‘The Social Reckoning’ Is No ‘The Social Network,’ and the Top Five Most Unnecessary Legasequels. Plus: The Best Movies at NYFF!

I'm Sean Fennese and this is the big picture a conversation show about reckoning with the socials today on the show Amanda and I face our greatest fear. No not the crushing toll of our own mortality. I'm talking about a sequel to our beloved social network. Aaron Sorkin's sequel to social reckoning arrived some 16 years after his first film with David Fincher as the director. This time Sorkin is in the director's chair for a follow up story about Mark Zuckerberg, whistleblowers and the ghastly impact of social media in our lives. So does it work? We'll break it all down along with a brief history of the best and worst legacy. But first I will report on the very best movies at the New York Film Festival and some movie news. Now right after this, okay Amanda it's it's the big picture after dark it's 716 p.m. That's right. We are recording there are very few events let alone movie releases that we would do this for that we would record at night. But we hadn't seen the social reckoning. You were kind enough to wait to see it with me. It was only right that we see it together. Yeah. And I was in New York. So you waited. I wasn't going to do it alone. We watched it together. We will break into it shortly before we do. We discussed this a bit on Monday, but Skydance, the flag is flying high waving proudly. Great. Strongly. Will you salute it? Do you have one at home? A Skydance flag. Yeah. Not yet. Okay. I mean, we'll see what kind of cinema they made. Right. In my neighborhood, it's the American flag, the McDonald's flag and then the Skydance flag right in a row flying over Los Angeles. Absolutely. Pillars of capitalism right there. A lot of news coming out. You can listen to a great many podcasts to listen to, you know, who's been brought in to fire people and how the money's going to work and the $75, $79 billion in debt getting paid down. I'm only interested in the movies. What movies are they going to make? Yeah. Tell us. Here's the movie news that we've gotten. One, Transformers is coming back. Congratulations. Not only is it coming back, Steven Spielberg is coming back. Steven Spielberg, of course, one of the producers of the original stretch of Transformers films with Michael Bay. No director yet attached. Michael Bay rumored to the MBB returning. We don't know. There have been two Transformers movies without Michael Bay and they've tried to relaunch the franchise once with Bumblebee. You saw that one. Haley Seinfeld. Yep. No. Okay. Saw the trailer. Pretty good. Okay. Pretty good. I like her. The other one was Transformers Rise of the Beasts. Didn't see that one. That was that animated. Across over. Not animated. Steven Kapel directed that one. Director of Creed II. Not very good. And yet I liked it. No one else did though. So they got to reboot again. Okay. I see how many Transformers movies have you seen? Saw the first one. And I think I saw the one that I want to call Dark Side of the Moon that is not, of course, Dark Side of the Moon. What is its actual title? Dark of the Moon? Sure. Yeah. That probably just sailed right. Can we get a factor? I'll be looking on that. Yeah. So I've seen that one. Is that the JFK one? That is. Yeah. Well, obviously, you know, it made my interest. The first dark of the moon. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. What album? Yeah. And you heard it waltz watching The Wizard of Oz? No. We haven't done that yet. But maybe we should do that in our house. Yeah. Oh, bring the whole family in. I think they did. Spark a J. See what happens. It could be exciting. Will you watch this one? Will we still be podcasting? Is there a timeline? Is it before or after June, 2028, which is currently the end date? That was a big picture. Are we expecting? It's a completely fair question. I don't know. I mean, maybe just a private conversation between us about Transformers. And the show is over. Will we have private conversations about films? Not really. Sure. Okay. I'm not sure either. I'm not sure either. Sounds like we do. We do. We save a lot for the pod. But every once in a while, we break containment. Okay. The other film that is coming back is G.I. Joe. Okay. There have been a few G.I. Joe movies under the paramount umbrella. In fact, I don't think I've seen all of them seen maybe one in one in a half. Were you a G.I. Joe, okay? Well, that certainly was. Thanks for asking. Okay. How could you not be growing up as a boy in the 1980s? Now, was it above he men and masters of the universe? No. Was it above Transformers? No. But G.I. Joe was right there. Paramounts got all my childhood interests right under its wing there. Danny McBride writing this movie. Yeah. See, I'm philosophically opposed to G.I. Joe and also definitely to Skydance making more G.I. Joe films at the same time Danny McBride is perfect for it. Will they let him be subversive enough within the containment of G.I. Joe also how subversive would he want to be? Well, an interesting question by you. I don't, you probably know this, but you may not, especially since it's October and we are talking a lot about Halloween. You know, Danny McBride co-wrote the through the co-wrote the three Halloween movies that David Gordon Green directed. So those movies are actually quite subversive to the Halloween or especially the third one. So we know and that that movie was not pretty well received, but we know that he's willing to fuck with Canon. Sure. We'll, we'll Skydance let him. I don't know. What he will do is he will cast Bradley Cooper as Duke. That's also funny. That's also a commander of G.I. Joe. Is it funny? I don't know. I don't know. Is it okay? I'm open, you know, he's in Paris. I think he's probably married. I don't know. Do you have you followed this that he and Gigi, he did are walking around with rings on their wedding fingers? Congratulations. Okay. They've been in Paris. He's been working out in Paris and also filming the Ocean's prequel around Europe. Of course. Well, and as you know, I'm very open to the Ocean's prequel. Yes. That's fine. A film we neglected to mention when we talked about what Warner Brothers was bringing over in this union with Paramount. The only franchise that is not announced here that I assume is coming any minute is Star Trek. Okay. Star Trek is one of the biggest things that Paramount has. Ostensibly, they have a lot of TV shows going right now. We haven't had announcement of a new movie in a long time. Is Chris Pine coming back? Probably not, but maybe. Any thoughts? I liked those movies. They have a re-release of something going on right now because there's a giant starship enterprise popcorn bucket for sale for $80 at the Regal Theatre. The last time I took my son there. And so I had to explain both what is Star Trek and what is $80. Look at Star Trek re-release right now. Which one was harder to explain? Oh, look at that. Unfortunately, is it not Star Trek? I'm pretty sure it was Star Trek. Yeah. I think it was last month when this happened, which passed by. Yes. I guess all the original films, which are wonderful. The older couple in front of me jumped into the conversation for the $80 bit because the man was also forbidden from buying the starship enterprise popcorn bucket, which doesn't serve as a popcorn bucket. Like, we've really. That's a big problem with a lot of these. We've lost the plot here, okay? Like, we have the Star Wars Grogu popcorn bucket at home, but it is a bucket. It's a helmet. You know, it's a really good popcorn bucket digger. It's a cowboy boot. That's pretty good. That's a really good idea. Yeah. I didn't buy it. I don't think anyone did. Nor did they buy tickets to that film. I need you to just hold your breath while I read a bunch of other Paramount franchise to you, okay? Okay. Ready? Set. Go. Sonic. Scream. Scary movie. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Smile. Next year, we get a quiet place. Three. World War Z. Two. They're in Tucson. Here's three that we've not yet heard new news about. Are you going to be okay? Hang in there. The Terminator Beverly Hills Cop. And then wait for it. I'll let you breathe right after this one. The Godfather. Now, there've been three Godfather movies. How long was the time on that? Probably like 17 seconds. Okay. So, I'm not going to be a Navy ceiling tonight soon. I don't think so. Skydance is not calling me to be the star of their next film, okay? I would pay to see it. There's no news about the Terminator Beverly Hills Cop being rebooted. And if you told, if someone announced tomorrow that those two things were happening in theaters, I would not be surprised. I write the Godfather cynically, but just to him use myself. Well, I've never done it before, the offer, which I did not watch. The offer is one version of it. There was a video game some years ago. Did you play that? I never did. I did. I was just out of my video game phase, I think, when that game came around. I don't think the Godfather necessitated a role-playing experience per se, but, you know, I had a lot of follow-up questions. But, okay. I just, I'm just flagging it. Because if I was a demon working at Paramount right now, I would probably be like, have you guys considered the Godfather? No, I'm not a demon. Let's not. First of all, first of all, you'll find that it's no longer Paramount at Skydance. The second of all, let's not characterize any of the kind people who are under the mergers. I said, if I was a demon, working at Skydance, I'm not saying people who work at Skydance are demons. Nor am I saying, I'm a demon. I'm merely saying if I were a demon who worked at Skydance. If I were a demon who is really good at his job, I would get the Godfather for going right now. Pitch me. Keep going. Tell me the story. No, Al Pacino's alive. Okay. So, let's start there. Al Pacino's breathing. That means we can get him on camera as soon as possible. Al Pacino can be seen at San Vicente, Bangladesh. Michael's final act. Any night of the week. Yes. He's out and about. Yeah. He's been going to screenings for the last year. I'm just throwing ideas out there. This is me sitting quietly alone in my house. I meant, how do they make you feel? How does it make you feel to see those when you say, all I care about, all I care about is cinema. So now let me talk to you. - I'm just trying to get a snapshot of where we're going. - So you don't feel right now. - I feel like you're not a demon, but you're not also currently feeling. - No, I'm really excited about Damien Chazelle's prison movie. And I hope that there are more movies that are like that movie that are coming. But these are the movies that we know are happening. - Yeah. - And, you know, they're probably not the most inspiring things I've ever heard. Does it mean I won't, could enjoy a screen movie, of course I can. - So could I? - Yeah, so that's, I mean, Teenager Ninja Turtles, that's, that's how it's fun. - That was complicated. And also especially in terms of who's just bought the company, but whatever. - Right. - What we'll see. - I was, I liked a quiet place. Did I like a quiet place too? - You liked a quiet place, day one. - I was okay on it until the end, which I thought was very silly. The very last shot in "Music Q" is very silly. And also, like they didn't, and they didn't lock up the fentanyl. You know, she's just rummaging through the drug store like you can get anything you want. - Right, spoilers for quiet place day one. - Well, that's not a spoiler. - Yeah, quiet place day one is the third quiet place film, but it's not a quiet place three. - Yes, anyway, a quiet place three. Sure, okay. Do I think that is also what my college reunion is, which we talked about? - That's right. - That's right. So it'll just be me and Krizynski, hosting the call that day. - Yeah. - Tough one for you. - But no. - Junior Union. (laughing) - What's this other piece of news I'm seeing over here? - Sure. So Taylor Swift, your favorite performer, will be closing the Academy Museum Gala in October. She's performing there. It was announced today. - No kidding. - It was just unprecedented levels of campaigning for a best song Oscar. I just, I think it's really funny. - Just, you have to say right now, will she win the best original song Oscar? - Yes. - Okay. - Because those-- - Sometimes some resistance to the Megastar. Sometimes. - I guess so. - But they've given Billie Eilish. At least one. And I believe two Oscars. Did she also win for her James Bond? - The gift says she has two. - Yeah. - She has two. - And she did win for James Bond as well as Barbie. She took that from Dua Lima. And then-- - They should re-record Skyfall as Skydance, by the way. Can we get somebody to do that? Skydance! Skydance! - This is the most hot Skyfall. - How's it going? - (singing) - Get a Skydance! - That's right. - Yeah. - That's good. You do, you record it. - Yeah. - We have microphones. Go. - I just, I, yes. There were a lot of people in the Academy who want to interact with Taylor Swift, because they want to look cool with their kids. And that's fine. - Her losing would be very funny. - Well. - I'm just putting it in there. - Anyway, I just, I wanted to know it, because this is starting. - Is it because it will. You're attending? - No, I haven't been invited. - Okay. - Okay. - Put it in the world. - Okay. - If you will it, it is no dream. - I don't know whether the Academy wants us there, but that's okay. - Okay, let's talk about New York. Forget about Los Angeles for a minute. I spent a week in New York. I had a lovely time. - Yeah. - I noticed a couple of things. - Great. - I usually spend a longer period of time at the New York Film Festival. This was a shorter period of time. Part of it is because there weren't as many movies that I had felt like I had to catch up on, 'cause I've been to many festivals this year, which is very nice. But it did