What the Oscars Got Right

Summary

Cannonball with Wesley Morris

Episode Summary: “What the Oscars Got Right”

Published: March 17, 2026
Host: Wesley Morris
Guest: Sasha Weiss, Culture Editor, New York Times Magazine

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Episode Overview

In this post-Oscars breakdown, Wesley Morris and guest Sasha Weiss delve into the significance of this year’s Academy Awards: the wins, losses, controversies, and what they reveal about the current state of culture and cinema. Their conversation balances ambivalence over the ceremony’s politicking with real admiration for the art and cultural power of the Oscars. Through candid debate, analysis, and reflection, they examine headline moments, category controversies, memorable speeches, and the deeper meanings beneath the year’s biggest film honors.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

1. The “Ambivalence” of Oscars Watching

• Reluctance & Ritual: Both host and guest admit to habitual but hesitant Oscars watching, torn between cynicism toward the awards’ political nature and fascination with their impact (00:59-01:44).

• Wesley on the Oscars’ Importance:

  “I think that all the things you're talking about, the things that exasperate you are legitimate. … But I actually think, I mean, first of all, you know, as a canon making exercise, the Academy Awards have always been very important” (01:44-02:49).

• Oscars as a Cultural X-Ray:

  “…I feel like award shows are the single most important. I call it a crucible… really an X-ray of what the culture is at any given moment.” (02:51-03:21)

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2. The Best Supporting Actress Controversy

• Category Tension:

  • Two acclaimed Black performances (Teyana Taylor in "One Battle After Another"; Wunmi Mosaku in "Sinners") were expected contenders (03:44-04:37).
  • Instead, Amy Madigan (a white veteran actress) wins for "Weapon" (04:37-05:31).

• Cultural Implications:

  • Sasha asks whether Madigan’s win sidestepped controversy, and Wesley suggests “we might have been spared something here,” as discourse shifts from a single performance to the wider issues of the contested films (05:34-06:11).
  • Wesley’s “shadow Oscars” pick would have gone to Taylor, quoting:

    “If I’m being honest, and my ballot was given to me the minute I left ‘One Battle After Another,’ I probably for sure would have checked Teyana Taylor’s name. … So I probably would have voted for Teyana Taylor if I didn’t have time to think about it. But then once my brain—” (06:23-06:55)

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3. Introduction of the Casting Award

• Celebration & Innovation:

  • Both host and guest praise the category and the unique presentation, which featured one actor from each nominated film championing their casting director (07:11-08:29).

• Insight on Casting as “Soul Work”:

  • Wesley:

    “For the way I consider great casting, ‘Secret Agent’ and ‘One Battle After Another’ are your winners here. … you have this layer of people you have never seen before, people who aren’t professional actors, like the kids in the movie, the skate kids…all the military guys…that have to be correspondent to each other as well as to the other constituent parts of the movie.” (08:42-09:58)

  • Sasha summarizes:

    “So this, like, delicate network of interrelation that you’re having to kind of map as a casting director—it’s not only the person for the part, it’s the person in relation to all of the other people.” (09:58-10:09)

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4. Major Snubs and Surprise Losses

“Secret Agent”:

• Despite being a personal favorite and earning many nominations, it walked away with nothing (10:54).
• Wesley expresses satisfaction it was even recognized—“should it have won international feature? It lost to ‘Sentimental Value’...It should have, yes.” (10:54-11:45)

“K Pop Demon Hunters”:

• Wins Animated Feature and Original Song but snubbed in major categories like Screenplay and Picture.
• Wesley draws a comparison to “Sinners,” both being about “two existences”—the undead and those who hunt them, and roots in African American and K-pop mythology (12:24-14:10).
• Quotes:

  “If I didn’t tell you that I was talking about K Pop Demon Hunters, I could have been talking about Sinners, right?” (12:24-12:48)
  “…Y’all could have thrown this a best original screenplay. Something. Like, I mean, it’s more original than like at least two of the other nominees.” (14:12-14:38)

“Marty Supreme” and Timothée Chalamet:

• Another snub—speculation arises around Chalamet’s out-of-pocket comments and perpetual presence in the press cycle, both a blessing and curse (17:12-21:12).

