B (2:38)

It's become there's a cottage industry that every year kind of sprouts up, you know, around awards, and I feel like, you know, I've been part of that For a while, because I did Little gold men for 10 years. Another podcast at VF and, um, I've been to a lot of those parties and receptions and, you know, things where I think my arm is being twisted a little bit to vote. I don't think I've ever actually been swayed by it, but. But I think there also is this other thing that's sort of even further outside of Academy voters, who ultimately are the ones who decide what wins, which is, like, there's all this online chatter now, like, there's almost a whole other Oscar race that is litigated on Twitter usually, or maybe letterboxd, that, like, yes, might not ultimately have an effect on who wins in March. But, like, I think it's worth talking about because it's part of the. It's like the film culture now, in a way, kind of.

A (3:29)

Yeah. And I also don't think it's something entirely separate. Right. For all that the Academy is filled with, as our friend Cal Buchanan put it, a bunch of guys named Mel.

B (3:40)

Yeah.

A (3:41)

It is also filled increasingly with younger, more online, more international members whose tastes are slightly less predictable, I would say, and maybe slightly less conventional, as we've always thought of it in terms of what an awards movie is and what. What the Oscars like. So I do feel like all of that online chatter, even as it gets sometimes, like, deranged, I think, can filter through and have some effect on some voters.

B (4:10)

I. I think we're gonna see more of it, too. And I think that when we get. We'll talk a bit in this episode about, like, the season overall, like. And I think when you get that picture, you do see some effect of. Well, yes, new members of the Academy, more international members of the Academy. But also, just discourse has changed around these movies. But before we do that, we should maybe more properly, I don't know, introduce ourselves. I mean, you know, close listeners to our parent podcast, Blank Check will of course, know us very well because we've both been guests on that show, but I don't know if people know how well we know each other. Do you remember where we first met?

A (4:46)

I don't at all. You told me about this. You mentioned it earlier, and I just had nothing, no trace of that in my brain.

B (4:54)

We met in a totally prosaic, you know, boring place. Cannes, France, during the Cannes film, which. Did you know that's in Europe. It's across the ocean. Yeah. We had, like, probably met, like, you know, in passing at screenings or something, because I was pretty new to, like, film screening world. I think we first hung out in like 2015 or 16.

A (5:14)

Well, okay, I will say in preparation for recording this podcast, I did some deep research, which is to say I searched by Gmail.

B (5:22)

Oh wow.

A (5:23)

When is the first time I got a message from Richard? And the first one that was mentioned was just 2014 actually.

B (5:29)

Oh, okay.

A (5:30)

We were at the Toronto Film Festival. We were trying to plan a late, late in the festival dinner at a Chinese restaurant. And. And I said, I asked Richard Lawson, but he's already got dinner plans tonight. We'll see if anyone else has left. So what I have is you blowing me off for someone else.

B (5:46)

Oh, I'm sorry. In Toronto, no less.

A (5:48)

Yeah. Then we also in 2016 have an email in which you ask me if I saw some film called Love Song and if you should bother seeing it at Sundance. I apparently did. Do I remember anything about this film?

B (5:59)

I could not tell you a single thing. What that. Okay. Wow.

A (6:03)

It is a movie in which Jenna Malone and Riley Keough are friends who have like a burst of like maybe romantic moments in that.

B (6:11)

And that's screened at Sundance. That doesn't sound like a Sundance movie at all.

A (6:15)

At all. No. But never a quiet kind of like vaguely lesbian and like very kind of non plot driven drama. Yeah, no, that doesn't sound like the kind of thing you would say at that festival at all.

B (6:27)

Yeah, I remember we like maybe it wasn't our first first one on one like drinks, but it was one of the early ones was Cannes probably 2015, maybe 2014 even. And we went to petite Majestic, which for people who don't know which, you know, probably very few people do know is this bar on a little side street in Cannes. It's not on the beach or anything and it's. There is an indoor portion, but it's not like that nice to sit in. So everyone just kind of either sits or stands outside and at it can get really crowded. The whole street is filled in a way that doesn't really happen in the US but we managed to get a table. I think we went kind of earlier in the afternoon, which is sort of my M.O. and it was lovely. And we chatted. And I think that from then on I was like, oh, Alison is not, you know, we're simpatico. We have sort of a similar outlook on things. But also, especially then you knew a way a lot more than me about movies.

A (7:26)

And also despite are being a straight woman and gay man, we became friends. I know a relationship that has hitherto never existed.

B (7:33)

Has there been a Sundance movie about that maybe.

A (7:37)

So I don't remember this, which I think is. I don't know. I would like. I do think also, like, oftentimes people who are in my life just feel like they've always been in my life. Which I realize sounds sweet, but it's actually just an example of how I have, like, the kind of object permanence of one of the dumber bird species. Like, keep me away from your home by hanging, like, you know, some old DVDs on strings outside. Like, oh, it's looking pretty shiny over there. But I will say I have a very strong memory. Another Film Festival Memory, 2018. We went to see Hereditary, which had premiered earlier at the festival. And we had heard it was very scary, this new movie by a guy named Ari Aster. And we're like, well, we got to go see it. One of the last press screenings, it was at like 8:30 in the morning. So we went to this press screening, we saw this wildly terrifying movie. And then we were both like, bye. And I think I got in an Uber to the airport to Lake City, got a flight back. Then I looked at it somehow, went back to New York through Charlotte. Oh, Arrived at midnight, and then definitely lay there in bed with my eyes, like, wide open, running through some of the more disturbing parts of that movie again and again.

B (8:46)

Yeah, that was back when I was. Cause I had taken a long break from horror movies because, like, my sister and I used to watch like every slasher down to like, you know, D, E F grade slasher movies when I was a kid. And then somewhere in like, young adulthood, I went to go see Scream 4 alone. Cause I thought it'd be fun. And the whole time I was just like, these poor kids. They're poor parents. Like, I found it really sad and I couldn't. So I kind of. And then it was also like, all the torture porn stuff. So Hereditary was actually one of the first, like, truly scary horror movies that I saw, like, in a theater in a long time. So I was happy for the moral support, you know.

A (9:23)

Yeah. I mean, that is a movie that.

B (9:24)

That.

A (9:25)

I mean, I love Hereditary. I think it is an incredible horror movie. An incredible movie. But that movie is one of those experiences where, yeah, it was like, just like running on a loop through my brain, even over hours of exhausting travel. This. The same thing happened at another festival setting with. It follows a movie where I was at the Cannes Film Festival.

B (9:44)

That's right.

A (9:44)

And I was like in my hotel room looking out the window, being like, is there anything following me.

B (9:51)

Well, in Cannes, there might have been. Honestly, yeah. Alison, There's a third person involved in Critical Darlings who we should introduce. Now, we're a blank check production. And it is in their bylaws that if you have a podcast on their network, there has to be a producer named Ben. In this case, we have the wonderful Ben Frisch. Ben, hello.

C (10:09)

Hey, how's it going?

B (10:11)

Good. We're happy to have you here.

C (10:12)

I have a question. When did you first get into watching the Oscars? Do you remember? Do you have a first Oscar memory?

B (10:19)

That's a good question. I mean, I've talked about this a bit on Little Gold Men before in the past. Like, my first really significant Oscar viewing experience was 97 because. So the 98 ceremony, because I'd seen every nominee in the theaters, including Titanic. And my mom let us stay up to watch the whole thing, which was not common. It was the first time that had happened. But my first real palpable memory of paying attention to the Oscars was for the 93 movies. Because my sister had seen the Piano. I told this story in blank check. Our babysitter took my sister to the pian and I went to go see the Pelican Brief alone when I was 10 years old and fell in love with a whole different kind of movie. But anyway. But I was keenly aware of what the Piano was. And I think, oh, yeah, Tom Hanks was also in the running for Philadelphia. He ended up winning. And so I just, for some reason, at like 10 years old, I kind of cared about it for the first time. And I distinctly remember opening the front door to the house, walking down the stairs to the sidewalk essentially, and getting the newspaper, the Boston Glob, and then bringing it inside and throwing away the front page in the sports and all that. And finding the arts thing, which had a photo of Holly Hunter holding the Oscar. Cause she had won. And I remember being very excited about that because Holly Hunter was in the movie always, which we owned on VHS.

A (11:43)

Yeah, I remember the 1993 Oscars as well. I don't know when I started watching them. I must have watched them at least in pieces with my parents. But I feel like my stamina was not always there. Also because they didn't go on forever. And these were often movies that I did not see because I was too.

B (12:01)

Young and there were a lot of boring movies for a kid. I mean.

A (12:04)

Yeah, but I did actually the Piano, I think, was one of the first R rated movies I saw in the theater with my parents. Awkward movie to see with your parents. Yeah. You see Arvie's full Keitel in that movie.

B (12:16)

You sure do.

A (12:17)

But I definitely remember that year because, yes, suddenly I felt like I was getting a glimpse into this idea of what not just a movie was, but like this grown up world of this, like prestige, serious, you know, like cinema that was about a lot of things. It was just so aware of. Just like it was trying to do a lot of like, kind of huge serious things. So, yeah, those, you know, those were, Those years were also when I was starting to have formative movie experiences, but like formative suburban Californian movie experiences. So it was very defined by what was either at the Blockbuster Video. Oh, sorry. I was more of a Hollywood video girl, to be honest. And at my local Cineplex, so.