make for a different experience. However, one, I met an extraordinary number of young people this year. And I feel like a lot of young people are attending. And one of the cool things about the New York Film Festival is you can just buy a ticket. You can just go online and you can buy a ticket. And not everything sells out right away. It's not like many other film festivals in that way. It's expensive. It's not cheap to buy tickets, but if you can afford it, I met a ton of just 20 somethings who were like, I'm about to watch a statement and no one's seen it before. So there's something really exciting about getting you to see a movie like that at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, Lincoln Plaza. The other thing that I noticed, and this has been evolving over time. I'm not sure if you thought about this, but the programming at New York, I'm not sure if the word is better, but it is evolving. And I feel like it is siphoning titles from other festivals in an interesting way. So this year, for example, there was a Godzilla movie, artificial behemoth, a statement, and the Cameron Winter concert film, all premiered at New York. Their first screenings were at New York, which is fascinating to me because all of those movies could have could have or should have appeared at other festivals in the last 20 years. Like Godzilla is like a fantastic fest movie or maybe a Toronto movie. I think a statement is kind of a telluride movie. Cameron Winter, it being a hometown thing. - That one makes a lot of sense, yeah. - But it is still a PTA concert doc, so like you could see that I could have been at Venice. - But he, I don't think wants to go to Venice. - I don't think he does, yeah. - And so he has a cozy home and artificial to me is it could have played all three. It could have played Venice, Toronto, and telluride. - I do wonder if some of that is just, because of the circumstances which artificial was supposed to be released by one company at the submission deadlines for all of these films. - Yes. - And then that deadline passed. - Yes. - And so that this was just sort of the last chance for an unusual circumstances. But I agree with you. It could have made us splash anywhere else. I mean, I do think the fall festivals have been a little, I think people are more skittish about them after the Joker folia do disaster. - Yeah. - All things launching a telluride and doing well, but not winning. What's the last best picture winner that telluride launched? - That's a really good question. The last best picture, I mean, they launched Moonlight. - Right. - So that's one I can think of. That maybe the last one that they launched and have to go through the list. I mean, in the meantime, while I'm looking at that, - I believe that is the last one by the way. - That is the last one. - Yeah. I think I'm trying to figure out is it that the New York film festival is somehow immune to the negative feedback loop that can come out of a festival some way because it's a much longer festival. It's all, there's not a lot of travel involved for the American press. There's a lot of native press that is there. It's a little bit more, I don't know how to describe it. I mean, it's always been a very elegant, tasteful, indie, international kind of festival, a real art house friendly festival. That doesn't mean it hasn't had big studio movies over the years, of course has, but especially Dennis Limit, the helm of it as a chief curator. He's just such an elegant, thoughtful person, introducing all the screenings. There's a quality of class that happens there that does feel different from some other festivals. It helps that a bunch of the movies I named were pretty good to great. So maybe that's just a circle, like a coincidence this year. But it does feel like this is maybe like a smarter play and that people have realized that. - I think so, yes, I think it's low risk and thus, the higher possible reward. It is also just a lower ask for all of to get your talent to New York than it is to get them to tell your ride or to Venice at this point. There's less of a production. So if you go and it doesn't really work, it's not a huge downside. There's not like a giant red carpet. It doesn't really matter. The expectations haven't been leveled at least this year for the New York Film Festival. But we'll see in three years whether we're just like studying the racing sheet and being like, okay, what's going to go to New York and what will be there? And then the expectations are upended. I think all of this changes because of assholes like us. - It does. Behemoth was the one that was a really interesting note and then a bunch of movies got stacked on top of it that all kind of felt part of a. Let's talk about these movies briefly. I don't want to like spoil our longer conversations about all of them because maybe five or six of these movies will get their own episodes honestly. But I thought we would start with Artificial because you had the chance to see it while you were here in Los Angeles as well. - Yes. - So. - I've seen a fair amount of things. That is another thing that seems also different about New York versus tell your ride in Venice. I mean, both of those festivals there will be pre-screenings and studios will make some of the films available for press and others who aren't attending. But New York, they really make an effort to just bring everyone in all at once. Which I appreciate, but it's interesting. - Yeah, it's not as much of a. They're not fighting with anyone. It's like the fight is over. And then once the movie has arrived, it's arrived and so then people are free to see them, which is interesting. And it kind of ends, you know, AFI is still to come. There's a bunch of regional festivals, but New York kind of ends this period in the movie calendar in a way. Artificial. - Yeah. I'll tell you briefly about my screening. Go ahead. This is one of the last films to premiere at the festival. I believe 14th, which I did not stick around for the new Ava DuVernay documentary that is a follow up to her doc. The 13th is premiering later this week. But this was the second, the last big one. This is Luca Guadagnino's new movie. It is about the rise to build open AI at the premiere, all the significant players were there, including Luca, Andrew Garfield, you're a Borosov, like Baron Holtz, Cooper Hoffman, most of the stars, Monica Barbara, are not present. And before the film, Dennis Slim came out and talked about the circumstances of the movie vaguely about how Amazon had dropped the film and Neon had picked it up for reasons that we can presume are related to Amazon's investment in open AI, although they have said that that is not the case publicly. And then Luca spoke very briefly for the f*ck. He introduced Damon Albarn, an erstwhile frontman of Blur, who composed the score of the movie, and then Damon Albarn sat down in a piano and sang a song with the children's choir from the movie to open the festival experience, which was fucking awesome. It was amazing and beautiful and it didn't really diminish the experience of the song in the film or anything like that. It was just a very elegant way to open a very interesting movie. - Yeah. - I thought this movie was excellent. - Yeah. - And it played very well in the room and it was clear within about 20 minutes that the concerns that the movie quote unquote wasn't good and that's why it was dropped were bullshit. - Yeah. - I think there's like a three hour discussion of this movie and Luca and his work to come here, but what did you think of it? - I never fucking waved. Not for one second, I never waved. I told you all. - Stay on the mic, stay on the mic. - And my guy did it. - And I cannot wait for everyone else to see this. I honestly kind of, I almost texted everyone in the booth last night to be like, can you guys go back and find all the tape of me being like, I believe in Luca because I believe in Luca. - We'll find that. - And my belief, this was just electrifying. I texted you immediately saying some version of what I just said. I was vibrating as I left. I haven't felt this way leaving a movie since I did leaving TAR. - Wow, I just, I just really, it's, I mean, it's so in my wheelhouse. Obviously, I'm happy to be right. And obviously, there's also, there was something exciting, as you said, even sitting through the movie of realizing, oh, no, this is good. And everything that we suspected about the way this movie was handled is true in one way or another. And the movie knows that too. And it is painting the picture in real time. So I'm, I'm very excited for this to be released. Very excited for the Andrew Garfield press tour. As I always am. - Fantastic in this movie, fantastic. It may be his best performance at least. He has a big favorite of ours. Yeah, it's, it's gonna be a thing. I immediately was like, oh, this is, this is like a best picture nominee. Like this is, yeah. - You and I were texting about best picture chances while I was like walking through like whole foods picking out, you know, milk. So that's, that's where we are with the, the energy on this one. It's happening. - My thing about this is just like, this is the only movie that's in the lineup this year that is competing in that race specifically. That feels actually urgent. It feels like it's like, the movie ends and you're like, it's like today. Like it's, we feel like we're in the present day, which is very, very hard to capture. But we'll speak more about it in the future. Behemoth, you haven't seen Behemoth yet? - Next week. - Okay, so I don't want to spoil too much about Behemoth. I wasn't in the room when it played. I had seen it a couple of months ago, but I did talk to a lot of the people who saw it. I went to an event as soon as the after the film premiered. And all I'll say about this movie is that it is not what you're expecting. It is not Michael Clayton too. If you go in expecting Michael Clayton too, do not. I found it to be a much more subtle, emotionally complex movie. I think it's the best pager Pascal performance ever. I think it utilizes what makes him an interesting actor in a way that is unique. One of the most passive protagonist films I can recall being made at a studio level. And the way that people who followed this movie, which Tony Gilroy's new film has followed to the two seasons of Andor, know that it is about a cellist who makes his money both playing in orchestras as well as performing on compositions for musicals for film scores. And nine different composers, most of whom are very well known, like James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, so on and so forth, composed music for the movie. And that's a big part of the way that the movie progresses. So I like this movie a lot. And I did take me an hour to realize it was not the movie I was expecting it to be. - Right. - And I think once I got on its level, I really enjoyed it. So we will have a discussion about that. That movie comes out December 4th. You did see Naza, right? - It did. - Okay, so Naza-- - It premiered in Venice, but later-- - It officially premiered in Venice, right. - Yes, but towards the end of the festival, so I had left, so I saw it here in Los Angeles. - Yeah, so it did play. I think it played early in the New York Film Festival. And then it had opened at the IFC Center and kind of an exclusive run. And now this week it's opening in Los Angeles. And I think it will start to play across the country over the next few weeks. This is Yuval Abraham and Rachel Zor to people who were significantly involved in no other land, the film about the West Bank a couple of years ago that was widely acclaimed, though sort of self-distributed because of it's the very controversial nature, I suppose, of the topic. This movie is executive produced by Jonathan Glazer. This film portrays an amazing active investigative journalism, the way that Israeli defense forces are bombing and attacking Gaza and specifically the way that they are not discerning between soldiers and war targets and women and children. And the film is basically more journalism than it is movie, though there are significant cinematic choices that are made in the movie, but it is a series of discussions. - Yes. - Which is similar to another movie that I've seen that I'll tell you about here, but I thought it was quite painful to watch this movie. It's very bracing. And the identities of the Israeli military figures who participate are shaded, their voices are shifted, there's been a significant outcry about this movie, especially from government officials in Israel who claim that this is not true and that the filmmakers themselves, that it's been suggested that their citizen will be stripped completely and that they will not be allowed to return to their home country. What thoughts did you have about this? - I thought it was incredibly effective and compelling and I agree upsetting to watch. It is an act of journalism. It's building on journalism that has been done and I believe that some of that has been done in the Guardian and so the Guardian is going to help be releasing that Gaza more broadly. But some of the journalism for me is, the interviews themselves are incredibly upsetting, illuminating and also just hearing someone explain something from their own experience is always going to be different and impact you in a way that even reading it in a newspaper article won't. They have people drawing diagrams. I'll never forget someone drawing a diagram and trying to recreate what they had done in their quote unquote day job. And in their small decisions, I thought that the filmmaking choices that they make were also quite effective and both what you see for the majority of the film and then what you see at the end without spoiling it too much. So yeah, I think this is an incredibly important piece of filmmaking and journalism and I was glad to have been able to see it. - Yeah, it's an interesting