The Winners and Losers of the Summer Movies Came Roaring Back. Plus: ‘Hope,’ ‘The Uprising,’ and 10 More We Missed.

I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is the Big Picture, a conversation show about the end of summer. Amanda is back in America. And today on the show, we're talking about some late summer movies we missed, the winners and losers of an extraordinary season at the box office, and the ghastly results of our summer movie preview game. And after that, something cool. Earlier this month, a new program on the Criterion channel launched, collecting many of the films from filmmaker Abel Ferrara, the man who made King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, Miss 45, and many other classics. I helped to curate that package. There's an intro on the channel that features me talking about Ferrara's body of work and why it matters. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by filmmaker and friend of the show, Ben David Grabinski, for a deeper dive into Ferrara's work and what makes it so special. So definitely stick around for that. But first, some movie news with Amanda in studio right after this. 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If your doctor decides that you can, self-inject Tramphya, proper training is required. Tramphya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit TramphyaRadio.com Okay, Dancing Queen, how are you doing? I'm great. You're back. I'm back. You feel good? Yeah, I'm glad to be back. I mean, I just spent a lot of time telling you and Jack and Lucas just how I absolutely, it was at peak powers in Venice and then on the way home from Venice, but I got a good night's sleep. I'm excited to see everybody. I'm locked in for fall. Huge fall ahead. So much to discuss. First thing we're going to discuss has nothing to do with the fall. Yeah. It has to do with Valentine's Day because the Valentine's Day film of 2027 will be Remain, a new supernatural romance thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, co-penned by Nicholas Sparks. I love it. The teaser premiered this week. You say what? Count me in. I mean, here's my only thing, and I don't know how this is going to go, and there is, I don't know how much of a balance there will be between M. Night Shyamalan and Nicholas Sparks, but I don't want a happy ending. Okay. You know? Okay. I don't want this. I don't, I don't want to. I'm not sure if that's in the offing. You think there's going to be a happy ending? I'm concerned. But what if it's like. Like we will find a greater peace and love. What if it's like a notebook happy ending? What is the ending of that movie? I don't remember. You don't remember? No, I've only seen it once. Well, so he keeps reading her the dementia notebook, and then she wakes up for 20 seconds, and he's like, oh, we're like healthy, and the kids are healthy, and I still love you, and then they die together, and they're in their bed. Have you been keeping a dementia notebook for me? It's called this podcast. Yeah. It's a good thing there's a public record of all of my thoughts, because they're going every day. Jake Gyllenhaal, Phoebe Dynevor are the stars of this movie, and it did get punted out of 2026 to 2027, which I found to be a little worrying. So did Phoebe Dynevor's other movie. Yes. No, you're thinking of. A Place in Hell. No, that's not Phoebe Dynevor. That's Daisy Edgar Jones and Michelle Williams. Oh, it is? Oh, I'm sorry to the very beautiful young British women. You're mixing up your white. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I apologize. You're both very pretty. So the movie, you know what the trailer reminded me a bit of What Lies Beneath? Mm-hmm. Kind of a ghostly romance. Yeah, great. With maybe some. Some shenanigans? Some violent ends, perhaps. We shall see. I'm looking forward to that. There was some news also this week that Paul Feig is attached to a new version of The Italian Job. Can I tell you a secret? Yeah. I've never seen the remake of The Italian Job. Oh, okay. Well, I was about to say Mini Coopers to you, but now I've just spoiled a major, that's in the new Italian Job, right? Anyone? I've also not seen it. Wow, okay. So No Salt and- Oh, can I tell you, I really was going to try and watch that on vacation when I heard you shout me out and I missed it. It's not- I'm going to make it happen, I promise. We're results-oriented here, okay? I'm aware, I'm aware. Let me know when you've actually watched it. It's coming. It's going to happen. Okay. It's not one of my heist movies, but I do like all heist movies. Sure. Recently featured on The Rewatchables, obviously a great cast in that. Mark Wahlberg, Charlie's there, and Edward Norton, so on and so forth. This new one, we need another one of these? Doesn't this kind of fall- Why? Listen, they can make as many horror movies and remakes of other things, and you don't complain, so just let me have a heist movie, okay? Okay, so you want it. It could be good, it could be bad. Yeah, I'd like, I don't- Let's make movies that I'm interested in. Okay, so the original Italian Job was released in the 1960s, starring Michael Caine. Also a artifact of the 1960s, the television series Get Smart. And there was a- movie remake- Correct. Of Get Smart that appeared in the 2000s, much like there was a remake of the Italian Job that appeared in the 2000s. The Get Smart remake starred Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. Right. And then Date Night was Steve Carell and Tina Fey? Correct. And Mark Wahlberg. Mmm, I see. It's all crashing together. It's just announced that Warner Brothers is developing a reboot of Get Smart, starring John Mulaney. Now, John Mulaney has not starred in very many movies. In fact, I would argue his most prominent role is as Spider-Pig, in the Spider-Verse films. He's good in The Bear. Was he in the last season of The Bear? Uh, yes. I forgot to download it. Anyhow, Get Smart, you know, Get Smart was created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, two of the greatest comic minds of the 20th century. And the show was very popular. I think it might have actually been spun off from a film originally. Don Adams starred in the TV show version of it. And this feels like a news announcement from 1990s. 1997? What? Why? The Italian job in Get Smart are getting reboots? Doesn't this feel kind of counter to a lot of the conversation we're about to have about what happened this summer? Yes. And that anything franchise or old person seeming or even old person adjacent is DOA. Yeah. And it's just about a bunch of new young people from the internet. I mean, I agree. Kind of weird, right? It's very, very strange. I guess these are, this is cheap IP that's, and probably the rights are expiring. So they're like, eh, is this anything? Is this anything? And every once in a while, is this anything turns into something. Yeah, I guess so. Jack, is Get Smart anything to you? It actually is. It's not like huge, but I vividly remember watching it as a child and enjoying it. The TV show or the film? The film, sorry. The Steve Carell movie. Yes, that's correct. Gosh, I remember that movie being a dud. I confused it in my head with Date Night until you said the words Anne Hathaway because they were, they're all of an era when Steve Carell was the most famous, beloved person in the world because of the, and also a 40-year-old virgin and then made some other movies. What's the one where he's like, he's basically Noah? Do you remember this? That was the sequel to the Jim Carrey movie where he's a newscaster, Bruce Almighty. Right. That was Evan Almighty, I think, was the name of that one? Yeah. I thought you were going to ask me about the film Dan in Real Life, which was another Steve Carell vehicle from that time. Sure, yeah. A lot of Steve Carell, I mean, obviously Little Miss Sunshine, a lot of Steve Carell movies that no longer exist, I would say. Get Smart, Reboot might be one of them. Okay. Would you like to talk about this summer? I mean, you're welcome to share any details from your personal life about this summer if you'd like to, but I do want to mark time. But you're trying to say, but I don't, but I, Sean Fennessey, don't want to hear about them? I've just heard about them a lot already. You know, like you're on the record. Like we're texting. Sort of, but there was a month there. That's true. We basically have not spent a lot of time together. That's true. Since our birthdays. Since the birthday party. That's true. We have not spent a lot of time together. Are you ready for basically six straight months of hanging out with me? Because that's what this is going to be. That's true. When you throw in Christmas. Yeah. Yes, I am. Okay, great. I am too. Feel free to intersperse any personal anecdote you need as we go through the events of the last three months. I don't feel like you actually mean that, but as everyone knows, I can't help myself. I would love it if you would continue to ingratiate yourself. Do we know enough about your summer? What's to share? Next one. You're still doing the merch. Riding high. Okay. Met status. Up, down. Fun team. I'm happy. Horrible outcome, but great vibes last month. Agreed. 100%. Okay, so no playoffs. Definitely no playoffs, but weirdly feeling optimistic about next year already. Me as well. Do I have to take on, do I have to witness any of your Jets, Aguida, the next four to five months? That's an interesting question. I appreciate you asking. I don't really know what I'm doing this year yet in that respect. Great. - Okay. - My formal prediction is seven, and ten. They have way too much talent to be the worst team in the league. I don't believe in their coach. I don't feel as emotionally invested in this year because we all know what the purpose of this year is, which is to find out whether they're going to keep the coach or not and then to choose a quarterback in the draft next year. So that's it. Hopefully the young kids, the young players are good. So it's an odd thing for 15 straight years of no playoffs and then to just know we're not making the playoffs again. So the only way to look at it is there's upside. Maybe they might surprise people. If they're abominable, it's kind of no big deal. So weirdly stress-free season. Do you think you'll stick to that? I mean, I'll be individually mad during games, but I don't think I'll be as rageful as I usually am. Also, the Knicks thing, it's kind of evened some stuff out. That's beautiful. It has really evened some stuff out. I'm really looking forward to the Knicks season. It's really quite a time. Did they keep everybody? They lost Mitchell Robinson to the Boston Celtics, which wasn't ideal. Otherwise, just intact. Beautiful. Okay, let's talk about the summer. This was the highest-grossing summer from a dollar perspective in the history of movies. Now, obviously, that doesn't account for inflation. I imagine if you look at the summer grosses from 1939, probably made more money with regards to inflation, but $4.76 billion across this summer movie season, which surpasses the record from 2013, which was $4.756. Okay. The admissions this summer, were $322 million. That's almost 50 million more people or more tickets were sold this summer than last summer, which is really saying something. There were four straight $1 billion plus months at the box office. Again, very crazy. This August was the biggest August in movie history. Now, that is almost entirely because of Spider-Man Brand New Day, but nevertheless, you know, this was a truly historic three months for movies. Did it feel that way for you? No. Yes and no. I mean, without accounting for inflation, part of it is a major part of this. It is. And I think admissions are certainly up from last year, but I think relative to even 10 years ago, you know, what we are finding is that movies are back for people who are interested in movies. Correct. And that's really fun. And I will say that anecdotally, I do feel like, I was talking with, you know, friends and family, and even in Venice, I had conversations with several people who were like, hey, you know what I saw? The invite. Really good. Like, it does feel like things beyond Spider-Man, you know, doing its fan service, are reaching people in a way that certainly five years ago during the pandemic and, you know, as TV still kind of held its chokehold over popular culture, we didn't have. So I think movies are definitely up over TV. I don't know what TV shows are on, and Emmys are this week. I don't care. And that feels nice. And it also does feel like we are continuing to develop like a new generation of fans and movie-going habits. And those are gonna be different than the movie-going habits that we had, but they're real. So that's positive. No, I think that's smartly observed. And I think the reaching the young people thing, which just came up with respect to the rebooting of old boomer culture and trying to make it into a movie again, is really notable to me. Like, I want to talk through what I perceive to be some of the winners and losers of this stretch of time. Yes. Some of which are going to be very obvious, but I think we should try to reflect on them a little bit. Spider-Man is the place to start. So Spider-Man Brand New Day has made $2.4 billion. It's made $923 million in America and Canada. And your cut was what? Zero dollars. You know, we will talk about the summer movie preview game, but in a million years, I never would have guessed this much money worldwide. This is insane. Now, there are a variety of reasons for this. I ran into somebody at Telluride over the weekend, and they were like, you know, it's really cool what's happening with movies. I saw Spider-Man. I thought it was fine. Like, I thought it was pretty good. And that was it. And that was the general reception I think I've gotten from a lot of the normal movie-going people in my life. They're obviously Spider-Man and Marvel has a stronghold of fandom. So I'm still trying to account maybe for what this, what the reason is for the success of this. Now, I think we can probably pull like five or six reasons. The number one thing that jumps to mind is the fact that Spider-Man, Spider-Man is for everyone. You know, Toy Story 5 is for kids. The Odyssey is for adults. But Spider-Man Brand New Day was for every single person who could see a movie. Does that. I completely agree. I think that's the biggest reason why. Yes, that you would get all generations, but just bringing a lot of kid audience. And there were some really soft kid titles across the summer. I mean, you know, Toy Story 5 obviously being the exception, but otherwise a lot of the other kid solo-oriented movies did not perform. True. And this feels like one that grownups and kids, and even like really little kids. I mean, our children are probably too little, but I'm sure there were lots of five-year-olds who are so psyched about Spider-Man. And this is, I mean, Spider-Man really, two-year-olds know what that is, even if they can't see the movies. So some of it just seems like the widest reach possible. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. Obviously, there is anticipation anytime there is going to be a new Spider-Man movie. And then I think there's anticipation for Doomsday, and what I think a lot of comic book movie fans hope is a rebirth or revival, whatever it's going to be. I'm quite fascinated to see how this impacts Doomsday, if at all. Like, I think Doomsday will be huge. Right. I'll ask you straight up. Do you think it will make as much money as Brand New Day? No, because it's split with Dune. And so I think even just some of the kind of repeat, I go to the theater four times to see something, the IMAX screens for sure. You know, all of this is just that they're just going to have to share some of the market, which again, I do not understand, but I don't make these decisions. Yeah, it is an interesting test of that audience. I think it will be less, maybe just a little bit less, but I do think it will be less. This is an extraordinary outcome for this movie. The second one is obvious, and that's The Odyssey and Christopher Nolan. The Odyssey sits at $1.63 billion. Domestically, it's made $585 million. It's the highest grossing R-rated film of all time. It surpassed Deadpool and Wolverine, speaking of the MCU. Christopher Nolan's biggest movie. It overtook The Dark Knight Rises. It's the highest grossing IMAX release of all time. It earned $289 million from IMAX. It better. With the amount of, you know, investment and time everyone spent in making that, the IMAX camera, you know, the marketing worked. Yes, and just as an addendum to this, IMAX is also, I think, one of the very big winners of the summer with a lot of question marks that we can get to after we talk about The Odyssey. So, you know, again, The Odyssey, I thought, would be huge, and I thought, well, if it got past Oppenheimer, that would be an amazing success, and then it made $680 million more than Oppenheimer. What does that tell you? Christopher Nolan is a brand, and to an extent, I think, also IMAX is a brand, and that's the other thing where, you know, Ryan Coogler did this with Sinners last year, and the studios and the directors know that there is a growing young cinephile audience and that part of going back to the theaters is also caring about the format, and that hyping that up will engage people and so far is working, and I've had so many conversations with, you know, family members being like, so do I need to go see it in 70mm IMAX? And I was like, no, you can just see it in the best place, but that message, that worked. And I think a lot of that is because Christopher Nolan has worked so hard to be the director who does this stuff and attach his name to it, and he's such a big deal at this point. So he's golden. Congratulations to all of them. Also, you know, fighting in movies is good. And there is an element of this movie for all of its textbook and academic associations that's just an adventure. It's a war movie. Yeah. Absolutely. 300 made a lot of money too, not this much, but people are into this. No, it's true. They haven't been as into this kind of movie in a very long time though, but I do think you're right that the timing was right. It was the fusion of that this filmmaker, this cast, this story being told in this way, the PLFs that you're describing. And that's something else to note that I think is useful, which is that regarding inflation, I think the average ticket price sale this summer was $14. And a lot of that is attributed to the fact that many of the ticket sales, an unusual proportion of the ticket sales were from premium large format screens, which cost more money to go see. So I think in 2019, the average ticket price was $10 because there just were not as many PLFs and obviously inflation has gone up. Something really fascinating for Nolan. God, I am so interested to hear what movie he makes next because now, you know, we'll be talking about him through the Oscar season for a long time, but just from a pure kind of dollars and cents, the absolute centerpiece of the business, the heir to Steven Spielberg as the person who commands commercial cinema stronger than anybody. And maybe honestly, is he a bigger draw than any movie star in the world right now? Probably. I'm trying, I mean, I'm trying to think. I mean, Leo is probably and, but not box office wise because one battle last year was not on the level. I think he's the single most powerful draw in the entire, I mean, maybe you could say Spider-Man. I was going to say, yeah. Like I said, characters aside, like actual living humans. Yeah. That's amazing for a filmmaker to be that. I don't know if you even know if you could make the case that Spielberg specifically had that over any key over like Eddie Murphy or Harrison Ford in the 1980s. 80s right like is this the first time in history that a director has been the biggest draw in the business i don't know it's a good it's a good thought exercise yeah you know people people can send us when is his next movie dated for i don't know if it is but there's a space on the 2029 calendar on that july weekend his favorite july weekend so i think that's probably where i mean he that's essentially what he does right is every three years on that july weekend that's where he goes do you feel that we need to extend the clock to july 2029 are you still holding at june 2028 uh i don't know i'm an x-men boy you know so that that would be a fitting way to go out so that's may 2028 so you don't want to hang on for days of thunder 2 oh right days of thunder 2 geez you want to go an entire 13 months after that i mean is days of thunder 2 really what we want to go out i truly don't care about it like i'm really i'm kind of not interested is that weird to say on a movie podcast either except that we like tom cruise yeah and we like it you know so the first trailer will come out and you'll immediately be locked in maybe maybe i don't know and hathaway and tom cruise these are literally your guys and girls sure i know i just don't care about days of thunder i really don't care about nascar i don't know it's just not not of interest to me okay so may 28 but but then won't the x-men set up 45 other x-men movies sure well what but i'll be able to see them i just wanted to talk with you about them okay that's yeah yeah okay so i know it's probably better for you than it is for me uh okay she learned about x-men from him it's still the greatest poster yeah it was a really good poster i think the next winner is michael and yeah and the michael jackson estate and the fact that this movie which received some of the worst pre-release press that you could ever imagine about the way that it was refashioned re-edited recut reshot um it raced to one billion dollars and it made 375 million dollars here in the states and it's the lions gate's biggest movie ever universal had the overseas rights so they made a trundle of money because it made you know over 700 600 million dollars overseas um michael part two will come it sounds like either late next year early 2028 and i'm sure that that'll be a very chill movie with not a lot of complications around it uh you know i predicted on the show a couple weeks ago that i think there's a chance that this movie gets a best picture nomination i predicted that this movie gets a best picture nomination i predicted that i think that there's a chance you're already like hedging deeply you gotta you gotta take a stand remember we talked about this juliette said that her fall goals are living with intention my hedging here is not because of lack of confidence it's because it's something that i don't want to happen right because i don't i don't like the film i don't like the film i don't want to talk about the film for six months um but i mean we don't really have to talk about it that much we didn't talk about f1 that much you're right you're right about that but i think that specifically that is a movie that people saw i know for a fact that if it goes in it will be pushing a more deserving film out almost certainly oh yeah you know like the the odds of the 11th place film being worse are low yeah so but the movie is such a success it is it's the first billion dollar biopic this has never really happened before and it makes sense because michael jackson is such a titanic figure to world culture and they have the catalog so they just blast the music music's in there and the music and the dancing is in there and jafar jackson did he did his thing right he did the thing that that that needed to happen for the movie to work any reflection on this