B (13:01)

Well, 93 was also Jurassic park, which was a big deal.

A (13:04)

I saw Jurassic park multiple times. Yeah. As a Bay Area kid. My. My dad worked at a computer company.

B (13:10)

He worked at ingen.

A (13:11)

Yeah, he was. He was like, no, it's fine. It's a foolproof idea.

B (13:15)

Anyway, off to Costa Rica.

C (13:16)

Yeah.

A (13:16)

Dot com boom. You know, it's. Yeah, that's. It was really the collapse of the dinosaur industry that led to the dot com boom. Actually, it's a little known part of the Silicon Valley history.

B (13:26)

Do you still have the house on Isla Nublar?

A (13:29)

You know, we don't go there much on account of all the death, but I think it'll appreciate in value eventually.

C (13:35)

I don't have the same Oscar experience as you guys. I remember the English Patient like, being a movie dude. I've still never seen.

B (13:44)

Oh, you should. It's.

C (13:45)

I have no idea what it's about other than presumably an English Patient, but I remember that being like a movie that's like. Oh, that's like a movie for adults. That's like. But Richard, you said that you had.

B (13:56)

Seen every single movie that was nominated for best picture that year.

C (14:00)

Oh, okay. Just for best picture. So you were going to the movies a lot as a. And your parents, presumably.

A (14:05)

Yeah.

B (14:05)

So, I mean. Well, first of all, funnily enough, the English Patient is actually not about an English Patient.

C (14:11)

Really?

B (14:11)

No, it's a Hungarian person they think is English. But anyway, yeah, so, no, I mean, 93, I was already well into movies. You know, there was a video store that was like my sister and I could walk to it from our house, which, like, really helped matters. We didn't have cable TV until I was 12, I think. So we were big video store rental people and big movie theater people. But for whatever reason, in 97, when I was 14, everything that was not so that would have been Full Monty, Louisiana. Confidential, Titanic, Goodwill Hunting, and, oh, God, I'm forgetting one.

A (14:51)

It's got a little dog in it.

B (14:53)

Oh, my dog, Skip.

A (14:54)

It's.

B (14:55)

Oh, it's good as it gets. Yeah. So all five of those were kind of. My parents were like, we could all four of us go see that together. There's nothing too risk. Yeah, There's Kate Winslet nude and I guess in Full Monty, you know, whatever. But that wasn't. So my parents were. And I was also not like, young young. So that was really exciting. Cause I felt really invested in not just the particular movies, but the sort of narrative of the whole season also because I was two years into a very long and devoted Entertainment Weekly subscription.

A (15:26)

Oh, yeah. I mean, that was a formative publication for sure. I also. I mean, like, the 90s, we were as both, like children of the 90s. It was a time in which you had these movies that were kind of like maybe like, technically being released by, like, art house Arms of, like, large, you know, larger companies were this interesting mix of movies that still felt pretty big, even though they were not considered to be giant commercial enterprises. But that also played at the Cineplex. It was not the way. Now, if I were in San Marone, California, where I grew up, and I do not know how much I would have to drive to go see a HV4 relief release. There's a lot more work.

B (16:15)

That's true. And I was lucky enough to grow up in Boston. So the English Patient year bed was 96. So the year before the Titanic year. And 96 was this kind of source of panic related to the Academy Awards because Jerry Maguire was the only major studio film nominated for Best Picture that year. There were all these indies, including the English Patient, which is kind of funny to think that that's an indie now. They're like, it was Miramax, which was, I think, already owned by Disney at that point. And it's a pretty, you know, sweeping war epic. But it was considered something of an interloper that was disrupting this narrative that, like, only big, you know, loss leader prestige films from studios are supposed to win Best Picture or be nominated for it. But then that was course corrected immediately the next year with Titanic.

C (16:58)

And how do you. How do you remember all of this? Like, do you keep spreadsheets or you.

B (17:01)

Like, I have it all tattooed on my body. Yeah. Like memento. No, I mean, that kind of stuff is like lore. That's Just like seared into my head, I think, because Entertainment Weekly, you know, I think my parents would call it an enabler. But for me, it was an instructor for many years. And those were facts that were just repeated over and over every time something would come up. Usually around Oscar time. But also, like, the fate of the film studio has been a question as long as I've been a fan of movies.

A (17:28)

Yeah, it's funny that that has been like the existential crisis of.

B (17:32)

But now it's solved, everything's fine.

A (17:33)

No, the studios will be fine forever. Nothing bad can ever happen to them again. This also does remind me I had not even realized it got nominated for best picture. But Il Postino was in 1995, when I was in Colle. I used to do psych experiments for money. You would like, go to do a psych experiment and they would do something and then they would be like, actually, we tricked you. What we were really testing is this. And then here's $10.

B (17:58)

Were you in that prison experiment?

A (18:00)

I mean, basically because one of the psych experiments that paid more. I was hooked up to two electrodes and they put headphones on. And then I was watching Il Postino and every once in a while they give me a mild electric shock or blast a loud sound in my ears. They claim that the point of this experiment was to see how well I could find follow the movie while getting interrupted by mild electric shocks. But I feel like there was something else weirder going on that they never told me about. Maybe it wasn't a psych experiment at all. Maybe this was just some test screening.

B (18:28)

Yeah, that was.

C (18:29)

What is Il Pastino.

B (18:31)

It was an Italian film, right. That became one of the rare then foreign language films to make its way into regular Oscar consideration. The actor who was already dead got nominated for best actor. It was like a big, like, art house sensation that rode this raft of like, you know, popular kind of esteem to break through, which rarely happened back then.

A (18:59)

But I never finished it because I died of mild electric shock halfway through.

B (19:02)

Wait, when. When did you do the experiment?

A (19:05)

I was an undergrad, so this was.

B (19:06)

So, like, the movie was already, well, like, old by then.

A (19:09)

Yeah, it was like it. So I.

B (19:11)

So why that movie?

A (19:12)

I have never. I've never found out.

B (19:15)

Wait, so some. Somewhere there is published in an obscure scientific journal by Dr. Victor Frankenstein, there is an Il Postino related psychological study about distraction?

A (19:26)

I guess so. And they just brought in a lot of undergrads and we're just shocking them.

B (19:30)

I'm like, that's Incredible.

A (19:33)

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I really should have asked a few more questions about this, but at the time, I mean, it paid, I think, like, $30, which felt like an enormous amount of money. And so it was mostly very psychedelic about how many, you know, pints of beer and hamburgers I could have.

B (19:47)

Yeah, that's true. Have either of you ever been to, like, an actual, like. Like one of those test screenings where they. You, like, give feedback?

A (19:52)

No, I feel like. I mean, I. I would never get invited, but also, I. I just. I don't know why I would think I was so important. I just imagine someone being like you.

B (20:01)

Yeah.

A (20:02)

Member of the media and, like, get. Getting tossed out, you know, like, tumbling head over heels.

B (20:06)

Well, I know a couple people who have tried to pretend they aren't members of the media so they can see something like eight months early. And then they kind of got found out and it became an issue.

A (20:14)

Oh, yeah.

C (20:14)

So you haven't either?

B (20:16)

No, I never. I mean, I think when I was a. When I was a kid, I would have probably, like, pushed my sister down a flight of stairs to get into one of those things. But I. I mean, I'm sure they had them in Boston, but they weren't. They probably weren't common, so.

A (20:28)

Yeah, no, I would really like to do one. Didn't they used to have ones where you'd have a dial and you'd be like, this is working for me. And you just.

B (20:34)

I believe so.

A (20:35)

And then be like. Yes. And then be like.

B (20:37)

It is parodied on the Simpsons. So I'm assuming they were getting it from somewhere.

A (20:39)

Yeah, I would have loved to do that.

B (20:42)

Oh, I know. The good old days now. And now it's probably just, like, tweet reactions.

A (20:46)

Yeah. Or they hook you up to mild electric shock.

B (20:49)

Yeah.

A (20:49)

Yeah. They're like, you're not laughing hard enough. Try harder to like this movie.

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B (23:33)

So yeah. So our movie fandom, both our movie fandoms began early. Our Oscar consciousness started early. Did it did either fade for you at any point like in college or after college? Because I took a big detour into theater for several years.

A (23:49)

I always liked movies but I will say also I feel like I have a more, a more distance relationship with awards than say you do or, or David Sims. I, I have, I watch them but I feel like, for me, the most interesting part of them is not necessarily even like, who's gonna win or not, but like, just the kind of, like what it says about what Hollywood thinks about. Of itself from year to year is really interesting to me. Like that.

B (24:21)

Yeah. And also I think it's sometimes interesting looking at, like, more recent best picture winners, let's say, and seeing, okay, this is what Hollywood thought it was saying about itself. But here's actually what it indicated, you know, like Green Book, for example, or, you know, something like that. So it is like, you know, it's an imperfect measuring stick by a lot of, you know, in a lot of ways. But there is something of value to, I don't know, assessing the mood of a given year. And even if someone like you or like a lot of film fans are just, like, not really into awards or actually some are really vehemently against them, which I totally get. I've just happened to stay kind of more pro awards my whole, well, now career, I guess. But I don't know, I don't love it when people say they have no sort of cultural significance or value because, like, they. They might be diminishing, but they. It does exist.