  “He’s so good at [promotion] that it kind of cursed the art.” (21:09)

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5. Michael B. Jordan’s Best Actor Win

• Wesley’s emotional reaction:

  “Oh my God, I’m gonna cry right now of just happiness because … Michael B. Jordan is the kind of movie star that it’s just so easy to overlook what they’re doing as an actor because the movie star dimension of them is so strong.” (21:45-22:03)

• On Jordan’s journey:

  • Early roles (as Wallace on The Wire)
  • Recognizing the soul of his work in “Sinners”
  • The performance was “about the soul, right? This is a soul performance. But this is also a movie about souls, right?” (25:48-27:14)

• On his late appreciation for Jordan:

  “…you can see, like, four different emotions settling on his face. And he says, like, with a delivery that I have never heard from him before, just like, ‘Well, why those roots ain't save our baby.’ And it is just, woo, woo. But I missed it the first three times.” (28:29-28:59)

• Why his win resonated:

  “He’s got the thing that you want from a movie star … you’re just rooting for this man. … He was just like, I thank y’all for believing in me. He wasn’t talking about the Academy. He was talking about everybody else. … Everybody believes in him. … It just feels good.” (29:07-30:13)

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6. The Best Picture Debate: “One Battle After Another” vs. “Sinners”

• Cultural Complication:

  • Both films are in conversation, reflecting different eras and approaches—Anderson’s being more provocatively racial and political, Sinners being “soul work” (30:18–36:17).

• Impact and Backlash:

  • “One Battle After Another” is divisive: lauded for filmmaking but criticized for its depiction of Black people, politics, and sexuality.
  • Comparison to historical Best Picture nominees (“Mississippi Burning”) that center white savior narratives and sideline Black voices (34:20–35:50).

• Ambiguity as Art and Flaw:

  • The strangeness of “One Battle…” is both a virtue and a failing:

    “I think it’s both a virtue and a failing. And I will say that, like, in the world of the Academy, what does it mean that that’s the movie that won instead of the movie that is doing soul work in a very straightforward way or in a very deep way?” (36:32-36:45)

• Oscars as a Site for Reflection:

  “One of the things that I love about the Academy Awards is that it forces a lot of us to have these conversations about what it means for these movies to not only be celebrated … What is making me uncomfortable about this celebration of this movie in this way?... what is this body trying to tell me about the people who make my movies?” (37:09–38:04)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On why the Oscars matter (Wesley, 02:51):
  “Award shows are the single most important…X-ray of what the culture is at any given moment.”
• On voting with your gut (Wesley, 06:23):
  “If I’m being honest … I probably for sure would have checked Teyana Taylor’s name.”
• On the complexities of casting (Sasha, 09:58):
  “…it’s not only the person for the part, it’s the person in relation to all of the other people.”
• On Michael B. Jordan’s resonance (Wesley, 29:07-30:13):
  “He’s got the thing that you want from a movie star…you’re just rooting for this man…everybody believes in him.”
• On the Oscars’ cultural lessons (Wesley, 37:09):
  “…it forces a lot of us to have these conversations about what it means for these movies to not only be celebrated. But what do they mean as works of art?”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Topic | |------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:31–03:21| Oscars' importance and cultural ambivalence | | 03:21–06:55| Supporting Actress: controversies and “who deserved it?” | | 07:11–10:29| The new Casting award: why it matters and who got snubbed | | 10:50–14:49| Deep dive: “Secret Agent” and “K Pop Demon Hunters” | | 17:12–21:12| “Marty Supreme”, Timothée Chalamet, and the perils of self-promotion | | 21:22–30:13| Michael B. Jordan’s Best Actor win and the nuances of his performance | | 30:18–38:04| Best Picture debate: “One Battle After Another” vs. “Sinners” | | 38:04–38:17| Closing thoughts: Oscars’ value as cultural reflection |

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Tone and Style

Wesley and Sasha’s conversation is lively, candid, self-reflective, and distinctly critical yet celebratory. They grapple with the political, racial, and artistic dynamics of contemporary film culture, retaining a conversational warmth and the incisive, personal engagement that characterizes “Cannonball.”

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Summary prepared for listeners who want depth on “What the Oscars Got Right”: this episode brings the drama, insight, and critique that shape both our awards and our culture.

Transcript

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[Wesley Morris]

I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball. Today, the Academy Awards, they happened. People won, people lost. And now I'm gonna talk about it with my friend and the culture editor at the New York Times Magazine, Sasha Weiss.

[Alexa Advertisement Voice]

Hi. Hi.

[Wesley Morris]

How are you?

[Sasha Weiss]

I'm good.

[Wesley Morris]

You watched the Oscars?

[Sasha Weiss]

I'm tired. Well, okay, I do watch them.

[Wesley Morris]

I didn't even ask you to do it.