does it tell you anything i mean i do wonder how much it is a rejoinder to what we were saying at the beginning of the podcast and what has been kind of the takeaway of the summer what we're about to discuss which is like old things out new young things in this is a generational shift unless you're making an incredibly traditional to the point of you know all societal blinders on film about one of the greatest pop stars to ever do it so you know there are i guess there are always exceptions um and people don't really have morals or i guess two other lessons but it's not really that surprising it to me it just feels like they're there's there i mean there are always going to be exceptions right yeah and then you're going to get get smart starring john mulaney yeah i mean get smart obviously does not hold one one thousand cultural power that's something like michael jackson does and it makes sense that a michael jackson movie would do so well and it does put it puts the beatles quartet of films in an interesting light because of course the beatles got started roughly 15 years before michael and they they were at the peak of their fame 25 years before michael was the peak of his fame and so i think it's actually an interesting test of like gen x millennial culture versus boomer culture um that the beatles are representative of something that we really feel like has has moved on and the beatles are eternal to us let me let's let's call the booth you guys care about the beatles i do okay lucas lucas i that was a shrug okay all right well we'll talk about that later i i'm fascinated i you know it's there's not very many people left for whom this sort of thing can be done prince is one of them i think the late dolly parton now is maybe somebody who you might you may see a life story or something like that story film pretty soon but it's not gonna happen it seems like madonna but maybe after she's a little older perhaps um you know i'm sure there's more than that are not coming immediately to mind we've still not seen the kurt cobain movie uh that's something that could happen like last days by gus van zandt notwithstanding so you know there's a maybe a few more opportunities for this from the 20th century musical icons but this one was probably always going to be the biggest and turns out it was the biggest uh okay young filmmakers now obsessions curry barker and back rooms as kane parsons are the two figureheads of this movement obsessions box office going over it is is shocking to me like it is shocking that far exceeds the brand new day shock the odyssey shock the michael jackson shock it doesn't mean it's as much money as those three movies but the amount of money that this movie made this may never happen again in the history of movies it's made 512 million dollars domestically it's made 263 million dollars it costs 750 000 it features zero famous people it's just a good horror movie it's a good horror movie it's got a very memorable very impressive breakout performance from indy navaretti i think it's a clever script it's got some good moments i'm a fan of the movie i'm not denigrating the movie at all how did the movie this happen i don't know you posed this question like i'm going to be able to answer i mean i also really like the movie and i did go i went after the first weekend when it was like it it did really well and it was clear that it was going to be a thing and i wanted to be able to talk about back rooms which was you know the more cinephile-y tipped movie uh in conversation together because they were released so close to each other and i will say like you know i went and my record with is improving but still kind of spotty and i got it and i think that there is something kind of i mean it is broad and it i understand that it uses all of the horror tropes and and many romantic comedy tropes so it's something that is familiar to the audience but every once in a while something just hits the spot of recognizable um but still a little surprising but not too provocative to turn people off and it just got in the zone and then it becomes a word of mouth thing and the phenomenon of it right and it's just like oh everyone's seen obsession i should also go see obsession yeah i mean going up weekend over weekend a few times was mind-blowing there was a very memorable like wednesday on its fourth week of release where it made like seven million dollars in one day and i was like what the fuck is this and i think it's all the things that you described i think that it is both satisfying in a traditional way but also feels like a new voice feels like it's hitting some of the horror tropes that you expect but also i think has some really pretty cleverly crafted contemporary ideas about dating sex loneliness um you know friendship all of these things that we kind of put in a in a in a bundle together when we start to generalize about generations that are younger than us but it does feel like that generation that is younger than us was like well yeah this is getting some things right and it's made by a 26 year old and that 26 year old does seem to have tapped into his own personal feelings which are then an extension of a generation of feelings but i also think 50 year olds enjoyed the movie i i heard tom palacero um one of the new nfl ringer nfl podcast hosts say that on his flight to australia for today's rams uh 49ers game they're playing in australia he watched obsession i know if we if we want to go down that rabbit hole i think it's fucking stupid so stupid so unfair to the players i mean but why i mean i understand the reach of the short yeah yeah listen i like i understand how i understand how it all works um i hate it i think it's totally unfair to those that seems really silly yeah i'd still like to go to australia nothing against australia no i would love to go to australia i love australia i love the idea of australia at least i'd like to go in our winter their summer yes same maybe we'll make that happen after the x-men episode okay but that'll be our summer so then we have to hang on okay so then december 2028 we'll do our last episode from and then we'll go straight to australia you don't want to do the last episode in australia maybe maybe so okay maybe so if anybody in australia would like to welcome us please let us know that'll be for two years from now um Curry Barker is another movie coming up. I thought this new movie, Anything But Ghosts, was going to come out in the spring. And now I'm starting to wonder if they're going to wait a little while to. Oh, try to distance? From the film. And this film, I think, is more of a pure comedy, pure horror comedy, as opposed to Obsession, which is pure horror with some very funny moments. But I'm interested. Aaron Paul is in the film. Bryce Dallas Howard's in the film. And as are Curry and his partner, Cooper Tomlinson. Um, I'm open. This movie was an acquisition. Focus bought this out of the Toronto International Film Festival for $15 million. What a buy. Obsession. Yeah. Not anything but ghosts. No, not anything but ghosts. Yeah. Is it the greatest acquisition ever? I mean, from a number of cents, I think so. Unbelievable. Goddamn. Okay. Back Rooms. Yeah. Made $394 million. Mm-hmm. Made almost $200 million here. In the States. Yes. Four of the 10 highest-grossing A24 movies have been released in the past 16 months. They said they were going to do it, and now they're doing it. Pretty crazy. I'm happy for them. Is this repeatable at all for Back Rooms? Will Cain Parsons be a part of the movie-going firmament for the next 25 years? Well, in some ways, Back Rooms was IP for a generation that is not us, right? And I think much of the response, and certainly the hype, was because there is an entire generation of children who have watched the entire YouTube series and knew all the lore and were living up to it. And, you know, I think far be it for me to speak for the youth, but they had mixed feelings about how this installment lived up to their understanding of the lore, which is, you know, being a fan. Welcome, kids. This is how it works. You're going to be disappointed for the rest of your life. But there is also. You know, it is a franchise in its own way. So, and I think he obviously has such a built-in audience from YouTube that clearly followed him to this, and I don't think are going to give up on his next. So, I don't know if it's going to be a $400 million film, the next one, but I think it will be successful. I agree with you. I think, arguably, an even bigger winner than Cain Parsons and the makers of Back Rooms is all of the people who will be rewarded as online creators, for trying to make the next Back Rooms. There are so many deals going around right now in Hollywood from production companies and studios trying to find the next Cain or trying to find the next Curry that what it feels like to me is the post-grunge alternative music gold rush. When all of these bands in the 1990s got signed to major labels and they all were expected to have the next Jeremy or the next Smells Like Teen Spirit and none of them could conjure it or they could have one hit and then they found themselves in massive debt or part of this kind of buzz bin. Right. Right. Right. There's going to be a lot of nostalgia, you know, remainder and there's going to be 30 movies in the next two years that are going to attempt to recreate this and one or two are going to hit and everything else and some of them might be really good, but they're going to get cast aside and I think this is like a generational turnover, not just in terms of how old the people are, but in terms of the style of movie, the tone of movie that you're going to get. How many more liminal space films will we get now? What expectations do we have for the audience to kind of encounter and engage with storytelling like this? Like there's going to be so many after effects of this that I'm so interested to see, but could be like painful or pretty dull for us as movie watchers. Yeah. And I mean, there were smaller but still notable successes this year of YouTube creators kind of even jumping the studio system and going directly to theaters and making a lot of money. And, you know, I didn't see most of those because that seems like none of my business, frankly, but it is enough of a business for some people. And for the theaters to, you know, make space and incentivize it a bit. So, yeah, I think you're right. I mean, in some ways, that's just the history of art and capital being entwined, which is like you get one hit and then you get 40 copycats. No doubt. We've seen it in every genre across the world. But, yeah, I'm going to learn a lot about YouTube in the next years, or maybe I won't. It's arguable that Mark Fischbach, that Iron Lung, his film, is actually the most astonishing story from this kind of ream of YouTube content creator turned filmmakers because, you know, he's a little older and he's been on YouTube a longer period of time and has a bigger fan base in that space. However, he independently distributed his movie. He self-distributed his movie, which made over $50 million and was based on a video game, but even still, self-distribution? Like that's a whole other, that's from the 1960s. That's something that just does not happen. And the only reason that that happened is because of the demand from his fans who insisted that they put his movie on their screens. So, again, like I see all of those things kind of together. There's the amazing digital circus. There's a couple of other examples of this. One of the most interesting ones is that we haven't talked about, and I haven't seen yet, is the, just the filmed version of Hadestown the musical. Right. Which did gangbusters over the late summer and was supposed to be a one-week release where they filmed, I think, three performances of that musical. And, yeah. It did so well that they extended it a second week and then extended it a third week. And I think it crossed like $40 million. That's another thing where it's just like fans demanding something and getting it. Coyote vs. Acne is the same thing. Fans were just like, Warner Brothers tried to kill this movie. We don't accept that. We're making a loud, noisy online campaign. Catch-up picks up the movie. That movie's going to make $50 million, maybe more. I mean, it is great news that what fans are demanding is please show it in a movie theater. Yeah, I agree. And I don't think that five years ago in, you know, in 2021 that we would have done that. I don't think we would have expected that at all. It seemed like it was completely dead. And it does, you know, this transition is a little bit more of, it's a concert model, like a tour model or an amusement park model or something where you're not seeing this demand for every single of the hundreds of movies that are released every year. But on the other hand, theaters are at least back in the conversation. I agree. And it is kind of limited engagement eventization. You know, and it feels a little bit maybe more like the Arrows Tour model where you've got something that has a three or four week window that will appear in theaters and that's the only time you can see it and race out to go and then that will drive box office. But if that's something that can work, they should pursue more of it. You know, some of it is strategy, some of it isn't. And then there's also like a plenty of, I guess we'd call, quote unquote, smaller titles that just did like good business. Like The Invite, The Sheep Detectives, like those movies just did good business. Like they justified their existence and also, made people happy and are memorable movies. So stuff like that working in addition to a couple more blockbusters that we'll talk about here, I find very encouraging. Two huge Disney movies this year. Huge. Both of which I think we would have predicted were going to be big. Would you have predicted that The Devil Wears Prada 2 would have made $700 million worldwide? I mean, I don't think I did in the box office game that we did. And I was protecting my heart a little bit. But once the rollout and the twist, again, this is another correction to our theory of like, it's only new young people now. You know, they were doing photo calls for two months. Yes. With that movie. And, you know, Meryl in Matthew Blasey's Chanel, like all over the world. And so it was very, very traditional. That movie is filled with Easter eggs to the original. It really was reheating something that was big 20 years ago. But because it's such an underserved market, and by that I mean women who like to have fun. Um, it, it worked out. I think you, you couldn't do it. I'm sure they'll try to do Devil Wears Prada 3. And I wonder if that will do as well. Well, it's funny because I paired this film with Toy Story 5. And Toy Story 5 did, I would say almost exact. This is one of the few films where I was like, I know what this is. I know this is going to be a billion dollar movie. Toy Story always works. I liked it a lot. You didn't like it so much. But it has, they have a formula in place. And those characters, are, those characters are kind of in the Spider-Man zone of just like. Yeah. You know, Woody and Buzz and Jessie. Or these are my friends. It was a Jessie movie. Please support women. Yeah. Um, I think that Pixar has done something really interesting with their sequels where they've taken more time between them than any other studio normally would. And we'll talk about that when we get into some of the losers of the summer. But Toy Story 5, I think is seven years after Toy Story 4. And I think Toy Story 4 is like seven years after Toy Story 3. So there's gaps in time. There were a big gap between Incredibles and Incredibles 2. You know, like movies like that, that then Inside Out and Inside Out 2 had a huge gap between them. And so you had a generation of fans that came in to fill that space. Devil Wears Prada 2 is the same thing. Came out 20 years ago. Two generations of movie fans and a lot of female movie fans claimed that movie. And then they waited just long enough that it was exciting to see these characters together on screen. And I wonder if rather than going back 80 years or 60 years for Get Smart, maybe the 2000s are the thing that should be pilfered for new IP? Yes, though. I mean, even the 2000s, you sort of, there weren't that many original things. Well, that was when things started to shift, right? Exactly. So it's like, you know, we didn't know how good we had it. But also they are reanimating most of the things from 2002 to 2009 that we, or 2000. I should say. Yeah, I mean, there have been obviously some examples of this, like Avatar coming back was an example of bringing back a 2000s era movie and reigniting it. I mean, they're going to try to bring back Pirates of the Caribbean. That's an example of something that hasn't been a new one in a long time. Johnny Depp, I guess, is back. We're going to have to have a whole Johnny Depp conversation when Ebenezer comes out in November. What are some other, I mean, Shrek is coming back. That's a 2000s thing. Maybe I put my finger on what I think is like, this is actually the new nostalgia that the studios are playing with. And I'm not a rocket scientist or anything, but I'm just putting this together at this exact moment. I mean, Harry Potter is coming back to HBO. That's another 2000s thing. The Da Vinci Code is coming back to television. Well, Robert Langdon, okay? Yes. They're not remaking the Da Vinci Code. No, it's a different Robert Langdon who Tom Hanks plays him in the movies. And I had some Da Vinci Code complaints that I wanted to make, but I can't remember what they are now. I'm looking at the highest grossing movies of the 2000s right now. It's Morgan Spector who's going to be Robert Langdon, right? It's Morgan Spector, that's correct. That's great stuff. Any other thoughts on Toy Story 5? It was not that great, but I'm glad that you liked it. It's the third highest grossing Pixar movie ever behind Incredibles 2 and Inside Out 2. Do you think? Do you think that Toy Story 5 is bringing in new fans? Or, you know, is it all five-year-olds like Alice who had seen Toy Story 1 through 4 ahead of time? New fans? Like, is it their first Toy Story movie? Yeah. I'm sure it was a lot of kids' first movie in the theater. Okay. Or first Toy Story movie in the theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But probably not anybody who's like, I'm going to start with Toy Story 5. That would be kind of confusing. It would. They would think that Jesse was the most important character in the entire universe, which, you know, through some people's eyes, she is. You know, Lucas reminds me that you did guess almost exactly right for the domestic gross of the Devil Wears Prada 2. Well, you know. Almost exactly. You guessed $210 million and made $220 million. That's pretty good. Thank you. Sometimes, you know, I have a very specific area of expertise. Yes. But I got it. Yeah, you're like. Power thing's a coach. Big losers this summer. Uh-huh. Disney Live. Action. Yeah. And all of us who had to sit in the theater and watch it. I mean, Moana was absolutely terrible. I can't believe how bad it was. And it made $315 million worldwide, which for this movie is a tremendous disappointment because this is one of the most valuable properties that the studio has. And Moana 2 was a billion-dollar movie less than two years ago. Obviously, this movie came way too soon after Moana 2. The Rock is in a bit of a tailspin as a commercial movie star right now. I hate these movies. I'm so sick of them. I'm so sick of having to think about them. There is a Tangled one that isn't, I guess, going into production right now. Tangled, one of my daughter's favorite movies. Sure. One of my little sister Grace's favorite movies, at least when she was a kid. A movie that I like, that I think is very good. Is Mandy Moore involved in the remake? Well, she's not the star. I don't know if she's going to be participating in it anyway. She's a little too young now to play Rapunzel. Oh, that's right, because it's live action. Yes, it's live action Rapunzel. So, Mandy Moore is a mom in her 40s. God bless her. Disney Live Action. Will they be making these five years from now? I don't know. Well, haven't they released their schedules for five years from now? I don't think there's more than two. And also, what's left? I think only a Lilo and Stitch sequel. Okay. Tangled. I don't even know if there's anything else on the slate at the moment. I mean, also, what's left for them to live action? Sword in the Stone. Okay. Robin Hood. Yeah. Black Cauldron. We have a million live action Robin Hoods, and I don't want any of them. I can't wait to talk to you about The Uprising. I cannot wait to talk to you about The Uprising. We're good. There's quite a rest. The Rescuers. That has The Rescuers down under. Isn't that. The Fox and the Hound. Isn't that an animal movie? Yeah, these are all animal movies. Did you see the new Corrieta movie, Look Back? No, I wasn't at the Venice Film Festival. How dare you? Well, but they were screening it. No, I haven't seen it. So, this is a live action of an anime as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And once again, we just need to stop doing this. Yeah, I've heard that. That movie in particular really made me. Well, I heard it's very faithful. Yes, and so I think the people who love the anime. Anime love it, but I. There is just a real energy difference in, you know, the beautiful animation and then putting real people in. And to me, it felt like I was watching a Lexus commercial when it was just real. It was so saccharine. Wow. And I did not get it at all. I will be starring in the live action remake of Ponyo as Ponyo. Pretty excited. Speaking of kids and animation, Minions and Monsters. It's a hit in my house. I don't know what else to say. It's funny to say this movie made $518 million worldwide and it's a disaster. Because it's obviously not a disaster. By all accounting standards, it is not a success. And it did not do what they wanted. Well, but by all accounting standards, it is a success. Except when you put it in the context of the entire franchise. Like the movie, I think, cost like $85 million to make, which is not that much. They made a profit on this movie. It's just that every other Despicable Me movie makes like $900 million. Yeah. And this made $518 million. And it was a movie that was clearly made for 40-year-old moms who love movie history. And not for 7-year-olds. We love it. We own it. And we watch it all the time. We watch all the Despicable Me stuff. Oh, you own it. You bought it digitally. Yes. I see. Not a 4K. I don't have a 4K player yet. So everyone being like, are you going to get the, well, the Marie Antoinette. And also because Knox wants to watch his ET 4K. And he came home and he was like, Mama, we need to do this. We need to get a new CD player. So. You got to have a sit down with him. We'll see. I mean, so many ideas going on in Knox's head right now. You guys would have quite a convention. Yeah. We got to catch up really soon. Speaking of kids, the Mandalorian era of Star Wars. I've been thinking about this. Not just that the Mandalorian and Grogu was not a financial success, which it was not. It was a pretty radical underperformance relative to all Star Wars movies. But I feel like this actually puts a pin. It puts a pin in a period in history with Star Wars. Because in 2019, we had the final J.J. Abrams film in the Rey trilogy. Yes, which you were incredibly normal about. Well, it sucked, right? It sucked. And also the way that they wrapped