we show you know a lot of individual experiences and we we sort of we sort of have an appreciation for the individualism in every case um and i i think about it often as i do with mental health you know i think sometimes there are certain personalities that you wouldn't assume are struggling or dealing with something because of their presentation because they are outgoing and they seem to be really really happy but it's important not to mistake that for someone who isn't masking or isn't actually you know practicing some kind of avoidance of their own feelings um and i think the way and i think that's what the characterization really kind of was was sort of supposed to do um if if i if i've interpreted it correctly and that's definitely the the way in which adam and i discussed it did you and noah decide to do this together is there was there because obviously you were in warfare together i don't know if you knew each other before that love warfare by the way um and so i was kind of curious like how that came about yeah that was pretty like magic bit of alchemy really um and i think that's definitely the way in which adam and i discussed it i had i met adam having read the script uh for the feature and having watched his short was blown away was blown away by my meeting with him was just sort of really hoping that he wanted to do it with me because it felt like a very very special quite kind of fast sort of uh meeting of intentions and and passion for the subject and in the last sort of five to ten minutes of our meeting he said um by the way what do you what do you think of noah's sentinel and i was like oh my god i love i just i just worked with noah on warfare and we got so close and and he said um he said okay well yeah there's a conversation about him maybe kind of playing jack and i thought wow to have this sort of pre-baked kind of understanding of each other yeah and you know having kind of spent such intimate time with each other like we worked it out and for about two months we spent 17 hours a day with each other um you know and and in a very intense environment that is almost designed to make you bond with each other and i think that's kind of a you know accelerated rate so arriving again in ohio playing these characters with this pre-baked understanding of each other was was amazing and i was so glad you know noah was the one to play jack i i think he's extraordinary in the movie i think he's so amazing in it he really is i i'm curious about the parts that you're picking at this phase related to this movie because i feel this is true in warfare too the first part of your career it felt like it was very easy for you from from my distance it felt like it was very easy for you from from my distance it felt like it was very easy for you from from my distance it felt like it was very easy for you to be charismatic to pick parts where you're funny where you're engaging or where you're more comfortable being the heel or you have like you have a lot to do a lot to chew on a lot of dialogue um and it seems like the last few projects and maybe this is in the bear a little bit too but more restraint a little quieter not as worried about showing off how entertaining you are and i don't know if that's a purposeful choice on your part if that's something you think about as an actor but it it strikes me as i look at the last few things that you've done yeah that that's interesting i mean i think i i definitely appreciated the challenge that lied in warfare and and in and in um in union county in that regard also in in the bear to a degree scary though as well like like the fit uh i think i i've sort of come to terms with this idea that the creatively speaking you know the things that scare me and the things that scare me and feel like i maybe can't actually do it are the things that i should challenge myself to do and you may end up with egg on your face doing that for sure and and god knows i probably have and and will but i i think that there's something that i am trying to embrace this idea that like a little bit of fear and even maybe a little bit more fear around the idea that you can do something or can't do something is is exactly what you should be trying to embrace because it may actually bring the best out of you like i felt i felt like potentially unprepared to to to to do it at the point that i did it union county and i think i threw my everything into warfare but i felt really scared by the challenge and and kind of unprepared and so but that that was the kind of thing that maybe in the past i would have sort of run from or panicked over and i'm trying to kind of not do that um yeah and and and i'm and actually i'm enjoying that challenge it's it's it's uh creatively it's keeping it kind of really interesting and and rewarding and it's it's forcing me to i think um yeah i don't know just just unearth stuff that i didn't necessarily know that i had maybe you've you've worked with a pretty cool collection of filmmakers and i'm i wonder if you do you go looking for established people who you really want to work with like you know bigelow and mariaster and you can go down the list of people you've worked with but then there's somebody like adam who is effectively is unknown effectively first-time filmmaker um and then you know like i said you have some ability to help movies get made especially at that scale so what's the responsibility to do that work what's the responsibility to just challenge yourself with exciting established filmmakers what's the responsibility to do studio movies that probably pay well and and allow you to do more of those other two things how do you think about yeah it's it's a it's a good question because i feel like you know in the case of union county you know i feel so lucky and i think there's like this mutual kind of understanding between adam and i where it's like maybe on one hand he's like oh you know great that you're attached