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The Big Picture
‘One Battle After Another’ Is a Modern Masterpiece, With Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson!
02:19:44
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- [00:00]
A
This episode is presented by State Farm. Life's full of decisions, big and small, and sometimes you make movie ones you can really stand behind. For example, I was wise enough to stick around through the mid credits during Ryan Coogler's Sinners. And unlike my co host Amanda, I got to see a very special sequence with a great buddy guy. Among other things. State Farm gets it. Making confident choices can make all the difference. That's why with the State Farm Personal Price Plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create an affordable price for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [00:47]
B
This episode is brought to you by Disney. Tron Ares is coming only in theaters October 10th. When sophisticated AI soldiers arrive from the digital world to invade ours, one soldier, Ares, goes against his programming and starts to think for himself. I love when this happens. He might be the only thing that could save humanity. See Tron Ares in IMAX in 3D only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now.
- [01:20]
A
I'm Sean Fennessy.
- [01:21]
C
I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the.
- [01:22]
A
Big Picture A Conversation Show One Battle after Another Today's the day Chris Ryan joins Amanda and me to discuss our most anticipated movie of 2025. It's called One Battle After Another. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by the writer, director and star of that movie, Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Perhaps you've heard of these two men, Leo and Paul, our patron saints of this podcast. A pleasure and an honor to talk to them. We talked about the long road to making the movie. Paul started writing it almost 20 years ago. Why it appealed to Leo, why it took them so long to get together, how the movie evolved when they decided to make it together, why Paul finally decided to make a movie set in the present day. Something that we've talked about many times on this show. We talked about a whole lot more. I hope you will stick around for that conversation. I suspect you will. Leonardo DiCaprio now a podcast guest. So we are coming right on the heels of New Heights. Very exciting programming. Reminder for the top of this episode. This is not the last conversation about One Battle after another.
- [02:19]
C
I mean, we're going to be talking about it for the next six months.
- [02:22]
A
But on Monday, on Monday we're going to do a mailbag A one battle PTA mailbag. So if you're listening right now, I assume you are going to see the movie or have seen the movie already. And if you want to hear more about it, more about pta, more about Leo, more about everything related to it, the box office, I think, will be a topic of hot discussion for sure. Send us an email@bigpickmailbagmail.com yes, bigpickmailbagmail.com you.
- [02:49]
C
Alluded to something important, which is if you're listening to this episode, you either have seen the movie or you're planning on seeing the movie. I think we need to set some boundaries and some delineations right here. Up top.
- [03:03]
A
We will spoil the movie in full starting right now. Yes.
- [03:06]
C
So, you know, don't do the thing where you're like, I know I'm going to see it, but I'm going to listen anyway. No, treat yourself. Stop, pause, come back. And also, if you're the person who's mad about spoilers in any way, shape or form, take responsibility for yourself and hit pause, because I don't want to hear it.
- [03:21]
A
Also, even if you wanted to fast forward, if you wanted to fast forward to my conversation with Leo and Paul that is also full of spoilers. And in fact, during the conversation, they were like, we're really spoiling this, but so go see the movie. We encourage you to see the movie. The reason we encourage you to see this movie is because this is a very special movie and it is Paul Thomas Anderson's 10th feature film. It's produced by Paul, the late Adam Sumner, to whom the film is dedicated, the longtime assistant director and producer. And Sarah Murphy stars Leo, Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, Chase Infinity, Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro, Wood Harris, Alana Haim, Tony Goldwyn, many other folks. Let's jump into it. Last night we saw it together. Yes, it was my third viewing. It was Amanda's second viewing. It was Chris's first viewing.
- [04:11]
D
Popped my cherry.
- [04:12]
A
Popped your cherry. Amanda, I will start with you. What did you think of one battle after another?
- [04:16]
C
This is the movie of the year and the movie of the decade, probably. And I mean that both in the sense of it is the best movie of the year and the best movie of the decade so far, but also is a movie of this moment and of these really fucked up five years that we in America have been living in, in a, like, a startling way, especially given how long PTA has been working on it in one form or another and how long it takes movies to make. It is jarringly prescient and timely and just feels like it is speaking to the things that torment us on our phone every day in beautiful and alarming and upsetting and exciting and amazing ways. So I just. I'm really glad everyone gets to see it now. It's amazing.
- [05:09]
A
So you would recommend this movie? Okay. CR so you had a slightly more challenging experience seeing the movie for the first time. You had a vertiginous view of the film.
- [05:19]
D
Those scenes, seats are there. We sat in the third row of the IMAX and CityWalk and. And if they put those rows there, someone's going to sit there. And so the movie has to play to the front end, to the back. I will go see it again where I can get, like, perhaps a different perspective, but didn't change how I felt about the movie. Interestingly, I went into this with the best movie of the decade, best movie of the year, the crowning achievement, etc. Etc. Of various careers. And it's a lot of hype to live up to and a lot of expectations to have. I don't think I've ever had that experience before. It's like saw Oppenheimer pretty early and I was like, that's great. You know, I saw Social Network and nobody was talking about it in those terms that we talk about it now. To go into a film and be like, this better be the best film of the last, you know, 10 years is. Is pretty impressive for it to live up to it. Which it did. Yeah, which it did. And I think I, you know, to. To the specific perspective that I had on it, like, in the screening. Like, it took me a second to get my sea legs with it, but it's just a transporting movie that transports you to where you are right now, which is an incredible feeling to have. To feel like there's something magical and amazing about real life is like, the best thing movies can do.
- [06:33]
A
Yeah, yeah. This is a very tactile movie made by human beings. It feels very much like a movie that could have come out in 2010 or 1985 or 1965, because there's no CGI, really, in this film. There's not. It's certainly very grounded in the real world, even though it has the familiar absurdist, satirical qualities that we expect from a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. And it is exactly what you're describing, which is that it is a very politically salient movie. It speaks to sort of like how power works. Right. More than anything. But it isn't only that, you know, so it is, like, incredibly entertaining. And exciting. And even though it is a 2 hour and 45 minute movie, which it is, it's a very long film. It's very propulsive and engaging and emotionally deep.
- [07:25]
C
Yeah.
- [07:25]
A
Which all of his films are, but very rarely in such conventional terms. And I mean that as a compliment. This is a movie movie. It's not a exploration of the human psyche. It has that. Those components. But like this isn't the master. If you're going in expecting something. Yeah, no, this has more mysterious. This is not as mysterious.