it up was offensive. Even I can get in on that. Everybody knows it was terrible. And there's a variety of reasons why it was terrible. It was rushed. They chose the wrong path for the story. The CGI was bad. There's so many. Didn't kill Chewie. So many things. You know, yeah. Or what was it? Not nevertheless she persisted. What was it? Somehow Palpatine returned. Yeah, somehow Palpatine returned. Many terrible things about it. But that same year was the year that The Mandalorian launched on TV in 2019. And those first two seasons of The Mandalorian, I thought were stellar. I thought they were really cool. And they were a path forward for Star Wars. And they've since dead-ended. I noticed that as I was looking this up last night, that there hasn't been a new Star Wars TV property that has launched since the end of 2019. It was in 2024 when Skeleton Crew came out. And this movie comes out. It's basically four TV episodes clung together. I don't know if we're ever going to have another Mandalorian season. Probably, but maybe not. And now Starfighter comes next year. And that's kind of reset the table. And I'm kind of wondering if after we get Ahsoka Season 2, all that stuff is like that's from over there from the past. This is no longer a TV business. Right. Maybe we'll continue with our animated series because they seem to work well. There was a Darth Maul series that did well, I guess. But I didn't watch it. But we're going to get back to eventizing movies. Yes. Starting with Starfighter. And then we're going to go to the next trilogy that's been rumored, which, you know, I think will involve past and present figures. Right. I mean, I think just the wild underperformance of Mandalorian and Grogu cemented to everyone, like the TV shows devalued what we're doing here. And people can tell the difference between TV shows and movies. Yes. And aren't going to accept one. And in the other space, unless you're my two-year-old, who this morning turned on the TV and said, Mended Grogu. Okay. He's never seen it. We didn't turn it on. It can be a little scary for him. No screens before school in my house. No screens before. Well, yeah. Yeah, of course. We've never turned the TV on in the morning. But he tried, you know? Yeah. After school, sometimes, not usually. Yeah. We're more of a weekend TV household at this point. I mean, listen, the licensing, the figurines worked. Like, I'm still thinking about the two. There was a massive toddler meltdown that occurred in JFK over a Lego, a Grogu Lego figurine. A Lego. A Lego. Innovating here. I mean, it was like a physical brawl. I was so embarrassed. Get ready for 10 more years of that as somebody with a younger brother. Yeah, but we're in the airport. That means nothing. The number of times I yelled, do you want to go to airport jail? No. Nothing. Location is irrelevant. Only place worse than airport jail is casino. As somebody who's, I've not been inside the, I've not been behind bars in casino jail, but I've been to casino jail. I mean, I think Eagles Jail is the lowest rung. Oh, yes. Well put. Yes. That is the final rung of hell. I have not visited the Eagles Jail or had to bail anyone out of it yet. I would never go to that stadium. Never in my life. Another loser, Supergirl. Wow, that was so bad. It was really bad. With Supergirl, I think is tier two Supergirl. Superhero movies, when you're not on the A-team, it's clear that it's going to be a lot harder to find success. This movie only made $126 million worldwide. That's insane. epic bomb i mean it was it was a bomb of an experience i haven't thought about it yeah but it really really stuck can i ask you something was that florence pew marvel movie this year or last year okay because i've just been like where's florence thunderbolts yes well i mean she's gonna she's gonna be in dune i know no but she's dominating dunes day because she's also in the avengers right right so is that this is going to be the single biggest box office day for any movie star in movie history because she will be in both dune part three and avengers doomsday and then she's also she's elena she's a big part of that movie i think okay and then she's also in east of eden so and east of eden on netflix which i heard is good and i would like to watch i would as well but i just i couldn't i thought she had disappeared forever and thunderbolts is a similar they you know they tried to launch b-list avengers they did avengers dark avengers dark avengers okay new avengers new avengers new avengers yeah that was that was a really smart idea to just have two games for a movie with an asterisk i thought it was kind of fun okay i think marvel should have more fun what do you think is what's dark big pick maybe that's the third chair episode where it's just all the third chairs fighting and posing with their superpowers uh more specifically supergirl is emblematic of the major lack of success of warner brothers last year i think warner brothers accounted for about 25 percent of the box office over summer 2025 this year they account for five percent yeah not good things are not going well yeah mike and pam writing hi mike and pam not having it as great a year and that's before you take into account everything that's happening to warner brothers ownership which good luck to everyone i'm not addressing that issue i was gonna say like good luck to everyone except the people that we don't wish luck to i think warner brothers will be fine because they do have cat in the hat they have dune part three they have some movies coming out this fall they have digger of course we'll see if that performs they have some movies that have a chance to be bigger but very bad summer for them the last thing i wanted to mention to you quickly before we get into the game results masters of the universe obviously was a bomb it only made 113 million dollars worldwide we talked about my deep emotional complex relationship and problems and and love for all of that it's a huge streaming hit it's one of the biggest streaming movies in the history of amazon it debuted to over 1 billion minutes watched which is one of those fake stats but i think is notable because it was basically putting it at the top of the charts when it came out now that does make sense because and to your point about mandalorian and grogo i think there's something to this too which is that masters of the universe and he meant as a tv property it was a tv show but a lot of people have now seen this movie and that is actually when you get right down to it what banners the most is who sees the movies and i'm trying to figure out is there a world where it makes sense for masters of the universe to have a sequel that is streaming only and is that coherent in a way that the movie and movie theaters wasn't which is kind of a rejection of everything that we normally say about movies do you know what i mean sort of but i don't know if people have seen it is the only thing that matters if it's not making money right it's keeping people engaged on the prime video service sure which works for amazon which is also but you know for amazon for apple and i guess for netflix and for netflix sort of these are just lost leaders and that's okay but that's not true for universal and warner brothers and correct and all of and 824 and all of the people who make the movies that need theaters and need people going to theaters so i i guess that's great for amazon but if amazon just then makes direct keeps and mostly keeps making direct to prime streaming videos of poor quality that people do their laundry to that's a type of movie that's definitely a lane but it's i don't know if that's great for certainly the quality of movies and maybe not for the health of the business and everything else that we were talking about long term i know i think i'm speaking just specifically about this franchise like is there a world where and we've talked about this many times over the years where films that get proper marketing budgets always perform better at home like films that get theatrical release because they get stronger marketing and and commercial uh representation and then there's just more awareness of them and they feel more real so masters of the universe even though nobody went it's the the classic example of i'll wait for streaming and then people did and then they watched it on streaming but then does that set up a franchise that doesn't need theatrical anymore because they already got that marketing push and now this is like a revived ip that has value to the service i'm just gonna say yes i think it is which is unusual there's not a lot of examples of this where you could be like if they can get nicholas gallatin and camilla mendez and idris elba back together again like they could just make another one of these movies i bet they can spend enough money i'll bet they can uh i just thought that was interesting as a takeaway from the movie that would otherwise be discarded as a total failure yeah well i mean i just the rules for amazon apple netflix and the the companies that make movies as an add-on to what their actual business is yes are very different than the movies for movie studios no doubt about it and the rules for me did you read about the apple uh fold phone yeah i i read text about it remember those i know but i then i didn't see a demo but like maybe i'm interested am i interested well it'll be smaller also what movie recently was someone using a movie that didn't have a demo and someone's using um it's set in the future and someone's using a full like no it's a fold phone but it seems to have all of the optionality of a smartphone i don't know what movie you're talking about disclosure day no i don't think so that is just the segue with the alien um i i can't remember i'm not opposed to it are you opposed to it no i thought it was interesting okay i was like apple you got me again you you mentioned something that seems obvious you developed it you built it and now i'm like two thousand dollars seems reasonable so then it's fucking crazy oh it's two thousand dollars yeah that's okay that is the msrp oh okay so then what does it matter though what their you know what their movie strategy is for the next it's just it doesn't they can do whatever they want yeah my advice would be to make good films same uh okay the movie game we predict the box office and metacritic scores and we have a very elaborate point system lucas cavanaugh has helpfully tallied them a couple of quick highlights for you okay we hit on a couple of films we missed on a couple of films um our misses were pretty bad obsession is the most interesting one to me because i guessed 42 million and i thought that that was like a pretty generous guess yeah and you guessed 15 million which was the the price of acquisition for the film out of tiff and it made 263 backrooms we guessed 67 and 16 respectively it made 198 the odyssey we guessed 412 and 350 respectively it made 589 toy story 5 we guessed 401 and 503 it made 480 that was pretty good spider-man brand new day i guessed 527 you guessed 580 it made 923 yeah bonkers you wanna hear your misses uh i'm i'm aware of them but go ahead billy eilish hit me hard and soft the tour parentheses live in 3d yeah i guessed 42 million you guessed 160 million well listen we were just talking about the heiress tour and the taylor swift of it all and all i hear about billy eilish so important billy eilish she deserves that all the oscars over duolipa billy eilish billy eilish okay where were they we'll get to duolipa later in this podcast this movie made 9.9 million million dollars we say as a rule on this show that big jim does not miss as the co-director of this film big jim missed he really did he missed for the first time ever he missed you where were the young people i don't know i don't know power ballad i guess 26 million you guessed 16 million yeah it made 2.6 million i was being nice with 60 million yeah that's dark mandalorian grogu i guessed 275 million because i was nervous about how things were going you guessed 421 and i made 178 well i was wrong you were wrong minions and monsters are you i was so was disney they were uh minions and monsters i guessed 352 you guessed 350 we were so close and it made about half that 183 million dollars that's okay supergirl i guessed 159 you guessed 190 it made 72 jackass best and last heartbreaking here i guessed 81 million dollars way way overshot i didn't mean it was yeah it was a clip reel what are you gonna do you guessed 60 million it made 18 million dollars and moana this is probably the most dramatic miss of the whole thing i guessed 412 you guessed 410 we were so close in our guesses it made 126 i don't know if this is just an anomaly or if it augurs something new about the disney live action thing it's very interesting to me one night only i guessed 76 million you guessed 38 million yes it only made 11.5 million i'll share my thoughts on one night only shortly yeah i also had this in my movie fantasy league yeah and it really fucked me i'm sorry about that yeah it's tough super troopers three i guessed 48 million okay you guessed 22 million it made 7 million okay tough one um fun fact for disclosure day yes i guessed a 74 metacritic score yeah and 121 million dollars for the gross okay it had a 74 metacritic score and 117 million dollars for the gross okay that's just fucking perfect come on isn't that amazing it's so good it's so good for our brand to nail that movie the way that i nailed that movie and i nailed that movie the way that i nailed it i'm happy for you yeah so then let's let's go to the final and then i'd like to do just like a little bit of reflection okay the final score yeah i had 166 points total you had 153 points yes sweet so you went i'm the victor congratulations thank you this was a tough summer to predict. Do you feel a sense of accomplishment? No. That you won? I love to play games with my friends. Okay, that's nice. Yeah. What accomplishment? What do I get? I don't know. You make such a big deal about it. You talk so much about box office. I'm just like, you know, will you, you won't leave this studio with a spring in your step? Well, it's one of the only art forms where there's a public accounting of success, which is something I find interesting. Yes. And we can trust it because it is correlated to the stock price and the industry that is contingent upon it in movie theaters. So I do talk about it a lot because I think it speaks specifically to what is working and what is not working in the business and art form that we care so much about. Right. So the game is just really a sign that I'm by no means a box office expert, nor are you. I'm just somebody who's really interested in how it works and the history of it. The Disclosure Day thing is too funny. That's good. Incredible. Let me ask you a question. If there were stakes, if we brought back the previously discussed Amanda reorganizes your physical media. Oh, yeah. I never got to do that. That's still on the table. And we never did the screening of a movie that I don't want to watch. Yeah, we can do both of those things in 2029 when the show wraps. From Australia. Yeah. Did we say that the reorganization needs to happen on camera? We didn't say that, right? Yeah. I mean, what's the fun? I'm saying it. Yeah, what's the fun? I don't want anybody. I don't want any cameras in my house. Well, I'll just wear a GoPro. And then narrate it. You'll find that it's the ADU. Well, that's a part of my house. Is it not a part of my house? It's a garage. Okay, let's talk about some new movies. Okay. We'll do this pretty quickly. Yeah. I saw The Uprising last night. Okay. You haven't seen it, right? No, I haven't. New film from Paul Greengrass, who is really one of the most successful directors of the 21st century. He directed two Bourne movies. He directed United 93, Captain Phillips, Sunday Bloody Sunday, a number of very, very good films. This new movie stars Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Delaney, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomas and Mackenzie, Johnny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Catherine Waterston. Big cast. Really good cast. It is about the Peasant Revolt of 1831, where after the plague sweeps across Europe, kills half the population, King Richard II and the oligarchs, they impose this tax on the common people. What plague was in the 20s? 1820 plague Europeans. No, it's not 1820. It's 1380s. Okay. Sorry, that's a typo. Okay, great. It's 1381. Excuse me. Listen. No, there was no plague in the 1820s. After this tax is imposed upon the people there, there's an uprising and a revolt among commoners who stormed the gates in England. The first hour of this movie was electric. Okay. Electric. And I thought I was going to, like, have to rebuild the episode. To be like, we have to start with the uprising. Because it was Paul Greengrass doing shaky cam digital photography, Bourne-style action, but in the 1300s with Andrew Garfield and Cosmo Jarvis destroying people. And I was so into it and so locked in. And Garfield was doing the action sequences? And he is this movie's superpower because he's such a brilliant actor. And I just believe everything he does. I just think he's the best. And I thought he was great in this. He plays a character named Plowman because he is the common person. And he is just, he's but a plowman. Much like yourself. That's right. Exactly. I'm an avatar for the peasants. And I really was really, really enjoying it. And I found it very credible and very fast moving. The pace. The moment from, like, okay, something terrible. Like, this poor person has encountered attacks in this big huddle of people. And they are just rejecting it instantaneously. And that is leading to various groups from around England. Finding each other from various townships and connecting and storming England. Two things happen. Once the bigger groups start to come together, tremendous amount of one of your least favorite things, CGI overhead shots of big crowds and castles. Oh, no. That looked so bad. In a movie that looked so good. It was like so up close and with great production design. And they fucking ruined it by doing that. The crowd thing is a true epidemic. I have not. I have not. I have not seen one example of a CGI crowd that works. It's so bad. Get it out of your movie. If it's in your treatment, write another scene. I don't think they needed it. Like, there is no company that has mastered the digital crowd. It doesn't exist. It's so bad because, you know, I understand why they did it. Because they're trying to call back to these films from the 60s and 70s where they could have put 3,000, 5,000 extras in a scene. And they can't afford to do it anymore, right? It's too expensive. It's too hard structurally. I understand why it happened. But because of the way that Greengrass makes music, it's so bad. He's so good at everything being right in your face. We don't even need the scale to feel the effect of the story. So I felt that was a huge, huge error in the movie. And it really pulled me right out of a movie I was loving. And then secondarily, I think there were some just huge third act problems with how they communicated the ultimate results. The Robin Hood thing I think is overstated. Okay. There is, you can certainly read it that way without spoiling anything. But he doesn't say, my name is Robin. He does not say, I'm a cartoon fox. And I'm here to. He doesn't do Robin Hood and Little John walking through the forest. There's no Little John. There's no Friar Tuck. There's no Maid Marian. Is he stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Not exactly. Okay. It's not really like that. Because Robin Hood is not a real person, right? He's a legend. But there are components of this story that have some reflections of Robin Hood. Okay. Man, there was some good stuff in it. You know, Greengrass is super talented. And he's singular. He has a real style that is his own style that I really respect. And I will always go see a movie like this over whatever. IP Garbage, like 10 out of 10 times. I think there's a lot to recommend about the movie. But it bummed me out when it kind of lost the thread. Yeah. I just wanted to get that off my chest. Let's talk about Hope. Yes. So this is the second biggest movie of the weekend, I would say, behind the movie we'll talk about on Monday, Practical Magic 2. Hope is the new South Korean sci-fi action extravaganza from Na Hongjin. It's Na Hongjin's first movie in like 10 years. It has a fascinating cast. Hwang Jun-min, Zo In-sung, who I just saw in Possible Love, Jung Ho-yeon, and then Taylor Russell, Alicia Vikander, and Michael Fassbender. Yes. And very interesting parts. Now, we did talk about this movie when we saw it at the Cannes Film Festival. Yes. We were at the premiere. The logline of the movie is a police chief and a policewoman and a group of hunters try to track down and kill a mysterious creature that's laying waste to a Korean village. Now, the film takes place in what looks like already a post-apocalyptic South Korean village. It looks like there's already been pestilence or some sort of plague or just a general kind of degradation of society. In the first hour of the movie, we spend a lot of time in this world and we just follow along with a handful of characters who are. We know something is wrong, but we don't know what it is. And that sequence of the movie is some of the best stuff I've seen in a movie this year. It is. It's almost. It's almost an hour chase sequence where you can't see what is, you know, what they're running from. Yes. And then, as you said, it shows you the whole world and how this world has broken down and you're just following a group of survivors who are trying to use the rules of the world that they know very well to not be caught by this thing. And it's, you know, it's very implied. You don't see the monster. It's. And it goes on for like an hour. When we saw it at the premiere, when the sequence finally ended, the entire theater broke into applause. Yes. Because it really is so. It announces itself so. In such an exciting way. And the power of suggestion is very effective. And then. And then something really terrible happens. And it really changes, I think, a lot of people's relationships to the movie and mine as well. I will generally recommend this movie because I think it's a lot of fun. Yeah. However, the creatures that. The characters are. The characters are trying to escape from start to appear in the movie. One in particular in that the end of that first act. And the CGI is terrible. And this is the most expensive South Korean movie ever made. Yeah. And it's the biggest scale movie ever made. And it's a movie that aspires to Spielberg, Cameron, Michael Bay, Peter Jackson. It's in that lineage of, you know, a ragtag group of people fighting a big bad that requires CGI. But the CGI is so bad that the movie. At times feels laughable after feeling so profoundly exciting. Do you agree with me about this? Yes. It's incredibly silly to the point that when we saw it in Cannes, everyone walked in and said, OK, so the CGI isn't finished. Like that they're still working on all this. The other. The other twist in that CGI, and there are mild spoilers here. But, you know, you watch this first 45, 50 minutes. It's so thrilling. And you do also know that at some point, Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender and Taylor Russell are going to show up in the movie. And so you're like very much almost. It's not quite first person shooter vibes, but you're very much on the ride with these