to my first film you know that that helps you and noah attaching to the film helps get it made at the more i'm like dude thank you for giving me this opportunity to play this character to have this experience to you know spend time in this community to meet some of the most incredible people i've ever met i mean and that deal alone i said this the other day i was like even putting the film aside the fact that i got to interact with a human that good and call them a friend is like the biggest win in the world and um you know i think it definitely works both ways and and adam i think is such an extraordinary talent i really think like the sky is the limit for him and i think it's like the biggest win in the world and i think it's like i just feel lucky that i got to start working with him at the beginning of his career um i think in terms of identifying who i want to work with next or or you know if i'm so lucky as to choose um which i'm not in that position where i can just obviously just sort of pick who i want to work with but but um certainly the filmmaker is a massive massive part you know the director writer director in this case is a massive massive part of the consideration because that relationship is so important and so intimate and so vulnerable and you know i i rely so heavily on on my directors and um you know i i carry information that they've passed on and advice that they give with me long after i've finished working with them like i cherish those relationships um and i've been really lucky to work with some amazing people who are very experienced and then also some people who are kind of like you know first time or second time filmmakers and in a way it's not even so much of course their experience kind of textures what your experience is with them and i think that's a really important part of the experience and i think that's a really important part of the experience and i think that's a really important part of the experience with them but the most important thing for me is always like you know what is the what is the story what is the story that's being told what is the like social application of that what our audience members is going to kind of experience from hearing it and and and living with it in the outside world whether that's as simple as like putting a smile on people's face and and having a laugh and and experiencing some escapism to thinking being encouraged to think very differently about you know a subject as sensitive as it is and i think that's a really important part of the sensitive and important as substance use disorder, like thinking about who the kind of stewards are of that story and whether you can serve those stories, whether also you're the right person to do it with them. And I think also like, you know, the character side of things is very personal and instinctive. It's like, am I the right person for this? And there's plenty of times where it's kind of ineffable. I'm like, I can't put my finger on it. I'm just not the right person. And I don't know why, but I don't think it exists in my tool belt. And there's other times where I'm like, it might exist in my tool belt. It scares me that I might not get there. And I think now I'm sort of trying to force myself to maybe grab a hold of that tool and go to work. Okay. You don't have to tell me the parts, but have you ever done a part where you thought you were right and then you did it and you were like, oh, I made the wrong choice. And then vice versa, did you ever turn anything down and then see it and think I could have done that? Well, it's interesting. I've turned things down, seen it, seen other actors do it and thought, yeah, they nailed it. I like, I don't know if I could have done that. Um, for sure. Um, have I done something? I mean, listen, yeah. I mean, you can be modest and say, you know, sure. I, you always could do better, but like genuinely, you know, I mean, yeah, I, well, I feel that with every project to just be clear, but, um, yeah, I don't know if there's like, I feel like more often than not, if I've stepped away from something or, or said like, I'm not the person for the job, I feel, I felt like vindicated only because inevitably, like more often than not, someone else has filled the role and done a great job at it. And it's been like affirming. I've been like, yeah, that's, that's what I, that's what I hoped it looked like for the people involved, but I wasn't the right person at the time. Um, I think that just now I'm trying to not allow self-doubt to creep in too much. Cause I think if I look back on some of those occasions, even though the result was affirming, it was still a lack of confidence or, you know, uh, self-doubt that held me back. And now I'm like, Oh, maybe I won't write myself off too quickly. And I'll try and push myself outside of my comfort zone a bit more. Cause I've been, been doing it a bit more and, and, and enjoying it and loving the experiences that I've had. I think of you as a very versatile actor. Is there a kind of movie you would like to make a certain genre that you have not yet made? I really have tried to be like genre and medium agnostic, if that makes sense. Like I don't actually care if it's TV, film or theater other than the times when like, I haven't like, been able to afford to do theater, frankly, like I know a lot of actors will be able to like relate to that, but, um, I've tried to be like kind of agnostic as much as possible. Um, That's interesting. Cause it looks, it almost feels like you're spinning a wheel, you know, and you're like comedy, action film, sensitive drama, you know, like you really do have a variety of, of different types of projects that you've worked on. Yeah. Thanks, man. I mean, I, yeah, I, I suppose I'm being genre agnostic, but then also, yeah. I'm trying to, I guess, I guess trying to kind of like vary it for my own sake as much as anything else as well, just for different experiences