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- [00:12]
A
Hello, welcome to Slate. Money goes to the movies. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of Slate and the Times and places like that. Hello, I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.
- [00:28]
B
Hello. Hello.
- [00:29]
A
And we are going to talk about Jerry Maguire. Remember that? That was. That was like a big thing back in the day. It won Oscars and everything. And, oh, boy, do we have someone amazingly awesome and fabulous to talk about Jerry Maguire. Mina Kimes, welcome.
- [00:49]
B
Hi. Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
- [00:52]
A
Welcome back. I feel it's been a minute since you've been on the show, like many years.
- [00:58]
B
Was I a business journalist at the time?
- [01:00]
A
You were probably a business journalist at the time. Are you no longer a business journalist now? You're a TV person, right?
- [01:07]
B
Yeah, well, I went from being a business journalist to a sports writer, and then I went from being a sports writer to an analyst, which means now I just give my opinions on tv. But when I was a sports writer, I spent a lot of time around agents. So I do think I have some qualifications to talk about this movie in particular.
- [01:25]
A
You are always qualified to come onto Slate money for any reason, any subject. You picked this movie, so obviously you're qualified to talk about this movie. Honestly, the only qualifications you need to talk about this movie is having watched the movie, which I'm going to assume you have done. But welcome. And. And people can find you on espn. Is that it?
- [01:46]
B
Espn.
- [01:46]
A
Do you have a podcast to plug?
- [01:48]
B
I do. I have a football podcast called the Mini Kaim show featuring Lenny.
- [01:52]
A
Just.
- [01:52]
B
Just came back. Yeah, I was just on maternity leave. Just came back this today as of our recording. So, yeah. Had a baby right in the middle of the NFL season.
- [02:00]
C
You look well rested.
- [02:02]
B
Thank you.
- [02:05]
C
What's your secret?
- [02:06]
B
Professional makeup is my secret.
- [02:10]
A
Congratulations on the baby. And I'm sure there is an overlap between Slate Money listeners and football people, so go check out the Mina Kimes show. But right now we're gonna just talk about Jerry Maguire, which does have a large quantum of American football in it. Is that why you chose it?
- [02:29]
B
I hadn't seen it in a while, which is kind of one reason why I chose it. And I kind of wanted to see how it held up because I was really young when I watched this. I saw it in the theater, I remember, with my family. I remember it was, as you kind of said, a sensation at the time. It was a huge hit. It was award winning. It was. I mean, Tom Cruise is already famous at that point, but it was like A pretty, pretty significant moment in his career. So I kind of just wanted to go back and revisit all those things. Also, just as someone again who's in sports and around sports, business and the business, sports, I kind of was curious from a time capsule perspective to see how stuff aged. And spoiler alert, some of it aged well, some of it didn't.
- [03:10]
A
Two part question. Was it accurate about the business of sports at the time and would it still be accurate today?
- [03:17]
B
I think it was accurate. I mean, I mean, agents don't look like Tom. The whole thing, you know, was a lot sexier. I actually know the guy who the movie is based on, the agent, and his story is pretty different as well. Lee Steinberg. But yeah, I think it was pretty accurate to the industry back then, to some of the concerns, the relationships between athletes and agents, the approach towards money and health and all player health and all those things. But that industry has changed a lot since then, so it wouldn't. If you were to tell a similar story today, it would be very different.
- [03:53]
D
Should we give the 45 second recap of Jerry Maguire so people know what we're talking about?
- [03:57]
A
Do it, Emily. You're the queen of the recaps.
- [04:00]
D
Jerry Maguire is a sports agent. As Mina has already said. I shouldn't have used my time to repeat that. He is a sports agent and he goes through this, like, existential crisis, maybe because some little kid gave him the finger, because he was insensitive because the kid's dad performed professional sports player had had multiple concussions. And Jerry Maguire was like, don't worry. No matter how many times he gets a concussion, he's gonna keep playing. Like that's a good thing. It's not. When he gets the finger, he realizes, oh, that's not a good thing. He has an existential crisis in a Miami hotel room and writes what he calls a manifesto and what others call a memo throughout the film. It's kind of like this rambling stream of consciousness thing that we don't get the full picture on in the film. But 20 years later, director Cameron Crowe released the full manifesto, which we should discuss because it's so terrible. And the manifesto is just like, basically, money's not the most important thing. You should have relationships with your athletes. We should represent fewer of them. Blah, blah, blah. Coffee late at night, tastes like college, stuff like that. And then he basically gets fired and meets Renee Zellweger and things happen. And it's billed as a romantic comedy. But I think that the real romance is between Tom Cruise's character again, Cuba Gooding, jr's character.
- [05:14]
A
Okay, wow.
- [05:15]
C
Back to you.
- [05:16]
B
Yes.