demonstration too of how to ask questions and get answers as a journalist. And it's interesting that we're talking about this movie on the social reckoning episode that's also a component of this. And you know, not to say that it's wrong or different somehow in the social reckoning but it's traumatized. And this is someone actually attempting to find out the truth about something that many people don't want you to know or believe to be true. So I thought the movie was very effective. - Yeah. - Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall. This is Whiplash Tonely from the last film. This was the first film that I watched when I arrived at the festival. I would say Target Rich Environment. Lot of guys who look like me or who will be me in 15 to 20 years at this screening. Very friendly fellows. Women as well, but a PTA concert film, it draws out a certain type. I am a Cameron Winter fan. I didn't know if you were or not. So I was wondering about this before you seeing the movie. I say this not to degrade you in any way but because this was the experience of watching the movie and then talking to people afterwards. If you like Cameron Winter, this is a very cool concert movie. If you have no relationship to Cameron Winter, your takeaway from this will be, this is a movie about a filmmaker trying to find an interesting way to film a musical performance. Because that was my takeaway from it. - I guess that's true. I mean, Cam is him in my opinion. And I guess you don't know that my son's can sing taxes that that was something that developed this summer, they know, well, they know Dr. Heel yourself. - Yeah. - But so we enjoy Geese and my extension, Cameron Winter in my household also, like he's quite tall, but I do think in addition to it being PTA and Benny Safty is one of the camera operators on this, just trying to do the concert film in an interesting way. It's also a portrait of like a young genius. And I think that there is something in the actual performance and watching this very special person, just sing his songs. And I don't want to say too much more about how he sings them 'cause even that is a really delightful reveal. But it feels very much of a moment in time. And I would say it last week I got to see in a good way. It's like a time capsule. I got to see a lot of the films that were in New York last week, but I obviously had some FOMO. I felt like I was far away and I was missing New York and I was missing the vibe and the fall of it all. And the energy. - This was a particularly fun night. Yeah. - Well, but I will say at least for the 75 minutes when I was in the movie, I was like, I'm getting the energy of this concert. I don't feel like divorced from the after party. Then I went on Instagram and I saw everybody hanging out. Cameron and PTA were at the after party, by the way. - Yes, I didn't see them. - Yeah, but they were there. - I was there as well. - Sure, yeah. - But in a moment, I was like this is a, I feel the energy of this in a way that I think is exciting. - I was talking to an older gentleman after the screening and he was not a Cameron Winter person, but a loves music and a worked in music and he was saying that didn't look like Carnegie Hall to me, which I thought was an interesting note, which is that if you see a performance in Carnegie Hall that has been filmed, maybe on PBS, it's basically just two cameras on tripods and the two aisles on the sides. And that's what you'll see. And this movie is almost like a diagrammatic journey through where you can put a camera in that building. There are times when it's up in the rafters, there are times when it is on stage and as close to the performer as possible. There are times when you can almost see PTA walking by operating the camera before a hard cut to not allow you to see him. So in that way, it's almost like a nature documentary, the way that it's filmed and the way that Cameron is captured. I mean, as a singer, songwriter, he's wonderful. Like he's working in a tradition that is my favorite thing. Like Harry Nielsen and Randy Newman and those kinds of guys like sitting at the piano pouring their heart out and also being really funny. That's like, that's my zone, that's my lane. So I love that. I might like that more than Geese actually, but I was more amused by the like, what if we put it over here? What if we went over here? - Sure. - You know, it's a big palette cleanser after making a $100 million movie. - For sure. But it had that vibe of we just, we like this and we would like to have fun with this and make something cool. And that's what it is. It's just something cool and it'll speak to you or it won't. But I do think it can speak to people beyond just like the hardcore Cameron Winter fans. - Jack, you saw it? - I have not. - Oh my God. - Jack. - I can die after I watch this movie. - Okay. - I won't say anything else to ruin it for you. - Jack's in love. - I would hold on. - Yeah, but it's really, it's delightful. - Genuinely, the most special artist in my life. So I'm very excited. - Wow, huge statement, speaking of a statement. A statement. - Wow. - The new film from Tom McCarthy. This is an interesting one. I didn't really know very much about this movie. I don't believe it's slated to come out until 2027. It seems like it will have an awards qualifying run. Sony Pictures Classics has it. Tom McCarthy, of course, the director of Spotlight and win-win and still water, fascinating director. I always say he's a coin flip director for me. Where every other movie I think is great. And I think this one is, if not great, it's certainly very good. I wrote about it a little bit in the newsletter today, but I'll just briefly summarize it for you. I don't know if you and I talked about this one at all. - No, I just saw your letterbox review of people talking in Rooms Banger, which I was like, "Sign me up." - It is a people talking in Rooms Banger. Here's the kind of the framework of the movie. So it is based on a true event that happened in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1980, in which a panel of policymakers, economists, environmentalists, representatives for government officials, all got in a room together, specifically scientists and academics I should say as well, got in a room together to talk about the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere and what we can do about it and climate change. And what's interesting about the movie is that all of the dialogue that takes place in the conference room is pulled from the transcript of what was actually set during this meeting. And on top of that, it is Paul Giamatti and John Terturo and Paul Rudd and Amy Ryan and then 10 incredibly esteemed New York theater actors who may not be as famous as some of those people, but who bring the same level of gravitas and skill. Just demonstrating the ways in which we are not able to agree on things and make any progress in this world. The movie's like light and funny the way that a lot of McCarthy stuff can be, but pretty devastating 'cause 46 years ago, it's very clear that all of these people knew exactly what the problem was and almost nothing was done. And it's also an event that takes place right on the precipice of the Reagan administration. - Great. - So that particular timing, it's pulled from Nathaniel Rich's book, "Losing Earth." I think it's like chapter three of that book. And so they use that book as like a springboard into this story. And then there's some other dramatized elements of what's happening not inside the conference room that are worth discussing when people get a chance to see the movie, but yeah, you know, it's not 12-angry men or anything, but it was very engaging for a movie that could have felt very dead. Also kind of, I guess somewhat ironically, I think a movie that should be seen on a big screen, because if you watch it at home, it's gonna feel like TV. And if you see it big, you'll let yourself feel it more. That's all I'll say about it. I mean, I think that's true of most things. - Yeah, some things are not worthy of that, and we'll talk about that when we get into the social reckoning. - Well, sure, yeah. - Making Marie Antoinette? - Yes, I see it. - Exactly. - Yeah, well, I just, I mean, this is wonderful. So this is a film that is directed by Eleanor Coppola, mother of Sophia Coppola, wife of Francis Ford Coppola, and the filmmaker behind Hearts of Darkness, the making of-- - And Francis Ford Coppola who will make The Godfather Ford. - Sure, great. Okay, that seems like a wonderful idea. But Francis, make Skydance pay for it. Anyway, so Eleanor Coppola, it's a great filmmaker in her own right, and a great writer, and she was on set during the making of Marie Antoinette, which is having its 20th anniversary this fall. And you know, filmed a making of documentary, Eleanor Coppola died recently. I'm gonna say last year. And so I think her loved ones finished the film, but it is just a beautiful portrait, not just of the making of a movie that I love very much, and that is, you know, a very physical movie in its own way. So it's fun to see the behind the scenes of how they're doing the sets and the hair, and just how long everybody has to wait for the hair to be done, which that became one of the major dramas of the set, which like I get it. And why don't we have enough extras? But it is also, it's the only narration is excerpts from Eleanor Coppola's journals that are read by Diane Lane, who starred in her only feature film. And they're wonderful. And it is about a mother watching her daughter and how she feels about that. And there are some interviews that Sophia gives to her mother that are wonderful and illuminating because they are things that she would only say to her mother, but also they are still, like I don't wanna talk to you right now 'cause you're my mother. I believe that Eleanor Coppola meets Sophia's now husband, Thomas Mars of Phoenix on camera, and he says, "Oh, on camera." So, you know, it has all of those wonderful slice of, it's very lived in and feels very specific to them, while also just being a great making of documentary about a truly great film. I really feel like we're being proved right about Marie Antoinette. I mean, we were, you know, we were there. I was there. - Yeah. - And I, you were there more than anybody, no doubt, although I've always loved the movie too. I think there's two things that I really, really liked about the movie. I think you put your finger on something which is the way in which Sophia communicates to the camera is different in this movie than the way that you would normally see her communicating, which is like a little bit more composed and calm. There's one moment in particular near the end of the film where she is expressing some regret about having decided to do this and whether she would do this again. And like that was a very like, I don't know if it's like blisteringly raw, but it was real. - Right. - And I really appreciated that perspective. I also really like seeing her relationship with Roman Coppola and the way that like he kind of swoops into the movie and you can feel her like her, like he's like ballast. - Yes. - And I thought that was nice too. - And watching how they all work together. - Yeah, like that's a really, that was a nice, something you wouldn't see in a normal making of documentary. - It was a, it was a beautiful thing about a family and also, you know, that then such a family together can make such extraordinary things. And then there is also another amazing moment between Sophia and her mother is, she's talking about an interaction that she had with her cinematographer, Lance Accord, where they're just talking about how to frame a shot and she just wants the table and the shot. And it's Sophia's version of the until I see my notes applied. Like, there's no point in me giving more notes, which is a Beyonce reference. Thanks everyone for keeping up. But she, she's venting about it to her mom. And she's like, you know, even dad, when dad does this blah, blah, blah, and it's amazing 'cause it's half her just bitching about the way her dad is really being annoying. And it's also half her talking about how Frances Ford Coppola is being dominier and trying to like direct, you know, a movie because he does know some things about this. It's a really, really interesting text. It's amazing. So I mean, I obviously loved it. - You're in the back. - Yeah. I thought it was good. I'm glad to watch it. I mean, I love movies like this. I wish every movie had a version of this, where this is like, this is exactly what it felt like to be on set during the making of this movie, but this one doesn't have a very good version of it. Godzilla minus zero. - Yeah. - We both loved Godzilla minus one. And that was this big surprise. It was a 23 or 24, I can't remember what year it was. And kind of came out of nowhere and it was the revival, obviously, of the big guy, the G-man 23. And that movie was a surprise hit here in the United States, though Godzilla lives in my household forever. I love him. The stunning thing about that movie was it's balance between classic Kaiju, effects driven monster fights and human experience setting the film in the aftermath of World War II. This movie is an extension of that. Most of the same major characters return for this movie. It is also a Godzilla, a G-dera movie. It is like it is Geeter of the like origins of Geeter of the the giant dragon who fights Godzilla. I think significantly outpaces the action in in Godzilla minus one like I don't know if you're gonna care that much about this because it is just like a lot of monster fighting but the monster fighting which is not there's not a lot I shouldn't say there's a lot of monster fighting there's not what it's done well yeah when Godzilla punched Kong or Kong punched cut Godzilla for the first time yeah you loved it come on yeah I was I didn't like the second movie that they made about that