and, and, and to challenge myself, but really I'm drawn to story and character. So wherever that presents itself in whatever medium and with whichever creatives I'm sort of drawn to, like, um, you know, and then there are some people that maybe at the risk of contradicting myself, I, I do like seek to work for, like, I, I asked to work for Paul. I was like, I will peel a carrot in the background for two minutes, please let me in sort of thing. And, um, he then, you know, went above and beyond and blessed me with this like unbelievable role that kind of changed my life. Um, you know, uh, do you think that that part changed your life? That's so interesting. I, why do you say that? It didn't necessarily change my life in the context of my career, I don't think, but it changed my life in terms of affirming that something was like something that like fed my soul and like, was this creative endeavor separate from, or used to be separate from my job, but like was, and can still be kind of separate from my life as an actor that, that really feeds me. And, and also if you pun the pun, like also can feed other people, like is this beautiful practice of being able to like create something, you know, through emotional expression, using memory, using experience, and then share that to sort of impact someone else in the same way. Like I regard cooking as kind of like the most, as a non-professional fan of the, of the world. Uh, I, I regard cooking as kind of the most complete human art form. The reason being that as an actor, I can appeal to people's sense of like sound and sight in order to kind of affect them emotionally or tell my story. But if I'm cooking for someone, or I should say if a professional cook or a chef is cooking for someone, I think that, I hope I'm not speaking out of turn by saying that you have access to far more senses and you can impact someone emotionally in a, in a, in a wider range of ways. So you can appeal to their sense of smell. You can appeal to their sense of touch. You can appeal to their sense of taste as well as, as well as sight and sound actually. You can have all of those sensory experiences in, in one moment. And just as you can watch a film and TV show and be moved because it represents your experience, you know, authentically or renders an emotion really, really, um, clearly, uh, you know, conjures a sense of nostalgia, brings back a memory. Food can do exactly the same thing. And, um, the bear really helped me realize that made me realize I, I thought I love food just cause food tastes good. Um, but I, I love food because it's fundamental to the human experience. And it is, I think, you know, cooking and eating is the most kind of like sensory complete experience we have. That was beautiful. Um, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing they've seen? Have you seen anything you like recently? Wow. Um, I've been really fortunate because with Union County, we've gone around to all these amazing independent movie theaters. Uh, around the country and, uh, around Ohio specifically. And it's really kind of affirmed my just love and faith in like independent film. So, um, my thinking is to, uh, mention something within that, within that vein. Um, uh, although I'm tempted to also mention a documentary that I've seen recently. Just say both. Just say both. I can say both. Um, I saw a film called Omaha by Cole Webley. Oh my God. Devastating. Isn't that beautiful film though? Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Very similar to Union County. Very tough movie. Yeah. A tough film, but beautiful. Yeah. Um. John Magaro, he's amazing in that film. John Magaro gives an amazing performance as do those two young children. Yes. Yes. Um, I think that's a really beautiful film, I think made for a very, very limited budget and done beautifully well. And then I saw an amazing, um, documentary called Come and See Me in the Good Light, which I believe was, uh, Oscar nominated, um, last year. And, um, so it, so it's, it's relatively well known, but, um, yeah, stunning, like talk about laughing and crying. And, um, uh, so those, those are the two that are kind of top of mind right now. Will, thanks for doing this. Yeah, dude. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks to Will. Thanks to Mallory and CR. Listen to The Watch, House of R. Yeah. Tailgate, you on that these days? Man, I tried out. You heard me on this. I'm Bill Simmons on Sunday night talking. Didn't hear it. How'd it go? I didn't, I didn't hear it. Was it good? I was good. Yeah. You were good on it? I talked a lot about Eric Morris and the system he's running at Oklahoma State. I think I have to watch college football this year because of the Jets. Oh, I mean, of course. Yeah. So like, I actually, maybe this is a different episode, but I need a cheat sheet for who, who we're, who we're looking at. I mean, this takes me back to the Grantland days. And he doesn't want to play there though. Dante, he doesn't want to play in New York. Okay. And he certainly doesn't want to play for the Jets, even though the color scheme is like, you can just flip around. Flip right over. He's wonderful. You know. Just wonderful. Do you think we should start, did you, have you been following the Jaden Daniels NIL story? I have. where even though he has left LSU, he's like, you guys can't use number five. You can't use my picture, all this stuff. I want to start doing that with pods. You know, like if somebody does the Charlie Rose imitation and I'm not there, I'm like, you have to take that pod down. This is a guy who's getting a little agitated by the third chair a bit. First of all, how dare you bring that up this late? And honestly, what Will Poulter gave to this pod, you shouldn't be desecrating it with this shenanigans, this nonsense. I'm merely citing that the heat is on. The heat, the H is O. That Van walked in this room. I heard. And he turned the volume up. And he said, listen