- [05:17]
A
I'm going to quote from this letter because it is one of the most amazing things in the world. I once had a yellow couch. I got rid of it because it was neutral. My life is now like that yellow couch. And apparently in the world of the movie, this is an incredibly inspirational and dangerous thing to write. Everyone sort of applauds him for writing it. Rene Zellweger falls in love with him for writing it. He gets fired for writing it. And I'm like, seriously? No one ever got fired or applauded or fallen in love with for writing. My life is like a yellow couch. But this is Hollywood, people. Well done, Tom Cruise. Maybe it's. Maybe it's just something about that Tom Cruise magic.
- [06:01]
C
I think in real life, people who write manifestos are largely regarded as narcissists, are slightly unhinged. So this portrayal of manifesto writer as.
- [06:11]
A
Romantic, you know, hero, he calls it a mission statement.
- [06:17]
D
I called it a manifesto. I'm sorry, correction.
- [06:20]
B
Yeah.
- [06:22]
A
The purported message of the manifesto is we don't really care about our clients and we should care about them more and spend more time with them, which seems like a very unobjectionable thing to write. Mina, as someone who knows this industry, is this a tension in the industry that agents have too many clients and they don't spend enough time with them?
- [06:44]
B
That actually is a real tension, a real thing. By the way, yellow couch is not neutral. When you said that, I was like, that should have been the first red flag.
- [06:53]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [06:54]
B
Yeah. So a lot of agencies or agents start out. Some start out in the CAA mailroom or the one of the three big three or whatever. But a lot of them who started independent will start out with like one or two clients, and then they grow with them. And then if they choose wisely, they can get bigger. And then at a point, they either get much bigger and they stop. They run the risk of paying less attention to their clients or they get bought out. And that sort of results in a similar dynamic. So I think that is a actual, like, pretty accurate representation of attention that is pretty persistent in the industry, regardless of whether you're talking about sports agents, Hollywood agents, or whatever.
- [07:36]
A
Well, and you. You mentioned that the CAA mailroom. CAA stands for Creative Artists Agency. It is famous in Hollywood for representing Hollywood actors. Probably more than one of the stars in the. In the movie and even Mina Kimes. It strikes me that one of the messages of the movie is that Sports is very much. We've covered this on the show many times in the past. Sports is very much part of the entertainment industry that Tom Cruise is struggling to get Cuba Gooding the multi million contract that he feels that he deserves. Until Cuba Gooding does all manner of crowd pleasing antics at the end of the field and jumps up and down and gets everyone to cheer for him. At which point the club is more or less obliged to throw millions of dollars at him because he's such a good entertainer.
- [08:37]
D
Felix that is not an accurate reflection or summary of what occurs. Tom Cruise tells Cuba Gooding Jr's character, Rod Tidwell. He says, play with your heart, not your head. And then Rod Tidwell starts playing like amazing football. It's not his capacity as an entertainer. Playing the amazing football is what is entertaining.
- [09:00]
B
Right.
- [09:00]
D
I mean it's not because he does.
- [09:01]
C
Antics also it's supposed to be like a championship game and he wins it or something. Right.
- [09:06]
B
It's their game to get into the playoffs. Yeah. And he has the big play at the end and he's clearly concussed. Which by the way, that is the aspect of the movie that has aged worse. How they talk about concussions. That's every sports movie pre, like 2009, what you just talked about Emily, like there this sort of how did he get the contract? That tension is I would say the single biggest tension that sports agents, NFL agents in particular face, which is do you accept the safe contract for less money or do you allow your client to accept risk to their health because it's such a dangerous sport bet on themselves. He has a great season, the bet goes well, but often it doesn't. And there's a scene that I actually think is probably one of the better scenes of the movie where they get the offer. It's very underwhelming from the Cardinals. And Jerry doesn't tell him what to do in that scene, which I thought actually was pretty accurate to how agents and players, because it is such a personal decision. Do I want to risk my body for an entire season or do I want to just take less money now?
- [10:12]
D
Yeah. And he even says that the Jerry Maguire does say that like, well, if he doesn't take it, he, he could get injured and then get nothing.
- [10:19]
B
And I was like, which happens all the time. Happens all the time. It happens a lot. Yeah. I mean this is a real. That's awful.
- [10:26]
A
Yeah.
- [10:26]
B
And this is a way in which a lot of NFL players contracts are pretty cost controlled because they don't want to play them Out. So teams are always offering them early extensions, knowing that they, they don't want to take the risk of not getting paid at all.
- [10:39]
A
Is it also realistic that, that if I do a good catch play thing at the end of a playoff game, then that will get me another $10 million?
- [10:49]
B
Well, as Emily said, it was the cumulative, I would say, of the season. But yeah, honestly, we have seen teams make those kinds of business decisions. It's not purely merit. So that is another element of film that is a little bit accurate. Like if he does have fan base appeal as an entertainer in a big play, in a big moment, that actually can incentivize teams to stick with the player because, you know, it sells tickets.