yeah and you know Middle Earth or whatever this one is different because this one is like very much about the PTSD of World War II okay so you're not cheering yeah no but you know obviously the monsters are representative of something but there is just like forgive me for sending like such a door monster choreography in this that is amazing and then it is kind of it's not loving so much as it is like set against this kind of real human struggle I would argue there's like a little bit too much human struggle in this movie yeah which makes it a little drawn out we got to pat out the second movie it's it's tough it is a little padded out some of it is really earned some of it not so much but there's there's there's monsters shit in here that it's just fantastic let me ask you that's so funny that this movie played at the New York film festival but it's cool it's great let me ask you this yeah why can't your family go as Godzilla for Halloween I would I would love nothing and the three of you so it's like one of the you know one costume someone's the head someone's the tail Alice can be in the middle so you don't lose her yes yeah yeah my daughter was speaking of choreography I know my daughter would want to be mothra though because mothra is a girl okay and mothra is her favorite all right so we're having some of this in my house as well where he's just no no no it's like oh no no I want the the band with the boy drummer and I'm like I it doesn't matter I hate this I know I know I know mothra is also nice you know Godzilla is not nice whatever she loves Godzilla she does she does but he's really cranky you know he's kind of he's like like Godzilla he's kind of a bitch like he's kind of he's got to he's got to get his shit to go yeah yeah he's got to like wake up okay you know all right so they woke you up like all right I think it would be funny if the three of you maybe he should be traveling around no I'm wearing May's hat remember all right yeah you'll be May um a couple quick things well one one quick thing that I'll I'll close with which was Joy of Joy's okay which was the new short film directed by Jonathan Glazer who we just mentioned around Naza which is a 35 minute documentary about the making of a benefit album for children in danger in war zones that features a lot of very well known artists the I guess the gimmick the wrinkle of this documentary is that while many of the artists are recording those artists include Jarvis Cocker Fontaine's DC Damon Alburn Olivia Rodrigo they're being filmed by eight-year-olds so eight-year-olds have video cameras wow and are like yes are like utterly disarming these world famous pop stars and it is very very entertaining that's just that sounds great and very thoughtful yeah and then you're also seeing Olivia Rodrigo just like rip one of the sickest vocal runs yeah yeah you know that you'll ever hear and then like turning to an eight-year-old and charming them and they're charming her and so you know small film obviously a very good cause uh but I mean that sounds yeah that sounds great worth people's time I would say um yeah and then there was a ton of stuff that we've already talked about here that was at the festival but all the you know all of a sudden paper tiger club kid debut, minotaur they everything played here um and you know I think consensus is starting to concretize amongst the critical classes and really the next step is sort of critics prizes I feel like that's what we're going to start to hear from that in the globes um there's still a couple things I need to see but I feel like I'm getting pretty close to having a handle on the whole season how are you feeling I'm so glad artificial camera and I feel like yeah I feel like it shook shook up the snow globe a little bit you know so that we needed that energy also we do we do there's something there's something vicious and aggressive yeah and uh it just delightful about it all it was it's a take no prisoners movie about that this movement that is very interesting you know not unlike this next movie I wanted to talk with you about very briefly which is musk yeah which is the new four-hour documentary by Alex give me what you had a chance to see in Venice and you watched it in full in Venice right I did I just saw it yesterday um give me of course among the most successful documentarians of this century he made and run the smartest guys in the room client nine rise and fall of Elliott Spitzer going clear Scientology and the prison of belief he's made like 50 movies at this point so he is really the guy when it comes to these big sweeping social issues and figures of great controversy and great influence um this one is in his view Elon Musk in full through all the stages of his success and controversies and struggles but does not include Elon Musk's supposed involvement in Skydance so that's true we haven't gotten that far yeah has there been any other reporting about that I haven't heard anything but I just wanted to know you know it's a living document I'd love for that to not happen well like he is a living document truly I mean this document this movie is trying to keep up with the changing times it is clearly something he's been working on for a long time give me and it gets us pretty close into the present day as well yeah um well what what did you think about it you mentioned it breathes some brief thoughts I think at a Venice but I thought that it was comprehensive and convincing and I was irritated by some of the filmmaking choices even as they understood the purpose that they were serving specifically the the video game simulation of it all which is a narrative device that it borrows from Elon Musk's own pondering and then builds um the the exploration of his life and the and the many different things that he has done or said um or places he has inserted himself through and you know in a video game structure yes and and also then kind of instead of doing recreations for real it just does you know it it smooths over some of the tape that they don't have right I get it you know once again I am not a video game person in in any discipline so I was just sort of limited by that yeah and I also it has you know many people spoke it does rely almost entirely on other people's reporting and and they are credited and featured and so there are some things I didn't know as much about but I didn't feel like there was anything new in it it was the the new is just putting it all in one place which I think is a public service and I think is valuable yeah and again it is convincing yeah I mean it's a horror film that's being released theatrically and if you are interested in the origins of zip to SpaceX Tesla his acquisition of twitter and turning it into x.com doge you know it is spending a good portion of time on all of those things his various marriages and children it spends a lot of time on that um you know Gibney is one of those filmmakers who I would say has a boundless appetite for information like he wants to squeeze as much context from his perspective into his work as he possibly can I do think that's sometimes he's working in a non cinematic register that is like borderlines closer to like you can almost listen to the movie and get the point yeah you're right that he's trying to add this element of the video game there's also this element of using a CGI created musk that looks like AI though apparently was not made with AI that we see on screen you talking whenever there's audio that is not made available to us or there's testimony essentially from him from interviews you know it's a bit um disorienting watching that footage it's also like the the avatar does look like him but is also gotten a glow up of some sort it's very confusing yes he's more fit yeah yeah it's almost like as though he would imagine himself right leather jacket it and maybe that's a purposeful choice right because he is a person who well there's a there's a devastating opening shot once we get past the sort of intro section of this film which is that we see him stalking the halls of one of his very first startups and his hairline and what his hair looked like in 1997 and nothing is said about it there's no comment made there's no exploration of this subject matter at all but it's an unmistakable choice yeah that this is a person who has transformed himself pretty consistently over the years there is some discussion about the way that he dressed himself at a certain period of time when he wanted to be identified as an engineer that I thought was quite fascinating he's a self-styled megalomaniacal world conquering trillionaire I mean that is really yes he is he is Hank Scorpio come to life from the Simpsons like he is he is everything that we ever imagined in 1960s television when we thought of like Lex Luthor so I guess it's reasonable that there would be a four hour film about him I do agree with you that there's not a ton of revelation but maybe that doesn't matter as long as there's like it's like reading a big old biography about somebody and you're like yes you know it's like reading a Walter Isaacson book and you're like oh well that's that person's life got that right though I do wonder whether a Walter Isaacson book in a four hour theatrical documentary format will find its audience you know it really did again I it is very, very convincing. I buy the take and it shows its work. I know about most of this, right? I don't need to be convinced and I do understand the public value in having this exist for someone, but who needs to see it and are they going to see it in a movie theater? I don't know. I mean, you know, and will they be able to watch it on streaming? Will it be uploaded to the streaming platform? I think you will get to HBO. The HBO documentary films Kyron does appear at the beginning of the movie. If it doesn't appear on HBO, that will feel like silencing an artist. Yeah, that's how it's going to feel, whether that's actually what's transpiring or not. I don't know what agreement Alex Gibney has with, you know, Sky Dance now. The movie though, like, here's one thing it doesn't do. It uses the rocket launches as this kind of very simple metaphor for him imagining the impossible and trying to make it so. And even in the face of failure, pretending as though nothing is wrong and continuing forging ahead. And you can say from one direction, he's a great scientist who works tirelessly to achieve dreams and change the world. Seen from another direction, he wreaks havoc on the world thinking only of his own personal angles. I don't totally understand, and this is maybe not Alex Gibney's fault. Anything underneath Elon Musk. It feels like he's, has a slowly evolving mind state about certain things that feel very important to us. But there's no, like, there, there. There's no ultimate philosophy. There's no ultimate personal incident that informed his point of view. Like we see his father and his mother speak briefly. And we see that his father's quite strange and that there is an undercurrent of racism from his background. He's of course South African. But like, when he was 12, what was going on? When he was 19, what was going on? What were the things that he wrote in his journals as a young person? What were the, you know, we see him as an entrepreneur, as a person who wants to build. But is that all there is? Maybe. But I don't know. I agree with you completely that the documentary doesn't even try to answer that question. And it's much more interested in making a public record of, of, you know, a figure that is of historical significance. So I guess it's the Walter Isaacson book rather than the Candice Millard version, which is that's a historian that Juliet Lippmann and my father and law read a lot. But, you know, it's not the dad history version trying to assign a character study. Though, yeah. I, you know, I don't, I guess I may have seen more sympathetic somehow. I mean, it's a deeply unsympathetic portrait of him deeply. But that also doesn't feel unjustified. You know, I want to talk about character studies in the context of social reckoning and also in other films that are coming out in the next few weeks. So let's put a pen in it. Okay. We'll put a pen in it. Generally, I liked musk. I, you know, it's hard to be like heart on musk. You know, it's kind of a grueling four hour experience of watching somebody who's sort of obnoxious hurt people. But nevertheless. Part of the back half and part of the reason that I snuck in, you know, my Compari Spritz and the water bottle was there are aspects of Elon Musk now that I've just been like, well, I don't actually need to consume any of this media. So some of it was sort of bracing towards the end of just like, I haven't watched that many clips of the manosphere. And I was like, oh, it's really, it's really as bad as I imagined. And just the tremendous amount of Babylon B content in the documentary. That's the most Babylon B content I've ever consumed. So in that sense, you know, I guess it is a, it is a record of something that happened. Okay, let's pivot to the social reckoning. So this movie's written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. Yeah. He's, he's, I mean, is he your lighthouse? Is he your ship in the night? He once was. He once was. Yeah. Explore that. I think one half of that written by Aaron Sorkin. Do we even there? I'd like to investigate. Yes. I think we should explore. What was written in this? This new film stars Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, Betty Gilpin, and Billy Magneson and one of me Musaku, I should say. Cinematography by Jeff Kronner with who I believe shot the social network. Okay. Well, unlike the social network, this film is scored by Alexander Desplatt, not Trent Resner and Atticus Ross. Yeah. Here's what this film is about. Facebook engineer Francis Hagen and the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horowitz blow the whistle on the social networks