people. And in the back of your head, you're thinking, OK, and then the world's going to expand and we're going to see what's going on. You know, how are you bringing Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender and Taylor Russell into this? Are they like scientists? What's going on? And it sets up like the expectation of this sweeping, really exciting. You know, action drama. And again, spoiler alert. are the aliens so and and they're just in terrible cgi and if you like squint really hard once you realize it you're like oh that is my those are michael fastbender's eyes sort of i get it yes and so it's the crushing realization both that these are the silly bugs are all you're gonna get and also that that's all you're gonna get from the movie that it's not going any further than this world right and or this particular village i now i'll say i found the cgi and the utilization of those characters to be not very strong i do think it sort of redeems itself at the end of the film because there is another chase sequence on a highway that is again that features a car and a horse and the creatures yeah it is again like mind-blowing practical filmmaking with the with what is happening on the car and the horse like i genuinely as somebody who really admires those things i think it's a really good movie and i think it's a really good movie and i think big train set kinds of movies and what it takes to accomplish that stuff i think it is like world class action it's just that the the frame of the story is so dumb at this point and you're so taken out of it by the cgi by the utilization of those actors that it's this movie is such a crazy mixed bag like it's totally worth going to the movies to see it with a little bit of lowered expectations and then you'll have a fun time i think i mean that's the other thing is that we did see it and it was in competition at can yeah we like got dressed up you were in your tux again for like the world premiere and we were sort of jockeying for these tickets because there was you know kind of buzz the week before like oh maybe that's the palm winner yeah yeah you know not very respected he's made like serial killer movies and some some you know supernatural dramas so yeah and so on the one hand it's hilarious and amazing and a great pick that this was in competition it can like i love it it's very fun but we were expecting something very different yeah and i think for the person who's just going to the movies on the weekend in september and you want like a very fun creature movie you'll really like it i agree i think it's pretty much effective as that it is two hours and 40 minutes that's true it's really that's long it's really long it's really long and and it's also just setting up the next one you know you're just like oh yeah and it seems like it's done well overseas but maybe not has not been i actually don't i don't want to comment on the box office because i'm not totally sure what it is but a fascinating experiment um and i think it's cool that neon is putting it like on 1500 screens or something and encouraging to me this is like completely the product of the incredible success of a movie like parasite that a film like this can and should play in the u.s at scale yeah um even though it has some flaws i do think it's a lot of fun yeah did you watch mayday i sure did i watched it on the plane okay so i'm actually really glad you did because i need you to help me with this one so let's be honest i watched it on the plane on the way home okay 24 hour travel day okay so i'm actually really glad you did because i need you to help me with this one so let's be honest i did but i was back up i saw the ending i like i i you know i checked through the boxes but i have to be very honest this is again this is a a straight to apple film starring ryan reynolds and kenneth branagh that is somehow like an even more jingoistic parody of top gun you just you nailed it it's i don't understand so it's it's from john francis daly and jonathan goldstein yeah uh game night and the most recent dungeons and dragons film movies i like game night one of the great underrated comedies incredible movie of the last 25 years this one i i don't really get it so when a u.s navy pilot on a top secret mission during the cold war gets trapped behind enemy lines his only chance of survival is to form an alliance with an eccentric ex-kgb agent so reynolds is the pilot brana is the ex-kgb agent nobody loves doing a bizarre european russian accent like kenneth brana um the key here is that the brana character is so he is willing to help this pilot who has crash landed um what like why really really tough well i i noted that one of the companies production companies is skydance yeah uh so you know planes top gun and top gun is like literally in the movie yes it's not just oh this is a lot like top gun like they do actually make callbacks to the movie and that and kenneth brana's character loves the movie and you know there are lots of goose references so i'm sure that has something to do with it i was quite taken aback by the the mismatch of tone between like earnest american exceptionalism and ryan gosling i'm excuse me and i'm sorry ryan though they'll watch it tells you a lot i know where ryan gosling is at that you would ever consider and ryan reynolds is jokey sarcastic quirky but he's also trying to be a cia i'm sorry he's a navy seal i guess he's he's he's in the navy he's the navy pilot he's a navy pilot um and so he's both trying to be sarcastic but also communicate to you that he believes in america which like he says a lot it's and i i kept being like wait so is this earnest i couldn't figure out what the hell the point of this movie was like why did anybody want to make this movie i i don't know i mean i try to not i try to not do that with movies but like i genuinely was like so we're like glossing like glazing 80s top gun culture there's a little bit of you know listen i like hunter red october i like 2010 salt on like jack and lucas over there but um people like spy thrillers yeah and so maybe you want to make a a spy thriller that's a little lighter but i mean maybe if it was a different actor i'd have a slightly different perspective on it but it's very confusing everything with reynolds is inherently kind of jokey yeah right because his acting tone is very joking he's his character is in very dangerous circumstances here but there's always that kind of slight smarm that comes with a lot of his roles brana is having fun and like whatever he's doing in the action sequences the fight sequences is pretty fun it's not it's not an unwatchable movie or anything but i think the actual like there's a big scale expensive film that went straight to streaming yeah one of the 10 biggest movie stars in the world like what what is it i don't know once again i do not know and i don't know why apple needs to do this because they're gonna get you know four thousand of our dollars for their little flip phones that's true yeah but i mean damn i gotta start saving this is a tough break for me to your point i don't know if you need a flip phone it seems like the phone that you have is working just fine uh why isn't this movie movie theaters then it's got big action it's got notable people because they don't need it what does they don't need it i don't know i don't know why apple and amazon are making movies like i really don't well i i welcome more movies i just but not these yeah okay all right well let's talk about another movie that i'm completely mystified by i caught up with one night only now you and juliette did a great episode of the show i did not listen to the one night only section of that episode because i didn't want any of the movies spoiled for me i knew i would watch it at some point um as i said i had this in my movie fantasy league i had some some interest in it when it came out i was out of town so i watched it on vod last night started by will glock best known probably for anyone but you at this point yeah um and an easy a uh screenplay by travis braun it stars monica barbaro callum turner maya hawk molly ringwald levar burton and as many people know it's a this is the rom-com about the one night only that you can have premarital sex yeah it's this it's the sex purge the sex purge um i thought this was horrible horrible did you laugh not even a little not even a little bit so that's that's the thing is that juliette and i both laughed a lot i think that this movie just like does not work i think it's a good movie i think it's a good movie i think it's a good movie i think it's an insurmountable premise that and it does not surmount it okay here oh here's my major issue and i thought about it with respect to the episode that you guys did this is a sex comedy not a rom-com but it's pretending like it's a rom-com yes there's a huge difference between those two kinds of movies correct but it's also a sex movie without sex and they took all the sex out that's my point i mean you saw will glock gave interviews afterwards being like well the tests and the children don't want sex hey boys the most overblown thing of all time so fucking interesting annoying that you don't want that your generation doesn't want people like to fuck yeah i mean there's sex scenes in anyone but you everyone be safe but good job like anyone but you will glock maybe there's a huge hit there's a shower scene in the fucking movie i remember how was the takeaway in the sex comedy not to have any sex i have absolutely no idea it's just mystifying this is straight up like absolute malpractice at every level i mean can we just just go into this this is a movie about how people can't have sex because the federal government has outlawed sex and in premarital sex premarital sex and implanted chips into everybody's bodies yes yes and then they're just like yeah let's go you know let's make some jokes about where to get a condom yeah i was kind of like i i you know i agree the premise is completely unexplored it's pure science fiction i i don't i don't need that movie to be like a a you know a chilling i don't want it rebuttal of fascism like i don't want it that's to be the handmaid's tale and i stopped watching the handmaid's tale because you know i don't watch five seasons of anything but also not a great hang but but there just is something about i mean the sex purge is a great elevator pitch and like a funny thing yes and you would have thought that they would have been able to market more with it but i don't know if there's a a good a version of this movie like i don't know if it actually is a possible a premise that you can carry out i think you might be right i think i was also distracted by just the like wave of gen z young millennial signifiers to the audience to tell you like how cool this movie is it's like multiple king princess songs king princess plays one of the friends in the movie you've got uh julia fox you've got maya hawke you've got um daniel craig's daughter at one point yeah you've got uh z way and uh estee heim as the bouncers at the club like you've got all like all the nicholas braun is there for five seconds all the needle drops like everything in the movie is so like hey you know about this young person hey hey hey the needle drops were at least better than normally the needle drops in these movies are just the most terrible i just thought it sounded like not even sarah borrell they sounded like all the needle drops in the dating shows on netflix that eileen likes to watch where i'm just like the most banal like light fizzy pop only you is a great song take it back that well that's an old song that's the yazoo song that's yeah that's good yeah monica barbara wonderful singer i i would throw it all away for her today of course she's stunning she's so stunning and a good actor and you know the other thing i thought a lot about when harry met sally i was watching this movie because i was like when harry met sally obviously one of the probably the single greatest movie of this kind ever made that movie looks so good the way it's shot the production design the costumes the vibe of that movie is magical the score the music yes yeah everything about that movie you've got that great nor effron script you've got rob reiner right in his zone and perfect performances from those two leads now it's unfair to hold a movie like this to the absolute best and to the absolute worst and to the absolute best and to the absolute best and to the absolute platinum standard of a certain kind of genre but it's not as though what's accomplished in when harry met sally is impossible it just requires more time effort money and thought sean i say this on every single episode every single time we talk about romantic comedies they just they won't spend the time and money this looks like a shitty streaming service show i don't understand it and the other thing at least they filmed in new york listen yeah this is important yeah this is really important yeah calum turner i don't know i don't think so i don't think so you you saw the running right sure they're running um i don't i don't think so amanda listen he's not gonna get bond it sounds like which is tough he's got dualipa so that's good for him listen he one thing that juliet and i identified which i do think is true is that he has the really good rom-com reaction face when she's singing and they cut to him and he's smiling at her yeah and you know i found myself in that moment being like you know so and that's something that you just can't replicate and it does they have chemistry i disagree so she has chemistry with a telephone she's so great yeah she's wonderful and he is pretty cute i i listen had at notes on the accent which was pretty tough another issue uh the running is not bond worthy uh-huh and you know why isn't he just british i mean then they have to get into like immigration status and the bio chips and all sorts of stuff which is again you don't want to get it listen you should listen we really got i have a lot of questions okay i'll go back and listen to it yeah it's like how are they tracking that you're using a condom you know which is a point like what is that sensor about like there's just nothing going no information on masturbation no information on hand jobs is masturbation allowed we don't know when they're at the um when they're at the police office which i thought was the single worst uh scene in the movie pretty rough and like you know clearly noted and people being like you do you need to acknowledge this which like you do but it it just feels added on to the script anyway on the background there's a sign of you know illustrations of acts that are allowed so oral sex is depicted that's out nothing about hand jobs okay i don't understand you would just be given handies every day i mean it's just like are people doing that you know why is everyone not getting married immediately we don't like explore what's going on with divorce overrated um it's just not i think i think that that's true but listen like don't aren't you trying to survive you know like come on let's be real calum turner getting a hand job every day well sure but but also like think about the reverse for a second you're just you're cutting out like a hole that's true so but they don't specify that people are not ready at 7 p.m when the alarm goes off you know they're still hanging out and i'm like why aren't you just at home counting down the clock and you're like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm trying to maximize the amount of time good note very good note again like why aren't we marrying and then getting divorced one question i had maybe you brought this up yeah if you get married can you cheat with other people again we talked about that it's not specified but that seems like a right exactly because you've got your marriage certificate sure but you know the because then you just marry a friend and then just go gallivant totally yeah and so the the condom thing suggests that there is like the biosensor element has like a lot of like a some dna elements to it which again is just really upsetting it's practically blade runner but so nothing is explored that i like want to know about this is like you know how bill has said for years there should be like the sports consulting firm that he has for hollywood like yeah this is our business you know like a thousand percent you want to integrate rom-coms and science fiction into a movie this is the duo that can help you like we should have gotten a phone call to walk through some of these ideas i what a misfire crazy yeah it really really doesn't work i didn't have a bad time watching it i'm happy i know you don't get a lot of these movies you know like you know they're they're cute also so both of them this episode is presented by state farm you know the feeling long day good meal you finally sit down and now you're just staring at your screen slasher rom-com period drama psychological thriller but some decisions don't have to be that hard state farm is here to help like when you choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan bundling just another way to save with the personal price plan like a good neighbor state farm is there prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state this is the way hi i'm john favreau we are launching the all-new star wars the amanda learn and grogu official podcast i'm sorry i can't focus at the moment we're going behind the scenes with the cast and crew sharing stories from the set creative insights and a few surprises from across the galaxy i think a little snack watch and listen to star wars the mandalorian and grogu official podcast now streaming on disney plus or wherever you get your podcasts and catch star wars the mandalorian and grogu now streaming on disney plus terms apply did you know that psoriatic arthritis may progress over time and could cause permanent joint damage if left untreated listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away trim fire guselcomab taken by injection is a prescription medicine for adults with active psoriatic arthritis serious allergic reactions increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur before treatment get checked for infections and tuberculosis tell your doctor if you have an infection flu-like symptoms or need a vaccine imagine being a million miles away from a patient with psoriatic arthritis explore the possibilities ask your doctor about trim fire tap this ad to see new joint data and learn more about trim fire including important safety information idiots i can't believe you watched idiots how about you did you watch it on the plane i did okay so this is the new movie from macon blair wrote and directed it stars dave franco o'shea jackson mason is it thames or thames i believe i don't know thames thames i believe okay uh kieran shipka nicholas braun recurring and peter dinklage uh it's about two rock bottom drivers transporting a wealthy teen to rehab but their simple job spirals into a chaotic journey of drugs danger and crime as their passenger derails their plans what do you think of this one i wanted it to be funnier me too i thought it was i expected it to be less of a movie and more of a comedy given the people involved specifically jackson jr and dave franco did you see the trailer it was very funny trailer so i think it sold me hard on it being what you're describing um and also like once you're doing midnight run you know it's those are big shoes to fill but so it wasn't as funny and and i didn't think like the performances of those two people who i think are hilarious were as funny i agree it was more of a movie than i think i you know it's not that it doesn't work it's just trying to be something different than i thought it was going to be yeah i think it's really actually ultimately more of the last detail than it is uh midnight run because of the like transporting someone against their will to some extent um and i yeah i really wanted this to be a little bit better too it's got a couple of really funny moments there's some funny reveals but it didn't it didn't totally click this was a sundance movie that was originally called shitheads and they renamed it i had a question for you yeah do you think that movies should have it should be okay for movies to have expletives in the title i'm okay with it but then you can't even curse on instagram still so what are we what do you mean you can't curse right don't you have to bleep it out but typically the algorithm takes it yeah takes it down more i had no idea yeah we live in mayday's america you know so mayday's america you're absolutely right and i won't argue with you okay uh did i did i talk at you about buddy i don't think so i don't remember it you know what it is well i know that people have taken their children to it thinking it's a children's movie and that would be a huge mistake yeah i've i read that they were mad you know well it's a testimony to the very successful marketing campaign of this movie this movie is now turning out to be i think in that conversation not at the same box office level but in that same conversation with back rooms With Obsession, with the Markiplier movie, like where independent horror with a really strong hook can do really, really well. I guess you could say Terrifier kind of laid some of the groundwork for this. Buddy is basically what if a Barney the Dinosaur-esque children's giant puppet host was actually deranged, malevolent, etc., etc. Right, right, right, right. We did talk about this a little bit because we talked about the Barney movie that Daniel Kaluuya is allegedly going to make at some point, which seems to me would be the same thing. I'm just going to bring this movie up again to you because I mentioned Casper Kelly, who made Too Many Cooks and made the Adult Swim Yule Log movies, which were both really, really funny and really clever in these kind of postmodern explorations of old, you know, 80s and 90s pop culture. This is the same thing. This is like in his wheelhouse. He didn't, I guess, he didn't originally write this movie, but rewrote it. Kristen Milati is in the movie. Delaney Quinn, the young actress, is in the movie. And then there's a lot of famous people who do voices. Patton Oswalt, Michael Shannon, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key. The first half of the movie, where it's just we're inside the world of Buddy, we're like inside the show. They basically recreated the show as Buddy, this orange unicorn. One kid doesn't want to do the things that Buddy wants to do. And this kid, he's an outsider. He's a rebel. And he's like, I don't want to read today, Buddy. I don't want to go do this activity today, Buddy. And he keeps going off to the side. And this sort of breaks something in Buddy's psychology. And he cracks. It's a great idea. It's a great idea. And the first 40 minutes when he loses it, when it like kind of shatters everything, and he kills this kid. Oh, okay. Yeah. We don't see the murder, but it's very clear what's happened. Okay. All of that stuff inside of the show, fantastic. Perfectly executed, recreating a show from 1994, like when we were kids when this stuff was on TV. Every time we're in the world of the puppets, and the movie is not just Barney. It has a lot of Pee-wee's Playhouse in it, which is a TV show that I really love. I thought all that stuff was really smart. The movie's success, though, is really cool because they never released the full trailer. They only released a series of teasers. The teasers are these like very unnerving little segments from the show. And so