- [11:14]
C
Can you talk a little bit about what the agent's responsibilities are in this kind of job? Like, I remember the first time I had a meeting with a literary agent. I told my mom about it and she was like, oh, like in Jerry Maguire.
- [11:26]
A
And I said, that's exactly. Yeah. Well, my book agent is exactly like.
- [11:30]
D
All of you have agents. I am the only one who is a free agent. I have nothing. Anyway, go on, it's not important.
- [11:37]
C
So what, what are they? You know, in the movie, McGuire and Rod Sidwell are super close and he shows up at everything he does. Where do the agents responsibilities actually start and stop?
- [11:49]
B
If it's a guy who doesn't have many clients, he might actually do that, show up a lot, and be really involved in their lives to that extent. With your bigger agent, maybe with their big clients, they're more likely to act that way. So again, that is pretty accurate. His job is obviously to negotiate with the team and then try to help the client make the optimal decision. But again, because football is so dangerous, that's pretty fraught. Concussions make it fraught as well. You're constantly like, okay, do you want to X years? Well, could the value go up? You're calculating the market, all of that. I think an interesting tension that doesn't exist when you're smaller, like Maguire is in the movie is sometimes because these agents. So there's like a few super agents in football, for example, who represent tons of guys, the biggest guys. Sometimes there's a little bit of horse trading involved. I mean, you're dealing with only 32 buyers of your client's services and you're negotiating with them on the part of multiple parties. So it can get a little bit fraught that way as well.
- [12:55]
C
Right.
- [12:55]
D
Because they might not go as hard for their clients because they have to come back and negotiate with the teams all the time and the clients come and go.
- [13:03]
A
Yeah, but I mean, you get this kind of even more in the book world where there are only like four big publishers. And if you have a big agency, then in a weird way that helps you, I think, because the publishers know that this is a repeat game, package.
- [13:19]
B
Deals, that kind of thing.
- [13:20]
A
Yeah, it's not just package deals. It's just that they know that it's not just about this one deal. They're going to have to come back and work with this agent over and over and over again. And they need to have some kind of a relationship of trust there. Otherwise, you know, nothing is going to work.
- [13:35]
B
Another thing about, like if, let's say Jerry represented a bunch of slot receivers who all became free agents at the same time, if you're one of them, if you're Rod Tidwell, how do you think, Are you sure he's advocating the most for you for a particular team? So again, this all speaks to the mission statement and why there is a little bit of underlying truth to this idea of like, when you get too big, it creates a lot of problems for the clients.
- [14:02]
A
And so I guess in the weird parallel universe of the movie, the reason why he gets fired is because there's some kind of an implication that they would have to downsize and represent fewer athletes. I didn't, I never quite understood the purpose, like what, what they thought they were achieving by firing him.
- [14:26]
B
I found it to be really, that was like the really like a relic of the time, which you guys I'm sure remember in the 90s, we old gen Xs.
- [14:37]
A
Yeah.
- [14:39]
B
I remember movies like Fight Club and Reality Bites, like Anti Corp Capitalism was, it was very simplistic. Right? Like, and this, the messaging of this movie is very simplistic. His mission statement, it's so simplistic. It's just like corporations are bad, capitalism is bad, the man is bad. And now looking back on it, it's so one dimensional and not like doesn't, you know, we now understand, like there's so many different layers to these things. And to go to your point, it was just like, well, he said the man was bad, so of course the man's gonna fire him. And it didn't really, like, they never really drew that line logically I felt.
- [15:21]
D
But I mean, I would have fired him because writing that and then getting it professionally bound at the mailboxes, et cetera, wherever, and then distributing it to the whole company, that was like an unhinged thing to do. Like, that's what's fireable to me? Not the contents of the memo, but just the whole.
- [15:39]
A
Don't be unhinged.
- [15:41]
D
Don't be unhinged. You have to be chill and cool.
- [15:43]
A
Don't be stealing fish.
- [15:45]
C
Although the mission statement was supposedly based on an actual memo that Jeffrey Katzenberg sent around that sounded kind of equally loaded with meaningless corporate psychobabble.
- [15:58]
D
Have to love the work. He said in his memo. He was at Disney at the time, right?
- [16:02]
A
Yeah, but yeah, this is clearly not designed to be a documentary.
- [16:12]
C
Also, we're talking about this like it's a Michael Mann movie or something about a lone wolf character. You know, it's a rom com and it feels like a rom com from that period.
- [16:24]
D
But Cameron Crowe at the time was like a very well respected director. He had done singles. He had done the one where the guy holds up the boombox. Help me out.
- [16:35]
A
Say anything.
- [16:36]
D
Say anything. He was like. People took this seriously.
- [16:39]
A
Like Janet Maslin in the Times loved it, which really surprised me because it is an objectively bad movie.