- [07:45]
C
This has a plot. It has a prologue and then characters and what's going to happen and dramatic reveals and you know, in some lights could almost be parts of it could be seen almost like soap opera atticly. But it still has room for the psychological analysis. You do wonder about every character. There are those weird, you know, flights of surrealism and horror that are also played for laughs. So it kind of has it all. But yeah, it's a movie. It's a movie movie.
- [08:19]
D
It's way closer to Road Warrior than it is Nashville in a great way, but little bits of both.
- [08:25]
A
Those are two good signposts, I think, for the movie because it is trying to accomplish both of those things in terms of its expansiveness, but also how the movie moves. This is a movie of literally moving from one physical destination to another over and over and over again. So to me, it's very much the culmination of the Paul Thomas Anderson project. Like this is it. Being number 10 is, I guess, kind of interesting and being kind of a capstone on these three waves of his career that he's had.
- [08:51]
D
Don't retire Paul Thomas Anderson.
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C
No, no, no.
- [08:53]
A
I don't get the impression he's planning to do that anytime soon, but, you know, we can talk about those. What I think a lot of fans of his see as like the three different phases of his career. But he's never really attempted anything. Not just this big, but in this style. His movies, if something is moving, it's usually the camera and not the people. You know, with the. With the exception of Boogie Nights where there's some high energy. He makes a lot of people talking in rooms. Films, you know, that's kind of his thing. And this is not that. This is something very, very different from that. So for him to attempt that without losing, I think those qualities in the first nine movies is part of what is so exciting to me. Because one of the tenets of this show is that we like big Hollywood spectacle. You know, we like action movies and blockbusters and so for someone with his skill set and point of view to bring his ethic to a blockbuster movie is incredibly exciting.
- [09:44]
C
Yeah, but on steroids. It's not like there's just like one really virtuosic chase sequence where you're like, oh, wow, you know, you've never done that before. And look, you can really do it. It is like two hours of that, of different set pieces, people in different places. And you know, that's another. They are in most PTA movies. They're in like a house or a townhouse or, you know, other. And they're. They're very nice houses in real places. But these are out in the world with like tons of extras and tons of explosions and just, you know, real, actual, practical, giant things happening in volume. Like just the sheer amount of it is sort of astonishing.
- [10:26]
D
I was really blown away thinking about how he moves the camera in this movie. I think you alluded to it. There are scenes where really very little is happening. A character is in a convenience store and the camera's just speeding past all the stuff on the shelves and going over a shelf and then turning to see who's come in the door and then turning back to the character going out of an employee only door. And I was trying to think about, like, why he did what he did. Because I think that there's parts of Boogie Nights that when you go back and watch it, you're like, man, this guy's really fucking good. But like, he's almost like, that's the point. I'm really fucking good.
- [11:01]
A
I completely agree with you. One thing I feel, I don't feel that this movie is show offy. I think it does have all the moves. But, you know, those first couple of movies are real. Like, I've seen every Martin Scorsese movie. And let me show you how I can do it too.
- [11:12]
D
Yes.
- [11:13]
A
And while this movie has incredible energy, it doesn't feel like it's riffing on other people in quite the same way. I think he's very generous and says, like, I was inspired by the Battle of Algiers or the Searchers or Running on Empty for this movie. And that all is clear. But it's not the same as I watched Raging Bull 10 times in a row and then I made my movie. This doesn't feel like that at all. It feels. And I wouldn't say it's like, oh, it's singularly his style either. I think it's because it is so generally entertaining. You're so interested in where the story is moving that you're not like you don't have time to kind of ponder on the mechanical decisions.
- [11:47]
D
What's the relationship between moving a camera or keeping a camera still and what it does to the audience. And the only time in my first viewing of this, like all caveats aside, that I really noticed the camera was still was when people felt safe. So it was either people in power who don't think anything can touch them, or it was people who were about to be on the run in that moment of peace before their lives change. That's the only time I remember the camera ever sitting still. And then the rest of the movie is pushing these people out of the doors, following them on rooftops, into cars, into, you know, all these different things. And it creates your emotionally identifying with characters who are doing things that you maybe could never imagine doing. And that's like what movies do that nothing else does.
- [12:32]
A
So we should really talk about what the movie is about. Okay, the logline is that Bob Ferguson, Leo's character, is a washed up revolutionary who lives in a state of stone paranoia, surviving off grid with his spirited and self reliant daughter Willa, played by Chase Infinity. When his evil nemesis Steven J. Lockjaw, played by Sean Penn, resurfaces, Willa goes missing. The radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their past. Now that description of the movie, which is sort of like the widely shared plot synopsis, elides the first 40 minutes of the movie, which is a really. Which is really interesting and has become more interesting as I've watched the movie a couple of times now, because I think this is the part of the movie that people will probably love the least because it is the most impressionistic and it is not as focused on Leonardo DiCaprio. It's very much Kiana Taylor's story. She plays a character named Perfidia Beverly Hills, who is a radical revolutionary. I guess this is meant to be roughly 2008, 2009, 2010, when everything is happening. Because the movie is contemporarily set right.
- [13:36]
C
And it says 15 or 16 years.
- [13:38]
A
Later when it springs. Yes, it springs ahead. So this is.
- [13:42]
C
Wow, I can't believe that was 15 years ago.
- [13:43]
A
But anyway, and I think that's kind of useful to think about too in terms of what was happening in the world at that time and why this character, who is part of this radical group called the French 75, part of a wider resistance that engage in violent acts of revolution. And so this setup for the movie, and even just the very first thing that we see, which is the very first thing we see is her and him moving towards her. We see Leo's character, who's known as Ghetto Pat, and Rocketman, who's like a new joiner of the French 75, going to be closer to the movement, going to be closer to her, going to join whatever it is that they're cooking up. And the movie is very unpta. I would say it is not as funny in the first 30 or 40 minutes as it becomes in the second.
- [14:27]
C
Half of the movie.