most guarded secrets. This is of course based on a true story transpired from roughly 2019 through 2021. What did you think of the social reckoning? I have been apprehensive, which is I think a generous word about this film since it was announced. Number one, because the social network is was our was number one on our 25 for 25 list. We think it is one of the great movies of our lifetime. It is our generation citizen came and it means a lot to both of us. And so, you know, you can't reheat a souffle. I just make it a sequel seems like a bad idea. And also, it was announced from the beginning that Aaron Sorkin would be directing as well as writing this film. And putting aside whatever we think of Aaron Sorkin's directing, which we'll get to. The magic of the social network was that it was where Fincher's genius and Sorkin's genius is met and the sum was greater than the parts. So I have been really nervous. Then we saw some trailers. I would continue to be nervous. And you know, no one likes to hear me say I was right. But this did not work out. This is everything that I feared. This is the MSNBC mom Aaron Sorkin unedited version of the Facebook files. It is all of his sins and a few of his skills put together but with no one to save him from himself. And I found myself thinking a lot about the West Wing, which is a show that I grew up on. And that I love. And that taught me a lot about how to be funny. Though many people are like, you're not funny. So that's fine. That's what they're doing better in Sorkin too. Yeah, that's what we all agree on that one. But if this were just a TV show on NBC in the year 2002, I probably wouldn't have a problem with it. But it is very much a network TV procedural. It's really, it's just a procedural and it's shot like it and it's maybe acted worse than it, which we can get into. Yeah. I mean, and so it's a no for me. Yeah, I didn't think it was successful. I didn't hate it. I think that there's a significant number of moments that are grown worthy or I roll inducing. That's something that's been pretty common in the Aaron Sorkin experience for about a decade. And the actually the lifespan of this show has coincided with me really getting off the train. I thought Molly's game was fun but flawed. I thought the trial of the Chicago seven was over serious and inert. I thought being their cartos was embarrassing. And I think this movie is not embarrassing and not inert. But it actually just feels quite safe. And it's a much more of a journalism movie than it is a courtroom film, which is what the social network is. The social network is a character study and an exploration of the building of a company and an idea that kind of infected our culture. But it's also a movie that uses a very specific litigation strategy as he so often does to elevate the tension, which Fincher like ceases on. It's Fincher's courtroom movie, right? This movie is procedural about journalism, but in a way that is not revelatory in a story that is widely known, but whose impact is debatable. And I think we can talk about maybe that at the end of this conversation, sort of like what really were the ramifications of these events specifically and why would you choose this moment to dramatize if you were going to follow up the social network, which I always felt did have tremendous social import. You know, I felt like there actually is a meaningful movie. And we debated that with sort of like the world at large when we were doing 25 or 25 because there were a lot of younger people who were like, what's the big deal with this movie? And we didn't understand there was none. There was life before Facebook. And it did actually change things pretty dramatically. And this movie is kind of trying to follow up on that by seizing on a moment in history and recent history that, you know, is upsetting to some and certainly had meaningful impact on political systems and the presidential administrations and people's lives. But I can't help but feeling like this is more of a blip than it is like a monumental moment. And so the stakes just feel kind of low at all times while you're watching. The movie is just kind of like, yes, kind of like very gently moving along at its own pace. It doesn't feel like you're ever, it's not a thriller. And it should feel like a thriller. The movie thinks that it stakes are so high and takes on, you know, the entire world government systems and spoiler alert, Jan 6, at which was rumored from the beginning. So, and, you know, many other, it has life is at stake. And the and democracy. I mean, the number of times that the word democracy is said, free speech is said, the movie takes its stakes so seriously and sets them so high that there are basically, that there are no stakes because it can't encompass and telegraph all of them appropriately. Well, democracy was not radically altered in any direction by any of these events. I mean, we know that like some things changed, but there's a paradox at the very end of the movie that we'll talk about when we get to the end of this conversation. I think I know why he wanted to come back to this, and I do understand that Aaron Sorkin, who has been very proudly noting that he still does not have any social media during his promotion cycle for this film, but is using all of the tools of social media to try to get people to go see his movie because he's not engaged in the kind of contemporary world in that way. It feels like he's unsuited to make a movie about these times. He doesn't really understand the modes of communication because he's not participating. So it doesn't mean that like, you know, in order to make the best ever movie about media in 2026, you need to be on x.com all day. But this is very old fashioned, very old fashioned, and it feels that way the whole time. Yeah, it's also the target of the social network is the media and is how we talk to each other and is this world that we live in now. But the target of social network is really just one person. It's a character study, and it's not even really a target. He's an anti-hero, and the, you know, Sean Parker is the hero, just in Timberlake, and people taking advantage of him. But this takes there are ultimately very human. The target of the social reckoning is in fact the media, Facebook specifically, definitely the Trump administration, everyone on the internet. So he doesn't have characters in this. He's not exploring anything other than his opinions loudly and attaching them to various characters. And so it's just the concept of the movie is so different and so suited to everything that he is not good at unless he's making a weekly television show. Yeah, I thought about this a lot with him, especially in recent years, every sorkin script is a dialectic between himself. That it's like, there's, it's the two brains of Aaron Sorkin. And one brain is a lot smarter than the other brain, and you know it while you're watching the movie. And so it becomes these kind of two-tracked ideas battling against each other. So in a few good men, it's duty versus honor. What is the right answer in that equation, especially if you're a member of the American military? In Steve Jobs, it's innovation versus humanity. Should you push forward no matter what to develop something that will change people's lives versus should you be a good father or a good colleague or a good whatever in the world? Or should it come to that come at the expense? Can you be best? Can you have both in Molly's game? He could not until he invented the iPad LivePod. In Molly's game, it's having something for yourself, especially as a woman in a world that is very competitive and unrelenting in the face of a woman's independence. But if you do so, can you only do it by non-virtuous activity? Right? There's like, there are always these parallel tracks where a character has to choose one or the other. They're really, these are really old school theatrical like structures that he is applying. Yeah. And I don't really know what it is in this one. I don't really know that what the debate he seems to be most interested in is the one between the two characters, the Jeremy Alan White and Mikey Madison play. They're the two characters who are constantly talking to each other in this movie. Their discussions comprise 60% of the movie. And Halgen is a increasingly guilt ridden engineer who works in civic integrity at Facebook. And Jeremy Alan White is portraying Horowitz, the investigative reporter who is shifting from the political beat to the tech beat at the Wall Street Journal. And so he's on the hunt for what's really going down at these social media companies and how Facebook is toxifying our minds. And so there's just a lot of discussion about what is happening and why it's happening at Facebook between these two people. And increasingly, he is trying to extract more and more information from her and more and more trust from her. And she is at war with the idea of breaking her NDA and then breaking the kind of bolder, bigger, truer promise of what Facebook could and should be, which is connecting to other people, yes, according to her idea. And the one interpretation of the social network. I'm willing to give I'll be curious to know how you feel about this. I'm I'd be willing to give her this character at least. I don't know if this is how France is, how can I actually felt at the time in 2007. I was like, Oh, wow. I know what's going on with my uncle already. He posted an update. I mean, I see what's going on with it. There was something like that. I still feel that way about Instagram on a small level, which is owned by Facebook now called meta. And which is also invoked in the the film because at this time, Instagram was owned by meta and part of the eventual revelations of the Facebook files include studies on Instagram. And how about it is for kids? And the rest of us too, but they don't, you know, they don't care once you are it's fine. We're doing it to ourselves. So yeah, I I understand that, but that's 2007 or 2009 or that's, you know, I'm trying to grant that character a little because she just seems so polyanna about this idea that we obviously know to be foolish, you know, that that Facebook could have ever represented some common good. And that the people who worked there and many of the people who were users came into the experience of using it, feeling like that was possible. And then increasingly, the notion of MSIs are introduced inside of the company, which are meaningful social interactions. Are you familiar with this phrase? Even from some of the reporting. I just forgotten it. Yeah. Once the jargon starts, I go away. Understandable. There's a lot of jargon in this movie. A lot of the film is obviously based on the reporting that Horowitz and others did. But meaningful social interactions were originally meant to be about Facebook reestablishing this thing that we're discussing. This idea of rather than sharing news about people talking about what they believe or something that's happening to them in the world. And in fact, it was kind of a manipulated strategy by Facebook to get people to share more rage-inducing content that those were the things that drove the most engagement on the platform as they are across all platforms. I guess the that particular component of the story, which like is depicted as a massive reveal in the reporting by the Wall Street Journal is one of those things. It's just like, I've been on the internet for 30 years. You mean to tell me? Yeah. That like a clickbait headline will drive people crazy and make them click more and say more and leave more comments and go more crazy. That's not news. It was notable that Mark Zuckerberg was confronted about these ideas before Congress. That was notable. But that Wall Street Journal reporting did anybody who was under 40 look at that and go like, oh my god, this changes everything. Like, how did we not know that? Yeah. No, it's true. And I mean, even the idea that like Facebook was gaming the system, which of course is the big revelation, like, was that surprising? Was that genuinely surprising to people that these four profit enterprises were manipulating people's behaviors? No, I guess it was, you know, having it on the record and having it. But it's like, it's a little bit of like disclosure day also. It's the same thing. It's of a same generation. There is a very boomerish quality. Yeah. They should have wheeled out Mark Zuckerberg like that. Yeah. But just also that like, once it's out there, of course, you know, to someone like Aaron Sorkin, it's like, once the truth is testified before Congress, then of course, everything will change. Like once, and also once we can link what's going on here to the Jan 6th riots, which he at least does filmically. He does. Then of course, like all justice will be restored and we'll get him, you know, and if not, then we'll just vote for Mitt Romney, like, which was it. Don't forget that op ed. So there is, I like, I agree with you that structuring the movie around these events and this reveal is the non starter that Sorkin thinks he's important because he's of a generation where, like, you know, the Pentagon papers are invoked several times in this movie. This movie does borrow at least a little bit of the structure, if quite literally nothing else from all the presidents. Indeed. And you know, it's if you know, all the presidents men as well as you an idea, then it's to its detriment that you're thinking of it so often. Yeah. I mean, one of the wonderful things about all the presidents, which we talked about many times over the years is that the shoelether is demonstrated in many different environments with many different characters. Yeah. You know, part of what makes the movie so interesting is the sort of treasure hunt with no map quality that would remember in scene or pursuing in this movie. It's just Horowitz going back to Hogan over and over again. And he's persuasive. And