much so that I was looking at YouTube on my phone, and my daughter came over and looked over my shoulder, as she often does when I'm looking at my phone. Yeah. And she saw me flip past one of the buddy teasers, and she said, I want to watch that. Yeah. And we did watch it. Oh, no. Now, it was 30 seconds. Nothing actually bad happened in it, but what it had was ambient malevolent terror. Sound design. Okay. Insinuation of violence. Nothing depicted. But it was almost like this was her first exposure to hardcore, real scary shit. And was she terrified? Didn't clock it at all. Yeah. Nothing. I think Knox would be the same way. Clocked nothing. Nothing was wrong. Like, they don't have the language. Yeah. I remember this the first year that we took the kids trick-or-treating, and we went by all the houses that have, like, all the gory setups. And, like, the pool. And, like, the plastic, you know, claws coming out of the grave and all these sorts of things. And they didn't know that it was scary. Yeah. And so they just, and so they didn't know. I think Knox was like, ooh, look at that red, you know, because he was learning colors. But it's so interesting what we think is scary versus what they respond to. Yes. And they haven't learned the language of, like, grown-up terror yet. It's like you have to get old enough to be scared of something. Yeah. Which is, I just thought was notable because this movie is using a five-year-old. It's using a five-year-old sensibility to make something scary, but five-year-olds don't quite know that this should be scary. Yeah. Anyway, let's talk about the rivals of I'm Zaya King. Okay. One of the craziest movies of the year. All I knew that Matthew McConaughey was, that's all I knew about the movie was Matthew McConaughey. So this is the new movie from Andrew Patterson, his first since The Vast of Night, which we've talked about a bunch on the show recently. I think I mentioned it during the Twilight Zone episode. And it stars McConaughey and Angelina Lookingglass, Scott Shepard, Rob Morgan, Tony Stark. Tony Ravalori, Kurt Russell. The logline of the movie, if you haven't seen it because it came out last month. Deep within the backwoods of rural Oklahoma, charismatic and musically gifted M. Zaya King herds a bluegrass band of misfits while overseeing the premier honey-making operation in town. When his estranged foster daughter unexpectedly returns, M. Zaya leaps at the possibility to reconnect and create a family business. What did you think of this? Because you texted me when you saw it. I don't even know if I responded because I knew we would eventually discuss it on the show. Yeah. I think you said that you were kind of into it for the first half. Loved the first half. I think I did, too. Though, again, I did not know that I was going to a film in which Matthew McConaughey makes, like, tends to bees, keeps bees, is a beekeeper in the non-Statham sense, and plays in a, like, praise band. I don't know what's going on, and that's all he does. The movie stops three different times to just basically do a bluegrass music video in which Matthew McConaughey performs with a series of actors, Owen Teague and, you know, many other people. And it's a choice. It's aggressive. I enjoyed it. I was intrigued by it. And really, for an hour, it is just honey and him doing his accent and, like, being, you know. And it's kind of like slapstick gross-out humor a little bit that is in it. Yes. The opening sequence is very funny. There's also a sequence when they have to get rid of bees at a school, which is incredibly funny. And he's very engaging. And then it turns into a completely different revenge movie. Yeah. It's a real. The second half of the movie, something dramatic happens, and it turns into more of a thriller revenge movie. Where the film sort of refocuses to the Angelina Lookingglass character, who is McConaughey's foster daughter. And I don't know that I've ever really seen a choice like that, to basically just topple the movie and turn it into a completely different kind of a movie. And for me, the second half of the movie is just not successful. And it starts to really drag. You start to wonder why you're there. You don't feel invested in the revenge plot. And it really just dropped the rope. Mm-hmm. What's that? I was bummed out. Yeah. The first half is set pieces. And it goes beyond. Beyond goofy, but there is kind of like a joyous slapstick, as you said, anarchy to what's going on. Paired with like real sincerity in the performances and in the things that they're talking about. But once it has to take on capitalism, I didn't really know what's going on. Also, we have bees in the wall again. I keep meaning to tell you this. You have bees in the wall? There are more bees in the wall. Well, it's so hot. Yeah. Well, they've been there for a long time. Oh. And it's sort of. So, there's a room in our house where bees took up residence. Yeah. And they were swarming more outside that time. So, first, Zach had to be an amateur beekeeper. Then we had to come have the hive removed. This time, they're staying inside. Also, do you remember the time when we had bees in a different part of the house, but then they just died and disappeared? I don't remember the second time, no. They were coming into our room and then dying. And by the time the beekeeper could come, they had moved on. So, something's going on with bees in my house. It's a sensitive subject right now. Do you think you are being hunted, Amityville Horror Style? No, I don't. Are you sure? Swarms of bees do freak me out. Like, I never watched the video that the beekeeper sent us of the hive that they removed from our house. We sent it to Chris and Phoebe immediately. You're afraid of bees? Well, there's something about the visual aspect of. The hive. The hive and all of them together. What's the phobia? The phobia of too many small things. I don't know. That kind of underlines a lot of horror design, actually. It's fairly common, but I definitely have that. So, I don't like looking at it. Too many small. Like a. Trypophobia. Trypophobia. Okay, like an army of ants. Yes. Don't like that. But, you know, it can also be like a lot of the skin graft and diseases and all this sort of. For Halloween season, yeah. Like a lot of the gross-out stuff. Okay. I think speaks to. But I think, like, that's. Half of people find that very scary, and I'm one of them. So, I don't like that. Okay. I don't want to be stung by a bee or a swarm of bees. No, no one does. I mean, listen, like, I'm, you know, Generation My Girl, but. Yeah. I don't think I'm being haunted, no. It doesn't feel like a supernatural element. It just seems like they. You know, now I got these bees I got to deal with. Instead, I just don't go in the room of the house, which is not really useful, because that's where my desk is. Oh, you don't work, so it's okay. That's tough about the bees. Sorry about that. So, the. All I can hear is Nick Cage screaming, the bees! So, I was, like, a little uncomfortable during the second half of it, because I was like, oh, God, now I got these bees I got to deal with, you know? Wow. You're a regular old Anxiety King with all these bees. Did you see The Wrong Girls? No. Okay, then we don't need to talk about it. Okay. We'll talk about it after you've seen it. Okay. This is the new movie from Dylan Meyer. It stars Kristen Stewart. Yes. Worth discussing. Okay. I'm not sure if it's worth recommending. Any other closing thoughts? Except you've asked me to see it, so I will. Well. And Dylan Meyer is Kristen Stewart's wife. That's correct. Yeah. So, I mean, I love. - I love stories like this. - Yes, and there's much to discuss. Yeah, that's cool. I'll see it. I just, I don't know if you've heard, but I've been in Italy. I have heard. You know, I feel like I'm really good at going to see a lot of movies. It's one of my skills. And there's still a ton of movies that I haven't seen. Like for this episode, I was hoping to have seen Insidious Out of the Further, which was actually also a pretty solid hit at the end of the summer. I was hoping that you were going to see Finding Emily, which I don't think you've seen yet, right? No. And I was even at Century City seeing a not very good movie while one of the Emily screenings was happening for Finding Emily, where they did a stunt where only Emily's were. Yeah. What movie did we see? I don't remember. Okay. An August film of some renown. I'm sure we podcasted about it. Fall 2, Deadpoint. Did you ever see Fall? Fall 1? This is the one where they climb the pole and then, can you climb, Jacob? Lordy and yada yada. So no, I never saw it, but it lives on in my mind. I like the original Fall. By Any Means, the Mark Wahlberg, Yaya Abdul-Mateen film from Paramount. Featuring Diane Warren's upcoming Oscar-nominated original song, By Any Means. I haven't seen that. I'd like to see it. I meant to watch the two Angel Studios films. Sure. Young Washington and The Brink of War. I have famously seen Young Washington. You have. The Brink of War. Should we do a Reagan Gorbachev whole podcast? Oh. Oh, that one. I was kind of interested. You're intrigued. Jeff Daniels? I mean, it looked terrible. It's probably terrible. You know? And it probably, I mean, it's probably Mayday Corps, but. Yeah, but like with no action. Yeah. So Daniels is Reagan. Jared Harris is Gorbachev. J.K. Simmons is George Shultz. Back in the news. Yeah. After the Elizabeth Holmes recurrence. Don't tell me anymore. Guys, like I sent an email this morning. Do you know who plays Nancy Reagan? Tell me. Hope Davis. I did know that because I saw the trailer. Listen, I'm glad people are getting work. Pretty good. Pretty good. I'm going to watch The Brink of War and I'm going to watch it. I still need to see the Angel Studios film Drummer Boy. That's not out yet. Or The Drummer, which is, you know, has the Drummer Boy soundtrack in it. Isn't that a Christmas celebration movie? Well, it's really, it's just about someone who drums like in the regiment. In the Revolutionary War. Yeah. So I don't know whether this particular battle was fought at Christmas. Is it because you see your son in that character? Noted drummer, your son? It's because they did the Grey's Anatomy version of the Drummer Boy for the trailer. Oh. Yeah. I laughed out loud. Like a mournful pop cover of Little Drummer Boy? Yes. Okay. Interesting. Great. Hey, great chat. Great to have you back. Everything good? Thanks so much. Yeah, doing great. What are we doing next week again? Oh, we got to talk about Practical Magic 2. Can we also add Aways Us Don't Look Back in Anger to it? Yes, because Yossi will be on the episode. On the episode. Yes. And I'm seeing it tomorrow. Okay. That's very exciting. So we will do Practical Magic 2. We'll talk about Sandy. I want to talk about Sandy. I want to talk about. Oh, Sandra Bullock. Yes. I was like, Hurricane Sandy? No, no. No, Sandra Bullock. Because I wanted to do Hall of Fame and then I was looking at the filmography and I'm like, Hall of Fame. Yeah. I don't know if we can do that. It's been a long time. Yeah. But what I want to do is try to revive Movie Star Playbook. Because what I want is Sandy's 60s to be amazing. Yeah. But we haven't seen Practical Magic 2, Okay, let's go now to my conversation with Ben David Grabinski about Abel Ferrara. Okay, Ben David Grabinski is back on the show. Not promoting a film. I'm not? You're here. I'm not here to talk about Whale Fall? Well, if you'd like to. No, I haven't seen it yet. I just think we should talk about the science of it so Brian can hear this later and text me and go, what the fuck? There's a lot of time for us to talk about the science of Whale Fall. And we will on this podcast, I promise you. We're talking about a different kind of science. A different kind of scientist. So by this time, when this is airing, folks will be able to see the Abel Ferrara collection that I helped to co-curate on the Criterion channel, which is, of course, one of the, I say the very best streaming service, in my opinion. And I pitched them over a year ago an idea to show as many of the films of Abel Ferrara as we possibly can and to talk about why his work is special and why it's meaningful to me. And in recent months, I learned that you, like me, are an Abel superfan. And you've seen a great many of his films. Have you seen every film? No. I did watch 19 of them in the last two weeks without having a Criterion curation thing. So now it's like my end-of-year stats on Letterboxd are gonna be a little fucked where it's like your number one actor is some obscure guy who's in like 12 Abel movies. Yeah, it'll be James Russo, Chris Walken. No, the guy who's like the police chief and king of New York and bad lieutenant. Oh, Victor Argo? Yeah. He right now is my number one actor of 2026. Sure, yeah. And I can't be the only one. But, you know, now it probably would have been easier if they'd been on there. I mean, the thing we'll probably get into is there's a few of them that really need a good physical release. And then there's some that have incredible ones already. Yeah, I mean, I can talk about my experience of seeing Abel's movies through that perspective maybe because I tried to acquire a physical copy of as many of his movies as I possibly could to do this project. And the first movie of his that I saw was King of New York. I tell this story in the Criterion Channel video that I made. But in 1994, I got obsessed with Biggie and Ready to Die. And on The What with Method Man, he calls himself the Black Frank White. And I thought to myself, who is the White Frank White? What does this mean? And so when seeking that out, I hadn't seen King of New York. I probably had heard Quentin Tarantino referencing Abel and referencing those string of late 80s and early 90s movies that he had made. But I was 12 years old, so it was not super easy to track down some of this stuff. But I did track down King of New York and I saw Bad Lieutenant shortly thereafter. And I got very interested in his movies as a big gangster movie fan and as a New Yorker and as a hip hop fan and as somebody who is interested in, you know, New York cinematic history. So fell in love with those movies and I've had like an up and down experience with him. I think like so many other people have where he is a bit of a shapeshifter and is constantly evolving his style. The last 25 years, he's gone through some really interesting evolutions and transgressive moves. His earliest work is the really like at the absolute outer edge of exploitation. His first movie is a porno. He makes a proper slasher inspired by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He makes a rape revenge movie. And then he kind of slowly starts to pivot into more mainstream fare. What about for you? Like when did you get exposed to him and what makes you connected to him? You know, there's like the guys who you grew up with. I had like my favorite New York filmmakers and favorite like crime filmmakers that I was obsessed with. And I somehow had just missed most of his things. I was aware of King of New York because you'd hear other directors, you like talking about it. And, you know, you kind of, I knew who he was, but I didn't really get into any of them. And he's one of the rare people of like one of my favorite directors who I got into like as an adult. Like most of the stuff that really I'm passionate about, you know, it was like you're 15, 16, 17 and you rented that thing and it changed your life. This is like when Drafthouse Films put out Miss 45 more than 10 years ago. I'd seen the trailer that Jason Eisner had cut and I'm like, that looks really interesting. So I cold bopped the Blu-ray and it just melted my brain. And then you just start going down a rabbit hole. And if you watch his movies out of order, it's insane because there's very clear kind of, you know, sort of eras or sections of his filmography where like he's doing a certain type of thing genre-wise or a certain budget level or has the same department heads where the style evolves and everything changes where when I went back this way, I was kind of watching in order. I started trying to pick up some of the later ones I'd missed because like I saw zeros and ones in theaters and I'm like a huge fan of that. But also just because I think it's the closest we've gotten to like "Metal Gear Solid 2" in a movie. I got it on iTunes and then saw that it was playing in a small theater on Beverly. So I went with some friends, including Joe Bigas, who I'm gonna mention because some of his movies feel very able. So I saw it in a theater 'cause I'm like, well, I need to see it with a crowd. I need to see it on a big screen. No one was there. And you know, and zeros and ones has like three out of 10 on IMDB or something. And a lot of people act like it's bad. And I watched it again this morning and I'm like, I don't know, man. I think every movie should be like this. But, you know, I think he's so interesting as a personality. He's so interesting from like a craft perspective and a thematic perspective. And because there's not a lot of directors who like from beginning to end, like if you watch "Driller Killer" and then "Zeros and Ones" back to back or "Tomaso" and, you know, "Miss 45", just drastically different stuff. Also, he has his New Yorker. And then he has that classic New York move of like, they move out of New York and then they're no longer making New York movies, which is still odd. I mean, we'll probably get into it, but when you watch stuff like "The Blackout", you're like, why are you in Miami? What is going on here, April? Like, this feels like this is almost disconcerting to not have that environment. It feels like it is so much part of his storytelling. Yeah, and those are the movies that I first fell in love with was those New York movies. And I saw stuff as I got a little older in college, like "China Girl" or like "The Addiction" where it still seemed like he was working in the New York Register. And those movies have a very specific feel, a very specific vibe. They're melancholy movies. They're kind of doom-laden movies. They feel operatic. They're often quite beautifully photographed. They're not that stylistically transgressive, but the content feels very dangerous. His move to Europe, I think dramatically changes, maybe not like his internal register of what makes a good story, but it does change the look and feel of the movies a lot. And it's also, he did it, I think, at the same time he got sober after spending decades on all kinds of stuff. We both listened to his book. I'm not even a big audiobook guy, but I've listened to his book 1.5 times now. I don't mean 1.5 times speed. I mean, I listened to the whole thing and then went back and listened to a bunch of the chapters because it is like being at 1.30 a.m. at a bar and a guy telling you a story where you're like, I was going to leave, but just please keep talking. This is riveting. And hearing it in his own voice, it just feels insane. I mean, the fact that that came out at the same time as like your collection curated thing, I think it's really great if someone gets into him now because you can both get access to like the wide range of his movies, but also get his mostly seemingly uncensored hot take on his entire life. But also I highly recommend his audio commentaries too, which are a little bit, they're a lot. Well, he's also, he's also not, he's clearly very proud of his career and his work, but he, when he feels something isn't up to his standard or he didn't enjoy an experience, he's very frank about that. And some of the movies that we might revere a lot, he maybe doesn't hold in as high esteem. It was kind of interesting to try to navigate. It's kind of like, what is the proper able canon? You know, like what is the best way to highlight what he's so great at and then contrast that to how he thinks about it. Because in the book, which is called Scene, and I think if you've watched five or six, movies in the collection, it's worth just listening to it all the way through or reading it, of course. But listening to it, you can hear his voice. He turned 75 this year. He is, he lived pretty hard. He speaks very openly about not just his drinking and casual drug use, but being addicted to heroin for years and the many people around him and their use of heroin. And the fact that he's working for decades through this addiction. He made a movie called The Addiction about vampires that is a very thinly veiled, allegory for becoming addicted to a substance. And it's amazing how much work he did given the way that he was living. It's kind of extraordinary. And sometimes when it feels like a movie is right on the brink of falling apart, maybe you have more empathy or at least more understanding of why, like a movie like The Blackout, which feels so emotionally chaotic and so like my life is falling apart and I don't know what to do. Doesn't it feel like it's ripped completely from the headlines of his own life? I mean, the blackout, I would say, you know, going back through all these and watching some for the first time, that is one of the darkest movies I've ever seen. And I, you know, I love a lot of movies that are like, you know, just pure misery. But that movie is so bleak in the level of like guilt and shame that is like put into that character as like the worst case scenario version of finding out who you were in those like lost times from your life feels very pointed. And there's just a level of it that it's, because he can put you in the point of view of a character so well. And you feel like you're on the journey with that guy who is having the worst time more than almost any movie character has ever. I mean, like, do we care about spoilers? No, I think we should just talk openly about the man's work. You know, it's, you know, it's a movie about a guy who is now sober. And if he had just stayed in New York and stayed sober, he'd be fine. But he just, he just can't let it go. And he wants to know what happened and he wants to know some things and then finds out that he did unforgivable stuff. And he could have spent the rest of his life like the, like the end of Oldboy with a guy who's like erased all the things and he can just live at peace. But this guy chose to find out and then he gets yelled at by Dennis Hopper in full Frank Booth mode for like 10 minutes. Who literally shows him what he's done. Uh, yes. And he's almost like, you fucking idiot. You, you could have just made peace with this, but now I'm showing you on camera what you did. That was, that movie is such a bad hang in a way that I both loved, but also, you know, I think Abel must have been having a hard time. I think you can say that about almost every movie. You know, three different times he made films about filmmakers. Mame is a scene from the perspective of a filmmaker played by Harvey Keitel. The Blackout, Matthew Modine plays the filmmaker and Tommaso is also about a filmmaker. And, you know, I think it's safe to say there's a lot of autobiography in those movies, but I think there's a lot of autobiography in things like King of New York and Bad Lieutenant and should probably say the name of Nicholas St. John, who's his co-writer, who is his writer or co-writer on 10 different movies. Probably the most significant collaborator of what's seen as like his glory period. Wildly different scripts and so many of them are like truly brilliant. An incredible writer and amazing characterization, incredible dialogue writer. And, you know, I think many of Abel's best known and best loved movies are written by St. John. And he's also