- [14:29]
A
It's much more tightly focused. It is. It reminded me a little bit of Phantom Thread in terms of how much time it's giving to the psychology of a woman in a movie, which is, you know, not really a signature of his work. And it's very interested in showing the. The how to of revolution, the specific things that they do. Blowing up banks, freeing migrants from a detention center, blowing out electric grids and dominating municipal spaces. And also like a very sensual part of the movie too, because Perfidia and Ghetto Pat are falling in love as they're doing this revolution and they're fucking a lot. And there's like a thing that happens really early in the movie where you know that it's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie where one, Perfidia engages Lockjaw, the Sean Penn character, and she like embarrasses him, Slash, you know, and sorcerers him. Yes, exactly. Perfect. Perfect word for what she does. She turns him on and leads him out. And after they have finished raiding his detention center, she gets in the car and she kisses Ghetto Pat. And the way that they kiss, I was like, this is a. This is a PTA movie. It's like an open mouth, tongue out kiss. It's not a movie kiss. And you can see that there's something really like right on the surface with Perfidia. She's like living out loud in a way that a lot of characters don't in a lot of movies like this. They're sort of like presenting the idea of revolution but not actually showing it. And the movie then becomes this like, portrait of her kind of dominating the space. You know, her kind of running the show, him living kind of in awe of her.
- [16:03]
C
Right.
- [16:04]
A
While they enact all of this stuff. So, I mean, give me some reflections on the first third of the movie.
- [16:10]
C
Essentially well woven into all of that. And you mentioned what starts it, the initial scene between Stephen J. Lockjaw, Sean Penn and Perfidia, which, you know, and turns into like a sight gag erection, but also with some very, very Messed up undertones. And so throughout this, this prologue, this kind of extended montage of Pat and Perfidia being revolutionaries, falling in love, starting a family, like, interwoven through, like, Lockjaw keeps showing up and Lockjaw keeps showing up and you keep seeing his obsession. Fetishization of Perfidia. And ultimately, like, they do also wind up sexually entangled in a way that is, like, important to the plot. Very upsetting. Played like, a little bit for shock value, maybe, if not for laughs. I mean, there is an incredible needle drop to Soldier Boy when they are finally the Shirelle song. Yeah. Doing whatever you want to call that. I don't know what you would term.
- [17:28]
A
I have some ideas. Yeah.
- [17:29]
C
Intercourse. But it's sort of like the question of power comes into play from the very beginning.
- [17:34]
D
And it's something Lockjaw thinks about a lot.
- [17:38]
C
And also something that Tiana Taylor thinks that Perfidia does. And you see it in Teyana Taylor's performance, like in that first erection scene, the way her eyes kind of light up and she realizes that something's going on. There's a bonfire scene where she has a line she's talking about, like. Like, this pussy is for war. It's not for, like, as she's pregnant. And then you cut to Pat being like. It's like she doesn't even know she's pregnant. But so how she is both using her sexuality and how it is being objectified or, you know, taken advantage of being a generous term is also like, a major part of what is going on with her and the lockjaw. So she is figuring. And that's a different, like, type of power, both from Perfidia's perspective, but also then what Lockjaw has on her or against her. So I. It's. I mean, it's fascinating and the way it resolves itself is not a resolution, but. And I think I like it about it too. And I think it's not a.
- [18:45]
A
The movie doesn't present like, a binary idea about Perfidia. No, there is a lot of. There's shades of gray in terms of how. Trying to understand how she really feels about certain things, whether she is actually turned on in any way.
- [18:56]
D
Well, I think it's also. There's an element that I. I find fascinating, which is, like, what does it take to be a revolutionary? And how far do you take your beliefs and your.
- [19:06]
E
Your principles?
- [19:07]
D
Right. And so the reasons that she gives, like, Perfidia has, like, more in common with, like, Neil McCauley than she does with anybody like, she lives by code. She's like. And she. When it's useful to her, it starts employing revolutionary rhetoric to be like, there's a new consciousness. You can't keep me at home with this baby and you can't, like, own my. Like, this is fragile.
- [19:28]
C
Male says right after she's talking about how I carried her for nine months and now he has this person to coo over. And it's like, I'm not even the number one girl anymore.
- [19:38]
A
She's jealous over her child. Yeah.
- [19:40]
C
She says, you know, it's, like, insightful and, you know, but, like, another complication in terms of the power dynamic. And she. She got power from being, like, the. The number one woman in charge.
- [19:52]
A
Yeah.
- [19:53]
C
And then there's someone else on the scene.
- [19:55]
A
Yep.
- [19:55]
C
Who's very small and demanding.
- [19:57]
A
Yeah. And I don't think the movie judges her, you know, and I think the decisions that she makes because of the position that she's put in. And, you know, as the movie goes on, we see her trying to kind of break free of the expectations of any woman, especially a woman who's had a child, where the expectation is that she stay home and take care of her family. And Pat is very comfortable even at, let's say, he's in his early 30s, entering into, like, a more domesticated phase of his life. And she's not. She doesn't want that. And so she continues to go out into the world and she goes to rob a bank and something terrible happens and she shoots and kills someone during this bank robbery. That leads to breathtaking chase sequence. I think one of the most accomplished things PTA has ever done. He's talked about the French Connection. Huge waves of that in this movie. Very exciting moment. Very scary moment for the characters. And it ultimately leads to her being captured. And when she's captured, she has to make a decision about what she's going to do. And she chooses to. She's forced to. To save her own life, essentially rat out the French 75. And we see a lot of her cohort either get killed or arrested in a really bracing sequence. And Lockjaw thinks that he has commandeered control of her.
- [21:06]
D
I guess it's worth mentioning that Lockjaw represents this, like, shadowy government agency called mku, which is, like, a highly militarized police force that seems to concentrate a lot on immigration, but now seems to be rolling rogue through the country and.
- [21:20]
A
Doing whatever else, uses narco terrorism and a lot of other concerns to exert his power. And when she makes this choice to Go in and win his protection. That's the moment when the movie starts to shift gears. The first 30 to 40 minutes, with the exception of the funny stuff that Sean Penn is doing, is quite serious and is like kind of an example. It's a portrait of a revolutionary, basically. And it's feels a lot like a lot of 60s and 70s movies that were about these kinds of figures and these kinds of ideas. Part of what is interesting to me about this, and I just haven't thought about this as much, but seeing it a couple times has continued to push it to the front of my mind. This is an invention. We don't have a lot of examples in our culture in the last 25 years of violent revolutionary acts. There have been some. There have been some attacks, like we saw how to blow up a pipeline a couple of years ago that was inspired by, you know, some real acts of.