I want to say, like, I thought Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison were pretty good in this. Like, it's not really their fault. They're they're being saddled with a bunch of really led and overwritten, like, um, I guess meant to be sort of like metaphorically compelling breadcrumbs throughout, you know, like, oh, wouldn't it be funny if you say this here so I can have a call back to it an hour for now. I mean, that's like, you know, that's like Sorkin 101 or playwriting. That's like that comedy, whatever. And they don't they do not land the comedy. I would argue that they are miscast. Okay. Um, particularly Mikey Madison, who I think it's it's just now not on the Sorcan Ratatat level, and that's not her fault. That's, it's just not there. - And where did he just does not write women? - Well, he doesn't. But like, the Alison Janie could do it, you know? - Sure. - So, the only woman ever cited in any Aaron Sorcan entertainment that was credible. - I just like a Justin was kind of. - Kind of. - I'm trying to think of. - This is not against any of those actors. It's like the way that these characters are written, I'm like. - Well, they're not characters, they're not women. It's in neither of those people are characters. They are not. - Yeah, we get nothing of Horwitz real life. - They're very, very broad. - Excuse me, he doesn't know how to use a GPS. - I was about to say he doesn't know how to use a GPS, and she, you know, like talks too much at meetings. And so, and people don't wanna like befriend her. So, and also she has, you know, gluten disease. So, she has to wear it. - She's celiac, so she has neuropathy. - Sorcan literally suggests that she's not a character, when she's writing her dating profile. And she's like, I'm a free spirited data scientist who deletes the likes, deletes the free spirited. It's like, I'm a data scientist. - Yeah. - Now, listen, I think there's something interesting in that idea of a kind of lost person who has like set out this life for herself, where she's like, I'm throwing my life into working for the biggest and most exciting tech company in the world at a time when someone like me with my kind of brain can be really successful in part of changing the world. - Yes. - I think if this was more of a loss of innocence movie, which it's trying to be, it could be compelling. - But it's saddled with, it's trying to score too many other points. It's not interested in her. It's not a character setting. - It's not. - Like the series of events in which she decides not just, not just to like leak one document, but within the span of two minutes, the character goes from being a Facebook employee and surreptitiously photographing documents to being willing to go on the record. She's contacted a whistleblower like advocacy group already. She understands, none of this is spoilers 'cause this is all shit that really happened five years ago. - But it happens so fast that even I, who knows the real events, and knows what happens, I turned to you, I was like, what the hell? There's just, there's absolutely no development. There's no interest in like what her motivation would be why she would want to do it. - Well, I mean, I think in that particular case, the implication is that the delivery of the information about Instagram kind of tips her over. That her coworker shows up and is like here, you know, I have your support. - Right, wait a minute, that's seen in the Avengers. - Yeah. - We got to save the teenage girls. - Yeah, body image, 30 something percent, wow. - 32% I believe the number was, I mean, you know. - I think that, I think you're right though, which is just that we don't really understand these people. You know, we don't really have a sequence like the opening sequence of the social network where we get a sense of Mark Zuckerberg in his opening conversation with Rene Mara, where she is not only defining him, but he is continuing to define himself and their friction between each other and the way that the way that that conversation is executed from a filmmaking perspective is just more entertaining and more complex, and more finely observed than what Aaron's working can do as a filmmaker. - There is an opening sequence that sets the intentions and the tone of this film very clearly that opening sequence is an absolutely excruciating recreation. I assume imagined because the way that it's written is so sorkin, and so it's sorkin recreating what he imagines or what he wants to represent is going on in an extremist chat group viral videos. And so he recreates a white woman being stopped by the police. She's not even stopped by the police. She's been stopped. The police happen upon her. She films her own video, then it gets posted. And it is supposed to be excruciating because it is an extremist group, but it is also Aaron sorkin's view of what's wrong with the world and why people are hateful to each other and how they express themselves and what's wrong with the media is so reductive. And honestly, a product is the very thing that he is inditing in this movie itself. Like this is a very like Facebook mom movie. And that is a very Facebook mom post and a very like very, can you believe that this is what's going on? This is exactly what your uncle would describe to you. You know, a Thanksgiving dinner if you have the good kind of uncle, I guess. So it's a nightmare. It's an absolute nightmare. And the movie just goes from there with the same level of analysis and lack of character explanation. And we haven't even talked about Jeremy Strong playing more technical again. I was getting to that. So, you know, the bulk of the movie is the whistleblower and the reporter. And then the film has an acronological structure where it keeps shifting forward and backward into time. And we start effectively in 2019 and we slide about five or six times in the movie to 2021. To Mark Zuckerberg, preparing for future testimony before Congress. And he is being prepped by a fleet of lawyers and crisis consultants and former friends who happen to be in the room. And in this movie, Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, not Jesse Eisenberg notably, in that room. It's kind of a fascinating collection of actors that are really good actors. But I might argue that this stuff works a lot better than what's in the rest of the movie. But I don't know that there's enough here to justify its existence. - Well, it's tough because-- - It again, it doesn't really teach you anything? - No, it doesn't. It's what Sorkin does well, which is, you know, litigation. This is deposition. There's, he's prepping for his congressional appearance or like major callbacks to the debate prep, which is an episode of the West Wing. And it's a wonderful episode. So if you're, you know, if you're in the know, you're already in that mood, but it's people arguing about ideologies in rooms, like good actors and they are good actors. And it's also like, you can just feel that's what Sorkin really wants to be saying. Like, and, you know, the billboard character is the Sorkin stand-in, and he just keeps screaming about like fact-check political ads, which, you know, you can hear Aaron Sorkin screaming that at like a news broadcast, because he doesn't look at social media, quote unquote. - I know, but it's hard for me to be like, Sorkin is not a good filmmaker when I watch some of this stuff because what Wunmi Musaku and Billy Magnuson and Bill Burr are doing in these sequences. And you know, we can talk about strong in a minute as a sort of stand-alone. - Yeah. - But that stuff works. Like it is definitely like hectoring Sorkin speech writing that is flying a mile a minute, but like, that's what he does well. We, listen, you watched all three seasons of the news room. When that works, that is, that's his skill set. That's what he's good at. It does also, by the way, just like, in one room, so he doesn't have to worry about-- - It's a play, he's a playwright. - He doesn't have to worry about moving a camera, setting anything on. He doesn't have to worry about like not having other locations. It's, you know, it's-- - Just to go back to the filmmaking very quickly, I can see him attempting to make moves like the way that he's creating atmosphere with the fog in San Francisco and the secret meetings between Hagen and Horowitz are transpiring, where he's trying to create some mood and atmosphere, or the way that the camera is sort of moving over the desks across the offices of the Wall Street Journal. We're like, I feel him trying to do things that are like, I too am a filmmaker. - Right. - I have moves that are making you feel situated in environments, but it's stilted and very transparent. - He does the working girl shot of all the feet walking to work in San Francisco, but it's, you know, all the solomans or what-- - Oh, oh, that's gay. - He has the Jansixers, yes, yes, yes. He might be doing both. He might be doing cross-cutting both of those things. And you can see this in the trial of Chicago 7-2, where he's attempting to create, you know, there's a particular sort of like riot march sequence in that movie with a lot of gas. That he wants to give you the feeling that you feel when you watch reds or you watch, you know, like the curious case of Benjamin Button, a movie that like, even if I don't love that movie, there's an extraordinary atmosphere, you know, it feels like very different from other films. He does not have the juice, but when he's in a room, as you say-- - He's got the juice. - And Bill Burr, who like, 10 years ago, nobody was like, "Bill Burr's gonna be a good actor," but I'm like, "Bill Burr's going toe-to-toe with Jeremy Strong "and is very entertaining in this movie." - Yeah. - And-- - Helps that he makes all of the good points. - Yeah, but that is a feature of Sorkin's skill, like of what he does best, where it's like, that's the two brain thing, where when you're having a debate, someone is winning, and someone is losing, and there's a little nuance in between, a little nuance, but there's always one person who's like, more ethically right in any Sorkin debate. And it is kind of gratifying. It's the same way, like when you're watching a few good men and you're watching somebody thunder back at somebody else, you're like, "Well, I'm rooting for that person, not that person." Even though I think that what that person said was kind of cool. - Yes, well, I mean, but that's the thing, is that you are missing in-- and again, it's not Jeremy Strong's performance is fine. It's just Jeremy Strong doing Mark Zuckerberg, with the Caesar hair, but he's not given anything cool to do. So there is no, there's not even the Nicholson-esque pushback, or the you can't handle the truth. He doesn't have any good one-liners. He doesn't have any-- - There's one scene. - He yells about free speech. - There's one scene, and part of what's challenging about this movie is the flashbacks, they're not confusing, but they reveal a kind of ornateness in the structure that makes the film black pace. So there are some flashbacks that are in black and white where we're seeing a very momentous meeting in which a decision is made. And then there are other flashbacks where we're seeing, or if they're not flashbacks, they're happening in Hagen's contemporary reality, but then we're flashing forward. But at one point, we go in 2019 to a civic integrity meeting that takes place in Zuckerberg's office. And it's the only time that we see Zuckerberg at length out of the 2021 timeline. I thought that seemed worked really well. Yes. And it's a demonstration of how Zuckerberg led and made choices at Facebook with particular units of the company. And this one, he's extremely dismissive, cuts to the forces everyone to cut to the chase. And you can see the ways in which it is making his employees uncomfortable because he is focused strictly on bottom line at a certain time in the company's history. That to me is what the sequel to the Facebook movie should be. It should be the demonstration of the way all those choices were made. Not the assertation, not the acquisition of the information about what he did. Like this is a movie about getting the info about what he did rather than just showing us what he did, except for two scenes. I mean, I agree with you. I don't know. I don't know. It's so strange. I mean, you know, I understand why because he had, he saw it structurally in terms of a play and he's like, oh, okay, well, I can do my deposition thing over here, except it's the deposition prep. And then I'll fold in, you know, the homage to all the whistleblower movies that I love. And then I can bring it all together with my recreation of Jansix, which is important to me as a boomer, to make sure we get on the record, how I feel about this, which is negative. He, he's, he was against it. Who is against it? He'll note it, Aaron's working. Are you for Jansix? Were you there that day? I mean, I will say that this recreation makes the morning show look like reds. So in that sense, you know, I just, I think that the morning show had a lot more resources. I think they built a fake capital, you know, they had Reese Witherspoon there. Sure. So it's, it's tough though. It's tough when you're watching the so-called sequel to the social network. And you're thinking about the West Wing and the morning show. It's very TV, the movie. Yeah. It's very much, it feels like an HBO original movie from 1998. And I liked a lot of those movies. I've cited them here in the past. I always found those docky dramas entertaining. They continued those with some of the kind of political comedies that J Roach was making like game change, you know, movies like that. And those movies are cool. And they're, they're like, they passed the time by humorously summarizing outrageous events in our recent history. I feel like Aaron Sorkin is just at sea with what kind of stories he wants to tell. And these last few films, I don't really get what he's after. And maybe this is just like he's got a great life. He's been extraordinarily honored and successful. And he's operating in a different stratosphere. But he's trying to get you to think about a lot of much better movies. And it's a very dangerous game. Before the film started, I was treated to some you know, behind the scenes, EPK, Sorkin prep about this movie. And he was noting how his last two movies because of the pandemic were streaming only. And he was excited for people to get back in theaters and to watch his great cinema. But like, sir, just make a mini series. Imagine if this were a mini series. I think it's like we'd be okay. I think it could have been good. And then also it gives more room for all the Sorkin stuff that is within this. I mean, there's musical theater and sports references and some pattern. Again, I think we would have to recast to get some of the pattern back. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I've really soured on him over the last five years. And so I'm I probably sound like I disliked this more than I actually did. Like I didn't find it to be. I felt like you were maybe a little bit more frustrated by it while we were watching it together, even then I was. But I think I'm just for someone like him. Who I have venerated in the past. Yeah. And not just the social network. I think Steve Jobs is exceptional. And I also really like a lot of his 90s scripts. And I think he was able to have a little bit more fun back then too. I don't sense him having a lot of fun. I sense him to some almost like box checking his own pecadillos, you know, like references to showboat and the bedant banana daiquiri stuff in this movie. And, um, you know, there's a fist pump callback reference to a college basketball game that is like very sports night 101. And all that stuff feels almost perfunctory. It's like we're waiting for him to do something like that instead of it being logically or emotionally coherent to the story being told. I think if you are not a sworkinologist, you might not feel any of those things as much. But we do. And so I'm like, you know, there's a moment towards the end, uh, when Jeremy Allen White's character throws a towel at the, um, Francis Howard and character. And she doesn't catch it. And he's like, oh, I guess I should have told you that that was coming. And, you know, again, I've rewatched many sworkin shows over and over again. But I'm like, with different actors, there's a pattern. Yeah, there's a there's a timing there. So I think a little bit it much of it, I think, is the execution doesn't work out. But then also it like he picked the wrong, like in every circumstance, he picked he picked the wrong framing. He picked the wrong story. He didn't develop characters. You know, it's like, I want to talk about Jeremy Allen White a little bit because, um, I think he's really talented. And I think he is like, he's now picked two parts in a row, where you've got ostensibly people with a lot going on and you don't really get a whole lot. The last part was Bruce Springsteen and they deliver me from nowhere. And that movie is also very unsuccessful in a kind of a similar way, where it's like, this could have been an email with a link to a well constructed oral history. You know, like it's just not terribly cinematic. Lots of shots of people doing things, writing out their thoughts on paper or screen and then maybe crossing things out. And in this movie, taking photographs of charts from internal documents of Facebook. And but I don't, I also don't know what the best use of him is per se, you know, because obviously in the bear army is this incredibly internal tortured person and that the nature of his own torture and his own ambition and drive to succeed is like slowly revealed over time over many seasons. I thought I thought he was good in Iron Claw, which I almost called white law. He is good in Iron Claw, which you might need a white claw to get through its utter pain and sadness of a devastating movie. That's a good use of him. Yeah, that was a good use of him. And that's a cinematic movie. It is. This is, I mean, it's not a, yeah, but it's Sean Durkin, like to say, that's a real filmmaker, you know, like that's not Sarah Sorkin. I don't know. I don't know why I want better for him. I see him in interviews. I'm like, he seems cool. I want better for everyone involved in his film. Like him, that was going to be fine. Yeah, she's going to be fine. I don't totally agree that she's miscast, but I just don't really think he fully has the conflict of that person. No, how to write women, but I would also say he doesn't really write any characters in this film. So that's part of the problem. You know what? I'm willing to forgive that in most movies that he writes because there is a kind of kinetic energy to the back and forth. And no one is really generating that except for Jeremy Strong for about five minutes and Bilber for about five minutes. And then everything else is really flat. So yeah, this is, this is a bum. You know, Billy Magnuson innocent. Betty Gilpin. So unbelievably innocent. I know, but I just really want somebody to write her part where she gets to be nice. Okay, but I don't, I don't mind that she's not. I'm getting a little tired of people being like, she's the bitch in this one. Okay. I don't, I don't know. Was Catherine Hepburn ever nice? She was charming. Was Betty Gilpin charming in this? I thought so. I mean, she's great. I love her. But I thought I was like, this is, this is another woman that like, have you met a woman? I don't know. I like to when she was like, you guys can have him by and just like left the room. It's kind of trial how I try to deal with all the men in my life. I know what it was. I'll tell you what it was with that character. She keeps like announcing how not nice she is. Yeah. Well, sure. Yeah. You know, we can see she's an actor. She's performing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know where I think I'm taking this conversation. Okay. It didn't work. It didn't work. We were right. They should have called us. They didn't. Oh, they don't need to call me. I just need to just need to be better. Well, I agree. But I think I'm going to tell them. I've never written a movie. I don't know about that. I just know what I like. I don't think you could have fixed it. But I think I think that we were we were concerned about this. That's all. Okay. Let me just posit this to you. Yeah. If it's Fincher directing in Eisenberg is in here. And it's this script, but presumably the like pressure makes diamonds to create something different. Yes. Fincher's notes on the script. Yeah. Eisenberg's sense of this character. Is this a significantly better film? Yes. I mean, I like, I think so. I think also what Fincher will bring in terms of not just like the emphasis, not cinematic achievements, but the emphasis on characters and And how the characters are portrayed and getting all the actren in it, actreness out, I think that you probably get a lot of people recast also. It doesn't feel sociological. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it's definitely better, does it, but still does it have a need to exist? Like does it reveal anything about the world? I don't think so. Because we live in a disclosure day world, not in the 1970s of all the Presidents men. I feel like it's more useful if you're looking at 1718 and 19 instead of 1920 and 21. 1920 and 21 is when all the decisions made in 1718 and 19 start to really play out. Right. It's like really when everything has bubbled over entirely because we're living in the, you know, the post, the first Trump election and the rage emanating off of that and the sort of like the way in which liberals were caught by surprise by the way, the Trump wave and then this kind of like true, two-sided warfare that's happening online over the period of first administration is what starts to generate all of this knowledge about like that's when the Washington Post really takes off when these, after Bezos buys it, subscriptions are flying. So the New York Times really hunkers down and they start growing and growing and growing in the aftermath of that. And then that media, you know, this is a different movie, but it's just like that's what, that's what happened that got us to that thing. Yeah. No, of course, but he doesn't understand that. He just wants to make all the president's men and because and he does think that, you know, but he doesn't even learn the basic script writing lessons of that, which is that like they do all of the work, but then you don't see that you don't see the victory lap. Well, that brings me to one last thing, which is that the movie closes with Hogan's testimony and then a series of cards about what has happened with Facebook in the intervening years. And then the last card indicates what is it about the number of users at current active users that that Facebook has that meta has, is that the last line that we see on the screen? I don't remember that. What is the last thing we see on the screen? Oh, no, isn't the last thing like, um, now meta's policy is they don't fact check anything at all. Oh, yeah. That's the last thing. Thank you. Yeah. And, you know, that's obviously a very upsetting, but perfectly sorghum-esque way of framing the like the doom quality that we have around all this stuff. But then we cut back to Hogan and she gives Jeremy always character a fist pump like they have achieved something. We'll call back to her moment of observing. Yeah. No, I know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. There's one moment of happiness and accomplishing something led to Facebook and meta becoming even more nihilistic about the way that they manage their company. It's just it's such a confused message like, what are we even supposed to take from that idea? I don't know. I agree with you. It's not your job to answer it, but you see why I'm asking, right? No, it's a great question. I mean, the, the movie that Aaron Sorkin thinks that he's making reflects his version, his view of the world and what he thinks needs to be done to solve all of our problems. Our problems have not been solved and this movie is not solving them because Aaron Sorkin is wrong on like that, you know, like he's not wrong that that Facebook doesn't fact check anything and that like we live in a hell created by many things, including the media. But like, no, it didn't help. You said it. It didn't work. We didn't have all this information and nothing's different. Maybe you've gone on social media recently. It's fucking crazy. I tried not to. Yeah. I found the film's biggest flaw to be that on one side, he's operating and this is the most serious thing to ever happen to us and we really need to care. And the other side is like, aren't these people funny? Let's have some gags and it's just like so totally, totally unbalanced, just found it incredibly strange and like, I also like Jeremy Allen White, but like, he's at his best in the movie when he is kind of doing the hard expository stuff because like he's keeping up with the sorkanisms and keeping the car driving. But when he has to do like the funny stuff, he's so stiff and wooden. I agree. He's not very good at that stuff at all. And you do need a leading man who can riff on those things. The social network is funny, but in a very cutting way. It kind of like, it really adds, it's like putting ice cubes in some of the like, overheated, overcaffeinated sorkan style writing. Yes. And this stuff, like you said at the very beginning of the conversation, there's nothing pushing back against some of those instincts. So it's not a success. It doesn't, you know, it's honestly, it looks like it's tracking even worse than I would have imagined in terms of performance. Like, this is another movie now that is going to be like a sub 10 million dollar movie vlog. I was just thinking about the fact that like, I'm not aware of any pushback from Facebook or meta. Like, they have just, it seems that their strategy is like, this doesn't matter and we don't have to deal with it, which is probably for their purposes, the correct strategy but that's quite an indictment of the success or import of the film. I admit that I'm reading here that their market cap is $1.84 trillion or the eighth most valuable company in the world. That's cool. So I use it every day. So. Yeah. I'm in Instagram user. Um, yeah, October. It's been up and down for us. Yeah. Some struggles. Yeah. Some struggles. Is it maybe not next week, what maybe not, maybe not, maybe not Monday next Friday. Next Friday. Okay. We have something next Friday, uh, legacy sequels, legacy sequels, and increasingly common strategy of desperate movie studios, who are no longer able to get original storytelling over the line. We should keep an eye on this given what's transpired with the Warner Brothers Paramount merger acquisition because this is something that I suspect that Skydance is going to pursue even more aggressively almost started singing Skydance like Skyfall. How does it go? Like the Skydance. Yeah. Yeah. Skydance. Yeah. No, you were like, you were merging in another Bond theme that I can't remember now, but it was like, it wasn't tomorrow never dies. But that's okay. Well, I could do it like Goldfinger right away. Skydance. And isn't that the tone of Goldfinger? Skydance die. Right. That's one. I don't know. What else give what other bond themes? Can I think of? I don't know. I'm not very good at bond themes. Do you think the listeners of this show can tell it's 8.52 PM? It's always a 52 PM on this show. Yeah. Um, legacy sequels. Mm-hmm. Here's my rule. Yeah. Must be more than 10 years since the original. One note, if the word legacy appears in the title of the movie, very dangerous. Like. Doesn't mean it's going to be a disaster, but be warned. Sure. Yeah. There could be some struggles here. One last thing about Sorkin