[Sasha Weiss]

I do watch them every year, but I watch them with some feeling of reluctance and ambivalence, which I know you share too, a little bit, the ambivalence. Like, I just feel like the actual films, you know, especially this year, we've talked about this, it was so thrilling and exciting. But the Oscars themselves are so gamed and pre baked and there's just this, you know, like, big importance we attach to this thing that we all know is kind of a charade of politics and inner industry politicking. And like, we all have to pretend that it's hugely important. But I know that you persist in your belief that it is important.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm not pretending like I know.

[Sasha Weiss]

And like every year I'm like, please remind me why this is really important.

[Wesley Morris]

Let's not pretend for me. I mean, I think that all the things you're talking about, the things that exasperate you are legitimate. There is a lot of politicking, there is a lot of industrial horse race oriented business that goes on in the leading up to the show. But I actually think, I mean, first of all, you know, as a canon making exercise, the Academy Awards have always been very important. Like, what winds up happening, especially in modern times with this show. Like, people start trying to cram in, especially now that there are 10 nominees for best picture, they just cram all the movies in in like a week. So I don't know, I just feel like the way that it has come to mean something to everybody, just as a, like, what should I see? Exercise is important. But then there is what it means for the movies that win to win and for the movies that, that lose to lose. And then there's the third thing, which is the broadcast itself, I think the

[Sasha Weiss]

broadcast, which is still very much watched.

[Wesley Morris]

The broadcast, yes. I mean, and I think. I don't know what the numbers were for this year, but I feel like. I think award shows in general are. After whatever happens at, like, political conventions and certain sporting events, I feel like award shows are the single most important. I call it a crucible, but I mean, it really is like an X ray of what the culture is at any given moment.

[Sasha Weiss]

But let's like, okay, as usual, once you start talking about it, I get more and more interested in it. And, you know, yes, it's an X ray. Yes. We're able to see certain things that we might not otherwise have seen. So let's get into it. Let's get into what happened last night. Maybe starting with kind of where the show starts, which is best supporting actress category this year. I mean, you have talked a lot about some of the tensions around the supporting actress category. Right. I mean, there's Teyana Taylor playing this kind of explosive role in one battle after another as a black radical revolutionary. And some people, like Daphne Brooks last week on your show were really skeptical of her portrayal in this movie and how he kind of used her in this movie.

[Wesley Morris]

Like, offended by it.

[Sasha Weiss]

Offended by it.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah.

[Sasha Weiss]

And then on the other hand, we had Wunmi Mosaku in Sinners, who plays this kind of really potent, spiritual, kind of centered performance summoned from her by a black director. And these two were kind of contending, and we thought that they were maybe the top contenders. But in the end, either one of

[Wesley Morris]

them won some white lady. Some white lady won. A great white lady named Amy Madigan wins a supporting actress Oscar. And, you know, she wins for Weapon. She plays the now notorious Aunt Gladys, which, you know, I don't know if you were around on Halloween, but I saw a lot of Aunt Gladys costumes last Halloween. I suspect that canonically, we will keep seeing Aunt Gladys costumes. Conan o' Brien opened the show dressed as Aunt Gladys, but only from the chin up, which was really funny. And I think Amy Madigan winning was kind of almost preordained when the movie came out over the summer of last year. Why she stole the movie. She is very good. I'm glad she won. Amy Madigan has been doing this for a long time. For a long time. I don't know.

[Sasha Weiss]

So you were happy about it?

[Wesley Morris]

I was fine with it. But it also.

[Sasha Weiss]

Did you feel like it kind of sidestepped this controversy or debate?

[Wesley Morris]

I think it's so. It does not feel good to say. I think we might have been spared something here, only in that it just puts the conversation about at least the Teyana Taylor character to rest. And for some people, the performance itself. Because now the contention is more with the film as a complete entity, rather than singling out this one performance for praise. But, you know, I don't know. I just feel like.

[Sasha Weiss]

Can I ask maybe. Annoying question?

[Wesley Morris]

Sure.

[Sasha Weiss]

In your shadow Academy Awards, which you don't actually like giving out, would you have awarded it to Tiana?

[Wesley Morris]

If I'm being honest, and my ballot was given to me the minute I left, One Battle after Another, I probably for sure would have checked Teyana Taylor's name. Yeah. Because it was thrilling. If you. I feel like a lot of people with this movie saw it once, and they're still high off the excitement of having seen it one time. So I probably would have voted for Teyana Taylor if I didn't have time to think about it. But then once my brain.