- [22:15]
D
We don't have a Weather Underground that we're aware of these people rampaging. Not rampaging, but, you know, like doing their thing.
- [22:22]
A
Yeah, and I bring that up for a couple of reasons. One, obviously, the. The movie has been inspired by Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, which is a movie set in the 1980s, very much about Reagan's America, about 1960s revolutionaries kind of contending with their former lives.
- [22:36]
C
Right.
- [22:36]
A
What they've done, what that represents to them to transport the movie to the present time is really interesting because all of the ideas of power, the way that Lockjaw's character works, and the way that the shadowy secret group that we will soon meet in the movie operate all feels very now. It just feels exactly like how we imagine decisions are made behind the scenes. But what Perfidia and her group do doesn't feel as Now. I'm not sure if you could say it feels like a wish that might be casting too strong a notion. But it feels like it's an oddly hopeful movie about this kind of action, even though a lot of terrible and sad and tragic things happen to the characters throughout it. And I'm fascinated by the choice to make a movie that is about standing up to power, essentially.
- [23:23]
C
Yeah, well, it's still. It does put it in the past, even though the perfidia section is a prologue. Right. And so then the. The majority of the movie and the characters are dealing with the after effects. And also many of them that they're not in the game anymore, that they have failed in one way or another or they've lost the fight, as the sister of the brave beaver says. So I think I Didn't bump on it as much. I mean, you're completely right that we don't. I'm not aware of the Weather Underground of the current day. You know, that's.
- [24:03]
D
Sure I'm not on the show.
- [24:04]
A
I'm sure there are people who imagine themselves as such.
- [24:06]
C
I'm not on that particular dark web.
- [24:08]
A
But you don't wake up every day and hear news about a bank getting blown up by revolutionaries. That's not the common political news right.
- [24:14]
C
Now, but it is. The movie still does set it in, even though we can remember that past, that it's kind of trying more to deal with the aftermath and the people, the younger generations and the people trying to make sense of something that has failed, which I would argue we are very much living in.
- [24:33]
D
And also, I mean, the movie's not particularly explicit about ideology or the ideology it's explicit about is like ideology that is like, transcends like politics. It's like racism or counter, like revolutionary behavior.
- [24:46]
C
She calls about an abortion clinic.
- [24:48]
D
Yes.
- [24:48]
C
At some point, like, in that montage, they're kind of.
- [24:50]
A
For sure, there's some ideas.
- [24:52]
C
Thanks.
- [24:52]
D
And like, I. I totally understand, but I just mean, like, once you move into the second half of the movie, it's much more almost mythical than it is political, I think, you know, to.
- [25:04]
A
Me, in some ways, and also much more comic. And because of that, it feels more absurdist. Again, with the exception of some of the lockjaw stuff, the first 40 minutes of the movie is pretty grounded in terms of the tone.
- [25:16]
C
The opening scene is Teyana Taylor on a bridge overlooking a detention camp at the. At the U.S. mexico border. And it's like we have seen those images, you know, very recently in. And there is a lot of it in the first 40 minutes of like, the, you know, militarized police in major cities. I was trying to figure out, like, which. Which city is this that is being overrun right now that I have also seen on the news being overrun. So it. Yeah, it's. It is very much, if not pulled literally from headlines, then reflective of the news.
- [25:53]
A
The second and third acts of the movie are fascinating. Very crowd pleasing. The movie jumps, as you said, 15 years into the future, where Willa and Bob, which are the new identities of Ghetto Pat and his daughter Charlene, they move to Bacton Cross, California, which is.
- [26:15]
D
Supposed to be like Eureka, like Northern California kind of thing.
- [26:19]
A
I think some of this movie takes place in Sacramento. Some of it takes place in kind of like the middle of this state. Again, it's a Paul Thomas Anderson Movie. It's a California movie. In many ways. The movie is all about the. The topography of California. And they're hiding out, and they've been hiding out for 16 years and trying to avoid becoming discovered. And then, of course, they. They become discovered. Because this is a movie, this is my opportunity to say this is very much a dad daughter movie. And that is not surprising. Paul Thomas Anderson has three daughters. I think all three of his daughters are teenagers. You can feel a lot of the inspiration of this movie being about the conversations that fathers have with their daughters. You see that up front at the beginning of the second act because to me, one of the most entertaining and affecting scenes in the movie is Bob and Willa. Willa coming down hard on her father after a long night in which he's been going out drinking with the boys.
- [27:25]
D
Trying to achieve Steely Dan sound with some.
- [27:28]
A
Yeah, he's trying to get those tubes. And then she.
- [27:30]
C
And she's also. She has a school dance to get to. So her dad is, you know, trying to. They're trying to parent each other.
- [27:36]
A
Let's do the math on that. So do we think he just slept till 6pm? Like, what happened?
- [27:40]
C
I did notice the second time that the school dance is happening during daylight hours. Yeah, like, even when.
- [27:47]
A
But could it have been like 5pm? Like, it seemed like he slept pretty late that day.
- [27:52]
C
Sure.
- [27:53]
A
Had some odd hours.
- [27:55]
C
He got home around three or four. He said so, you know, but, like, the bathrobe is a lifestyle, not just a time of day thing for him. So.
- [28:02]
A
That's a good point in that scene, you know, chase infinity. We saw her in Presumed Dennis in Presumed Dennis at the TV show. And this is her first movie. And her job in this movie is to go toe to toe with Leonardo DiCaprio, Regina hall and Sean Penn. So that's a tough job.
- [28:22]
D
She also has to be an action star for some of it.
- [28:25]
A
Has to incredibly hold a gun, has to credibly run away, has to credibly fight grown men.
- [28:29]
C
Gotta figure out how to get zip tied hands. Like the zip tied thing, which I was really ingenious. I was like, wow, this is.
- [28:36]
A
She knew, right, what to do.
- [28:37]
D
We're gonna do the Amanda Dobbins drives a Dodge Charger with zip tied hands challenge.
- [28:41]
C
She's really, really turning there at one point. But yeah, no, just the leg reversal thing. I was like, this is practical knowledge. I'm glad I have this now.
- [28:50]
A
One of the things that we don't get explicitly clarified, but that you can assume is that Bob has Shared his ideology with his daughter. Not just the information about how to keep her safe and keep her anonymous, but how they see the world, or at least how the French set running.