A (25:14)

Yeah. I also, of course, feel much more invested in awards when I personally get to influence them, you know, so, like, when like, one of the littler awards comes up and I was like, would you like to be on our committee this year? I'm always like, yes. Even though that's a lot of work for nothing, because I would like to feel more powerful.

B (25:30)

Yeah. I mean, I've definitely been. Yeah, I've had that. My hands on that power a couple times too. And it's pretty. It's, you know, like, it's heady. But it also, I think really instructively. And maybe this will come to bear as we continue to talk about this season throughout, you know, in the next few weeks. But, like, it also reminded me of how sort of arbitrary it all is and, like. Cause there's sometimes when I'm going to vote for something and I haven't really made a game plan and I'm just kind of deciding on the fly. And it's like, oh, right. That. That's definitely. You know, a significant portion of the Academy is filling their ballot out that way.

A (26:01)

Sure.

B (26:02)

You know, like, what am I into this morning, basically?

A (26:04)

Yeah.

B (26:05)

So, you know, so I think the long games definitely, like, the campaigns definitely help, but also it can be a whim. And so you never really know ultimately what the. How it shook out.

A (26:14)

Yeah. And I Feel like there is this fascinating, like, social dynamic there as well, which is that you are watching reflections of an industry, but you are also watching reflections of a whole group of people who are. See each other as colleagues, but also there's like, an enormous, like, power gradient right amongst them. And I think that the ways in which people who are voting are part of this industry, but also fans of this industry or also, like, begrudge this industry. I mean, those are all, like, totally unpredictable, you know, currents that ultimately affect people's votes.

C (26:49)

Do you feel like a responsibility as critics to serve as sort of mediators in some way of the awards generally, or the awards season? You know, when you're growing up and reading Variety or whatever, those writers were presumably influencing you. Do you feel like that sort of responsibility for young film, Brazilian film, Twitter or whatever?

A (27:13)

Well, first of all, Ben, do you know what a Variety subscription costs? I was not just, like, swimming in money that I could get a kind of professional.

C (27:22)

How much is a Variety?

A (27:24)

It was quite expensive, I think. Yeah.

B (27:26)

You were getting like a. Was it like a. Yeah, like this? Sometimes you were. Well, in the old days, you were getting a daily print issue.

A (27:31)

Yeah.

B (27:32)

Oh, wow. And then now it's weekly, I think.

A (27:34)

And also it's, like, priced in that way. That is assuming your company is paying for it and then you are expensing it. So.

B (27:40)

Yeah, like a Getty subscription.

A (27:42)

Yeah. I don't know how many members of the public actually get Variety. I'm sure they are hoping to get more members of the public to do that. But, yeah, I think, like, the actual subscription, I would love to be, like. That would be such a great weirdo origin story for me to be. Like, I was 12 years old and I told my parents that I needed several hundred.

C (28:00)

So it's like a Bloomberg, right?

B (28:01)

A bit.

A (28:02)

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

C (28:03)

I had no idea.

A (28:04)

Yeah. But I mean. And now these days, I'm sure it doesn't work like that in the same way, but, yeah, I feel like my responsibility as a critic is only just a comment on them. Like, I don't feel. I mean, I guess in theory we could have some kind of input on there, but, like, I don't have any way of gauging that. And I don't really set out to try and do that, you know, to be like, I can make a case for this. If I'm gonna make a case for, like, I. You know, like, last year I wrote a piece about how much I thought Marianne Jean Baptiste should get an Oscar nomination, and that worked really well. Of course, yeah, they instantly nominated her. Of course. But I think that's just more me wanting to write about that performance that I, you know, I hadn't had I gotten a chance to write about it. And I just thought she was so incredible. So I think that's more how I approach it is. I don't really have any input here, but I will comment on it in the same way that I am also commenting on the movies.

B (29:04)

I think that, like, ideally I would say the same thing, but the reality is that, like, the bulk of my film criticism career, -2,3 years, was at Vanity Fair. And that magazine is very closely tied to the Oscars and that we, you know, there's a big afterparty that every year that is, you know, very like, well attended events and other things throughout the season. And, you know, and I did an awards podcast. And so inevitably, not that I was writing reviews with awards in mind necessarily, but I think a lot of times how those reviews were packaged, like, how they were headlined, what the, like the subhead was where it arrived in the year, like usually from a film festival. That's sort of an Oscar precursor. Like, I think inevitably my reviews tended to get rolled up in that, you know, maybe more so than other publications that are a little bit, just a tiny bit further away from the Oscars. But I don't think that I was. When I would sit down to write that, that was top of mind. I was able to keep that hat on. And then if an editor wanted me to write something specifically Oscar focused, like, who are the front runners this year? I could put the other hat on.

A (30:18)

Okay, hopefully. Did Leonardo DiCaprio always come to the party? Would they, like, cancel the party if he couldn't come?

B (30:25)

That's a great question. I've only went to the Oscar party twice in 12 years because they were.

A (30:29)

Not like, please, Vanity Fairstaffers come to the party.

B (30:32)

They were like, yeah, no, I had to. No, I had to work, but I had to do. I had to do live stream on camera hits of both times. That was why I was there. I do remember a Leo VF party story, though, involving can. So one year he used to come to that party whenever he was in town. And I was at that same party one year and Leo came and he was in like. And it's not black tie, it's like Mediterranean cocktail chic. He shows up in like shorts and a baseball cap and a T shirt, which, like, whatever.

A (31:04)

Yeah, Leonardo DiCaprio.

B (31:06)

He wasn't coming from a premiere. I think he had just Rolled down the hill at the Hotel du Cap, like, from his room, like, to the pool deck party. He sat, stood in a corner smoking, or maybe he was vaping. Complained that the music wasn't cool enough. Because it's like, it was our DJ Mateo, who always DJs at the parties, and it's for, like, an older set. It's, like, lively and fun, but it's not like Cha Cha Slide. It's Cha Cha Slide. It's straight for four hours. They just played on the loop. But I guess DiCaprio complained that the music wasn't cool enough. I think he wanted more something with the beat. Maybe some hip hop or something. Eventually, he decided to just round up every young woman at the party and leave with them, like, Pied Piper style.

A (31:46)

Yeah. I would imagine that he could just kind of, like, hold up a sign, you know, like a poor guy, and then.

B (31:51)

And they all got on his bus and drove into the night. Yeah. But I don't think. I don't think I remember seeing Leo at the actual Oscar party. I think mostly because I wasn't really supposed to talk to, like, even, like, really, like, notice talent at those things. But you couldn't help but standing five feet away from Oprah, talking to Jane Fonda, talking to Steven Spielberg, talking to Anita Hill. Jeff Bezos is standing behind them like a weirdo. Joni Mitchell being there a couple times when I was there was pretty amazing. But anyway, see, this is what I'm saying is that a job at VF is inherently more tied to that stuff than is another critic job somewhere else. So I was probably always a little compromised.

A (32:30)

Yeah. Whereas I feel like I'm mostly just attached, like a remora to award season as it swims by, you know, gaining its nutrients. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's, I guess what you could call it when I do a moderate a Q and A for, you know, an award screening.

B (32:43)

Yeah.

A (32:44)

That is me getting some delicious krill or whatever.

B (32:48)

But in terms of responsibility to younger readers, I do think that. I don't know if I don't know who the younger readers are, because I feel like they're all kind of having conversations with themselves. And they're on letterboxd and they're on film Twitter and so mean.

A (33:00)

They're so incredibly mean.

B (33:01)

And a lot of them are speaking Portuguese, so. Ben, do you know about Brazilian film Twitter?

C (33:06)

I've only heard tell. I would love for you to explain.

B (33:09)

It's probably the funniest and most heartening, in a way, phenomenon that's sprouted. Up in recent film memory for me in that it first became apparent when Allison and I would vote for the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, which are announced during one weekday, category by category as we vote, and the responses on Twitter to each one. With each passing year, it's just more and more people, like, from Brazil who seem young and they're like, if there's a Brazilian film in the mix, forget about it. But they're also die hard fans of American actors or British, whoever, and they just all have their horses that they're rooting for. They can be kind of nasty, but they're for the most part really enthusiastic. And it seems like there are thousands of them.

A (33:53)

Yeah. And they will all also. It's like when you. You like, happen to step on the edge of a stan war, you know, and you're like, oh, these people are already involved in like so many layers of deep of lore about the fights that they're having and the battles on behalf of their respective teams. I can't even understand what they're upset about. But then you will be like, oh, we gave the prize, you know, for best cinematography to this. And they'll be like raging in the response they have. Really start right. You're like, I don't know what they're so upset about. I didn't. I thought this was just good cinematography. I do love that. I feel like there are other pockets of international film Twitter.

B (34:30)

Yeah.