[Sasha Weiss]

So the pure fumes.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Sasha Weiss]

Okay. This is actually a good segue to the next thing I want to talk about, which is the Casting award, which was an award you were really excited about and kind of thrilled that they were creating. How did you like the presentation of it in the.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, during the show. Yeah, I loved that. I loved that they had one member of each. One cast member from each of the nominated movies come out and just sing the praises of the nominated cast casting director and talk about the process by which, in some cases, that actor who did it, Wagner Mora did it for the Secret Agent, Chase Infinity did it for One Battle After Another. Del or Lindo did it for Sinners, Paul Mescal did it for Hamnet, and Gwyneth Paltrow did it for Marty Supreme. And first of all, just that array of people on the stage at the same time is just like.

[Sasha Weiss]

It shows the sheer variety of the things that they're looking for.

[Wesley Morris]

It makes my movie Loving Eyes just like my star Loving Eyes well up. But also just the effusiveness with which they talked about these people who gave them these jobs, because really, they hired these people. Right, right, right.

[Sasha Weiss]

And you feel that gratitude. Well, you feel that they're expl. Kind of what it is to feel seen in a very particular way by these people.

[Wesley Morris]

Also, you know, the conversation beforehand was like, you know, I mean, obviously, who was gonna win the category? Who's gonna win the first ever Casting Director Award? And the assumption.

[Sasha Weiss]

I thought it was gonna be Francine Mazler for Sinners, Right?

[Wesley Morris]

Yes. But only because she's been at it for so long. But really, I mean, honestly, there were only two. I mean, for what I. The way I consider great casting, Secret Agent and One Battle After Another are your winners here. Because it's just what I would describe as a kitchen sink casting operation where the top tier of the casting, which for one battle after another is Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn. But then you've got this other layer of Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor Chase, Infinity, April Grace, all the black women in the movie, Jungle Pussy, all these black women in the movie that have to be correspondent to each other as well as to the other constituent parts of the movie. And then you've got this layer of people you have never seen before, people who aren't professional actors, like the kids in the movie, the skate kids who were called Latino Heat in the movie, all the military guys who used to do some kind of government or security work who are playing, you know, the, you know, terrible, bad military industrial complex exponents.

[Sasha Weiss]

So this, like, delicate network of interrelation that you're having to kind of map as a casting director, it's not only the person for the part, it's the person in relation to all of the other people.

[Wesley Morris]

Yes. So Cassandra Kulakundis was out, like, scouring the winner. The winner for One Battle After Another was doing that kind of work. And Secret Agent, which is of these five movies, I think it's my personal favorite for casting. But I mean, it's also my favorite movie of all of the best picture nominees, too. That might have been a harder job because it is so full of people who don't act professionally. You know, there are a lot of people who do in the movie, but there are a lot, a lot of people with major things to do in terms of the operation of the plot.

[Sasha Weiss]

And I want to talk more about the Secret Agent because it was so. It was a little bit neglected, let's say.

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, yeah, it won nothing. It won zero Oscars.

[Sasha Weiss]

It sounds like you kind of do think the movie got robbed. Maybe not Wagner himself.

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, robbed. No, I don't think it got robbed because, I mean, well, maybe robbed is too strong because it's just. I'm surprised it got what it got. You know, how many years a Secret Agent is out there in the world and it gets no Oscar nomination? Do you know what I mean? Like, you guys over here, my favorite movie has gotten nothing. So the idea that, like, it got as many Oscar nominations as it did is that's that's satisfying enough. It should it have won international feature. It lost to sentimental Value, Another movie that I like. Not as much as this. I don't know. Probably. Yes. But I mean, are we talking about. So we're talking about snubs. I watched K pop Demon Hunters over the weekend.

[Sasha Weiss]

Yeah? You think it got snubbed?

[Wesley Morris]

What are we doing now?

[Sasha Weiss]

Look, it got a lot of attention. Of all the movies. What do you mean?

[Wesley Morris]

Tell me, who had a better night than K Pop Demon Hunters? I mean, with all due respect to Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson and Michael B. Jordan, who had a better night? They went. They batted a thousand. It's fantastic.

[Sasha Weiss]

But

[Wesley Morris]

did y' all watch the movie?

[Sasha Weiss]

I love the movie.

[Wesley Morris]

Did y' all watch the movie? Like, where's the original screenplay nomination? Where is the best picture? I mean, if we're doing it, where's the best picture nomination?

[Sasha Weiss]

Let's fast do it.

[Wesley Morris]

Here's what I'll say. This is a whole movie about, like, a long tradition of people who've been. Who've existed as undead and people who've existed to stop them from proliferating, these undead. And if I didn't tell you that I was talking about K pop Demon Hunters, I could have been talking about sinners, right?

[Sasha Weiss]

That's fascinating. Like, connection you're making. Like, say more.