- [29:09]
D
On empty influence or whatever. But this idea of we're off the grid. There's like a really, I think, lovely bit of this movie that's about how just because you're not on the Internet doesn't mean you're not connected to a community. And like Bob, obviously, even though he's something of a hermit, like goes to bars, knows the Benicio del Toro character, like as part of this community and. And his daughter wants to be maybe part of a bigger world, you know, and both in terms of what Bob used to do, and also just having friends and going to dances and. And wanting to be out in the world through her phone.
- [29:45]
A
One of the things I like about it too is just the way that most daughters are smarter than their dads and they know it. And that's a huge part of this. Bob is such a burnout. He's a real. One of the running jokes of the movie is how he's completely fried his brain so he can't remember anything, especially when he really needs to remember something. And he wants to be progressive. He wants to be like. He wants to have an empowered daughter. That's important to him.
- [30:09]
C
Yeah.
- [30:09]
A
And so when she starts scolding him, he wants to say, like, stand up for yourself. That's right.
- [30:15]
C
You should tell me what you think.
- [30:16]
A
I am an idiot. You know, like, I did fuck up. Which is very amusing. And obviously like, she reacts to it, but she's like any 16 year old girl, she's like, I hate my parents, they're so annoying. Why won't they get out of my shit? But that. That interesting.
- [30:30]
C
Also, she has some points because he came home at 4:00pm, but, you know.
- [30:35]
A
And he's admitting to drinking and driving, you know, and he's like, I know how to drink and drive, you know? And then to me, the absolute funniest part of the movie is when her friends arrive to pick her up for the dance. It's a classic, you know, and Leo greets them and I can't do justice to what's up homie? But the entire what's up homie experience where he talks to Bluto is so, so good. And it does to me, the movie kind of like goes into a second gear once that scene happens because it feels like it finds its comic sensibility in a real way. And if Leo gets activated in the movie in a way that he has really, for the most part, not been up until that point.
- [31:13]
D
Yeah, that's where. That's where, like, that's the best acting I've ever seen. Rick Dalton shows up kind of. You know, it's like he kind of. He's kind of, like, running that whole. The whole space.
- [31:25]
C
Well, and it's. It is also when, like, the heart and the emotion of the movie shows up. The first 40 minutes are incredibly, like, upsetting and involving and obviously, like, technically accomplished. And, you know, there's like, amazing action set pieces. But then you get to this moment and, you know, you're like, oh, he's a girl dad. You know, but there is. To your point about, there's a hope in this movie. There is some. There's real emotion. And it becomes evident once Leo is in a bathroom screaming at people.
- [31:58]
A
Yeah. And their connection is the engine. You know, the idea of him being so protective of her. There's this great little plot device in the movie of these kind of transmitters, these responders that they're given that Leo is given right before he goes off on the road to go to Backton Cross eventually. I love that actor who gives him the transponders, who put the Howard Somerville character who is never in movies, he's in this great movie Frownland that Ronald Bronstein made some years ago, and he's a composer. And that character who creates these transponders and eventually shows up a little later in the film in the present day is a classic Paul Thomas Anderson thing where I'm like, did he just remember that that guy is alive?
- [32:42]
D
There's a guy in this movie who plays basically Sean Penn's character's interrogator who has a single IMDb credit. And it's one battle after another. And he is one of the scariest parts of this movie. And I just don't know how he does this. He just. Over and over again, the guys in the Christmas adventures who we'll talk about. But, like, you're just like, where did you fucking. How did you come up with the roulette wheel that gave you these three dudes?
- [33:09]
A
Yes. There's a lot of examples in this movie. Can go through every one. Honestly. It's a podcast. We have time. But, you know, he hands his daughter this transponder, and we, you know, we realize that her life is kind of hard because he is obsessive about protecting her.
- [33:27]
C
He's paranoid also, as she says in the car, they're driving away.
- [33:31]
A
Yes. And he is like, really? It's wearing her down as she's entering her teenage years. And I think actually Paul might have said this when we spoke, but just the idea of, like, maybe for the first 12 or 13 years of her life, she didn't realize how weird this was.
- [33:43]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [33:43]
A
But she's starting to realize for all of us, though. Very much so. I love that idea in the story of her trying to find a way to break free, figure out how to be her own person. But she's kind of bound by the actions of her parents, you know, and that she can't actually be as free as she wants to be in the world, which is really interesting, you know, common condition of all.
- [34:01]
C
Yeah. Here are we. Here we are all are.
- [34:05]
A
And I think it's funny that Leo is doing this part to me. He's never been a parent to an older kid in a movie before. He turned 50 years old last year, and he's.
- [34:20]
C
He was born sometime in the 80s, according to this movie. And I was like. I clocked that.
- [34:24]
A
He's playing down a little. Well, he says that to a police officer. We don't actually know if he's even telling me truth there. But it. This is a new step for him, I think, to be playing. He's played parents before, but not like this. And there's a certain kind of, like, desperation and goofballness. Like loserness.
- [34:42]
C
Yeah.
- [34:44]
A
Many of the dads I know, like, instantaneous. Instantaneously become losers when they become dads. Like, you kind of like seed something.
- [34:51]
C
Not you, though. You just leveled up.
- [34:53]
A
I was a loser well before I was a dad. But I just think this performance is really special. It's been part of a lineage of movies that he's now done for roughly the last six or seven years. We talked about the Wolf of Wall street on the show this week. And then if you go from there to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which Chris just mentioned, then the Rick Dalton energy. Don't look up Killers of the Flower Moon. These movies are all really nervy, comic, kind of like goofball, but also deeply dramatic stories.
- [35:24]
D
It's also an interesting.
- [35:26]
E
It's.
- [35:27]
D
It's interesting to think about, like, him. Think of it thinking of himself in this way. Yeah, because it's, you know, sometimes you see a picture of him and respectfully, like, he does have a little bit of a. Of a bob energy, you know what I mean? When he's got like a V neck, white T shirt on, and he's like, vaping with a hat pulled down and.
- [35:44]
C
Then he's on A Jet Ski.
- [35:45]
D
And then there are times where he puts on a tux and you're like, well, you win.
- [35:49]
A
Yeah. There's Cary Grant. Yeah.
- [35:50]
C
Yeah.