- [16:47]
D
There's no rom and there's no calm. Well, there's a little bit of comedy, right? Everything with Cuba Gooding Jr. In it is funny. And the show me, the show me.
- [16:55]
C
The money, everything the kid does is funny, but like.
- [16:58]
A
Yeah, but it's not that funny. But the times it's like, oh my God, this is the funniest thing that has happened in movies in decades. It's like, it's not that funny, people. It's just like. It's a one note joke.
- [17:10]
B
I think Renee Zellweger's good in it. I will say I. The she quivers. Well, it just. I like the like as far as like their relationship, it's not arc you usually see where like the way they get together and then sort of their reverse, you know, they get married and then kind of realize that they want to be together. I thought that was what struck me as watching it was not that it was a great piece of cinema necessarily, but that it's a kind of movie you don't really see anymore.
- [17:41]
D
That's true.
- [17:42]
B
Like that sort of mid market family is kind of. Well, I guess it's not a family.
- [17:48]
A
Movie, but like it's a family movie.
- [17:50]
B
Yeah, the scene, there's pretty raunchy sex scene with him and his ex, who. I don't. I still don't understand what she does.
- [17:55]
A
Oh my God. The weird. The sex scene at the beginning with his. He's. He's engaged at the beginning. And there's this long Scene where they're both completely naked and you're like, are you going to put some clothes on? No, I'm not. We're just going to stay naked. And yeah, it kind of like. And they're both magnificent sort of human specimens. Very buff and perfectly formed and it kind of put me in mind. And I'm really sorry for saying this because once I say it, you're not going to be able to unsee it. Of like, this is like Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, you know, they're just like, oh, no.
- [18:32]
B
What? How dare you compare Tom Felix.
- [18:36]
D
I don't.
- [18:39]
B
34 year old Tom Cruise was a specimen.
- [18:42]
A
Yeah.
- [18:43]
D
And Kelly Preston was gorgeous.
- [18:45]
B
Perfect.
- [18:46]
A
They were both. They were both very perfect and gorgeous. Yeah. And then, and then of course he winds up with Renee Zellweger who's always been like. Managed to be on that fine line between a. Being like a stunningly beautiful movie star but also being able to portray being normal.
- [19:03]
B
90S. She's got a very 90s look.
- [19:05]
D
Yeah. In the reviews they called her ordinary and I was like, were they watching the same. Like, she's obviously beautiful. That's so crazy. And also, why does she fall in love with his character? It's just because he's hot.
- [19:17]
C
Right.
- [19:17]
D
That's really what it is. That's it.
- [19:19]
A
And he was determined. I don't. Well, she falls in. She falls in love with him because her kid gives him a kiss and she's like, oh, now I need to love you because my kid loves you.
- [19:32]
B
He seems to. Why am I defending this movie? And Tom Cruise, he seems to really, really like her kid. And it's. Which I also thought was a kind of an interesting decision because the kid is never presented as like an obstacle or like the kid is a draw for him in the movie. He wants to be a dad to the kid. And I think that's a big part of the reason why she falls in love with him. Like from the moment when they see each other in the airport and he like helps her find the kid. I mean the kid is speaking of specimens. Like, where the hell did they find that kid? Oh my God. Yeah.
- [20:08]
C
He was like crazy. This little hairstyle with the spiked hair all the time.
- [20:13]
D
Jerry has more chemistry with the kid and with Cuba Gooding Jr. Like, there's really an arc with the Rod Tidwell character.
- [20:20]
B
Right.
- [20:20]
D
Like at first he's just like annoyed and rolling his eyes at this guy and he says, show me the money. And he's just like clinging to him because he's his only client. But by the end, I feel like they now love each other and they're really in each other's lives. And I was really struck by what a wonderful full arc they had. Whereas with Renee Zellweger's character.
- [20:40]
A
Yeah, it's a good bromance.
- [20:42]
D
Yeah, it's a bromance and I liked it.
- [20:45]
A
It's a better bromance than romance.
- [20:47]
B
Yes, I do think that is pretty accurate when it comes to like these lifelong relationships between sports agents. Like a lot of them represent these guys from high school or not high school. Sorry, right. When they grad. Well, now it's different because of Nil. They do actually work with them at a younger age, the college students, which is interesting. But they start working with them when they're like 22. And then a lot of them represent them for decades. Honestly, these are like really serious lifelong relationships. And it is someone who is an advocate for you in a way that no coach will ever be. No, like there's this weird, like the. They work for this 22 year old and they are their biggest cheerleader, their biggest fan. They're like, it's really. And I, and I have been around these relationships and seen them. I think the. So I mentioned this is based on Lee Steinberg, who was an agent. I don't know if you guys read about it at all. He, you know, he kind of famously. He was an alcoholic, he lost a lot of clients. He had a big comeback. He now represents Patrick Mahomes. He's the best football player in the world. And I believe it was based on his relationship with Warren Moon, who's a quarterback who he represented for years. And I do think that's kind of interesting. There's not really. It's a very unique financial relationship that it's hard to think of many things like that where it's one person who works for. It's like a really loyal assistant sort of. But they need you to be really successful.