somebody who really shied from the spotlight and wasn't interviewed very often. And so a lot of these ideas, these themes, these kinds of figures who recur, we, like I ascribe to Abel, but I think a lot of them are just as much St. John. One of the themes that I kept circling back to when I was writing about this and thinking about it for the curation was just, the trapped man, you know, which is a very kind of like noir-ish 40s and 50s concept. But in all of Ferrara's movies, the trapped men are trapped because of circumstances that they put themselves in. Like they're aspiring to a certain kind of power or success and in doing so, they keep building all these booby traps around them and they fall into them. And you can see that in Bad Lieutenant. You can see that in King of New York. You just described a version of it in The Blackout. It goes on and on and on. The funeral is defined by this. Sometimes the lead is a, woman, and in that case, that power dynamic shifts a little bit. If it's Miss 45, or if it's the addiction, it feels like more like something has been put upon the woman. But when it's a man, there's a lot of like, this is all your fault. That feels very personally subjective. Not to be too glib or jokey, but how much do you think Tommaso was inspired by This Is 40? Because it's very much like, okay, I'm going to have, the husband is, me, but then I'm going to put in my wife and kids and, you know, make something very personal. I think that would be one of the oddest double features ever. Like, you know, someone's like, Paul Rudd is me, and the other guy's like, well, Willem Dafoe is me. And there's a different level of energy to that. But it is this same cinematic approach to telling a personal movie. I, you know, it just, it's kind of a coincidence, but also knowing the personal relationship between Abel and Willem makes that even more complicated. But, you know, he has a lot of recurring collaborations with actors that really pay off. And their performances are very different. Like, multiple walk-ins, multiple Willem Dafoe, and then, you know, there's guys who he's worked with a million times. And that, you know, just another way that his stuff feels varied and also like repetition of themes is working with the same people and kind of working through them. Through the same demons and stuff. Yeah, Keitel too. Keitel recurring another actor who feels like he could be volcanic at any moment. And there's a lot going on underneath the surface. You know, he's a, like Stanley Kubrick in KRS-One, he's a product of the Bronx. And his father was a bookie and seemed to spend a lot of time in bars. And he talks about this a bit in the book about being surrounded by a life of crime, not necessarily participating in it, but being proximate to it. And then in that proximity, trying to raise money and live a life in the arts while still retaining the hard edge that he's grown up around. And you can feel that. And so there's this interesting tension in the early part of his career. I don't know how much of the early stuff you looked at, but once you get past the exploitation movies, when he starts kind of getting like Hollywood training, where he makes Cat Chaser, which really doesn't go well for him. It's an Elmore Leonard adaptation that he's not really happy with, starring Peter Weller. And that film, that film doesn't really work or come together. And then he makes China Girl and The Gladiator, which is a TV movie. And he works on the, you know, two episode premiere of Crime Story. And he directs that TV pilot. And you can see that shift that you're talking about where like the movies get a lot shinier. There's a lot more neon and chrome in the frame. There's a lot more money on screen. Doesn't feel like a bunch of guys who just got together and made something a little bit depraved. And it's funny that he kind of picks up all those tools and gets kind of drawn into the system a bit. But then doesn't get like addicted to that over time. Like eventually he dispenses with a lot of the vagaries of like Michael Mann style filmmaking, which I think is so interesting because a lot of times once you get exposed to that level of work, it's hard to discover a new path. I don't know how much you think about his style at that time. I mean, I'm pretty obsessed with it because I think there's a real like, there's two kind of sliding doors moments. moments with his career and you look at so after Bad Lieutenant he gets brought to Warner Brothers to make Body Snatchers which I think is maybe the most underrated genre movie of the 90s um I think it is fucking beautiful because like his career for a little bit is tied to the same thing with Boyan Bozeli so that's a guy who shot China Girl, King of New York, and Body Snatchers which I think are all gorgeous movies um but Body Snatchers is such to me it's one of the most interesting like scale-ups from a director ever going from like his auteur smaller stuff he's doing like five six million dollar movies to making you know a gigantic undertaking like you know it's the thing I love about Body Snatchers is you get to see him like blow shit up and have huge sets and scale and tons of extras and it is so well executed but because as he gets into in his book you know it tested like a 46 out of 100 and the studio hated it um he I think he just got so burned by the experience and also they said he said in the book there's like a memo saying that Warner Brothers had like no more New York auteurs but you look at that movie and it's like Boyan shoots it and it is one of the most beautiful movies the he clearly was comfortable in that large-scale world whereas Abel is not the kind of guy who wants to go to a test screening and get feedback and he wants to you know take everybody's notes and either you can function in that world or you can't and I think because you go and it's like something like The Addiction he makes a bunch of movies like as cheaply as possible so he can have as much control as possible where it's clear that control matters more to him but as like a fan of his work I like really wish we got a couple more body snatchers uh even though he clearly was I think it seems like almost that process made him more miserable than any of his other like real life misery in a way yeah I've always wondered why he didn't try to get you know for lack of a better phrase why he wasn't able to get his goodfellas made but Carlito's way like he was gonna do and that's the thing that those are the two things to me is like what if he hadn't fired from Carlito's way and what if body snatchers had done well yeah like body snatchers you kind of understand too because one he's never made a movie of that scope before it's a it's a third time remake and so he's got some kind of misgivings about getting into this what we didn't know would be called IP world um it's a relentlessly bleak franchise and story idea so it was never going to test well regardless if if the Kaufman film or the Don Siegel film tested in the 70s and 50s those films were not going to test well because they end so brutally but it being a on a military base in Texas he's just so fish out of water like he's just he's doing the kind of thing he's never done before he's working with a lot of great artists and he's got great perspective but it's clear that there's some discomfort and I wonder if he was able to make something like Carlito's way in the early 90s if that trajectory really goes in a different direction because he then kind of pretty quickly pivots back to New York by doing the addiction and the funeral after that so he's still like hasn't gotten that out of his system and you'd think a movie studio would know in the aftermath of Scorsese's kind of roaring comeback in the 90s that and you know 1990 that very famous year of King of New York Miller's Crossing Goodfellas and the Godfather part three all coming out in the same year and this kind of gangster revival that's happening in the American cinema and he doesn't really get to take advantage of it like he doesn't get his 25 million dollar movie starring you know I don't know Chris Walken and Billy Baldwin or something but like that it feels like that should have happened yeah but he also you know he says in his book that he got fired from Carlito's way because he they thought he stole a bottle of wine from a table a can that belonged to the studio head and he tells a bunch of stories without trying to make himself look better where it sort of feels like in that system I don't really know if anyone would know what to do with him yeah you know it sounds like he was just uncomfortable even staying at the theater or being living like the life of luxury while making a large-scale movie just feels like it was not good for his temperament and the interesting thing is also as he gets older he sort of has less incident and less violence in his movies and less of kind of he doesn't gravitate as much to things that are like the fun pulp side of these things like in the the Alive doc Alive in France which is a doc that I think is going to be on your part of the collection yeah where he did showing his films in Europe and then also did a concert of a bunch of music and at a Q&A someone says are you ever gonna make a movie like King of New York again and he basically said he's over making movies about killers and that's cool and as an artist I totally respect that but you know not wanting to make movies that have a little bit more of a propulsive energy and an edge and like a thrill to them is kind of makes his stuff feel even smaller but I do think zeros and ones is very thrilling and that's about soldiers and you know people dying and terrorism and all this stuff but he does get way more internal you know yeah I mean all of his movies are so personal and passionate so it's inevitable that he's at a certain point not when he's especially when he's not living in New York not thinking about that way of life and he's getting further and further away from his youth and things he met he remembers seeing and he's kind of plunging into the movies but all the movies I find are really good and I think they're really good and I think they're really good and I think they're really good and I think they're really good and I think they're really good and I think completely anguished there's just like you know what one of the I think one of his most challenging movies is welcome to New York man I am I just need to vent about that one for a minute yeah is that on iTunes mm-hmm it says welcome New York two hours and five minutes I buy it I hit play about an hour into it I realized the running time is an hour and 48 and then mid movie I realized I was watching the edited version of welcome to New York which is a really good movie and I think it's which I think you can provide some context where people don't know what this movie is. You know, it's a movie about a very terrible incident involving a very rich person who came to America and went on trial and basically got away with it because of money. Yes. Allegedly, I don't want to get sued. It's inspired by, though it is not a docudrama, of an incident involving Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was the head of the International Monetary Fund, a very wealthy man who reportedly had some intense habits. And the film portrays this character, played by Gerard Depardieu, raping a woman who works in a hotel where he's staying in New York, and he goes on trial and he eventually gets off. And it's a movie about how power operates and vaingloriousness. And, you know, it's a hard, tough movie. But the two-hour and five-minute version is not the one that you saw, it sounds like. And the one that I saw? There's, like, some ambiguity in it. They didn't just remove the rape scene. It's, like, 17 minutes shorter or something like that. And they removed just a lot of dialogue scenes because it was the result of that guy suing the financier. So they got rid of all kinds of. Like, I was basically going through a list of everything that was there, and I was like, this is a completely different movie when you remove this stuff, where it seems like it doesn't have a strong piece, and it doesn't have a strong POV on this person. Whereas the original cut feels like an indictment. It's just like, look at evil. And the cut now that's supposed to be more palatable is actually like, "Yeah, he's a bad guy, but is he that bad, or did this really happen, or is it this?" I mean, it's a gross mistreatment of Farrar's perspective on the story. So the good news is the uncut version is in the collection. So you can watch the two-hour and five-minute version, Oh. which has, I think, some meaningful context to what you're describing. But you know, it's interesting that that's a movie that is not about a killer per se, but it is about a similar kind of power-hungry, devil-may-care, literally, figure. And it's like the kind of person that keeps getting drawn back to and back to. Some of his characters. There's like an interesting moral relativism that happens across a lot of his movies. In King of New York. Which is his best movie. I still. It's still my absolute favorite. Yeah, it's a masterpiece. And I just think it's a masterpiece. Completely agree. You know, it's kind of a Robin Hood movie. It's a movie that is told from the perspective of a crime kingpin who's come out of prison and is reclaiming his corner, so to speak. And, you know, it's unclear how actually generous or change-making he is in New York City in his attempts to kind of funnel some of this illicit money to hospitals for children in the South Bronx. But Frank did nothing wrong. Yeah. I mean. He's a great guy. Jimmy Jump, great guy. I think that the cops suck. I mean, whatever. Yes, yes. If you hate cops, you should definitely watch "Able to Talk." I mean, it's not just "Able" for our movies. There are a lot of very unpleasant police officers in these movies. But like, it's interesting that the way that he can kind of shift the perspective on who the bad guy is in the movie pretty seamlessly. I mean, that movie is so singular and fucking incredible. In the book. You know, if someone takes a shot every time I say in the book on this, they're gonna die. But in his book, Abel says he got the idea from. He saw "The Terminator" and then sat down and is like, "Well, I'm gonna make my version of 'The Terminator.'" And he wrote "King of New York." How perfect is that? But it makes sense because it's a relentless machine. So I watched "King of New York," and I had a couple, like, scathing. hot takes i know this isn't rewatchables but i had some really strong opinions and i was like you know what i'm gonna listen to the king of new york rewatchables so i don't like repeat stuff and somehow almost everything quentin said about it was like what i was like my i have a few very strong takes on the movie which is i think it's perfect but also like an hour too short and then you got into that and that i think it's really lawrence fishburne's movie and it was just like i was getting like okay well of course quentin had said everything that i want to say if people haven't heard that episode we did an episode with quentin tarantino in 2019 one of three episodes actually and he chose this movie which was extraordinary i was i could not have been more pumped how was that to do that can we just take a moment to talk about what was it like doing a rewatchables of quentin talking about king of new york well for me it was wonderful you know bill and i had never talked about that movie and bill's on that episode and but i but bill loves fishburne and i knew that he liked the movie that's all that i knew i knew he had seen it and he liked it and he wanted to be a part of it and i knew that he liked it and he wanted to be a part of it and i knew that he liked it and he wanted to be a part of it and i knew that he liked it and he wanted to be on that episode with us and the way that we did it was like i was on one with chris and quentin chris and bill were on one with quentin and i was on one with bill with quentin so you know we didn't really strategize or talk very much but you if you've ever met quentin you know he's like one of the great talkers about movies in the history of time and so he came in locked and loaded he shared with us one of the more incredible lawrence fishburne lore drops you'll ever hear oh man i mean we should talk about james russo though yeah it's like these are sort of the same discussion so james played the frank stallone part in beverly hills cop uh like uh so beverly hills cop was a stallone movie i'm sure everyone already knows this and it was cast around him and when he dropped out the only other part that had to be recast was mikey who's uh his friend who gets uh murdered and gets the plot going and that was supposed to be frank stallone and then that was amazing and then james that was like james russo's like big thing he's in this gigantic cultural movie you know he's shows up he's the heart of the movie and he's gone then he's in china girl which he's really really good at yes he plays the older brother albie and he was supposed to be the lawrence fishburne part king of new york i think is 60 is good that way and i mean no disrespect to james russo it's that what lawrence fishburne is doing in that movie the entire movie almost like he's like gravity the movie just gets pulled around him and the specificity of his performance and i think the first scene with him and walk-in in king of new york is maybe my favorite scene in any movie when walk-in has just come out of prison and he's in the hotel is he in the plaza hotel he's in the plaza hotel and we met lawrence fishburne where he shows up at a place and he kills a bunch of drug dealers and seems very scary we don't know if he's the antagonist of the movie we don't know his relationship to frank and he arrives in his hotel room and they have a they have a simmering 25 seconds where it feels like there's going to be an all a shootout an all-out and every line in the scene is gold it's just like it feels like a western and are these guys going to shoot each other and then it leads to dancing and then just everyone being like so kind of fun and funny and joyous and then like one of the best lines of movie history where he's like why didn't you visit me when i was on inside and you're like oh the rest of this movie there's gonna be this unspoken tension between them and then the third act you know you're gonna realize he's been mad at him this whole time mm-hmm and then he just has a one sentence explanation for why he didn't go which is like profound which is he's like uh like what does he say who wants to who wants to see you in a cage man i'm blowing it by doing all this build i'm getting the line i think that's it's like he's like he just didn't want to see him in a cage he didn't want to see someone who he admired and thought was like this larger than life personality in that environment but the movie doesn't want you to either it's like the movie skips just to his comeback like you don't have to live in all of that misery he's just like a bullet train when he gets out he's just like i gotta be king again you know and i think they have some of the most amazing chemistry in any movie of this type and it's just so specific part of what's so good about the movie and i honestly can't recall if we even discussed this with quentin is um you know it's a it's it's a movie about frank and it's a movie about ambition and desire and new york at a very specific moment in time there's that amazing moment early in the film when he's walking through the restaurant and being greeted and having his ring kissed by um the hoi polloi and also this sort of like elevated class of new york but it's really a movie i think about brotherhood on two sides you know it is about frank and his gang and it is about the cops and he spends a lot of time we go to one of the cops weddings and we see toast given we see caruso and snipes and their bond and we see these kind of like again a kind of a mimic of china girl that it is like jets and sharks you know it's these kind of two warring gangs that are at each other's throats and won't stop until we reach a kind of doom that is a you know story structure as old as time but he has a kind of poetry to it that makes it so wonderful i it's so beautifully shot like boyan's lighting in that movie is it is stunning but it is i think i don't think there's a better looking crime movie of the 90s at all i think it is in the 4k of it is awesome but it is just the everything about that movie there's so much mood the lighting is just it's just such a phenomenally executed movie but also there's a playfulness to walk-in and lawrence fishburne in it that makes all of the darkness it offsets it more than a lot of his movies don't have that like because if you compare walk-in in this versus walk-in in the funeral or the addiction i mean this in the most complimentary way possible very bad hang those people like you would never want to be in the same room as them no frank is a charisma machine yeah and and he's just likable like and and it's a thing that he doesn't usually do you know it's like it's somehow it's just very interesting to me is because it has all of his normal things but also the casting is so key and it i think because it's going back to the thing of uh russo passing and fishburne coming in is so much a movie and so much of careers is casting because that movie was almost james remar it was almost some other people also think about how walk-in almost a bad lieutenant completely different movie yes and so much of your career is based on if an actor says yes or no or if your gut says an actor's right and you find out if you're right or wrong how much it changes tone how much it changes how palatable your movie is like because there's a lot of movies he made that if they had something like that walk in performance and fishburne performance in it it just makes it more accessible because like chris penn in the funeral is one of the toughest performances i've ever seen i somehow i watched the funeral uh last week of the week before i had just seen henry portrait of a serial killer at lincoln center and i think chris penn in the funeral freaks me out more than rooker does in that movie there is there is a darkness to that performance in that character that is both brilliant but also is misery you know and that's so interesting to me is like weirdly i think it's two movies that have more kind of an upbeat energy to them and this is going to sound insane it's like miss 45 as i think miss 45 is once you get past the initial things which are really fucked up it's kind of a pretty upbeat thing of like an exultant romp about getting revenge yeah and it and it's fun it's very playful and he's not usually a playful guy and it's very interesting when he goes into that mode because his his usual operating principle is like paranoia and guilt and shame which is part of why body snatchers work so well to me because it is a paranoid thriller and he is so good at tapping into that and conveying that with performances but when you watch you know 19 of his movies in a how much different the energy of King of New York is, even though it is all kinds of fucked up stuff happens. But it has just, there's like a level of fun to it that is just really interesting as a counterpoint to all the violence and all the fucked up stuff, you know? Yeah, I think a state of contradiction is something that defines all of his work because like he's a director who's in touch with street culture, artistic