- [35:50]
D
And what he wants to be. I mean, he hasn't done Cary Grant in a while. You know, he's basically been like, I want to hide it. I want to have a paunch. I want to be stupid. I want to be insecure. I want to be in a bathrobe the entire movie. It's interesting that that's what he.
- [36:05]
C
But still, like, you know, vaping on a Jet Ski or, like, playing tennis, which. With his younger girlfriend, which I think was this summer's activity. Leah loves the summer, much like myself. That's still, like, very far from the dad energy that he is bringing to this. And there is something so, like. I mean, he's just a really good actor. It's, like, deeply felt, like, emotional. You're just like, oh, like, no, you have the dad stuff. Like, you really do. You care. And that scene in the car when he's talking about how he doesn't know how to do her hair. And the scene at the. You know, the very end with the hot. Like, it is. It's so moving. And there's a softness to it that I didn't really know Leo had.
- [36:47]
A
There is.
- [36:47]
C
That is so essential to making this movie work.
- [36:50]
A
And.
- [36:52]
C
And then. And that I've never seen before. Yeah.
- [36:53]
D
And I also think that the. One of the most powerful things the movie does is just say, like, it doesn't really matter. Like, it doesn't really matter. Like, the. The title is incidental to the behavior in terms of, like, people's family, familial relationships or how they treat each other. And it's like, if Bob treats her like a daughter, then he is her dad. You know what I mean? We'll get into why that is. But, like, this movie essentially moves from this moment where, you know, Willow goes to her dance. This is where the movie leaves earth. And you will, like, don't leave. Don't blame you.
- [37:27]
A
Can't go to the bathroom, do anything.
- [37:30]
D
Just stare at it. Because this is one of the best sustained pieces of filmmaking I've literally ever seen in my life. And it just turns into the inverted version of the Searchers told from the Comanches. And it's like this maniac chasing down this family. And it's unreal.
- [37:47]
A
One thing, one last dad thing I want to note that I think is important is, like, pretty relevant to this whole movie is Paul Thomas Anderson is the daughter of Biracial children. Excuse me, the father, biracial children. And like, this whole movie is very much a movie about black women and black women existing in the world. And his experience, I assume, as a white dad trying to understand how to help his kids get through the world.
- [38:13]
C
I do also think that there's a little bit of. His wife is Maya Rudolph, and there's a Katie Weaver profile of Maya Rudolph, like 20, 18, 19. I think that I always remember because Maya Rudolph's mother, Minnie Riperton, died pretty early in her life and has the detail of Maya Rudolph's father not knowing how to do her hair. And that being a thing to, like, in one detail, explaining, like, what that loss means at that age to a young black woman. And so then that is showed up literally line for line. And you know that there's also absent mother in that. So it's just he is pulling from not his experience, but people very close to him.
- [38:58]
A
There's no doubt this is an incredibly personal movie for him. And it's risky to kind of draw conclusions based on people's biographical details, but some things are just so overt that you can't help but ignore them. The other thing, too, is that one thing that we joke about a lot on the show is the generation gap and the way that ideas are a little bit different for people who are 10, 15, 20, 25 years younger than you are. And this is a version of it in politics and in particular ideologies. And the way that parents, as they get older, even if they fancy themselves revolutionary types of, just turn a little more inward, you know, get a little bit more focused on their own shit. Sometimes they turn conservative, but even if they don't turn conservative politically, they turn conservative personally, or they just become more nostalgic. They don't think about progress in the same way. And that having kids or even just encountering young people can really be like a confrontation of your values. It's hard to make a movie about that. And this movie is very much about that because of how strong Chase Infinity's character is, even though she's not, like, banging a gavel, explaining how the world works to her father for two hours.
- [40:07]
C
Right.
- [40:07]
A
You sense that there is a real tension insofar as she gets herself a cell phone, even though he's told her not to. Like, she is seeking a certain kind of independence.
- [40:14]
D
Yeah, I think that there's, like, a very funny exchange about they. Them pronouns that, like, he's just like, I'm just trying to be polite, you know, it's Just like. And she's just like, it's.
- [40:22]
C
They. Them. It's not that hard.
- [40:24]
D
I think that it's basically what this movie illustrates really well, is that when you're old enough to have any wisdom, you lack the willpower to change anything. And when you're young enough to have the willpower, you don't really have any wisdom, and people get hurt. And I think that that's depicted very well in this film.
- [40:41]
C
Yeah, I think also, just beyond the difference in ideology between generations, there's this movie's inflected with a real sense of like, we are not. We didn't do anything. Like, we didn't fix it. And so now this generation. And, you know, I think we all feel this way about our boomer parents, but now we're also having kids, and it's like, okay, well, what we're handing down to you, like, we've complet. Failed to change it in any way, shape or form. And like, you know, Jack's generation or our children's generation, like, know it. And so, like, Chase's Infinity's character, Willa, is literally like, yeah, you did. Like, you fucked up. And I, like, I don't want to deal with this. And all this is for nothing. And now. Now I have to figure out how to do things my way.
- [41:24]
A
I think it's really insightful. It's definitely a huge part of the movie. And it's. I was driving into work today, and I usually listen to podcasts because I have to listen to a lot of podcasts. And I was like, I'm just gonna listen to music. I wanna have, like, a clear head. I wanna have just a nice, emotional, upbeat drive. And I didn't want to even have to make a decision. So I went to Made for you on Spotify.
- [41:43]
C
Oh, boy.
- [41:43]
A
And I clicked hip hop mix.
- [41:45]
C
Okay.
- [41:46]
A
And the first song that played was Bombs Over Baghdad.
- [41:48]
C
Okay.
- [41:49]
A
Outcast. Bombs Over Baghdad. And it hit me that there's not a lot of popular art that is about radical politics and rebellion. There is a lot of art about that, not a lot of stuff that gets popular. And this is an attempt to make a popular work of art about these ideas. You know, Bombs Over Baghdad is not the Anarchist Cookbook or anything. It's not, like a guide to how to feel about the world. But it is very much a song about the chaos of that era when outkast was making music. This movie is the same thing. This movie. This is a movie about the chaos of being alive at this time and thinking generationally about the decisions you've made and how they affect the people in your life as you get older, which is really deep. But also what you just said is true, which is that once Willow leaves the house and she goes to the dance, the movie grows wings and starts flying. And you can think about all the ideas if you want to, but you really don't have to to enjoy yourself. Because then it just becomes an abduction, chase and retrieval movie, which is super duper exciting. And the mechanics of how he does it, we can talk through each step. But I was impressed. It sounds stupid to say that, but I was impressed by how he pulled it off. Even though this is my favorite director, even still, I was like, I didn't know he had. Well, it's new.