[Wesley Morris]

They're the same movie. I mean, they're very different, but they're very similar. I mean, they all. They begin the same. They have the same beginning. Wunmi Masaku, who plays, you know, Annie, the hoodoo conjure woman, is essentially laying out this history of, you know, I'm gonna boil it all the way down to just the veil in African American existential psychic life, right? And what it means to, like, be. To have two existences essentially, right? And then the beginning of K Pop Demon Hunters is unveiling, like, unfurling this ancient history of elders and ancients. Using music also, right? Like, music has sort of been a part of this. You know, these demons that exist in people, and how do you snuff them out? And these people have been existed to, like, find the demons and expunge them. And one of the more ingenious developments in the movie is the dark forces come up with the brilliant idea to guise themselves as a K pop boy band.

[Sasha Weiss]

It's so good. It's so funny.

[Wesley Morris]

And the movie means it, right? And I just feel like there's so many. There's so many great jokes in that film. Anyway, the point is fine. It wins Best Animated Feature. It wins best Original Song. But like, y' all could have thrown this a best original screenplay. Something like, I mean, it's just, I mean, it's more original than like at least two of the other nominees. I don't know. I don't know what we're doing.

[Sasha Weiss]

I love it that in rewatching K Pop Demon Hunters, you're like kind of, you're elevating it into the same league as Hunters. I just wish, which maybe is not unfair.

[Wesley Morris]

I just wish that I had figured this out months ago. Cause I think it's really deep and it also is just so refreshing. Refreshingly light at the same time. Yeah, but I mean, it, it just works at two different valences. We're gonna take a break and when we come back, I don't know, we'll just keep talking about this show.

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[Sasha Weiss]

Okay, one more snub just to touch on at least. Party supreme. Oh, Timothy Chalamet kind of a rough night.

[Wesley Morris]

What happened to that movie? Like what happened to the campaign around it? Now look, it was never, nobody was ever talking about it as being the best picture of last year or anything. But like it is. Something industrial is going on with this movie. To me, I don't know what it is. Some of it is related to Timothee Chalamet and you know, his PR antics

[Sasha Weiss]

and, you know, which just got tired after a while. People liked them at first.

[Wesley Morris]

I never liked them. They always sort of made me uncomfortable. I think that like, I love his professionalism, I love his adaptability, like his disturbingly chameleon like adaptability to all non artistic situations. I guess. Like he's a great co conspirator in Internet oriented activity. You know, he's kind of a master at that. But I also think that, you know, at the end of the day, this is a very traditional operation and I don't know what the voters know about anything this man is doing. I also think the voting closed. I don't remember exactly what the. Over how many more days were left in the voting when he made those comments about opera and modern or ballet. And ballet and opera, you know, basically saying nobody cares about these art forms,

[Sasha Weiss]

but he doesn't want to be in an opera or a ballet. He wants to be in the arena, essentially.

[Wesley Morris]

Right? I mean, whatever. Everybody's taking their shots at this man. I'm not gonna bother. Like it's a dumb thing to say. He probably. The minute he said it, you know how these things work. You get all heated up.

[Sasha Weiss]

So his sister and mother both in ballet. He didn't.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm not gonna say he didn't mean it, but it's just one of those things you say and the minute it's out there, you're like, oh my fucking God. Fuck. Cause you can't take it back. Cause you're Timothee Chalamet. You can't call. There's no publicist in the world that can make this disappear. So he's just gotta like take his lumps. But I think, I don't know, I mean, I don't have a lot of mystery around what happened to Marty Supreme. I think it suffers a similar problem as the Secret Agent, right?

[Sasha Weiss]

Strangeness.

[Wesley Morris]

Strangeness. It's got a strange tone. People went to that movie, as you and I have discussed, thinking they were gonna go watch. They were gonna watch a Farrelly Brothers movie, you know, a Marx Brothers movie. I don't know what they thought they were gonna get, but they did not get that. They got something much rougher, raw, more violent, more unrelenting in its rawness. And Ro. And he was at the center of. You know, he's the eye of that storm. And, you know, honestly, I mean, I'm putting Wagner Moore first in my ballot, but my second choice, just based on the performance. Right. Is probably Timothy Chalamet. That's a great performance. There's no argument, at least for me. That is a great piece of acting to me. And it's such a promise of, like, what the next 10 years can look like for this person. Like, the things that he can do if the right parts come along. But I also understand the sort of dislike of him at the same time. Yeah, right. I mean, he. I don't know. It seems to ad hominem, though, because it doesn't have to do with the work. It has to do with all of the other stuff. And I think the other stuff has sort of invaded the willingness to tolerate the ambition of the work. It's kind of a weird, cruel, cultural

[Sasha Weiss]

one, too, because it's like you're obligated as an actor to participate in these press cycles and to promote yourself and to. And like Timothee Chalamet won that.