A (34:30)

Oh, yeah, yeah. There was one year where there are a bunch of kind of like people in the Philippines, basically. Philippines were just, like, deeply invested and also like, very displeased and, and, and scornful of our picks. And I was like, I accept it, I appreciate it. But yeah, I don't know, I love the idea that there are just whole enormous pockets of international Twitters that are just wildly invested in like, kind of whatever horse race is going on in whatever category of the Oscars, you know, we're heading.

B (35:01)

Yeah. So we're doing this podcast for them.

A (35:03)

Yeah.

B (35:03)

Solely for them. Yeah. This will be AI translated into Portuguese, I'm hoping. Although they all seem to speak very good English. But yeah, it's a funny phenomenon and I say heartening because, like, you know, there are big questions about the future of film and right now and to young people. Well, actually it does turn out that young people are going to movies more than older people, actually. But. But you know, when you see something like last year where I'm still here, a Brazilian movie was up for a bunch of awards and it won one and Then there's video of the Oscars being projected on the side of a church. I think it was in Rio or Sao Paulo. And there's a huge crowd like that would, you know, typically the size of crowd would be watching football or something, cheering as it wins and like partying in the streets. And it's like, I really wish we could, you know, kind of take an inspiration in America to that sort of film culture, which I think we've lost, if we ever had it at all.

A (35:55)

Yeah, well, I mean, maybe it'll happen again this year. The Secret Agent, which is full My Love, is definitely gaining momentum in ways that I would not have expected when I first saw it at Cannes. So who knows? Maybe we'll have another season of.

B (36:13)

Yeah, I mean, but I have to confess, I saw the Secret Agent at Cannes. I should maybe put the word saw in quotes because I was jet lagged. That movie can be a little slow.

A (36:21)

And it was like a later screening. I feel like it's where you run out of steam.

B (36:26)

And I was not dead asleep, but I was slipping in and out of lucid consciousness pretty much the whole run. So I didn't review it. I've been kind of. I was kind of quiet about it all summer when people talked about like potential awards movies because I was like, I don't really feel like I've seen that movie. I finally rewatched it in New York with some sleep, and I did really like it, but I apparently had absorbed less of it than I thought because I walked out of it and I said to my friend, I was like, oh, so he wasn't a spy. My memory was that he had been some sort of actual secret agent. And it turns out he's not really. I mean, they do kind of like a.

A (37:05)

They kind of like, like set him up like he's going to be. And then it becomes something more complicated to explain. I will say my version of this movie was leviathan, like a 2014 Russian film.

B (37:15)

Oh, I remember that. Yeah.

A (37:16)

Like, I remember. I went. It was at Cannes. And I remember sitting down, it started and my eyes just kind of. And then I spent the whole thing, like kind of lurching back into consciousness like every few minutes. And there's something would be happening and there would be like, you know, very upset Russian people talking to each other. And then there was like bones of a whale. And then it was over.

B (37:34)

And I was like, sounds right.

A (37:35)

Whoops. Yeah.

B (37:37)

My first can. We didn't know what we were doing. And so we. I flew in late and Left early and it was just a whole debacle. But I remember getting into town, putting my suitcase down, going to get my badge. We were staying, you know, two miles away, which was really stupid. And we didn't, you know, so we're walk. I was walking back and forth all the time anyway. The first movie that I could have seen was Winter Sleep, the three plus hour Turkish movie. And I was. I at least had the presence of mind to be like, I think that's maybe not the best thing to see right now. Just based on the title alone. As my first movie at Cannes, it.

C (38:11)

Sounds like going to festivals like that is just a marathon. And I'm curious about how from a filmmaker or director standpoint, how they're thinking about like, when do I premiere my movie? Obviously I don't think they have. They don't get to choose their time slot necessarily. But in terms of like, why do you premiere some things at certain festivals? How does that whole system work?

B (38:36)

I think people attack it from different angles of thought. You know, I mean, from my perspective, it is a total. It can be a grind, you know, I mean, it's also a privilege and it's really fun to be at those festivals. I have in recent years started to question whether or not I was doing the right thing by like turning around really quick reviews from festivals because many times I would reassess later with when I had more time to think and feel very differently about it. So that's from my critical perspective. But from a studio's perspective or a filmmaker's, it could kick off an awards campaign which is germane to what we're talking about on the show. It shores something up with good reviews. Hopefully it's a risk because it can sink it too. But it's really the most high profile way with the most amount of journalists and the most amount of everyone else there. Photographers, all that to premiere a film. And it also is prestigious and the filmmakers care about that prestige. To walk the Cannes red carpet, to get the standing ovation there or at Venice or wherever, it means something to them. And also there is a way to game when what time slot you get at a festival. If you just say, if you have big talent, you just say, well, they're only available on Saturday evening. So if you want the stars on the red carpet, it has to be the big Saturday night premiere slot.

A (39:50)

Oh, that's smart. Yeah. I mean, sometimes they also really only have that like highest to lowest premiered at Cannes this year. And Denzel Washington was on Broadway at the time, so they had this window of when the night the show was dark. They basically, as soon as he did his previous show, I think they put him on a plane. He slept on the plane, walked the red carpet, got back on a plane back in New York.

B (40:13)

Did Broadway.

A (40:13)

Yeah, did Broadway. So sometimes, yeah, you really just wrestle over getting your talent there. But I would say, I would say that most films, I'm not sure how many films turn down Cannes. I think if you're ready in time for Cannes, you go to Cannes because it is the glitziest, it is the most prestigious. It is not the one that is closest to awards festival or awards season. But I think lately it has proven a better launch. It is absolutely possible to. You get well received there and then it's fine. You can carry momentum across all the way through into fall because you can.

C (40:48)

Premiere at Cannes and then release the movie six or eight months later.

B (40:52)

You premiere at Cannes, you kind of lie dormant all summer. Maybe your film plays at one of the smaller European regional festivals. Then you can resurface at New York Film Festival or Toronto and restart the kind of awards campaign with.

A (41:04)

And then open in theaters.

B (41:05)

And then open in theaters with even more glowing reviews, kind of. Whatever. And as the Academy has gotten more international, it's no surprise that Cannes become so much more relevant on that front. Because if you look back, even 10 years ago, there was usually one Cannes movie that was a Best Picture contender. But nowadays, I mean, yes, they've expanded to 10 nominees and best Picture, sure. But nowadays it can be upwards of five, which is crazy.

C (41:31)

How French is Cannes?

B (41:33)

Pretty French.

A (41:33)

It's very French.

C (41:34)

I mean, are you, you're not having to like, get around in French?

B (41:39)

I try and then they say no and respond to me in English.

A (41:43)

The most French thing about the festival is that they tier all of the press members into a selection of like color coded badges that indicate basically how powerful they see you as. And it determines the order in which you get into screenings and the order in which some screenings that you can only access. And so it is like a giant psych experiment without the electroshock, as far as I know. But it is one in which people torture themselves over their status that they've been granted by the festival. And that feels to me wildly French in a way that I appreciate, you know?

B (42:20)

Yeah. I mean, I'm the kind of person who, as much as I complain about how rigid and horrible can, can be and look, they all, they do genuinely bad things. Like they're, they can be pretty racist and, you know, and Sexist and all that stuff. But their formality can be appreciated in a way where I go to, like, Toronto or Sundance, so a North American festival, and I get kind of annoyed by the earnest volunteers who were just kind of, like, happy to have a headset and a clipboard, and you're just like, bring back the uniformed French people who are just, like, stern and organized.

A (42:51)

And usually wearing some very stylish uniform, too. Yeah. I also, you know, Cannes is the only festival where I've seen people get into a physical shoving match over trying to see a Jia Jianke documentary about factory workers in China. And I feel like you cannot.

B (43:07)

That's how we met.

A (43:08)

That's what it is. I said I was sorry for knocking you down the stairs, Richard.

C (43:13)

But is there a correlation between, like, doing well at Cannes and then winning Best Picture or being nominated for Best Picture?

B (43:20)

There didn't really used to be. To be honest, like, it was rare that a Palme d' or winner was even an Oscar player, you know, because.

A (43:26)

It was usually too arthouse or too international or.

B (43:28)

Yeah, but now that has changed. I mean, Honora won Best Picture at the Oscars at 1 Palme d'Or at Cannes. This year's Palme d' or winner. It was just an accident. The Jafar Panahi film from Iran. I have that on my best picture 10 list right now. I think it's really good. It's one of the best movies of the year, and I think it's a contender. So. Yeah, something has shifted, Ben. And it's just, like, now that I think. Also, it's not just that the Academy has gotten more international and thus, and also the Internet audience has. Movies have kind of crossed borders more easily. Whatever. I think it's also just that Hollywood isn't really putting out enough awards y movies to fill 10 best picture slots anymore.

A (44:10)

Yeah. Like, the kind of version, more recent version of the, oh, my God, these movies are too small. No one will care crisis has been. Yeah. When you have, like, a few Sundance movies. Right. Like, movies or. I mean, it won, but, like, Coda is like, yeah, that was an anomalous year, but obvious. But, like, that's, like, not the kind of movie that they see themselves wanting to build the Oscars on, you know, it's just. It's too small to support the Oscars.

C (44:38)

I watched the Fugitive the other day.