- [22:19]
C
Also there's. And this may be an impression I just get from Hollywood or watching movies about sports and you know, behind the scenes sports stuff like Moneyball or the Winning Time series, which I thought was great. But in those films, you know, the agents kind of have this relationship not just with the athlete, but with their families, their spouses sometimes. And they sort of expect that the families are going to be part of the decision making process in a way that I can't imagine any other thing that you would be agented for where the agent knows that they also have to you know, butter up mom and dad or the spouse. How true is that?
- [23:00]
B
That's really true. And that's a really good point. I think that is something that differentiates sports from like, probably a lot. I mean, you know, if you represent like a young actor, obviously if you deal with their parents. But something that is unique with sports and especially football and basketball, although football is the one I know best, is these guys are like small economies. I mean, they are, you know, they, a lot of people are dependent on them. You are typically dealing with their entire families, especially because again, they start working with them at a really young age as well. And typically it is like they do have relationships with their parents and their uncles. And when you talk to, I can't even tell you how many times when I used to write about football players and I would deal with the agent and they'd be like, okay, I'll tell, you know, I'd be like, okay, can he be, I don't know, in Texas on Wednesday? And they'd be like, let me talk to his uncle or something like that. It really is like, I mean, like, it's, it's truly that sort of relationship. And they know everything about them. They know like the darkest secrets. They know their mom's birthdays. It is a very unique relationship.
- [24:09]
A
When, when was the movie? Like mid-90s.
- [24:11]
D
So yeah, 96.
- [24:13]
A
96 in the past, you know, 25, 30 years, however long it is in the movie, he goes from being given a lowball offer of just, what was it, like 1.7 million over three years or something like that, and eventually getting like 11 million for the same amount of time. And that's high. What would the equivalent numbers be today?
- [24:37]
B
Okay, so I don't know exactly. I'd have to look back. I mean, I would suspect at minimum per year rather than over three years. I'll just say he's a wide receiver. Right. So the top wide receivers in the NFL, the very best. And I don't think they suggest that he's like one of the best best, but make over 20 million around there. And then that mid tier is probably in high single digits through the teens per year, we're talking.
- [25:09]
A
So he's probably getting for a three year contract what a relatively normal wide receiver would get per year today.
- [25:17]
B
Yeah, so I could see like, you know, like I said, 11 million per year might be, or a little bit more if he's a really good player. But something that they don't address that is massive is NFL contracts aren't guaranteed and that's really everything in football is how much of it is actually guaranteed. And there's all these different kinds of guarantees. NFL contracts are famously misreported. So when you see a guy say, wow, he got like an, you know, a three year contract for $30 million. But then you start digging through the actual numbers and it'll be like, well, but this is only guaranteed for injury and this is a roster bonus. And, and that matters, of course, because as I was saying earlier, if you get injured, you might only see a small portion of that.
- [26:00]
A
Right. Because that's, that was the, that was the stated reason to take the lowball contract because the implication was at least that 1.7 million is guaranteed. But you're saying that nowadays, maybe back then they were, and now they're not.
- [26:15]
B
Like, oh, no, no, it's always, it's, yeah, this is not so.
- [26:18]
A
But even back then that 1.7 million wasn't really guaranteed.
- [26:22]
B
Yeah, football's unique in the lack of guarantees.
- [26:26]
D
So, so what is Jerry Maguire's cut then? 10%?
- [26:29]
B
No, much less. Yeah, football contracts, I think agents usually take like 2% or something.
- [26:34]
A
Oh, tiny.
- [26:35]
B
It's because the numbers are pretty large. I mean, like, you know, we're talking like a quarterback. So like, you know, a quarterback might be like a. I think the Last one was 260 million. I forget. But it's a lot of money. And then the guys who represent them represent a lot of people.
- [26:54]
A
And then did they get the same percentage of all of those shoe deals and all the rest of it as well?
- [26:59]
B
No, that's actually different. Yeah, so there's different percentages sometimes for marketing and it's different from the salary. Salary, I think, is usually the lowest of the buckets. But again, and there's a thing happening now too, by the way, where increasingly in sports, this isn't super common yet, but some athletes have started to represent themselves because they don't want to give that 2% away. And there's a lot of debate over how effective that is and whether they've done a good job. And obviously that debate is informed by anonymous sources who are agents. But, you know, it's complicated because the contracts are complicated. But some would say you just need a lawyer and just take the last guy's deal and add 5% to it.