[Wesley Morris]

He's so good at that.

[Sasha Weiss]

But he's so good that it kind of cursed the art.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, he went too far. Right. Like, you get carried away. He cursed himself. I think he cursed himself. Okay, so he doesn't win, but, you know. Right. Okay.

[Sasha Weiss]

Lachdr doesn't win.

[Wesley Morris]

No. Faulkner Mora does not win.

[Sasha Weiss]

The Oscar goes to Michael Bjorn.

[Wesley Morris]

Michael Jordan.

[Sasha Weiss]

And you wrote really movingly about him, about your kind of like, journey to a slow, not reluctant, but kind of like confused journey to really appreciating his performances. Look, I mean, how did you feel when he won?

[Wesley Morris]

Oh, my God, I'm gonna cry right now of just happiness because

[Sasha Weiss]

she's becoming a writer.

[Wesley Morris]

I know. It's just. I'm not gonna really, really cry. But, like,

[Sasha Weiss]

Ken, it's hard to cry.

[Wesley Morris]

There's something I'm just gonna like. Michael B. Jordan is the kind of movie star that it's just so easy to overlook what they're doing as an actor because the movie star dimension of them is so strong. And, I mean, sometimes you are positively overlooking what they're doing as an actor because it's not very interesting. And he never really interested me as an actor, but from the beginning of his career, like, I mean, the first time I saw him was probably the first time a lot of us saw him, which is as Wallace on the Wire. And that little boy, he had something, right? He's just like a. Like a ball of feeling, right? Like, just knotted up. Knotted up. And I think that the. Like the. The whatever it is in him that sort of coiled up as an actor, it frequently needs to be massaged into some sort of relaxation. And the parts he's playing, especially with Ryan Coogler, they don't allow for that. I'm talking. He plays Oscar Grant in Fruitvale Station. He starts the day one way and doesn't make it to the end of the day. And part of what he's acting is the frustration of his life in that moment. You know, the Creed movies, I mean, it's really interesting to me that, like, I am guilty of going to at least that first Creed movie and being like, man, Stallone, he really. Okay, Stallone. I don't remember what I thought about Michael B. Jordan. Beyond. I got to spend time at a movie starring Michael B. Jordan. But, like, these.

[Sasha Weiss]

Okay, how do you get from this.

[Wesley Morris]

This feeling. Well, this feeling of overlooking.

[Sasha Weiss]

Of overlooking and, like, slight disinterest. Right. And feeling that he's coiled up in a way that you can't access. Something to like weeping.

[Wesley Morris]

I'm not done weeping. I'll get back to that. But I. Well, because you go back and watch. I mean, well, once he got the Best Actor nomination, I was just kind of like, oh, okay, they did it.

[Sasha Weiss]

But they did Cat.

[Wesley Morris]

The Academy watched this movie and they were like, oh, Michael B. Jordan, that's not hard. I think people watched this movie and they were just like, huh? I mean, I hate Marty Supreme. I don't understand the Secret Agent. I don't know what Ethan Hawke is doing in this movie. And DiCaprio's won already, but, you know, that Michael B. Jordan, man, he got me. I mean, I think it was truly that simple. And then whoever didn't vote before the SAG Awards, the Now Actor Awards that he, Michael B. Jordan, won Best Actor at, like, two weeks ago. That speech was so moving. That moment was so powerful. Cause nobody in the room saw it coming, you know? And then it came, and you were like, oh, my God, I love this person. So Viola Davis is the person who started it, honestly, where she just was like, I can't believe this is happening. And, you know, I was on the sofa with two friends, and I was like, I can't believe this is happening. You know, it's just. It's an infection.

[Sasha Weiss]

So what does it mean to you? Like, what does it Mean to you in the end? Cause you're kind of describing, like, a process of elimination. And then when everybody else is eliminated, you feel your feeling rushes in. Like, I think it's more than that. It's more than that.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, I mean, on the one hand, it's math, right? But on the other hand, I mean, just. I don't know what. I don't know what people were thinking when they actually put his name on, or they, you know, chose him. But there's a lot going on in this performance, you know, And I missed it the first time. Even the second and third and the third time, I just wasn't watching for him. I was watching for this movie's ideas. Cause there are a lot of them, and they're kind of inexhaustible. And the arguments that I have with this movie about, should it have done this? Should it have done some other thing? Like, what is it? What are these metaphors? Like, do I understand this more, seeing it a third time? The answer is yes, I understand sinners a lot more, having seen it now four times. But the fourth time I watched it, I watched it just for him. And I had never studied Michael B. Jordan in this way before in any performance. And you just see that, like, okay, fine, the eyes don't do a lot. And his line readings aren't great. But this, to me, is about the soul, right? This is a soul performance. But this is also a movie about souls, right? Having one, keeping yours. And I just kind of missed what his soul was doing in this movie. Even once one of the characters he's playing loses his.