B (44:41)

The Harrison Ford Fugitive.

A (44:43)

Yeah.

C (44:43)

And I didn't realize that that had been nominated for Best Picture.

B (44:46)

Yeah. And that was a rare occurrence back then for something like that to get in there. But it was such a phenomenon and well enough made that and I guess probably Tommy Lee Jones and eventually winning the Oscar definitely I think helped that movie's momentum overall. But I guess like Unforgiven had been the year before, right?

A (45:03)

Yeah. I feel like it's easy to think that the dynamics that we deal with now were always the dynamics with regard to like something being too pop, being too commercial, being too this and that. But yeah, they're always being reshaped. And I should point out, like we've just talked about the festival circuit a lot but like you don't have to go to the festivals to, you know, like one battle after another is not a festival movie. Sinners is not a festival movie. And they are both, you know, they in addition to being enormous kind of commercial. Well, we can debate how enormous commercial hit one battle after another.

B (45:37)

We're not accountants.

A (45:38)

Yes. You know, it certainly made more money than most of the can.

B (45:42)

It made more money than I make in a year. So that's saying something.

A (45:53)

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C (45:54)

Yes.

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Yep. The last thing I'd want to do.

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C (47:31)

Is there a continuity between the types of movies that win Palme d' or that go on to win Best Picture, like Anora or Parasite? I think.

B (47:41)

Well, Anora and Parasite are really entertaining. For one thing, they're propulsive. Parasite's kind of genre. That probably helps. You know, I mean, this year's Palme d' or winner, the Iranian film, is among Iranian new wave movies. One of the more propulsive, plot driven kind of movies that come out of that film movement. So I think it benefits from that if there's some extra hook. I mean, Anora's English language and you know, from an American director. So that. But I don't know, but it feels like there has to be a little bit of extra juice to get.

A (48:17)

Yeah, and I feel like you are right, Richard, in that what you said, where I feel like part of this is not even necessarily the kind of greater footprint of international films and is more just like the falling away of Hollywood offerings. Right, right.

B (48:30)

Yeah. Like if we were getting two Philadelphias and three Forrest Gumps and whatever, in any given year, we would be having a very different conversation. But, like, those movies just aren't coming out. I mean, if we wanna talk more broadly about this year, as an example of all of this strangeness, I do think right now number 10 on my best Picture predictions is Weapons. Because I think that maybe Hollywood wants to claw back a little bit of their Oscar position and say, let's get more of our movies on these lists. And yes, it's a horror movie and yes, there's a Crazy Witch lady in it, but we kind of wanna nominate the Crazy Witch Lady. And so the screenplay's pretty good. And so why don't we just nominate the movie as a whole because it's another Hollywood triumph, you know, versus one of these damn Furner movies.

A (49:17)

Yeah, I also. It's a good movie. I like Weapons. I love if Weapons was nominated for Best Picture.

B (49:22)

I just think this year, out of many, like, like there is a tension between traditional Hollywood Oscar fare and the kind of new Oscar fare being like, can movies or whatever and the company that, you know, the two. The two major American companies that are sort of propping up the American side of the narrative, ironically, are Netflix and Warner Brothers, which are trying to get married and have babies. And I don't know if I want them to get married and have babies. But, you know, Warner Brothers has weapons. It has one battle. It has sinners. Netflix has J. Kelly and Frankenstein and I guess House of Dynamite, but not really That's Train Dreams. Like, so that's kind of the story, I think, of Best Picture this year at least, is like, on the American side is these two companies that are trying to merge are the only ones really producing the stuff that keeps the Americans in the race at all.

A (50:16)

Yeah, well, it's also. It's funny that Warner Brothers has had all these wild card movies, you know, these, like, really bold, original films, these, like, big swings of movies. And Netflix, with all of these resources, its slate of awards films, all of which sound great on paper.

B (50:33)

Yeah.

A (50:33)

Kind of fizzled out, aside from, I guess, Train Dreams, which is one they acquired and now they seem to be kind of pinning all their hopes on.

B (50:41)

And I don't mean to discount a 24, which has Marty supreme and Neon, you know, which acquires a lot of those Cannes films. They are an American company, so there's a lot of American interest involved past Netflix and Warner Brothers, but I don't know, that seems to be the big narrative. And speaking of going to festivals and whether it's worth it or not, I think one of the main stories of this year, Oscar wise, is, like, how unreliable festival reaction was. Because if you would talk to me out of Cannes, I'd be like, I think it was a pretty weak year. I saw maybe the sentimental value from Norway that probably has some decent Oscar chances, but past that, I don't really know. I'm saying a very different thing six months later, because I had a chance to see movies where I wasn't sleeping during them and stuff like that, catch up on stuff I missed. And. And then, you know, Venice, that was where all of Netflix's big movies premiered, and they kind of fizzled there. But then J. Kelly seems to have gotten a sort of, like, change of heart campaign, and ditto Frankenstein. And so I think this year has been really marked by a lot of up and down unpredictability.

A (51:49)

Yeah, I feel like also Venice is. I don't know, it's the place where you're supposed to be able to do a big glitzy launch of your festival film now or your fall film. And the stars go there, There are boats, you know, there are parties on islands. But it still has a smaller set of American press, like, in particular than Cannes. And then a lot of festivals, because, you know, it's Venice. It's a. It's a trek to get there.

B (52:18)

Although Secret is cheaper to go to Venice than go to Telluride.

A (52:21)

Yeah. But because of that, I think it creates a sense that there's a bit More of a bubble there.

B (52:27)

Yeah.

A (52:27)

And this year in particular, I saw people writing about how, oh, you'd hear about, like, every movie there, you know, getting seven minute standing ovation, 14 minutes standing ovation. And then when it actually plays here, everyone's like, huh, Her.

B (52:41)

Her. Yeah, well, I was, you know, I was one of the people, I'm embarrassed to say, but it's. It's. It's historical record. Speaking of the Venice bubble, I was one of the people who. On the water bus home from the Lido to the main city of Venice, where I was staying, starting to write my review on. On my phone, I genuinely worried if the movie Joker could incite violence, because that was what everyone was saying after that first screening. And I was like, I kind of. I see it. Like, I believe them. And so I didn't, like, actually say that the movie was dangerous, but I just sort of, you know, rubbed my hands together with worry and sort of said, oh, could this movie do something bad? And then Joker, I think it next played at Toronto like, a week or so, not even a week later. And everyone there who was seeing it anew was like, what the fuck were you talking. You guys are such dorks.

C (53:27)

Is it because maybe you're seeing these movies in these Europe, these, like, glitzy European settings? I don't know. Would it be different if you just, like, saw it at a mall?

B (53:36)

100%. Because it's not just that, like, you're in a different setting, and it's that that different setting costs money to be there and a lot of effort to get there, and you're burning the candle at both ends, and you want all of these things to be significant. You know, you want them to be glorious masterpieces or troubling visions of, you know.

C (53:53)

So you wanted Joker to.

B (53:56)

I think subconsciously I wanted Joker to be a reckless and irresponsible movie. Yes, I did. I mean, I wouldn't have ever said that out loud, but, like, I think in hindsight, we all sort of went there. I mean, the Reddit people are gonna go insane if they. But I don't. I don't. There was not a conspiracy to call Joker dangerous, I promise you. What I mean is that subconsciously we'd. That pump had already been primed by a lot of press leading up to the premiere that, oh, it's about incels, it's about this, it's about school shooters, it's about that. That. That was definitely in the back of some of our minds. And when we saw the movie, it seemed I thought it was well enough made that it seemed to confirm that. And thus, you know, but had I seen it a couple weeks later when all the stakes weren't as high, I probably would have felt very different about it.

A (54:41)

I can't believe we've blown this conspiracy wide open.

B (54:43)

I know. I'm gonna get us in so much trouble.

A (54:45)

Yeah, well, I think also, I think that Richard's point, though, like, you want these movies to be major whether they're good or bad. Like, the worst thing is being like, oh, I flew, you know, thousands of miles away and am sleeping three hours a night and like, churning out all of these reviews of movies that no one will ever care about. And there are certain festivals where I have kind of lost interest in going because I felt increasingly like I am doing this for movies that are not going to have. Most of which are not going to have a major footprint.

B (55:17)

Yeah.

C (55:17)

But when you're watching these movies, in your mind, are you like, this performance feels best supporting?

B (55:22)

Are you like, oh, I am.

A (55:23)

I am not.

B (55:24)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm. Because I'm VF Brained. And. And also just like me brained. That's. And like, you know, Kyle Buchanan, who is a kind of. He writes about awards for the New York Times. Like, that's a fun sort of post screening game for us. But that's not, number one, the number one reason why I'm seeing these movies. But it can be a fun little side convo.

A (55:45)

Yeah, yeah.

B (55:46)

I don't know.

A (55:46)

I mean, it's also like you are the first audiences seeing something. And so I do feel like the more a film kind of has this journey and plays for different audiences in different contexts, the more it is kind of freed up from the pressure of being like, you have to decide where this film exists in the world. Right. Because there are a lot of different people who have a lot of different opinions on where it exists in the world. Whereas when it's brand new and all you know about it are the kind of like, little stories that have gone up or sometimes nothing at all. Sometimes you are sitting down to a movie where you're like. Like, I know basically nothing about what this is going to be. And that's exciting. But I think it also means that you are just like, you're like, you know, footprints in fresh snow, basically, and later everyone else will trudge over them and what you say will matter. Nothing at all.