- [27:45]
A
I have a couple questions about football. I was surprised at how sort of crunchingly negatively the sport seemed to me to be portrayed. There's a lot of pain and concussion and football as a sport does not come across well in this movie, but maybe that's just me watching it in 2023. And in fact, everyone just saw all of these men, like, running into each other in high speed and went, oh, yeah, that's football. We love it.
- [28:20]
B
Well, I think if the. I agree with you, but I think if, like, the tension of the movie is this guy taking a guy who plays a position where they keep talking about he takes hits over the middle of the field, so he's a slot receiver. So, like, certain players get injured more than others. And it's implied that he is the type of receiver who takes very punishing hits. And that's sort of the tension of the movie is like, is this guy gonna make it through the season so that not only he can get generational wealth, but this Jerry Maguire, more importantly, into the movie? Right. Jerry Maguire can have a sustainable business.
- [28:55]
A
And Jerry Maguire's adoptive kid, because that's the one who really matters.
- [28:59]
B
Yeah, because if it was. Well, right. Their whole relationship is contingent on the business surviving. The business surviving is contingent on Rod Tidwell not getting concussed and, like, not getting paid. Right.
- [29:07]
A
And is this the kind of storyline that you talk about in your podcast? Like, there's. There's a slot receiver, and you're like, is he going to be able to make it through the season? And does this person actually have a future in the sport and that kind of thing?
- [29:19]
B
Well, my podcast is mostly just analyzing the game, so it's more like, did the slot receiver, does he have a good matchup this week? But we talk a little bit and we talk. I talk about contracts a lot. And you know what happens in this movie? A guy betting on himself. That is something we would talk about. And it is something that plays out all the time in the NFL, sometimes to great reward for these guys, and sometimes it doesn't work out.
- [29:49]
A
And the other very, very important question that I have about American football and American football players as portrayed in Jerry Maguire the movie, are they all that astonishingly hairless? There's, like, no body hair anywhere in the movie.
- [30:06]
B
Drew Bledsoe's in it. There's some. Oh, my gosh, now I'm thinking about all these cameos. Must have just gone over your head. There's some really famous people in this.
- [30:12]
C
Movie who doesn't know who any of these people are.
- [30:15]
B
Al Michaels is in it. Frank Gifford, which. That makes it interesting because, like you said, it's not the best portrayal of football.
- [30:21]
D
So I didn't recognize Al Michaels. I, like, googled it. Like, is that really Al Michaels. Because he looks so different.
- [30:27]
B
Yeah, you look different. Cuba Gooding Jr. I will say there's a lot. He is kind of like a stereotype of a wide receiver. Well, he's a stereotype in certain other ways, but as a wide receiver in the NFL, different positions have different stereotypes from a personality perspective associated with them. And wide receivers have historically been like the divas of NFL teams. They just want are about themselves, or they have big personalities. It can sometimes be pretty true, I will say, but I thought he played it pretty accurately. I mean, it's a little over the top.
- [31:03]
D
What about when Tom Cruise is like, you want to put a towel on? And he's like, no, I air dry. In the locker room, Cuba Gooding Jr. Is fully naked, and it's obviously awkward for Jerry Maguire's character, so he says, you know, do you want to put a towel on? And he's like, no, I air dry. And he just walks around naked for the rest of the scene. And we see his towel, a lot of his tush. There's a lot of male nudity in the film.
- [31:26]
B
Yeah. Wow.
- [31:28]
D
Silence. It's fine.
- [31:30]
B
It's a very masculine movie.
- [31:32]
C
I think of this film as a critique of American healthcare because Tidwell is really, really worried about his injury potential, and Renee Zellweger is very concerned about getting health insurance because her kid has asthma.
- [31:50]
B
I remembered him having, like, from when I watched it, like, some horrible disease. And he doesn't. I remember.
- [31:57]
D
I thought he did also. He just had glasses. It was just glasses, I think.
- [32:02]
C
Are we confusing it with that movie Jack Nicholson? And I forget where the kid really has some, like, terminal, kind of not terminal, but, like, really bad thing.
- [32:13]
D
Yeah, maybe.
- [32:14]
A
Yeah. No, it's true. Like, I only watched the movie, like, less than a week ago, and already I think that the kid had some terrible disease. But, no, he turns out to be, like, an incredible baseball player in the end.
- [32:24]
B
Oh, I was gonna say Jonathan Livnicki. I don't know anything about him, but he's very famous for now being super jacked. If you Google Jonathan Livnicki, the first thing that comes up is, now you should do it. And he's, like, unbelievably buff. I don't know if he's still an actor or not, but John. Johnathan Lipnicki, I think he had a few big child roles.
- [32:46]
A
Emily is Googling it, like, right now.
- [32:48]
D
Okay, all right, I see him. Is he jacked? He's 33, young still. Okay. I don't see any, like, through the Google Search naked pictures or anything, but I don't want to say naked pictures.