and his legacy sequels, because they're all kind of legacy sequels to relevance and history, why are all four of his movies about real life events? Once upon a time, he did write original stuff. Eee. I mean, the West Wing is original. It is based on a lot of stuff, but it borrows on like a lot of stuff. And you know, he spent so much time hanging out with the Clinton administration people in the, you know, it comes from American president, which was based on like the Michael J. Fox character is George Seff Nopoulos. Like it's sure. He fictionalizes some of it. I just feel like a few good men. Of course. Nice. The American president, the West Wing and sports night are all they're based on stuff. But they're not docu-dramas. They're not really using real people's names. Okay. And then you go, Charlie Wilson's War, the social network, money ball, Steve Jobs, Molly's game, the trial of Chicago seven, being the Ricardo's and the social reckoning all based on real stuff. But listen. Okay. So your whole, you have eight, eight fingers out. Eight fingers. Okay. But among those eight fingers are two of our favorite movies of all time and a top five Phillips, he put on Hoffman performance. So three out of eight, what is that is not quite five hundred? That's like three, that's three something. I'd like to see a list of his uncredited script work. Okay. Because we know that F1 is a movie that he worked on. Sure. Yeah. I might feel a little differently if it was like he also wrote Terminator Two Secret of the Use for No One Nose. You know, if that we put that on the board, that would change my feelings. Okay. I think I want to seem to take a chance on something. Use the real world as an inspiration. I think that's okay. I agree. Okay. Legacy sequels. What's your favorite? My favorite. Oh, it's top gun, Maverick. Yeah. What's your second favorite? Let's see. This is quite a list that we have here. The ones that are bad are Legion. Yeah. It's not Zoolander Two. No. It's not Borat Two. So that had some moments. Yeah. Yeah. That's the recent one, right? Yeah. Well, Ali G. Who is I is coming into weeks. Sure. Were you seeing that? Yes. Because you sent me a text message about it. Who is I? You know what Ali G? I do. I will not be seeing the new film. Okay. I kind of like Borat Two though. Yeah. Borat Two. Yeah. It's not with Giuliani. Yeah. Yeah. That was funny. It's not Dr. Sleep and Rosie the Hat. So I know that you and Gilbert Cruz have a real affection for it. Gilbert was listening this long. Rebecca Ferguson sucking out Jacob Tremblay's soul. That was pretty exciting stuff. Okay. Thank God that that's what it was. I just ended the way that it is. So you have the strangers here. Is that the strangers that you made me watch? - No. - Okay, 'cause that one was good. - Over the last 18 months there have been three in different films that are about the strangers, but the problem is is that they're a prequel to the strangers and they reveal who the strangers are. This is the whole point of the strangers. - Yeah, incorrect. - Not ideal. - Okay, so those are really bad. - What's your favorite? - The first Oman. - Damian Owen? - Nope. Well, yeah, I mean, yes. It's the origins of Damian Oman. - Sure. - Who is just named Damian? - Okay. - But it's about Damian's mother. - Yeah. - Who was a nun who was secretly impregnated by a band of Satanic cultists inside of the church in Italy. - Okay. - This was shown in the film in 2018. - How was this related to the DaVinci Code? - 2022. I don't believe it is. - Oh. - But you know what? - We haven't explored that yet. - I'm not up on my DaVinci Code. I saw the film one time, I thought that was okay. - Okay. - And then I stopped thinking about it. I know it's an international bestseller and more of your favorite things. - The film is just, is not that good. - No, it's not. The first Oman's really good because it doesn't try to be the Oman at all. It can't be the Oman. - Should I watch the Oman before Halloween? - For Halloween? - For Halloween? - Yeah. Yeah, it's very good. It's a very, it's never been like one of my favorites. Actually, and I just, I was telling you I was writing some trivia questions for an upcoming event. And I wrote an Oman trivia question as well. - Well, yeah. - Okay. - I'm full of your information. - You're giving people hints now that they can study hard. - When people were stopping me on the street in New York, they were saying, "Sean, first of all, you're way more handsome than person. Second of all, do you have any cool information you could share with me?" (laughing) And I would. I would say, "Well, Kinser or Madam, (laughing) thank you for stopping me on the street. I'm blushing and I appreciate that kind question. And I'll shall return it with some information. And then I would share a little piece of movie trivia and go about my day. - Do you? (laughing) - It makes me laugh 'cause it's just. - It's exactly what happens. - Yeah. - It's precisely what happens. - That was funny. - That was funny. - Um, Jurassic World? - Hmm, no, that was that blue, that's Chris Pratt and blue. - You know, I kind of enjoyed the first Jurassic World as like a horror movie. - Okay. - Everything after that is pretty much a car crash. - That you also famously don't remember. The one this summer, it was shot on film. I don't know what your problem is. They had a Bronisaurus and Cobble Hill. - Wasn't this summer, it was last summer, first of all. - Okay. - Second of all, it's a piece of shit. So. - Not Jonathan Bailey was wonderful. - You know who loves Jonathan Bailey is my wife. - Who doesn't love Jonathan Bailey? - She's like up on his daily activity. - Okay. - That was surprising to me to learn that she was as interested in his whereabouts. - All right. I mean, she must just be following him on Instagram. And then I remember when he wore the row flip flaps on the Jurassic, whatever, rebirth, press tour. - Yeah, sure, rebirth, good, you got it. - That was a year ago, so I guess I'm not that up. - That's just learned, yeah. - To date on it. I'm ready for that. - I'm ready for that. - It's punchy season, let's keep going. - You're not churned by him. I thought he was good. - No, I think he's good. - No, I think he was even good in that terrible Wicked movie. - Yeah, no, I think he's good. I like him. - Which one do I mean? You'll never know. - He's got one big number in the first Wicked that is pretty entertaining. It's blocked terribly, but it's pretty entertaining. - Oh God, but then they just like stare at each other for a while. And it's like silent. - What's wrong with romance? - Keep going. Say more about legacy clothes. - I will, thank you very much. You're like those people who stop me in the street. (laughing) - A movie that is not very like that I like is the Matrix Resurrections. - That was the COVID one? - It was the COVID one. And I think obviously that movie was part of Project Popcorn which didn't go well. You may have heard of Jason Tyler's decision to put all those Warner Brothers movies. What happened to Warner Brothers? - It was, it worked out. - Did they keep going? What did they do? Did AT&T sell? - I will say, the other half of that was that Paramount was like, we're not gonna put anything out until Top Gun Maverick. And now they're just one studio owned by David Ellison. Putting out G.I. Joe. - Bully for him. - Starting Bradley Cooper. So. - Calling to America bad. - Yeah. - I'll say it. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bad. I don't think it's good. - That's the Spilmer one. What about the Archimedes one? - I have more time for that. - Okay. - I'm more interested in that. I think that Crystal Skull doesn't work at all. - The Battle of Syracuse? Anyone? - Yeah. - Yeah, sure. - Because he's shaking his head now. - Okay. - I do not like the Evil Dead reboot from 2014. I kind of enjoyed Evil Dead Rise, but that's not important. I didn't like Neade Acosta's Candyman, like a sequel. - Okay. - Ghostbusters After Life is not good. - The Thumbs Down. - Noah is the other one. What's the second one called? It's a Frozen Empire? - Yeah. - What is wrong with me? Did I know the name of that movie? - I don't know. - That quickly. - God. - Now you see me now, you don't fit into this. - Mmm. - Is it, that's one of 10 years, is it? - Oh, right, it's definition. Okay. Max Furry Road. - That's pretty good. - Yeah. - Yes, that is. That's the fourth film in the series, I guess I wasn't, but I guess so is Crystal Skull, right? So yeah, that's probably the greatest of all time. Furry Road, right? - I would say so. - Yeah. - Godfather IV. - Soon. (laughing) One year from today. It'll be completed and we'll be doing an entire episode about it. - Produced by Sean, Fantasy, and a demon. (laughing) - No, produced by Sean, Fantasy, parentheses, PGA, comic, demon, division. - Do I have a demon division? Practical magic, too. - Oh, that one's a very good. - Mmm, there's some other good ones. - Mmm. - I think the first scream, like a sequel? - Yeah, that was good. - It's pretty good. The Melissa Breyer general, I think the one is pretty good. - Yeah, I mean, I'll be 10 years after Scream 4. It's probably not. Is it like eight years after Scream 4? - Scream 4 is 2011, so. - Oh, so it is 10 years. It fits. - Okay. - Scream is pretty good. I think the first David Gordon Green Halloween, I enjoy. You're on a journey with Halloween right now. - Yes. - Which we'll discuss in a future episode. - Yes, but I did see that one in theaters. - That one's better than the ones you've been watching, in my opinion. - Yeah, I'm in listen. I mean, I was at the dark period yesterday while sick. I honestly, I'm trending up at this point personally. - Look at you. - So, you know, here we are. - Yeah. - I've seen the social reckoning. - I keep feeding you all this cool information. And you keep getting stronger and stronger. Funny how that works. It's almost as like I have a magical power. - Did you like H2O, Amanda? - Yeah. - Yeah, me too. So good. - Okay. - Oh, I read it. Devil Wars brought it to. - I mean, I put this on. It is, yeah. We like, it was interesting. - I thought it was all right. - It was fine. I had a nice time. - Yeah. - I laughed a little bit. - Yeah. - Carly, I think he's a coach. That was wonderful. - You know? - Yeah. - Or things of coach, yeah. - Tina. Tina B. - Who's Tina B? Tina Brown. - Yes. - Tina Brown. - Yeah. - I've heard of her. Yeah. - She's one of the people who stopped me. You saw me. So I've been watching your content on Instagram, which is owned by meta. And you have a lot of interesting things to say. What's your co-host's name? - I said, no, that's Amanda. So yes, of course. - Sure. This is really good. This is, keep going. - We should do more episodes at 9 PM after a long day. Do you have any concluding thoughts? - I'm excited to talk about this when everyone else has seen artificial. You know, we had the benefit of the social reckoning that is, which is, you know, in its own way a legacy quo, even though it's not. But it is certainly in the school of the social network. And you and I got to see both of them in one week, which was great double featuring for us and no one else is gonna get that. So they'll just forget social reckoning and they'll enjoy artificial, which is how it should be. But it is an interesting case study and in what is interesting and what works about the social network and to how to tell stories about the media or great social change. - Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's really funny that the embargo for the social reckoning lifted at the exact moment when people watched artificial for the first time. And it didn't turn out well for social reckoning. - Well played me on. - Could be. - Yeah. - Could have been a very sound strategy by them. Yeah. I don't know, October, tricky. Next week. - Yes. - Other mommy. - Yes. Ben Affleck's new film, "Animals." - Yes. - And we will build the Ben Affleck Hall of Fame. - Yes. - Jack, I don't know if this is the first you're hearing of this, did I communicate this with you? - You did. - Yeah. - What's your favorite Ben Affleck movie? - Probably The Accountant, too. - I saw that. I did not. - You haven't seen it? - No, it's a pass for me. - I was about to spoil an incredible, no uni actually need to see it. - This is my new salt. - But and it's different and it's not as good a salt. And so I don't think we need any account in three, but some things happened in this film that I was about to just say, remember when, I'm just gonna say like a room full of coding children get involved. - Oh, I forgot about that. - Yeah. You gotta look into it. - All right, yeah, that was good. That was good. Not my favorite movie. - No. - Well, thanks to Jack Sanders. - Yes. - Nice to hear your voice today, Jack. Thanks to Lucas Kappa. for his production support, you know, I guess thanks to Zach. Thanks for everything you've done. Appreciate that. Nope. Um, he's fine. He owns like half of Kauai. So how is your other mommy get up looking? I was going to Google that today. I haven't seen the film yet. Have you seen the film other mommy? Tomorrow. Oh, wow. That's exciting. Well, yeah. I guess I am tomorrow's Friday. Oh, I'm going to see it tomorrow too. What time are you seeing it? I don't know yet. Okay, we can just have an interview here in the studio tomorrow with a very respected filmmaker. I probably will ask me for some cool information. Yeah. So once I see the film, then we can work with, you know, work with it. The real question is, how is your other mommy got up coming? Because you have to be the other half of it. Some people would say that on this show, I am the other mommy that you are mommy. Yeah. And then I am the other mommy. Yeah. Right. So there we go. I'm very pale. Right. And ghostly and a demon. So congratulations with a PGA credit. Thanks for watching along here with this very normal episode of the big picture. We'll see you next week. (upbeat music)