B (56:36)

Well, and I had, for the first time in a long time, I sort of had more of the civilian experience this year with a lot of these movies because, you know, I lost my job in August. I had to cancel my trip to Venice. So that meant I wasn't at the first audience for J. Kelly or for House of Dynamite or for Frankenstein or for Hamnet. And I didn't really have a chance to catch up with many of those in Toronto because I had other assignments to do for freelance stuff. And so there were maybe half a third of a lot of the big awards movies of the season, at least from the American side of things, that I saw either at a much later festival or sort of on my own, and had very different reactions to it because, again, the stakes were so low. And I found that really instructive, actually, if less exciting. That's the thing that is the trade off is you don't get all the pomp and circumstance, but maybe it makes you a better assessor of Frankenstein being terrible.

C (57:40)

Can I ask about two categories in particular that have always sort of confused me?

B (57:43)

Yes.

C (57:45)

Best Foreign Film and Best Animated Feature. What are the rules around those movies being eligible for Best Picture as well?

B (57:55)

Anything is eligible for Best Picture, as long as it's a feature that played for a certain amount, which is a short amount of time in the United States theatrically.

C (58:02)

But wasn't there some rule about Best Animated stuff not being eligible?

B (58:08)

I don't think so. Because, like, Beauty the Beast was nominated for Best picture. Toy Story 3 was nominated for Best Picture. Up was nominated. So there have been. That has happened in the past. It just doesn't happen often, I think because of a bias against the form.

A (58:23)

Yeah. I mean, like, it's a joke. Almost every year when they introduce that category. The Oscars are like animation. It's the thing we show to our children over and over again, and every animator in the audience is like, thank you so much for that.

C (58:35)

What are the odds that we get, like, a Chainsaw man or something?

B (58:41)

I think that we'd have to have all of film Twitter vote on the Oscars for that to happen. I think that the animated category is in a kind of weird position right now, because this year in particular was not great for animation, at least the mainstream American studio animation.

A (59:00)

But at the same time, you have K Pop Demon Hunters, which is a legit phenomenon and, like, barely should.

B (59:07)

It shouldn't technically qualify, though, because it didn't release theatrically. It went onto Netflix first, but it. But they kind of grandfathered them in. Right, like, for some reason. Yeah, because they want golden to be performed at the Oscars, which I don't blame them. I I too want that to happen.

A (59:20)

But yeah, yeah, it's.

B (59:22)

And.

A (59:22)

And then otherwise I don't know. I mean, I think the thing is with. It is true like to your point, I think Ben, you make a really good point which is like the, the biggest animated films of the year aside from like, you know, K Pop, Demon Hunters and like, I don't even know which.

C (59:36)

Zootopia.

A (59:37)

Yeah, Zootopia 2. The kind of like sequels to the established kind of franchises that are more aimed at children. The biggest animated films of the year have been these anime films that have been screened mostly as like kind of fathom event style screenings. Like event screenings and that are often like a feature film continuation of a hugely successful series. Series. Right. And it really is a whole other universe of animation and movie going because it is like all of these people who have already been really invested in these characters and in this world getting to get together and see something in person, you know, as a group in this like kind of, I don't know, communal setting. I feel like most of those movies are just like totally opaque to the average Academy viewer who has not, you know, already watched some of that series.

C (60:26)

Describe for me the average Academy viewer. You mentioned Amelia earlier.

B (60:30)

Yeah, that's Kyle Buchanan's construction. That a vast portion of the Academy who votes are the sort of under regarded males of West LA. Just guys in their 70s who've been in the industry a long time live in their little bubble in Santa Monica or wherever and have pretty conventional taste one could say. And I think that they're probably not the guys who are or and gals who were going out to these like you know, FYC events and you know, being you know, wined and dined. I mean some of them get definitely go. But I think that's the voter that we know is out there but is very hard to access in terms of like what they think. Yeah, exactly.

A (61:12)

Yeah. Well, I think also there is an interesting phenomenon where a lot of like younger viewers of film and television have tastes that are maybe like. Like be becoming more interesting and like animation skewing and international skewing thanks to streaming.

B (61:30)

Right.

A (61:31)

Like they're kind of outstripping what the average Mel might be interested in, you know, might what they might even think about viewing. Whereas you know, a lot of people who are younger who are watching like all of these anime series on streaming are watching foreign language television shows which is something that was like, you know, now is like so widespread and was just like not available for so much of. Yeah, you know, like My growing up. And I think that really normalizes a lot of interest in things that an older Academy member might not even consider, you know, as important.

B (62:08)

I also think that there's a question of film grammar and storytelling grammar, where, like, a lot of stuff from East Asia, let's say, is just following a sort of different storytelling rubric than people in the United States. You know, Western people are used to maybe. And you see that, like, in anime, you see something like Parasyte, which kind of, like, very successfully merges a sort of. Sort of traditions of storytelling, how to kind of lay out a plot. You know, you see something this year, like, no other choice. The Park Chan Wook film, which I think is trying. Is not trying to do that quite as much. It's a little bit harder to kind of parse. I also think that, like, Secret Agent from Brazil is also sort of challenging an American understanding of how a story like that is supposed to be lit, laid out, and told. Younger audiences, who are more steeped in international stuff, I think kind of already have that wired into them. They can parse a story from anywhere around the world. But I think older voters are like, wait, but I don't understand why this plot didn't show me X event happening and just only made us infer that it happened in the way that I find. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Allison, but, like, I feel like a lot of Chinese and Korean cinema and Japanese cinema to a lesser extent, like, aren't gonna hold your hand through every single matter of the plot, whereas I think an American film does.

C (63:31)

I mean, at some point, does the Academy kind of have to recognize that stuff? If only because Demon Slayer came out this year and is the highest grossing foreign film ever?

B (63:43)

I think they're gonna start looking pretty irrelevant if they don't.

A (63:46)

I think it's also the fact that the way a lot of those anime films work as, like, a feature film spin off of a series makes. Puts them in their own kind of unusual category, because I do think most of the viewers of that are ones who saw this show, right? Like, I've kept up with the series in some way, and I feel like it's a lot harder to be, like, you're an academy member, and you're like, oh, I got the screener for this thing, you know, like. And then do you start, like, is it. How. How good an experience is it watching that if you have no idea what, what. What, you know, the franchise is? I don't know. But I also think I, like, Like, it can also depend on, like, how mainstream these international films are meant to be as well, you know, But I think, I don't know, I, I, I feel like we are seeing audiences that are getting exposed to more of the fact that, like, there are different, there are different things allowed tonally, especially in different international cinemas.

B (64:46)

I think that that's true. Tone.

A (64:47)

Yeah, I, I, I happened to moderate a Q and A speaking of my Remora career. Moderate a Q and A with Jafar Panahi for, you know, it was just an accident. And he was talking about how audiences in the U.S. laugh at that movie a lot more, I think, which is a movie that I think is a very solid streak of, like, dark comedy in it. But they laugh at that movie a lot more than, say, when he took it to Japan and people were, like, silent, they did not kind of think it was funny at all. And I think that, you know, obviously things will always be received differently depending where you go. The US has like, coasted on this kind of, you know, soft power exporting of Hollywood standards for a really long time and this assumption that everyone would, of course, you know, follow and accept and take as, as the norm, Hollywood storytelling. But I think that's not necessarily the case anymore. So.

B (65:40)

Oh, I think it's almost like we're nearing full reversal, you know, of the engines. You know, China's sort of starting to really reject a lot of American movies and then America trying to, like, figure out what they wanted. And, you know, that's had some effect. But I think it's more just about a lot of young people are like, I have no trouble parsing what an anime story is, you know, or how the plot plays out, you know, or, And I think, you know, Squid Game being so successful on TV helped. Although that's pretty linear, that's pretty straightforward. But yeah, I mean, I do think that my question is, and not to sound doom and gloom, is like, whether or not the Academy catches up before the whole thing kind of goes away. Like the Academy Awards or at least as we know them. Well, they're going to be on YouTube soon. So.

A (66:31)

Yeah. Are you happy about that? Like, do you think that's a good thing or a bad thing?

B (66:34)

So this is in 2029. YouTube has attained the rights for the Oscars after what, three decades? Four decades at ABC, I think on the one hand, sure. Great. Attract younger viewers. There is a sense that younger people actually are going to movies more than is sort of conventionally thought of. I thought it was older people keeping theaters alive. It turns out, it's actually kind of the opposite. So if they have better access to the Oscars, because otherwise they don't know how to find broadcast tv, I think that's great. I worry a bit about. And maybe this is just me being middle aged about it, but I worry a little bit about YouTube feeling a little less prestigious and a little bit jankier. I think the Netflix award shows, they've done the SAG Awards a couple times. The sound quality is not great. The picture looks a little too kind of motion smoothed. It just feels a little kind of clunkier. And I do know that YouTube invested a lot of money in this, and so hopefully they'll treat it with a bit more care than Netflix does to the SAG Awards. I think they'll definitely get a big audience. Like, if the oscars were on YouTube this year, you would look at the graph of people watching, and then when golden was being performed, it would be up here, and then it would go back down.