- [33:01]
A
Oh my God. Wow. Yeah, there's, there's, there's, there's some real like six pack situations going on. New York Daily News headline, jonathan Lipnicki, former child star from Jerry Maguire, debuts shockingly muscular body. I love the idea that you can debut a body. How's your body? Have you debuted your body yet?
- [33:24]
B
Bonnie Hunt's really good in the movie too, by the way. Speaking of 90s icons, the sister.
- [33:29]
A
I thought that was Stockard Channing because I got my years wrong, but she does look a lot like Soccer Jennings.
- [33:35]
B
Kind of.
- [33:35]
A
Yeah, but, but she was good. I like, I like there's some real.
- [33:39]
B
90S stalwarts like Jay Moore as Bob Sugar is, is pretty solid in it.
- [33:46]
D
Great name.
- [33:46]
B
Yeah.
- [33:47]
A
So, okay, so explain where this comes from. It seems like such a weird conceit, right? Like I'm going to make like a bro ish American football sports movie with a triumphant comeback and big win at the end and everyone's happy. And then sort of mix it up, combine it with a very formulaic rom com. It's like, it's not an obvious movie to me. And then I'm going to get like Tom Cruise to star in it. Like, none of this is obvious. None of this makes any kind of obvious sense. And then it's gonna win Oscars. It's like, what?
- [34:30]
B
Like, there were a lot of movies like that. Like, to go back to the sort of anti capitalist thing this was like there were a lot of movies where that was really the sort of entire message. Have you seen Reality Bites? It really, it made me think of Reality Bites where it's just like, the man is bad. And so is that the message of this movie.
- [34:54]
A
Do you think this is an anti.
- [34:56]
B
Capitalist movie at a very superficial way? Yeah, I think that's what it would like it to be like, that the ethos of the movie is that selling out is bad. And here's a man who realizes that.
- [35:13]
A
I thought the ethos of the movie was show me the money and sell me out as much as you possibly can and more sell out, more better.
- [35:20]
D
It's very boomer because I feel like the boomers, they like, they were against the man and they were against selling out, but they wanted a lot of money at the same time. Like that was the ultimate boomer move to be like Jan Wenner or something like that. Like you're against the man and against selling out, but at the end of the day, you make a Lot of money.
- [35:37]
C
Who was in the movie?
- [35:38]
D
Who was in the movie? Right. He didn't hold up well. No, People have been following that story.
- [35:45]
B
Yeah, it's like, the suits are bad. Let me rephrase that. It's like, suit corporate culture is bad. And you know the end. Jerry's wearing, like, casual clothes. He's at the game. He's not like that slick asshole Bob Sugar. He dates a single mom who helped him find love. And he's rediscovered meaning in life. And he teaches his player to play with his heart instead of playing only for himself. And it's all kind of bullshit. But like that. A lot of 90s movies are kind of like that. That was kind of the point of them.
- [36:16]
C
I kind of think about the fact that the two supposedly most romantic lines in the movie, you complete me, and you'd had me at hello, are now just shorthand for rom com cheesiness. Everyone understands what you mean if you invoke them in that way.
- [36:34]
B
Did this movie invent you complete me?
- [36:36]
A
Yeah. This is a bit like, you know, to be or not to be. This is. This is. This is the font from which a million cliches since spouted. This is. This is the origination of you complete me.
- [36:49]
B
Wow.
- [36:49]
D
I heard show me the money long before I ever saw this movie. I was like, that's the show me the money movie. I didn't know what it meant.
- [36:55]
B
There's a lot of. Yeah, a lot of one liners.
- [36:58]
A
I think it's those three, really. It's show me the money, you complete me, and you had me at hello. All of which are. I don't know. I feel like none of them have really stood the test of time. Yeah, they all have that aura of cringe at this point.
- [37:12]
B
Regina King's character is by far the best character in the movie.
- [37:16]
A
Yes. She's great.
- [37:19]
B
And is, like, genuinely interesting. They should remake it, but just have it be about her character and Cuba Gooding Jr. Yeah, I don't know. I guess it just, to me, felt very of the moment. But it is surprising. Who were the other movies nominated for Best Picture that year? Because, like, it's definitely not a, you know, artistic film.
- [37:42]
A
Did it win Best Picture?
- [37:44]
B
No. Something. Maybe The English Patient.
- [37:47]
A
It won, like, but, like, Cuba Gooding famously gave the world's most, like, off the chain acceptance speech. But also, tell me, like, I feel like, again, I am not someone to talk about sports movies. I'm not a big sports movie kind of person. But this. This does seem to have been, you know, the related to that kind of movie. Movie where, you know, Moneyball or I don't know, probably the Blind side, which I still haven't seen. I haven't seen either of them, to be honest. But the idea that what you're doing is you're, you're, you're foregrounding the, you know, parasitical white guy as the way that the presumptively white audience can understand what is going on with the black athlete.