- [43:09]
C
We haven't seen him do all these things. That doesn't mean that he can't do them. But you are just like, huh? And there is also it not just one chase sequence. I mean, we've described, like, the first hour of the movie now. Right. So it's another hour and 40 minutes of people and cameras, like, on the move.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah.
- [43:26]
D
And there's an element to the second half of this movie. And I wish I had a more, like, maybe unique comparison point, but it made me think a lot of Nolan, Christopher Nolan movies. Because what he does is he takes the real world. And so the. There's a huge sequence in a town, and then there's a huge sequence on the road. And what he does is he takes these, like, pretty, like, recognizable things. And then you're like, did you spend a billion dollars building out a tunnel system in. In this area? Or how did you orchestrate, like, a rooftop chase like this? While there's also, like, a riot going on in the streets and that. That ability to see what we see every day. And then imagine, like, what's five layers deeper than that? And imagine, like, what if you went through that window and then out that door and then through into this other room that's over here? Is that feeling like you are actually inside of a world rather than watching someone paint something or something or construct something?
- [44:27]
A
Yeah, there. There are two. There's two things about that. One, you're right that there is, like, a level of world building that is really big. So, like, that allows for, in the storytelling this really great experience of intercutting and simultaneous action. Cause you've got these key characters who are separated from each other and what's happening to both. There's not, like one guy sitting in a room waiting for something, and things are Happening to another person. They're both on a kind of, you know, separate track journey. Three different. Cause Sean Penn's character is also, you know, he's trying to lay siege. Bob is trying to find his daughter, and Willa is being exported out. And that allows for the movie to not just be, like, rolling down a hill the whole time, but for all of these things to be happening in the periphery and all matter to the story, too, which you're right, Chris. That's really, really hard to do. And it's like a huge feat of editing.
- [45:17]
D
It makes me think about, like, how when you watch Dunkirk, you're like, God, you go inside of the boat, and then you go inside of, like, the cafeteria, like, the mess hall of the boat. And then you know where the mess hall is when the boat gets sunk and how, like, hard it is for them to get out. And that same thing happens in the Backton Cross battle, essentially.
- [45:34]
C
Right.
- [45:35]
D
Where you're like, oh, I understand how, like, this store turns into a dormitory, which also turns into, like, an underground railroad for immigrants. And, like, it just all unveils itself to you as you run through these doors.
- [45:50]
A
Yeah, let's. Let's. Let's talk about that. Because at the big switch over to 16 years later, we very quickly meet Sergio Sensei, Sergio, who has Benedicio Del Toro's character, who is a karate instructor. And we very quickly come back to him because Bob needs his help. Bob needs his help because Lockjaw has laid siege on his home. That leads to Bob escaping through a tunnel, one of many tunnels in this movie. And he realizes that his daughter is. If she has not been abducted, she is in big trouble because he's received a call from the wider resistance. I guess that's what we're meant to believe, is that there is a larger.
- [46:35]
D
Apparatus of French 75 that have turned into whatever.
- [46:38]
C
It's a point of contention. And it's not really clear who Comrade Josh is answering the phone on behalf of.
- [46:47]
D
Get a better name, Josh.
- [46:48]
A
Get a better name, Josh. That whole sequence where Lockjaw is trying to find him and smoke him out with a tear gas, and then he needs to escape through that tunnel that presumably he has built into his home some years ago, and then race through the convenience store and then get on the payphone, which is the moment that is seen in the first trailer with Rise and Shine. And that whole exchange of. What time is it doing phone acting. Yeah. Is amazing. Amazing. And his performance. His performance in this movie, talking into phones is remarkable. Like, some of the best stuff is just him on a phone.
- [47:25]
D
Some of the best stuff is him needing to charge his phone the number.
- [47:29]
C
Of different places that he plugs in that one D. It's really, really funny.
- [47:35]
A
He does eventually find his way to Sergio, who helps him to transport him. And Sergio also needs to jump into action because Lockjaw's team has invaded the high school. And invading the high school has triggered this sense of panic in the community. All these places are being raided. This seems like it's a very progressive community.
- [47:53]
C
It's a sanctuary city.
- [47:54]
A
Sanctuary city. And that World War three is starting to happen in the streets. There is a direct confrontation with police forces. And while that's happening, everyone is scurrying around trying to clear out all their illegal activity. This is happening simultaneous to Bob, who's trying to, you know, get to a safe harbor to charge his phone, to get in touch with his daughter as soon as he. Or at least to get in touch with the French 75 so he can figure out where his daughter is headed. Yeah, so I. I talked to our friend Wesley Morris about this, and he pointed something out to me after the first time I'd seen it, which is that that sequence when Sergio takes him up to that building where all of the migrants are being transported, protected, you know, given safe harbor. The patience that the movie has during that scene is amazing because it makes a real effort to humanize as many people as possible because Sergio keeps introducing Bob to all these people.
- [48:50]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:51]
A
Telling them their name, making him look at them. Making him, like, respect that they are alive. Benicio Del Toro's amazing in this movie. We can talk about why, but that decision in the face of. Of Bob's chaos. Right. Bob is freaking the fuck out. And all he wants to do is yell at Comrade Josh and get the rendezvous point so that he can go find Willa. But he has to look at all of these people. This older family, this young mother.
- [49:16]
C
The toddler.
- [49:17]
A
Yes. The little kid. He's like. I noticed this time, Leo, like, touches the little kid the way that you do when you meet a little baby and you just touch their finger. And all of that patience and the super Zen quality that Sergio has in that scene while Bob is saying, breathe ocean waves. Breathe ocean waves. Like him trying to calm him down. It's such a good choice. Such a human choice in the movie. Which then leads to.
- [49:41]
D
He also keeps giving him modelos.
- [49:43]
C
True, yes.
- [49:44]
D
Which is just a great. It's still kind of a buddy comedy. There's elements of that where it's just like. We can stop to have a beer, though.
- [49:51]
A
Totally. One of the movies that PCA is inciting is Midnight Run. And they have a little bit of Midnight Run energy between them. You know, the still waters and the chaos beside him. And then the conversation with Comrade Josh.