A (67:50)

Any Marty supreme thing. And Timothy.

B (67:52)

Yeah. Timothee Chalamet, obviously a big draw. So I think, look, the Academy needed to figure out how to move this ceremony into the future. They've tried experiments on ABC that haven't really worked. I think stylistically then they kind of went back to more traditional Oscars, which I love, and the ratings actually have been pretty decent in recent years. They've ticked up even a little bit. Still one of the most watched live events. I mean, it pales in comparison to football, but otherwise it does pretty well compared to other things. But. But yeah, they need to modernize, and I think maybe the YouTube of it all is what's gonna force them to do that.

C (68:31)

We should have the host directly address the chat.

B (68:35)

There you go.

A (68:36)

Yeah, that would be good. I love. I think there's nothing more compelling than when you're watching someone on a live stream, like, peer at the sidebar, you know, and just be like. As comments are flying by, being like, oh, yeah. Huh.

B (68:47)

Yeah.

A (68:48)

Yeah, you guys are right.

C (68:50)

It is like Goku420 says, it was just an accident. It was the best picture of the year.

B (68:55)

Come to Brazil. Come to Brazil.

A (68:57)

Exactly. Yeah. I. I have no idea what to think, but I am very curious about what it will look like for the structure of the Oscars to no longer be beholden to the kind of formal rhythms of network television, you know?

B (69:13)

Totally. I mean, I would assume that they would have ad breaks. Yeah, they will have, because not everyone will be paying for premiums, so they'll have to be. They'll be served ads. So they also. People have to pee.

A (69:24)

Sure.

B (69:24)

And the celebrities have to go get drinks in the, in the lobby and. Superpowers. Well, exactly. Yeah. Actually that is a superpower. Some critics don't.

A (69:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

B (69:34)

Well, Sims will get up out of a mood, you know.

A (69:36)

Yeah, no, no, I don't do that.

B (69:37)

No, I refuse. I have really bad bladder problems because of it.

A (69:43)

But it's worth it though.

B (69:45)

Yeah, but. Yeah, I don't know. Swears at the Oscars, you know, that'll be kind of strange. Yeah.

A (69:52)

I mean, runtime can go on.

B (69:55)

It can go. We just go on whatever for eight hours. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it would.

A (69:59)

No.

B (69:59)

But I also think that like Nate Bargatz hosting the Emmys. Was it this year where he had like the, like the charity money numbers going down the longer you go over time.

A (70:12)

Yeah.

B (70:13)

That felt like funny on paper, but in execution, like really kind of rude.

A (70:17)

To also like the opposite of what you actually want, which is like, like you're like the point of this is not to hurry through.

B (70:24)

Well, it's this non fan of awards show thinking about how award show should work. We're like, who want, who gives a shit? Let's just get through this, you know? And it's like, no, I want, I want Melissa Leo still on stage accepting her best supporting actress from 15 years ago. Like, that's what I like, that's what I want.

A (70:39)

You were like that. That speech should still be going on now.

B (70:41)

100%. You should be able to walk into the Dolby Theater at any time, 24 hours a day. And she's on that stage in that white dress.

A (70:47)

It's really good for the museum as just having her as a part of permanent exhibit. I think we should write to them.

B (70:54)

Melissa, what's your housing situation like right now? Would you want to move to la?

A (70:57)

Yes. Got a room set up for you. It'll be great.

C (71:01)

What's her name? She lived in a glass cube for a minute.

A (71:03)

Hilda Swinton. Yeah, no, I think, I think we're on to something here.

B (71:07)

So YouTube if you're listening. Actor, respected actresses in glass cubes.

A (71:11)

And they, and they live there. They have to. It's really got to be like at least a multi, multi year commitment. Yeah, yeah. It's the future, future of awards.

B (71:18)

And it's almost made me kind of like impatient for it where like I'm excited about, you know, Conan hosting again this year and, and I, I have, I'm invested in some of the narratives that are that we'll be getting into over the course of the next few weeks. But I don't know, I'm sort of suddenly really eager to see what the YouTube version looks like. And now it's. It's, you know, three years to wait.

A (71:40)

Yeah, we will. We will get there. I'll be so old then. Well, if I. Maybe I may not make it.

B (71:46)

Yeah, well, if. We'll try. Let's both try as hard as we can.

A (71:50)

Well, I. I have a really pressing question for you, Richard.

B (71:53)

Okay.

A (71:54)

Because obviously, one of the reasons I watch the Oscars is to look at what everyone is wearing, mostly the dresses, because, let's be honest, men's fashion has, like, come a bit further on the red carpet, but, like, it's a little, like. A little.

B (72:05)

But I got sick of the harnesses and the sort of, like, billowy pants.

A (72:09)

I feel like there's a lot of. There's been a kind of retrenchment to like, wearing just, like, a standard tux anyway.

B (72:13)

Well, look at Chalamet. He's completely reverted to.

A (72:16)

He's growing out these days. You. What do you think? Orange tux for the. For the. The Oscars this year?

B (72:23)

I bet he shows up in, like, a mesh basketball shirt and, like, long.

A (72:28)

Jean tux made entirely out of mesh. Basketball. I. I think that would be incredible.

B (72:32)

If you're his stylist. Rachel Zo, if you're listening, we're giving.

A (72:35)

Out some great notes here. We could save the Oscars. Personally, what is your favorite, favorite Oscar dress?

B (72:43)

I have sort of. One is. Well, I have two answers. One is sort of more sentimental. One is more technical. I think technically, the Cate Blanchett yellow dress when she won for the Aviator is incredible. It's very pretty. In hindsight, a really weird win.

A (73:03)

Yes.

B (73:04)

Have you watched clips of her in the Aviator, like, in the last, let's say, 10 years? No, no, it's like, basically SNL. It's not like, a very subtle performance. But you know when they say now, where people are in biopics, like, they're not doing an impersonation, they're capturing the spirit of the person. She's doing an impersonation. But anyway, I'm glad that she got her first Oscar and she looked amazing. But then the more sentimental one, which also I think is technically, critically, fashion critics, like, it is the Valentino dress that Julia Roberts wore when she won with the white strap, the kind of little, like, V cutout out, otherwise black, beautiful dress.

A (73:42)

Yeah, that is a good one.

B (73:43)

Yeah.

A (73:44)

My favorite. And I'M just discovering that there is a Wikipedia page for this that is definitely not translated from AI by AI from French ivory Jean Paul Gaultier dress of Marion Cotillard.

B (73:57)

It's always the of.

A (73:58)

Yes, yes, yes. Where you're like, there's no, like, possessive.

B (74:02)

It's.

A (74:02)

Yeah, you know, Marion Cotillard, one of my top five French nine, 11 denialists. Sometimes she's number one, sometimes she's number one. But I don't like to commit to that. But that was the year she won for La Vie en Rose. She wore this. Yes. It was kind of like white and silver. It had, like, it was like a mermaid dress and it had kind of like fish scale inspired. And it was, like, so beautiful and in this way where it was both, like, very elegant and glamorous, but just a little kind of organic looking and unsettling as well. I think that is still, like, my favorite Oscar dress.

B (74:38)

That's a really good choice and I think a rarer choice. You know, my Blanchett and Juliet. Those are pretty common, I think.

A (74:44)

No, but those were also very good dresses. I don't remember the last time I saw the Aviator. Is this something I should rewatch?

B (74:51)

It's a curiosity at this point, I think.

C (74:54)

Can we redeem the swan dress?

B (74:57)

I think it's been redeemed by the people who matter.

A (75:01)

Yeah, yeah. Like us, mostly. But I think also, I mean, part of the issue with the swan dress is that, like, we are now in an age where everyone has a stylist and so many people have, like, relationships with these, like, giant fashion houses and are committed to only wearing. So there's a lot of, like, less daring choices. You know, like, the Emmys are weirder. Yes.

C (75:25)

Because the Emmys, you have drag queens showing up in, like, green goblins or whatever.

A (75:29)

Yeah, yeah, right. I mean, I do.

B (75:31)

I doubt Travolta hasn't been to the Oscars in years. So.

A (75:36)

I feel like the kind of weird theme dressing that people have started to do, which they don't usually bring to the actual Oscars, but, like, the challengers kind of like tennis inspired fashion that some people calls whatever Timmy has been doing this year with the orange. I feel like I would like to see that. I would like to see that brought to the red carpet. You know, I want some bolder choices here.

B (75:57)

You know, like, I think about there was that costume designer who wore the American Express card dress. Remember, it was all the gold American Express cards that she'd sort of sewn together into a dress that was really cool. But then you also had, like, Sharon Stone wearing, like, her husband's, like, Gap buttoned up shirt. Then there was also a turtleneck she wore with a fancy skirt one year instead of.

A (76:16)

Yeah, there was a Gap top and.

B (76:17)

A fancy skirt and the top was cheap and whatever. I'd like to see more of that where it's a little bit less stylized and maybe trying to be less on trend and more individualistic.