- [38:40]
B
Yeah. And the movie kind of is like a little self aware about that. There's a few moments where they hint at it.
- [38:47]
A
But yeah, when he's like, I'm black, I'm the blackest agent there is. And everyone's like, yeah, you're Tom Cruise.
- [38:52]
B
Well, kind of. When I was saying how the mission statement is really like archaic in terms of like exploring what's problematic about the sports industry and representation, it's so simplistic. It's just like, you know, corporatism is bad, selling out is bad. When there. It's a. Something written now that was well done would address the fact that there's this like very omnipresent racial power imbalance that's been around for your. Not just in terms of college sports and obviously players who have been paid, but even when you look at the cottage industry around these athletes, the dynamic of asking them to put their bodies on the line. When do we ask them to do that? The player health aspect, there's just so many more complicated layers to that relationship, to that business of representation and agents that are just pushed aside. It's just about, don't get too big, pay attention to your clients. Which is very, very small slice of it.
- [39:56]
D
It's just that it's like that 90s thing or maybe that forever thing of like the man becoming a little more sensitive and following his heart and like, that's the whole thing.
- [40:07]
C
Totally.
- [40:08]
D
He's the protagonist. It's all about him.
- [40:10]
B
Yeah.
- [40:11]
C
And that's considered like a full redemption arc.
- [40:14]
D
Yeah, exactly.
- [40:15]
A
Yeah. If someone is rich and good looking as Tom Cruise, who flies in the front half of the airplane and is engaged to Kelly Preston and has very good sex, if he can turn out to have feelings, then that is a truly heroic and noble thing to do.
- [40:31]
C
I feel like this was definitely a trope of the rom coms of this period where, you know, this guy is kind of a dick. This woman falls in love with him even though he is a dick because she knows that he can be better. And then he gets slightly better and then there's A happy ending. So yay.
- [40:46]
B
Yeah.
- [40:46]
D
She even says that literally. She's like, I know he's almost there. Stuff like that. She says it over and over. There's some good in him.
- [40:54]
C
I'm in love with the man. He can be. What's the phrasing like? He's on the cusp of being or whatever.
- [41:01]
B
I will push back. One thing, I do think 34 year old Tom Cruise is charismatic.
- [41:06]
C
I.
- [41:09]
B
He, I mean he like, I don't know, on screen you're like, oh my God, like this guy. You see why he became. He was already. But his stardom has persisted for so long, for so many years because he's like just so magnetic to me.
- [41:26]
A
All right, so Elizabeth, what letter grade would you give this movie?
- [41:30]
C
Well, I think when I saw it and I was probably a freshman in college, I would have said like B plus or A minus. And now I was cringing enough that I was in the B minus territory. It's still kind of enjoyable, but as a movie now I think it doesn't compare to even the genre best stuff now.
- [41:55]
A
I think I would probably give it a C. It's just not well written. It just has struck deep structural weaknesses that like you, that's table stakes for a movie like this. But Emily, what do you think?
- [42:12]
D
I actually, I was, I was floating in the sea camp for a while but after talking about it, I put it, I put it to, to B plus. I, I enjoyed it. It's cringy.
- [42:23]
C
Yes.
- [42:23]
D
Does it hold up? Not really. Is it as funny as it wants to be?
- [42:27]
A
No.
- [42:28]
D
But at the end of the day it was like pretty entertaining film. Like you don't see a lot of movies like this anymore that are just like light fair, Light comic fair. I don't know. I enjoyed it. I like the catchphrases. Sue me.
- [42:41]
B
Light comic fair. That didn't make you laugh once. I'll give it a B2. I found it to be eminently watchable. I think that's like which that is to me is hard to find at the theaters these days. Like you just sit down, it just goes down so easy. I did find it to be, while not particularly nuanced or delving into the real tensions of the sports agency industry, pretty accurate to how those guys act and sort of some of the things that they encounter and I liked, you know, some of the performances. Clearly, I mean this.
- [43:20]
A
Yeah, I can. Yeah, it's clear you, you, you were attracted to the whole 34 year old Tom Griers thing.
- [43:28]
B
What can I say if you want.
- [43:30]
A
To see 34 year old Tom Cruise naked, this is a prime opportunity to do it.
- [43:35]
B
Holds up.
- [43:37]
A
Mina, thank you so much for coming on, coming out of maternity leave for doing this. This is amazing. And yeah, we will all start. I'm now going to start listening to your podcast and it will all go straight over my head. But I will understand somehow, eventually understand it.
- [43:52]
B
I wonder how many minutes you would get through of it.
- [43:56]
A
So yeah, thanks for coming on and thanks for emailing us. Slatemoney at slate. Com and we'll be back on Saturday with a regular Slate money.