clearly to what I'm saying. The reason he did that is because he also said, I am the prince who was promised. And I am going to take over Bill. But you said it in High Valerian, right? With some new eye makeup. You've been weighed in on this topic. Not that I really want you to. Yeah. I, to me, there's no, there's no greater person in the world than you. So I would love and respect to Tracy. What does that have to do with the question? It's wonderful. There's, there can only ever be one answer. This isn't who's a good person. Well, I think, I think that Chris is. He is a good person. I agree. You're a good person. This is the best podcaster as well. I like, I like, iron sharpens iron. I asked Chris at the end of the. It keeps me, it keeps me sharp. It keeps me good, good and ready for my appearances on this pod. What did you learn from Friedland about podcasting? Oh, interesting. Interesting question. Uh, that I'm not that funny. No. That he's, that, that. No. That I'm funny, but he's funny. It's a very generous response. I mean, yeah, he is, he's incredibly funny, but so are you. You're a great comic, great comedian. How many more years will you pod? How many more years do you want to pod? Over, under nine. Nine? Oh my God. Holy shit. I'll pod for nine more years. I'd like to be employed. I'd like to have a career, earn an income. But nine years ago, you never would have thought podcasting would have been your career. I know. When will I pivot to a quiet life? Nobody gives a shit what I have to say, you know? That's so not true. I'm asking you because I'm interested. I think, I think, I think the arc of the universe is bending towards you. I, I, I asked Chris at the end of Talk the Thrones, are you excited for next season? And he said, I'm on a year by year contract with Talk the Thrones on the, into the mic, on the record, on the public record. I respect that. So, you know, who knows? Once Chris is out, I'm out. That's, that's how I feel about it. No, but you still talk about those episodes for hours without me. It's just that you like my, you know, whatever energy I bring to those recaps. The everyman energy that you bring. How long will I podcast? I will podcast as long as you all will have me, you know? That's the answer. I think that you've been creating like a sense of scarcity with yourself where you're just like, oh, at any, you know, when I retire, when I leave. I haven't. I'm in, I'm in it for the long haul. What's the long haul mean? 18 months. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe less. Will you still be podcasting when you have to wear like a still suit to do it? You know? Because of the environment? That or because you're incontinent, you know, like either. I got some bad news for you. Been there for a long time. He's been pissing himself this entire time. Okay. Well, thanks everybody for listening along at home. CR will be back on this pod. He's, he's really putting in the hours. That's why he's third chair. We're going to talk about Tony. No thoughts about Pete Alonzo that you wanted to share. He's doing exactly what I told you he would do. Isn't he doing exactly what I told you he would do? He has 27 home runs. I said the first two years of this contract, he will be an above average first baseman. He's been excellent. Probably be a three and a half war player. He's got a 3.4 right now. There you go. But there's still time. There's still 30 games or so, right? Yeah. But he, you know, back half will be a little challenging. I wish I had him on the Mets right now. That's for sure. If the Dodgers, not only like athletically, but financially collapse. Would you revel in it, even though that probably also means that we're about to head into an economic depression? Oh, interesting question. Hmm. My answer is yes. Yeah, I think so too. We guys are NL fans. So, you know. So you want the Dodgers to be. Over here in the American League. I'm not worried. We got eight teams, you know, south of 500 fighting for the third wild card over here in the AL. Here's my real zag. And I'm very sorry, Jack. But just hang in there. Just hang in there. I think we're like three months away from it being curtains for the Dodgers, no matter what. Like the bets fall off happened. Freddie is 30, going to be 38. Otani. Otani. You know, how is that going to age? Right. Well, Otani, it's just like any style. Any moment. One thing that he does. Yeah. Just throws off the other. They've already got three $25 million plus pitchers who can't pitch. Right. Yeah. They'll just get more. If they're going to fucking win the World Series. That's absolutely correct. You guys are crazy. But. Anytime they need more players, they can sign or trade for anyone they want. And they still somehow have like one of the best farm systems. And there was an article about like how like the stadium is empty. People are booing, you know, Tucker. He's getting mad. Scooble sucks. How has Scooble been since he went over to LA? He's only like pitching like, I mean, he's mid. Yeah. But that's the thing about the prospects is they dupe these other organizations into thinking that they have good prospects. And then they trade for elite players every year. Who's the single best player? Best player they've traded in the last 10 years. Didn't the Red Sox get somebody out of this bet thing or no? Dean Kramer in the Manny Machado trade. That's not actually the answer. But what do you think about the Orioles trading Dean Kramer after he asked Pete Alonso, can you see? I noted that with interest. Incredible. What happened? He was like, you're fucking blind, old man. And they talked him out. He was thrown over to first. Yeah. He's like, can you see? And he was a little surprised. He was gone. Anyway, I think it's really bad for the economy if it turns out Mark Walter's been stealing from insurance annuities. It's incredible content. Thanks for listening to The Big Picture. We'll see you later this week.