A (76:29)

Yeah, I think that's the thing. The thing that's made it a little, little less fun is the degree to which also. Yeah, there's so many brands involved and brands that are like, you know, kind of like, they're like, here is our representative. And I'm like, that's a lot less interesting than someone being like, I love this dress. Even though no one. Everyone says, don't do it, I'm gonna wear it. And I'm like, I want that.

B (76:48)

There was one Oscar year not too long ago. I might be confused. Maybe it was a Golden Globes or something, but where all, like, it feels like two thirds of the famous women were wearing some mixture of white and red.

A (77:01)

Yes.

B (77:01)

And it was like, okay, so all these stylists are just, like, talking to each other and thinking that they're the only ones doing it. But then everyone. I don't know, it just felt very accidental collusion or something. So, yeah, more swan dresses. I say, yeah.

A (77:18)

So we should give people a little sense of what these episodes are gonna look like going forward. Obviously, it's gonna be 45 minutes of me talking about different dresses every time. But, like, after that, maybe we will also get around to talking about a movie.

B (77:32)

Well, that's like, most Blank Check episodes are that too.

A (77:35)

Just me coming in, barging it first and being like, yeah, I have some fun.

B (77:39)

Yeah. So, you know, we're gonna talk kind of broadly about, like, various things at the Oscars. Backlash, campaigning, all that kind of that we've experienced, you know, from the behind the scenes. But also because our parent podcast is Blank Check and they devote most episodes to a movie, we kind of want to do that as well. And Blank Check also has not really been able to talk about a lot of the movies that we think are going to be in the Best Picture race. So probably we'll be talking about 10ish movies over the next 10, 11ish weeks. But each of those movies, be it Marty supreme, which we assume is going to get nominated, or Hamnet, which we assume is going to get nominated, probably will make us think about some sort of bigger topic that surrounds either the movie or the awards season, because they each kind of. In their way, all these frontrunners represent something different in how we're thinking about the Oscars and the industry these days.

A (78:42)

Yeah. And I'm looking forward to revisiting some of these movies because as weird as it is to say, I feel like they've already had. Had. Some of them have already had full arcs. You know, like, they. They. The movies do not change themselves, but they're like our relationship to them or like the public's relationship to them can change so much. A movie can go from being a favorite to getting the backlash. It can go from getting a backlash to somehow, like, getting over that and. And rising in esteem again. So, you know, I think there's something really interesting about revisiting a movie after, you know, that initial reaction, which for us can sometimes be like back at a festival a long time ago.

B (79:21)

Yeah. And now more people have had a chance to see these movies and weigh in on them on their own. You know, the Hamnet backlash is real. I'm really curious in that movie's case. Like, I saw that movie in Toronto. I got in line for it at 7am I'd gotten four hours of sleep because I was up late writing. And so I wept like a. Like a baby at the last, you know, 10 minutes or whatever. Will that be the same if I watch it again now that everyone has backlashed against it? And I don't know. I'm just very curious if it'll have the same effect.

A (79:50)

I feel like you'll be swayed. You'll be backlashed into.

B (79:55)

We shall. We'll find out. Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah, we can't really. We don't really know if we're gonna be able to do one movie a week. Maybe we might have to double up on a couple occasions. Cause we are gonna do an episode when the nominations come out, kind of breaking those down. We'll also do an episode, obviously, doing a postmortem of the actual ceremony in March. But, yeah, in between, then we have these movies to talk about. We have SAG Awards, we have Golden Globe Awards. We have Guild awards from the Producers Guild, the Director's Guild, the Writer's Guild, which really help sort of any predicting anyone wants to do. So, yeah, it's gonna be kind of all things 20, 25 Oscars, which I think will be fun.

A (80:32)

It'll be great.

C (80:33)

And we should also say for upcoming episodes too, we'll be recording in a different location. We're at the Blankjack Studios right now, but we'll be be recording with our friends at Vulture in their video studio.

B (80:48)

There will be some clips of us floating around.

A (80:50)

Yeah. Which is a terrifying thing to think about, but.

B (80:53)

Yeah, I have to go to Turkey and get everything reworked.

A (80:56)

Yeah, I was going to say I'm also going to go to Turkey because I was thinking about getting a new.

B (81:00)

Can we do this from Turkey? Yeah, let's do me with the head bandage on. Yeah, there will be clips floating around. We won't have full video episodes, but the full episodes will just live in audio form on the blank check feed. But yeah, if you want to head over to the Vulture socials, there will be.

A (81:16)

And if you want to see, you know, Richard's face looking more and more gassed as I give some bad take on hand, that will be the place to look.

B (81:24)

Maybe I'll be sobbing again. Who knows? Yeah, I hope so. I hope I really moved me last time.

A (81:29)

I'm dead inside. I'm sorry.

B (81:30)

Well, no, I mean, more and more it seems like I'm actually in the microphone minority there, but. Yeah, well, we'll find out.

C (81:37)

Big year for dead child cinema.

A (81:39)

Yeah, it's always a big year for dead children.

B (81:41)

Yeah, we love. Yeah, that was Dead Children too.

C (81:46)

Oh, yeah, true.

A (81:47)

Yeah. That's how you know you're really going for an award. One is not enough.

B (81:51)

You're really committing. But yeah, Seurat, that's. That's a shocking one.

A (81:56)

That. Well, and a dog too. That Surat really went for it.

B (81:59)

Oh, God, yeah. I can't wait to talk about that one. I. I have a weird hunch just before we sign, we didn't really get the chance to talk about the shortlist stuff, which we will. But on the shortlist of like, what's eligible for casting and cinematography and all that stuff, Seurat showed up a lot, which is this Spanish film that was at Cannes, that won a bunch of awards at Cannes, and I was surprised by that. I think it has an actual shot, even though it's such a brutal, strange movie.

A (82:24)

Yeah, I had not expected either the Secret Agent, which is a much weirder movie than it seems like it will be at first, or Seurat, which is. Which is also actually a much weirder movie than it seems like it will be at first to make that kind of headway, but people seem to be really responding to them. And you know what? I find that really exciting.

C (82:43)

I'm really excited to see Seurat of Kang Ding Ray, the techno artist.

B (82:49)

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, next time we talk about Seurat, you have to tell us about Techno artist, because I don't know anything about that.

C (82:56)

Sure.

B (82:56)

I just. We'll have to.

A (82:57)

To consult your expertise for some of the soundtrack things because there's some. Some real, actual musical artists involved this year. I've. I've got breaking news, by the way. In 1997, the annual subscription rates for Variety magazine in the U.S. 199.

B (83:17)

In 19. In 97, that's like $5,000 in present day. Yeah.

A (83:22)

That's a lot. So much Money. Surface Delivery Worldwide279. It's like, I guess, just international. You could just get your.

B (83:30)

Yeah. Wow. All to learn words like prexi and.

A (83:33)

Yeah, exactly.

B (83:35)

Yeah.

A (83:35)

So this was a real investment. This was not happening at the Wilmore household in suburban county.

B (83:40)

Entertainment Weekly, on the other hand, that was a song. Yeah.

A (83:43)

You could get like a real deal.

B (83:44)

Yeah. You could also sometimes scam your way into free subscriptions to things. So that's the way the good old days. All right, so we'll be back next Thursday, right. In video form from the Vulture, your studio, at least in video clip form. In the meantime, I feel like we could plug things right. Like where people can find you.

A (84:06)

Allison, my work is@vulture.com and what do I have coming up?

B (84:13)

You can be found walking in the park with your dog.

A (84:15)

I can be found walking in the park with my dog. And then. Yeah, I have a George Clooney essay coming up. I have a interview that I did with Kevin O', Leary, the villain in Marty supreme, aka Mr. Wonderful, and probably some reviews out there. I'm sure that's theoretically my job. How about you?

B (84:37)

One of the best to do it well. So I just started a newsletter called Premier Party. That's premierparty.com we somehow got that domain name. I'm doing three posts a week, two of which are paid subscriber only one of which is anyone who just gives me their email can read. So come on by. It's reviews. It's some opt. It's some other things. I'm going to be doing recapping in the new year. Well, now that it is the new year, I think it'll be fun.

C (85:02)

Cool. And maybe we should say that next week we're going to be talking about Marty Supreme.

B (85:05)

Oh, yeah? Yes. If you want to watch along with us, I will go see Marty supreme again, even though it's very long. Wow. No, I'm excited to actually.

A (85:15)

Yeah. Okay. Well, I am excited to talk about my lunch with Mr. Wonderful, I guess.

B (85:21)

Oh, well, I'M excited to hear it about it.

A (85:24)

Spoilers. He ordered a $190 bottle of wine at lunch.

B (85:29)

Love it. Well, that's. That's the shark tank weighing it is.

A (85:31)

It seemed very on brand. Critical Darlings is a blank check. Production in association with Vulture. Hosted by Allison Wilmore and Richard Lawson. Produced by Benjamin Frank Frisch. Executive produced by Griffin Newman and Neil Janowitz. Video production and distribution by Anne Victoria Clark, Wolfgang Ruth and Jennifer Jean.