movements, hip hop, opera, religious history, gangster movies. He's a high-low artist. He turns B-movies into an esthete's paradise. Like that's his whole thing. And even as he like kind of degrades and erodes a lot of his stylistic greatness in the latter half of his career, he's still kind of like breaking the form and rebuilding it. Like we talked about The Blackout, which is a movie that seems to be taking place like 35% on VHS. Like DV or, it's like those high eight, I don't even know. Just like the late 90s. That early digital video. It almost feels like someone's dad's home video camera shooting. And then Hopper calls people vidiots. Yes, yes. And theater, which I know we both love. And gives big speeches about how video is the future. And I don't think that stuff looks great, but I think that he was onto something because he uses it more in later movies and it is very aesthetically interesting. And beautiful. Like just hitting a broken record on zeros and ones, but that's Sean Price Williams. And I wish they did more movies like that because it has like a half Inland Empire, half collateral view. The ugly, beautiful DV. Yeah, and then, not to jump around too much, but in Tommaso, he is giving a speech at a meeting. And it's a heartbreaking emotional scene where he's talking about the first time he went to rehab. He's in an AA meeting. And he's talking about making a movie Miami. And I'm just like, is this about the blackout? And then he talks about the movie, and it's not really. But it does line up a little bit. But it's interesting that, to me, it feels like he makes a bunch of scrappy movies to try to get more resources to make bigger movies. And then reaches a level where he has all kinds of resources and decides he doesn't care about that at all anymore. And he starts to care less and care less and care less. Because it feels like he wanted to prove himself that he could be. Like, this visually accomplished filmmaker. And then it just feels like he just wants to hang out with, like, Kelsch, his, like, favorite DP, the guy he's known forever. And just, you know, just get, just make sure they capture the performances and move on. Raise enough money to make a movie, you know? I mean, there's something really. So, 23 feature films, 8 documentaries, a TV movie, a TV pilot, episodes of series television, short films, music videos. He makes 9 Lives of a Wet Pussycat, his first film. Which is a porno. And one of the great, one of the reasons why I wanted to do this, and I was excited that Criterion wanted to do it, is because, you know, as you said, so many of these movies, because they're all made independently, give or take 4 or 5 of them, are hard to find. Or hard to watch. Or maybe you can rent them, but you can't own them. Or they're only available on DVD. Or they're, you know, like, movies like Mary. Like, Mary is not a part of the collection. That movie is hard to find. Yeah, I mean, I had a few that I loved. I literally could not find. And at the last second, some people are like, hey, I have a copy. And I'm like, well, that's a little late. But that's the, it's fascinating how much, his stuff is either very available in the best transfer possible. Yes. Or impossible to get. Yes. It's like, there's almost an excessive level of care put into some of the releases of his movies. And then it's like, why isn't there even a decent Blu-ray of the funeral? Like, a China Girl 4K would be incredible. I mean, that was a movie I watched for the first time during this that blew me away the most. I have a French Blu-ray of China Girl. I watched it on, I think I just bought it on iTunes. And I know that some people have been trying to get it and put it out and had some problems. And that's when it's like, clearly, it's like the production designer of, like, Eternal Sunshine and, like, all these crazy things. And then it's the. It's like the costume designer of, like, the Coen brothers and Natural Born Killers and stuff. And it just feels like that movie, people haven't even seen how good it could look. But the Bad Lieutenant 4K is beautiful. Like, I could not believe how good that looked. Because I got all the ones that were Miss 45, looks incredible. Body Snatchers, the releases, lights out. That's the one I still don't have. Well, at least you have something to look forward to. I do, I do. How rare in life. Yeah, it's interesting because I think this is pretty common. It's common amongst a lot of filmmakers who toggled between independent and studio work in the 80s and 90s. Which is, it feels like their filmographies are sort of incomplete in terms of scholarship because some things are harder to find than others. Or you're not able to see it in the way that it had hoped to be seen. And for Abel, you know, like we said before, he's got mixed feelings about his work, too. You know, and there's some things that he's confused why people would want to even see the movies. And there's other things where he feels like a brighter light should be. Should be shined upon certain films. But, you know, I was trying to think about him in relationship to his peers. And it's like, on the one hand, you know, there's a very clear Scorsese, Spike, Sidney Lumet, you know, New York City filmmaker parallel, right? Where movies made on the streets of New York about the kind of hard-bitten soul of New York. About the kind of fun and vivacity and the. You know, his movies are very diverse, especially the New York film. Like, they're very. Show a lot of different parts of the different communities of the city. But then there's also a part of his movies that are like Paul Schrader or Michael Haneke or Catherine Briand. Like, that are just like tough, dark movies about how people are ultimately bad. And it's an interesting thing for a person who's like kind of had a lot of transformation spiritually, too. You know, raised Catholic and then pivots to Buddhism in the second half of his life. And you can see. Like, in Tommaso, I feel like we're watching a guy literally wrestle with God. You know, like, that's the whole idea of the movie is him trying to come to grip with his demons, which feel like they're encroaching upon him in real time. And it's a fascinating thing for somebody to be so frank about their own worldview. Yeah, it's. You know, as someone who's not Catholic, I may be wrong about this, but I would think, to me, that Bad Lieutenant is like one of the most Catholic movies ever made. Yeah. It really. The fact that that guy, in his own weird way, his, like, journey to forgiveness and, you know, like, his Catholic upbringing is. When he first. He's so dismissive of it at first, and by the end, that's almost more important than living, you know? And it is. It's a really, really fascinating movie that is really brilliant and also somehow based on a song that Abel. Did, you know, when you get to that at the end, it's a little bit like. Because I think he sings a song in the end credits. It's a little bit like the end of Big Trouble in Little China, when suddenly it's like. It's a very specific thing where the director sings at the end. Actually, it's funny, because I just watched The Insidious that Patrick Wilson directed. Sure. And it ends with him singing a song, too. The Red Door? Yeah. Yeah. And I had watched both of those, like, close to each other, and it was just one of those things where it's like. More movies should have a director singing a song at the end. It'd be something for you to look into. You know, I think. I don't think I want to do that, but I do think. I also like at the end of RRR, where suddenly, like, just the director's dancing and, like, pointing at the audience at the end, and he's doing, like, his victory lap. That's another thing I think is important. Most movies should have a director dancing at the end, but not me. Someone else should be. I always think of Bad Lieutenant as, like, a companion to Last Temptation of Christ, and they feel like very similar kinds of movies to me, where you can. You really can't tell. I am a frequently devastated Mets fan with a cop father. And so Bad Lieutenant really holds a special place in my heart, that no one could make a man as insane as Keitel's character is in the movie, like the New York Mets. And the film opens with iconic WFN radio host Chris Maddog Russo arguing with a caller about the Mets before cutting to Keitel, stumbling out of his queen's home to drive his two sons to school. This is immensely relatable content to me. It's funny because my concept. My concept of New York sports is because I've been living in New York for almost two years now. I'd say being a bandwagon Knicks fan has been one of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me. And I. The idea that. I rocked my Real King of New York Jalen Brunson t-shirt today. Well, my concept of New York sports is that strangers on the street basically want to high-five you and will just say Knicks in five all the time, and sports only brings people happiness. And I'm like, it is. But my concept of sports is being a Suns fan for. 30 years, and just thinking that life is pain, and it's never gonna work out, and I wish that they never almost got it, because now every time they don't do well, I get mad. You know, I had to, you know, get airdropped into a fandom, and, like, everyone being so excited for how all that went. And it's funny because, you know, I listened to the episode where you were talking about it, and, like, you know, you could feel the catharsis for everybody, but for me it was just like. It feels like I got to do that and then spend, you know, a million days in a row watching World Cup games, and I'm just like. I'm like, New York's a city where sports are just great. Yeah, yeah. I tell you what, that has not been the case for at least a certain strain of us, right? But that's. But my concept of New York sports from movies is, you know. This. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's the Yankees and the New York Jets side of New York sports fandom, and the Mets side. One of the things that I always thought was really funny about this movie is it's apparently set during a dramatic Mets playoff comeback. And in real life in 1992, the Mets finished 72-90. They're one of the most disappointing Mets teams in franchise history, and they're in the midst of a real dry spell after having some success in the 80s. And so the whole movie kind of already feels like this abject fever dream, this kind of, like, power fantasia that collapses into this doom rot in this guy's life. And the idea of matching, like, the lie of Mets success against that is so fascinating and cutting-ass. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about a bunch of deep cuts already. I'm wondering if there's any movies we haven't mentioned that you really like and want to give some time to. We haven't talked about New Rose Hotel. I mean, you want to talk about that? I mean, you know, do we have enough hours to talk about New Rose Hotel? That movie. This comes immediately after the blackout, 1998. It's so. It's a really, really interesting movie because it's a movie made right after a lot of his collaborators had sort of gone away from him to a point where it's even, like. because it's not Nikki. uh schooly d's doing the score instead of his normal guy joe deal and uh which we gotta get into but in that movie is very it's fascinating because it's one of those things where pressman had the rights to it and they tried to make it like a schwarzenegger like an arnold action movie for a while and had no luck and then finally it was one of those things where like he just has to make a movie and it was like a seven page william gibson short story and that movie is just all mood it's all vibes it is a just like on the um he did an intro for the the recent release um the vinegar syndrome uh cinema cinematograph i hope justin's not listening i can't pronounce your uh your boutique labeled name but he he starts it out by saying movies are a 90 minute dream and that is the energy of that movie it is not really a narrative although it is um there's a there's a plot but it's sort of unrealized in a lot of ways very purposely because he's stretching out a seven page story idea about these kind of cyber extraction terrorist style figures attempting to remove a japanese guy from the center of power and bring him to another center of power and it's willem defoe him working with willem defoe for the first time and i think is it the last time with walk-in i believe it's the last time with walk-in it's also got a lot of paul schrader energy with willem defoe writing in notepads uh but it also feels like it has that notorious thing too or mission impossible too with you know falling in love with someone who is also you're using them to seduce or romance or whatever a target and that's right it's a lot of kind of ozzy argento is the yes uh seductor in the book he really gets into there's a lot going on in the real life of the making of that yes and because it's like a real life tortured love triangle uh which is it just insane i mean it's just insane and it's so interesting how frankie is about a lot of those and the fact that it made them even better friends for it also that abel thought you could fly to japan out of la guardia uh was the i was like buddy that that really shows how much how many drugs you're on at the time when someone said oh yeah i'm going to la guardia because i'm flying to japan uh can't do that um it'd be like flying to japan out of burbank really you just you know the the little gullible yeah yeah to say the least but that movie i think he was under the influence at this time too you know there's and there's something that very under the influence about new rose hotel it's another movie that feels like it's made entirely with surveillance cameras like it doesn't even really feel like it's a movie once you get past the kind of opening passages when they're in the club everything else that you're seeing feels kind of illicit and behind closed doors and there's also kind of a looseness between defoe and walk-in and circumspect about what they're talking about and how they're talking about it and you can see that they have this real bond between them and i'm watching the movie and i'm like on this scene it feels like defoe is representing ferrara and then in this scene it feels like walk-in is representing ferrara and is he talking to nicholas st john is he talking to joe delia is he talking all these longtime collaborators also doing like the dramatic version of nirvana the band the show when you re-see scenes but they're different when you cut to a flashback yes not done as like a comedic set up and payoff it's like you'll see a scene between defoe and walk-in and then they'll flash back to it and it's a different take and in the first time you saw the scene there's like resentment and then the second time there isn't and it's played completely differently yes which makes the whole thing it makes because it's non-linear and also when you cut back to things it's like wait did i remember that wrong like there's a different energy to this uh but also just like the school ed music is really good uh and i was watching like a featurette about that where he was talking about like it was like his concept of the future but then um rxmas yeah he did um great music in that and original songs but when i was watching rxmas i started to get really distracted because i somehow had not realized even though i like school ed a lot that he did the aquatine hunger force uh main theme absolutely and then now every time i was hearing a school ed song as i was watching more of these movies i'm just like that's that's the aquatine guy like there was just like this well there's that extraordinary scene in king of new york oh my god neon lit set to am i black enough for you which is one of those great songs is a gangster at pioneer school ed and um you know you can just see that abel has like an emotional connectivity to his music but he's in in alive in france school he's supposed to be there and he kind of slips through the screen and he's like cracks and doesn't show up and isn't there to perform and like it seems like that's pretty consistent with his relationship with him over the years where like he thinks he's gonna get him on something and then he doesn't and he's working with this kind of loose confederation of complicated artists all the time trying to get them to go together one of the most interesting things about music in his movies is uh in a way that i i don't think there's a comp is he has so many movies where he clearly just didn't have money for music or he has money to get one big song and then the rest they have to write like when you watch china girl it's like they have walked this way and you're like holy that is a big song and it's like yeah but we are now out of money so any of my collaborators to make sound alike songs and he has so many movies where he clearly had a song in there and then they had nothing in the budget later so then he has one of his collaborators do a song like it so but he'll have a movie that has like a gigantic song you know but then every other song in it is like a little bit more low rent and the balance of that because like china girl when walked this way kicked in i was like whoa how the fuck did they get this song but then it's it's frustrating because it's clear they weren't playing that on set because the dancing they're doing is not in rhythm to that song yes but it's a perfect song for like that time period but when you listen to interviews with him or like read stuff it's always like him complaining saying yeah we ran out of money for music so at the last minute we had to do blah blah blah because uh schooly d didn't want his songs in king of new york and he said no a bunch and then he finished the movie with those songs in there without his permission and then screened it for him and apparently told him hey if you want me to remove these it's going to be a huge pain in the ass and that was the start of their collaboration was him being like fine you can put my songs in your movie and then he had several movies where he was writing music for joe delia while joe delia was the composer and then when they had uh you know were butting heads then he did the score for a couple of them well i mean part of the reason why walk this way is in that film is because russell simmons is a figure who keeps dumping money into able for our movies yeah like the addiction yeah and they have this long-standing relationship and russell simmons at the time was like a revered new york entrepreneur and now his reputation has pretty dramatically changed after some rough accusations over recent years but like he's another one of those people that able would go to and say can you get me a quarter of a million dollars to dump into a movie like the addiction and there's a real like by hook or by crook quality to the making of so many of these movies that is really fascinating i like the joe delia schoolie d balance because to me they're like the kind of competing sounds of new york too they're sort of like the blues rock and synthesizer new wave you know no wave post-punk energy that he brings to movies and then schoolies like really classical nyc east coast hip-hop and not a lot of the new york filmmakers at that time could do both and i think that's kind of the reason why russell simmons Like, you think of Scorsese and you think of the Rolling Stones, you think of Spike and you think of Public Enemy. Very rarely do the twain meet. And I love him as this kind of meeting point of these two ethics of New York. But it's the same way that his movies are so different, is he has a wide sort of—his taste is complicated and covers multiple genres. You know, because, like, the music for Miss 45, I think, is one of my favorite scores ever, especially, like, the music in The Final Party is just lights out. And it is so different from the music in King of New York, just drastically, which is so different from the music in Body Snatchers. But he clearly has these things he's passionate about that are kind of idiosyncratic, because, like, The Addiction has so much hip-hop in it, and King of New York does. And then he has other movies. That are so far in the other direction. And then, like, you watch Bad Lieutenant, and it has, like, all more vintage tracks, but then it ends with his song in the end credits, which is a completely different energy. Yes. And somehow it all mixes together, because it is—I think this is either interesting or the most obvious thing I could ever say is, like, the best movies are, like, a reflection of, like, the passion and interest of the director. And it's like, you can feel—he's like, I fucking love this song, man, and this feels right. And I fucking love this song, and this feels right, even though, like, I can't imagine another director mixing those together. But they work, because you can tell he's, like, energized by it. We talked about this with you picking songs for your movie when you were on the show last time. And you were just like, this is something that just matters to me. And you can sense that. It's specificity, right? And it's like, you're understanding someone's point of view and the specificity of the choice. But this—to circle back to the previous thing, I think the difference between me and Abel is, like, I really like scale. And it's really important to me. To get money for music. And that, to him, is clearly very secondary. Like, I—because I maybe spent 11 months trying to get all the music for my first movie because I didn't— didn't have a lot of money. And then even on my last one, you know, you're doing your best to not have compromises. But I have to start from a point of, you know, I like scale and I like blowing shit up and I like production value. Like to me, that is enjoyable and it makes me feel like I'm getting my money's worth watching a movie. But with Abel, it's like the further he got into his movies, he becomes clear that it's like what he has to say is more important than formalism. You know, it's like, and he's still like the addiction is a beautiful movie, but it's not like China Girl that has like, you know, a lot of lighting of these New York streets and stuff. It's very scrappy, but beautiful. But it also gives it like an energy, you know, where the kind of scaled down thing also feels like actors must enjoy it. And he talks about like, he's like Clint Eastwood, where like a lot of things he only wants to do one or two takes, which is crazy when you see some of these performances. You're like, that's not what I want to do. I want to do one or two takes. That was just right out of the gate. That wasn't like take 12. He talks about that. I think the take in The Addiction when Chris Walken first meets Lily Taylor's character is one take. And he gives that long speech and he's a very dramatic gestural performance. That's top five vampire movies of all time for me, The Addiction. It's an amazing film. It's fucking so good, dude. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because you talked a lot about Boyan Bazeli and the beauty that he brings to a lot of the movies and these like complicated lighting rigs. And they're clearly much more kind of upscale. productions. But Ken Kelsch is basically shooting handheld black and white in The Addiction and it's among his most beautiful films. I mean, I think the Boyan stuff to me is like my personal preference, but the Kelsch on Bad Lieutenant and The Addiction is undeniable, especially like Arrow has a release of both of those and they just look crazy good. And I saw The Addiction at Midnight at Nighthawk a couple months ago and it is such a good midnight movie. The movies have nothing in common, but I think too my favorite midnight movies are Near Dark and that, which are wildly different vampire movies. But there's something about vampire movies and that kind of thing where it's like being kind of sleepy while watching it makes you feel it just it's like the right energy. You know, there's something about like The Addiction you should sort of be watching a little bit later than you plan on staying up. And, you know, also he has so many movies that are like under 90 minutes, which is crazy. But that going back again to that was wonderful for doing all the catch up, though, you know, to just kind of plow through a lot of these movies and be able to like really dig in to as many of them as possible. It's interesting because almost every movie he's made feels like it is the right length or maybe just overstays its welcome a little bit, except King of New York. I can't get over the fact that it does. I think there could have easily been a three hour version of that movie that would have been incredible because it does feel. A little bit like it's a speed run because it's like you meet the cops. Well, now the cops are going dark because they've had it with him. But you're almost like, well, I want all the steps in between. Like, I want to see him scale up his structure. I want to see like more power he gains. I want to see like conflict in the organization. It's like the movie is both perfect. And also I greedily want more. I think some of that is that we are conditioned to expect that Coppola has The Godfather, Scorsese has Goodfellas, Lumet has Prince of the City, these kind of like expansive, extensive, magisterial New York crime operas. And it's a movie that feels like it's operating on the same level, but it's whatever, an hour and 58 minutes. You know, it's not, it's just not as long. And it, but it, it has maybe the most propulsive pacing of any movie I've ever seen. I'm not saying like editorially, like it is rapidly cut. It just, the movie just moves from scene. He's like, I'm out. I'm going to do this thing. But that also reflects like his drive character wise, because he's like impatient to get to the top again. But it's, you know, it's interesting because like he gets all of his movies end up being sort of that length. The one movie that I don't know if he was ever going to figure out in that regard where like, I think it is amazing. Like I gave it like five stars or whatever, but Dangerous Game also is clearly like both too long and way too short and very shaggy, but you know, it is what it is. It's like, you know, the, the rumors are are, as you know, I think we talked before about this is like that at both at one point, he just was like, I think I've shot enough and hadn't shot everything, but just like wrapped. And then also in post, apparently like just lopped off like a 20 minute section just randomly. Well, you know, it's a film that was written around Madonna. It's, it's supposed to be framed around Madonna's character. And you can see that he does not have a ton of interest in that character. And he pivots the story pretty dramatically to Harvey Keitel's character who's a filmmaker. And it's, you know, that's a recurring interest as well about this kind of film. Guy whose life is falling apart around him. Um, and it makes sense, you know, it makes sense. And it seemed like Madonna did not have the best time and did not enjoy the movie. It's never been one of my favorites of his. It does feel, it feels like it's been revised in real time. Um, and it does not have any of the propulsion of the movies from this era. It is purposefully kind of like a little sullen and a little dank. Um, but it does kind of lead the way I think to the blackout and blackout. Um, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. He's more interested in mood than he is in style. And then he'll just leave for a long time and then come back. And I think I'd misunderstood the premise is I thought the premise was going to be Billy Dee and it's Behringer, right? Tom Behringer. I thought, um, that the two of them were going to like kind of team up to solve this. I was like, in my head, backseat directing, I'm like, this is the best premise ever. The cop who wants to stop these people, like, this would be a buddy thing and they hate each other, but they need each other. And the two of them are going to find this serial killer and that it didn't become that. Uh, and then I found out afterwards, I think Billy Dee was only in it because like a studio obligation. It's like he, he had to do, it's like Ed Norton in Italian Job or The Score or whatever the fuck, one of those movies where he's like, you contractually have to be, and he's like, I will show up and be a movie star for like these four scenes. But I, the interesting thing when you do this with a filmmaker is being like, what actors didn't come back when they were like cooking? Like, I really wish there was more Dennis Farina and, uh, Abel. I think Dennis Farina is probably up there. And it, in terms of, there's very rare that there's an actor who somehow is in so many important movies and so fucking great. Cause it's like the fact that he's like, you know, in wildly different performances, but I mean, you out of sight last night, two of my favorite performances in movie history are Don Cheadle and him in that movie. I think every second they're on screen, they are just like, I'm going to steal this movie. And then you can let everyone else do their thing. And he's so, it's small, but he's just one of the most underrated actors ever, even though he's, it's not that he's underrated, but I just wish he was in more of these movies. He seems like a real person, you know, and he has a ton of charisma, but he, I've always said this, like being, growing up around a lot of cops, he just seemed like a cop and he was a cop. And it was always funny when he would play villains in movies versus playing, playing the cop. But yeah, I agree that they could have made some more beautiful music together. That's the, you know, it's like, I, I wish Billy Dee had come back. I wish he had more stuff with Lawrence Fishburne. Like that's, that's one of those things where you get kind of greedy when you're. Decided like to go deep dive on a filmmaker is when you're like, oh man, I wish there was more movies. These guys did. The other thing I want to talk about was one of the comparable filmmakers to me, especially in his early days was Larry Cohen, who I'm a huge fan of. And I was having like a weird epiphany that like his earlier, like a lot of his stuff feels like it's sort of like half Larry Cohen, half Safdies. And like they have kind of picked up the mantle in a lot of ways, which is why it was so exciting to have him. Show up in Marty Supreme. I mean, what, how did you feel when you're watching that movie and he just showed up? Wasn't that like, it's like, it was like, I felt like someone just did that for me. Well, you may recall he's in Daddy Longlegs. Yes. For like a hot minute. But being in this movie and that significant of a part. Also, I watched that movie twice before I realized that that was Penn. Like, uh, Pendulet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the guy in that. The, the, the angry, uh, house owner. Yeah. But there's something really, I like that passing the torch. Sort of thing. Totally. I mean, you know, Criterion asked me to talk about Abel's influence and how it lives on. It obviously lives on in, in Josh and Benny's movies, especially Josh. Um, and I, I asked Josh just to like tell me a little bit off the record about what he thinks about Abel's work, you know? And the, the one thing he did say is he's one of the most romantic people I've ever met, which I thought was an interesting way to frame him. You know, he's somebody who kind of like falls in love and is very passionate. And you were saying he's, his passions are kind of suffused. through the movies. screen or in interviews or even in his own book he's has you know he can be a little grouchy he's very frank he's lived hard but he makes these movies about these people in deep emotional throes you know like that is the whole premise like if you look at Tommaso or Pasolini or um even in Fear City they're like which I think is a very flawed movie but it's an interesting movie you're right that it never sets up that diptych between him and Billy Dee it focuses more on Tom Berenger's character who is this kind of little punch drunk boxer who's got PTSD from killing someone in the ring and he's trying to solve this serial killer story or a kung fu serial killer who is murdering strippers and it's very like Ref and Origins at times totally totally yeah and it's a grimy exploitation movie in a lot of ways and Berenger's like okay a little miscast but it's again another movie that's about a person who's just like haunted by the past can't get away and thinks if he pulls off one final act of good then he can free himself from his pain and he comes back to that over and over again the thing that we need to talk about from Fear City though that's more important to me is there's a song in it called method to your badness uh that's fucking so sick yeah yeah just you know there's nothing better than that um and uh so was it I watched so many of these in quick succession another thing I want to bring up just about music was that I uh the lead singer of New York Dolls um David Johansson yeah did I think it was China Girl there's a couple songs that he sang and I was like looking at the songs because I was you know doing my own dumb obsession stuff to figure out like who was performing and which ones were written by his composer and which ones were songs they licensed and I saw that and I was like oh my god I don't know I don't know I don't know I looked him up and I never knew what he looked like and I have never felt dumber than realizing that the guy from Scrooged is the singer of New York Dolls and I'd always and Buster Poindexter the hot hot hot guy yeah he's also that guy I'd always been like who is that guy in Scrooge that had such an idiosyncratic performance that has never really been in anything else and I never once bothered to google it and like that was the weirdest thing from watching China Girls realizing that the Ghost of Christmas passed or present whichever one he is uh I think it's passed uh yes is him and have you seen Personality Crisis the documentary that um sort of a performance documentary that Scorsese made about him I think if I had I would have known he was the guy from Scrooge it's a relatively recent it came out in 2022 it's pretty weird because I've listened to them forever but I've never I never seen a intro footage and then I started going down a rabbit hole on that stuff and that's also a really interesting thing is when um uh musicians get repurposed as performers based on their larger than life personality either on talk shows or on just you know going to dinner parties with all these people and them knowing each other um like the thing I wanted to say earlier it's that uh I'm kind of fascinated by movies that all Stuart Gordon almost did because Stuart Gordon was the director of Body Snatchers and then was replaced and then he was the director of Honey I Shrunk the Kids and there's that sliding doors thing of like that's like what it was like with him and then he was the director of Honey I Shrunk the Kids and on Carlito's Way which is like there's these in-between stages of these large-scale studio movies where that were almost a movie by like these smaller scale auteurs and is the story there that Pacino's manager pursued Ferrara after seeing King of New York is that Pacino had seen King of New York and wanted to meet him in Fishburne and uh then they put him on there and then David Koepp got brought on to do a rewrite not involving uh Abel or Pacino just involving the studio then Bad Lieutenant came out uh Abel sort of made a few poor choices and was replaced and it's funny too because as much as I'd really like to see that I am weirdly very very ride or die in like Carlito's Way I used to think that Carlito's Way was merely good and I've reached a point where it's one of my favorite De Palmas and he's one of my favorite directors I think it is even though people like it I think it's genuinely a great movie uh and I'm really fascinated by it and I think it's a great movie and I think it's a great movie and I think it's a great movie and I think it's a great movie and I think it's a great movie by that I'd love to see Abel's version but you know that worked out yeah I wish it was more like both it's more like what would have happened to Abel's career if he was able to make that movie maybe nothing maybe nothing I wish that it took he made like two or three big movies before he got burned out instead of just making one big one but he clearly was never going to reach a point where he was that comfortable in that world you know um give me your five favorites you know I I so I'd say King of New York is like by far uh is my favorite I think it's fucking just one of the great movies um but when I was going back and re-watching these Miss 45 is pretty close to the top like I if you catch me on a certain day I might say it's my favorite like King of New York is a better movie but I think Miss 45 is like one of the most interesting exciting specific movies of that type I've ever seen her performance in that movie I can't believe I've gone this whole time without talking about her yeah is I will never forget the experience of seeing that and being like who is this person this is like a silent movie star this is one of the best performances I've ever seen whatever happened to her googling her and going oh okay shit she Abel writes beautifully about her and about the struggles that she had she's listed you know she's um Idita is the co-writer of Bad Lieutenant and and appears in that film it's the only other film of his that she appeared in yeah and she was also in a Larry Cohen movie uh and special but I think that the combination of her performance the specificity of that movie the score how tight it is it is one of the great it's like I like the Death Wish movies uh especially three um but this is like so much better than every Death Wish movie ever made I think that it is like the most pure distilled like terrible thing happens to a person now this person is just becoming a vigilante and the fact that she doesn't speak and then until when she screams at the end I mean the movie is also it is such a level up in execution from Driller Killer which is I think a really really interesting movie uh you know because it's like his dirtbag era and it's also part of that legacy of a lot of people being like oh horror movies make money I will make a horror movie he literally watched Texas Chance I'm Asking him was like how can I do one of these and kind of elevate myself out of the inability to make a movie but he it's funny because I think a lot of times like execs view almost porn and horror is interchangeable because they view it as a profitable thing that they don't respect and he went through that cycle of making a porn film because well that's the only thing I can make that I can get money for okay well horror I can make and that evolution through that but I think just Driller Killer is a movie that I can make and I think it's a movie that I can make and I think is so interesting and scrappy and awesome but Miss 45 is like a tour shit like it's just got such a vision such an interesting tone uh and I just think it's one of the great performances so like I'd say those are the those top two I have Miss 45 in New York on my list as well body snatchers you're not gonna meet someone who is more but more going to bat like if I have anything I can say in this podcast is that everyone has to give body snatchers a shot um and then the other one which is not in my top five but I think everyone should watch China Girl I thought it was so interesting and the fact that it is really about having a shitty boss more than it's anything else like the entire movie is about the pain of middle management where it's like two different warring gangs because it's his version of West Side Story or uh Romeo and Juliet I think it's an incredible movie and but it also it is really about how all of our conflict all of our personal issues and our anger can really just be that our boss doesn't give a fuck about us they don't care about what we want and we will never profit in the same way like it's like there's something so interesting about how that was the way into that movie because he's like it was something he just threw out as a lark saying I want to make my Romeo and Juliet with like you know Little Italy and Chinatown but it ends up just being about the frustration of these guys who like are just like why the fuck our boss does not pay attention to us we don't get invited to his dinner parties like what's going on here the fact that that is the point of view of that movie I thought was so interesting but okay so I would go uh Cam New York uh Miss 45 Body Snatchers uh The Addiction I we've gone over it I think is just it's just such a great fucking movie man like it is it's so interesting I think I wish that every artsy director made one horror movie or more but there's something about someone who has a strong point of view and a specificity of vision working in that genre that almost always pays off like I've said it a million times but like I wish PT made a full-on horror movie so bad like when he's doing his shining stuff and there'll be blood it just feels like I want just make a haunted house movie man just like spend six months doing that like I you know I wish Quentin would make just make a slasher movie like he always talks about even though death proof is one but when he's doing genre like Body Snatchers and The Addiction are both like working at at such a high level because he cares so much. Like, I'm a big horror guy, but there's a lot of horror directors who've made horror movies I love that don't really feel like they are really all about cinema. You know, like, they are just about horror, and I think when you have someone who's like that making a vampire movie, it's just fucking the best. So that's four. Did I only do four? Four is good. I, you know, I can't. My number five would be zeros and ones. All right, okay. That's great. I would throw Tommaso on my list as well. That, to me, is like the late period masterpiece. I think Pasolini is really interesting, and Welcome to New York is hugely accomplished and powerful, but Tommaso is the one that I like the most that feels the most personal, that feels the most complex, unresolved, really scary, upsetting ending. New Rose Hotel would also be on my list, as would Bad Lieutenant. Bad Lieutenant would be my five. I can't be too much of a stinker. I love zeros and ones, but Bad Lieutenant's undeniable. And what you're saying is, like, that 90s period is so unmatched. But he's still, I mean, he's still working, still form-breaking. I think he's trying to get a movie made right now. I mean, you know, I will go to bat for a lot of his, you know, movies past, like, the legacy era. And I think a lot of them are super interesting and absolutely should be watched. There's just, like, you know, it's like, you know, you have a band where they have the really interesting albums that you love and you could talk about for hours, but you're also, like, on a desert island, I would bring the other one. And that's sort of how I feel about those. Totally, totally agree with you. Hey, thank you for doing this with me. Hey, man. It was a really good time. It's like, it's a very, there's nothing like, I was already reading his book and going down a rabbit hole of these things, so I was really glad you gave me an excuse to be obsessive and then have people write weird comments on my Letterboxd reviews being like, why are you watching all these movies? Are you going on Big Picture? Big Picture when? Yeah, that, you know, I assumed I would come back, to talk about Beekeeper 2, The Beequel. Like, you know, we could do three hours on that. The door is open. The door is open. Did I tell you that I saw the trailer for it in April? I mean, I, Pretty fucking good. When I saw The Beekeeper and I talked about it on Hitmaker's podcast, I saw it opening night, me and a bunch of my friends went to Burbank 16, and we had such a good time that when it ended, I was in the lobby and someone walked up to me and said, hey, congratulations. And I said, what do you mean? They're like, that's your movie, right? And I was like, no. They're like, then what was going on with you guys? Why are you talking about it? We were having such a good time watching it opening night that it's that L.A. thing where you're like, oh, those people must have worked on it. Why would they like this movie so much? But I walked out of it and my only complaint was, why didn't he unleash bees? Why didn't he use bees? And I've heard a rumor that he uses bees this time. No spoilers. No spoilers. Hey, I just wanted to say thank you to Aliza and Curtis and Kim and all of the fine folks at the Criterion channel who helped this project get out into the world. I hope people are watching it and interested in it. It's like, some of it is the least, is like the easiest sell of all time. King of New York is such an easy movie to sell. If you haven't seen it, it's so magical. And some of the movies are a little bit more challenging, but absolutely worth your time. And thank you to Abel Ferrara for just having such a profound, deep and interesting body of work that gave us a chance to chat. It was definitely worth it, even though it was difficult for me to watch them. So the fact that they have the ease of use that they can just log into the Criterion channel and they're all just sitting there and you can click on them, they would probably have an even better time than I did. Yeah. And I'm sorry for those, that short number of movies. You know, The Funeral is not in this package. Mary is not in this package. I watched The Funeral on YouTube. I have an old DVD of The Funeral, which is one of the only ways to watch it on physical media. I mean, Go Go Tales is a movie we didn't talk about, but it's not in this package. I could not track that one down. It's the single hardest movie of his to find right now. Hopefully one day somebody will excavate it. But there's a whole host of movies there that you can check out right now. Thank you. Okay, thanks to Ben David. Thank you to the God, Abel Ferrara. Thanks to Jack Sanders, our producer, for his work on today's episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production support. As I said, Practical Magic 2, Oasis Don't Look Back in Anger. Yes. Yossi Salik on the podcast again. What else? What are you bringing? What are you bringing to the table? Come on. Hit me. Will we get some great news over the weekend? Something dynamite to talk about? I hope so. I hope so too. We'll see you then. We'll see you then. A subscriber about WeGoV, some maglutide injection, 2.4 milligrams, a GLP-1. Call 1-833-4-WEGOV or visit WeGoV.com to view the medication guide and to learn more about WeGoV. Why wait? We. Go. V. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tramphya, proper training is required. Serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them and liver problems may occur. 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