[Sasha Weiss]

What is it doing?

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, connecting to the sort of historical environment, to these other people. I mean, the story of this movie is very simple, right? Two brothers want to open a club, and then these demons show up. But these two brothers fight to live when they were, like, each other's keeper for so long. And now Michael B. Jordan has to act the evil of this turned brother and the, like, heartbreak of what to do about how to extinguish him. Like a person that he's been protecting this whole time, these many years. It is really tough. I mean, you can see the devastation on his face, the difficulty, the sadness of losing the child. There's a scene in this movie where he goes to Annie's apothecary in the woods, and, you know, he's dismissing, you know, her hoodoo, and she's like, well, let me tell you something. How do you know that any of the root work I did didn't keep you and your brother alive up in Chicago where y' all were gangsters with Al Capone and stuff. And he has this moment where, like, it's very fast, but you can see, like, four different emotions settling on his face. And he says, like, with a delivery that I have never heard from him before, just like, well, why those roots saying, save our baby. And it is just, woo, woo. But I missed it the first three times.

[Sasha Weiss]

Okay, well, this gets us to the ultimate award.

[Wesley Morris]

Can I just say, though, real quick?

[Instagram Advertisement Voice]

Yeah.

[Wesley Morris]

Like, the thing that felt so good about him winning is he's got the thing that you want from a movie star, which is all the other stuff. You're just rooting for this man. And the beautiful thing about his speech was he was just like, I thank y' all for believing in me. He wasn't talking about the Academy. He was talking about everybody else. The audiences, you know, the people who've been stopping him on the street since he was on the wire being like, yo, man, I love you. And that is the thing about Michael B. Jordan. Everybody believes in him. You know, like, there isn't a person that I have encountered, even the people who don't think he's a good actor, they all believe in him. They're all rooting for him. And that is what that title emotion was in that room at the Academy Awards that night. Like, just, yes, of course. Michael B. Jordan. It just feels good. Even when, like, I would not have voted for him myself, but I'm glad that enough people did that. He went up there and got that Oscar. It just makes me happy. It just really makes me happy.

[Sasha Weiss]

Congratulations, Michael B. Jordan.

[Wesley Morris]

Amen.

[Sasha Weiss]

But Sinners didn't win. And I'm curious how you ultimately felt about that. I mean, you know, that was kind of the narrative of the night. It's. It's one battle after another versus Sinners. Two movies that, as you say, are in some kind of conversation with each other. But if this Oscars is an X ray of the moment, what does it mean that One Battle was the ultimate winner? And how did you feel about that?

[Wesley Morris]

I was real heavy about it. I mean, you know, it's funny because if you had asked me a few years ago how I feel about Paul Thomas Anderson winning a bunch of Oscars, I mean. Cause he's been nominated for a bunch of Oscars. I would have been like, yeah, he is one of my favorite filmmakers. I love him. I love his movies. He's got an imagination. He's got all this history cinematically that he can play with that he has command of. He's got different modes. I mean, the Phantom Thread is a wildly different movie from Boogie Nights is a wildly different movie from Licorice Pizza is a wildly different movie from Hard 8 or Inherent Vice, which is my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie. But, you know, I left that film just so high. I mean, just so happy. One battle after another. And then I met the reality of the people in my life. You know, I. I'm friends with a lot of people who love it more than I do, but I'm also friends with a lot of people who despise it and think it is another kind of movie that we have been being subjected to for, you know, more than a century. These images that are really difficult to take of black people being depicted in a certain way, which is negatively. Right. Like in the case of one battle after another, sexually, explicitly sexually. Does the movie work as radical leftist politics? What are its politics? They're not the politics you think you're getting. Right. It's the implicit politics. It's the politics that are upsetting to people, which is they're all racial. It's not the free bodies, free borders, free choices. It's not that. It's this very ancient politics about white men and black women's bodies. That's what this movie is about, period. And does this movie. Does Paul Thomas Anderson's movie really understand, really what it is fucking with here? Right. You know, it's funny because I had Daphne Brooks on last week to talk about the feminist. The black feminist response to this movie and the black feminist dislike of it, that frustration with the appreciation of it and their anger toward the movie. And she brought up Mississippi Burning, which is a Best picture nominee from 1988 in the 89 Oscar year. And Gene Hackman movie where Gene Hackman is playing a member like this. Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman are these FBI guys who've gone down to Mississippi, same place Sinners has set, and they're trying to figure out who murdered the three civil rights workers who were killed in Mississippi. And the whole movie is about Gene Hackman solving this crime or trying to solve it. He falls in love with Frances McDormand, who plays this abused wife of one of the Klan members. And the whole thing, there's not one black character in this movie. Oh, my God. It's so well made. I can remember having a great time at Mississippi Burning. I had it on a cassette with two other movies. I watched it over and over and over and about maybe the 10th time I watched this movie. Cause it just, you know, I'd play them in a loop. I was young. I was 11 years old. I actually remember asking my mother how come none of the black people are really talking in this movie about the civil rights movement. And she's like, well, that's just how it normally goes, honey. That's what usually happens. This is why. And she said to me, like, we're kind of sometimes better off just watching movies where there are no black people. Like, meaning white movies or just black movies. Right. And the point was, like, once you start involving our stories and us, things get unpleasantly complicated. Because often the people who are trying to tell black characters stories or tell some story of this country involving, you know, all kinds of non white people, they don't really know, you know, this soul work that you need. These casting directors are looking for people with the souls to populate these movies. There's something missing. And so rather than, like, make a mistake, they just omit or they didn't think it was important to get the people part right because the moral story is correct.

[Sasha Weiss]

So are you saying that one battle after another is making a valiant attempt at some kind of, like, serious cinematic integration that then results in, like, these problems? Yeah, but like, I guess what I want to know is like, this strangeness and something missing and sort of stew

[Wesley Morris]

of

[Sasha Weiss]

like, shortcomings that enter into a movie when it, you know, kind of goes there. Like, is that a virtue of this movie in a way, or is it a failing of the movie?

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, it's both. I think it's both a virtue and a failing. And I will say that, like, in the world of the Academy, what does

[Sasha Weiss]

it mean that that's the movie that won instead of the movie that is doing soul work in a very straightforward way or in a very deep way?

[Wesley Morris]

I mean, I don't know. There's a number of ways to answer that. One is like they just thought one battle after another was just a better movie, a better made movie. Just like, you know, as filmmaking and storytelling.

[Alexa Advertisement Voice]

Right.

[Sasha Weiss]

That forward velocity that you're talking about, that excitement, that chase scene, it makes you high. That movie and the X ray of the present. Like, talk about X rays just speaking right to us right now.

[Wesley Morris]

For some people, Sinners is like old history. It's old history. It has no bearing on the present. And that, to me, feels sad. But one of the things that I love about the Academy Awards is that it forces a lot of us to have these conversations about what it means for these movies to not only be celebrated. But what do they mean as works of art? Who are they about? What are they doing? What is making me uncomfortable about this celebration of this movie in this way? You know, giving Sean Penn the supporting actor Oscar for playing as a racist man. Like, what is, what is this body trying to tell me about the people who make my movies? And, you know, sometimes depending on who the winner is, what this country is all about.

[Sasha Weiss]

All right, Wesley, you've done it again.

[Wesley Morris]

I don't know.

[Sasha Weiss]

You persuaded me that the Oscars are indeed important, Are really important. They're really important, important. So thank you.

[Wesley Morris]

Thank you. All right, that's our show.

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[Sasha Weiss]

How did I not know Rack has Adidas?

[Wesley Morris]

Why do we rack for the hottest deals?

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[Wesley Morris]

That's it. We did it. We also did it early. And because you know we're doing this episode early, this is this week's episode. And so we'll see you next week with our regularly scheduled Thursday drop. This episode of Cannonball was produced by Elissa Dudley, Austin Mitchell, John White and Janelle Anderson. It was edited by Lisa Tobin. Caitlin Love did our fact checking. Daniel Ramirez engineered this episode. Maddy Masiello, Kyle Grandillo and Nick Pittman recorded it. Dan Powell and Diane Wong, they did our original music. Our theme music is by just. Bobby Doherty took our photo for the show art and our video team is Brooke Minters and Felice Leon. This episode was filmed by Andrew Smith and Jika Gonzalez. It was edited by Jeremy Rocklin, Jamie Heaths and Pat Guenther. We're on YouTube. We're on YouTube. We'll be back next week and you know, thanks for listening everybody.

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