- [50:06]
C
Sure.
- [50:07]
A
In Sergio's apartment.
- [50:08]
C
I'm calling in a Greyhawk.
- [50:09]
A
I'm calling it a Greyhawk 10.
- [50:11]
C
Oh, Greyhawk.
- [50:11]
D
That's right. He's like, you're doing this? He's like, yeah, I'm doing this.
- [50:15]
A
And he gets a supervisor on the phone, and his supervisor is played by the RB singer Dijon. And Dijon, who's got dyed gray hair. I think he's like 28 years old. Gives him the clue with my. This is the most Paul Thomas Henderson thing in the whole movie where he's like, bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob. You're gonna know it. You're gonna know this question. You're gonna know this question. This isn't. What time is it? You're gonna know it. You're gonna know it. What's my favorite type of pussy? And Bob, in less than five seconds, is like, Mexican hairless. It's the only time he's cogent in the whole movie as he instantaneously remembers this inside joke. True story.
- [50:53]
D
Kind of sounds like a cat, too.
- [50:54]
A
It's just like. So that allows him to learn that, in fact, he's headed to the Sisterhood of the Brave Beaver.
- [51:03]
C
The supervisor is like, apologize. Mean it to Comrade Josh. It's just really.
- [51:07]
A
He's like, this is a war hero, is what he says to Comrade Josh. I love that sequence so much. I love Leo in that whole sequence. And then that leads to another amazing chase. You mentioned the rooftop foot chase.
- [51:19]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [51:21]
A
It's.
- [51:21]
D
Honestly has my. My favorite shot, I think, of the movie, which is the. All the smoke and light coming off of the street and the kid with the skateboard, like, leaping over.
- [51:32]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:33]
D
Like a roof. And Leo has to climb the ladder to get up.
- [51:36]
A
Yes.
- [51:37]
D
And just following those skaters and it's. It's just like. You know, I watch a lot of TV where there's a lot of critiquing and nitpicking of, like, the mechanics of doing something. And it's like, why did. Why did this character do this or do that? I love that he puts real people in action sequences and that Leo falls off the roof.
- [51:56]
C
Yeah.
- [51:56]
D
It's the fucking funniest psych gag you'll see. Like, for a second, I was just like, this didn't just really happen because he's making his getaway and you're like, you're a revolutionary soldier and these awesome skateboards are leading you to freedom. And then he fucking falls off.
- [52:12]
C
Like, a beautiful shot down the tree.
- [52:14]
D
And I don't even know how they did it.
- [52:16]
A
I have no idea. I've seen three times. Times. And he's in the shot. There's no cut.
- [52:20]
D
And it's down through this tree as he, like, falls off these branches, lands on the ground, stands up, walks five feet and gets Tasered. And it's so awesome. Which also then, actually, if. I don't mean to run ahead, but, like, that leads to, honestly, one of the most beautiful sequences in the movie, which is the hospital.
- [52:38]
C
It's. Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah.
- [52:39]
D
Is when, like. Then the, like, kind of.
- [52:42]
A
The community.
- [52:43]
D
The community community kind of kicks in. And they say, oh, he's diabetic, even though he's not, and so he needs medical attention. And then immediately the nurse is like.
- [52:51]
C
And that nurse who runs in and you're gonna, you know, go through this, but. And he just says, right now. And she just, like, very, like, calmly, like, yes, right now, and then leaves. It's wonderful.
- [52:59]
A
Those two actresses, the woman who receives him and then the nurse who sends him out are so good in such small moments. There's. There's 10 performances like that in this movie of people you see for a minute, and then they're gone. Before we get too far, we should probably talk about the Christmas adventures.
- [53:13]
C
Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right.
- [53:14]
A
Because we've totally skipped over that.
- [53:15]
C
Just a tough.
- [53:16]
D
I guess we should also talk a little bit about Lockjaw, like, just in general.
- [53:19]
A
Yeah. And Sean Penn, because there's such an important part of this movie. The reason that Lockjaw has. Is. Is attempting to apprehend Willa and. And kill Bob is because he has been asked to join a secret society. He's been invited to a hotel room by characters played by Tony Goldwyn and James Downey. James Downey, the famed SNL writer who, of course once appeared in There Will Be blood, showing up 20 years later in a PTA movie. And these two men want to invite him to join this secret club called the Christmas Adventurers Club.
- [53:53]
C
Yeah. Introduced with the. What are you doing? New Year's Eve needle drop.
- [53:57]
A
Yes.
- [53:58]
C
Really? As soon as it hit, I was like, okay, this is. What's. What's. What's happening here.
- [54:04]
D
Their greeting is Hail St. Nick.
- [54:06]
A
Hail St. Nick.
- [54:07]
D
Yeah.
- [54:07]
A
Tony Goldwyn marshaling the wonderfully malevolent force that only he can marshal great sport.
- [54:13]
D
From a time to kill or not time to kill the Pelican Brief to scandal. Yeah, Just always a great asshole in a suit.
- [54:21]
A
Yes. And they explained to Lockjaw that they want him to apply to start the initiation process for this very secret club, which is clearly a white supremacist organization that is attempting to eliminate the maniacs, haters and punk trash as Sandy, Jim Downey's character identifies, which is what we're also trying to eliminate here on this podcast.
- [54:42]
D
He's like, that's all we're trying to do. No more lunatics. And they're all lunatics.
- [54:48]
A
And Lockjaw, who we don't know anything about, except for the fact that he loves black women. Because he has told this explicitly to Bob's face and has had an affair, a coerced affair, with Perfidia and works for this government organization. These are the only things we know about him.
- [55:03]
C
Well, we know a lot from his physical demeanor. We know a lot from his haircut, which is, I mean, shaved on the.
- [55:11]
A
Sides, grown long down in front and combed down with spit.
- [55:16]
D
With spit.
- [55:17]
C
And he has a very specific walk.
- [55:19]
A
Yes. His posture is stick up the ass.
- [55:22]
C
Yes. Injured.
- [55:23]
D
And also injured at some point.
- [55:25]
C
Yes. And veins visible just about everywhere in a pretty alarming way.
- [55:32]
A
I have not heard Sean Penn say this, but I would be stunned if he was not Inspired by Vincent McMahon. This is Vince McMahon. Oh, this is how Vince McMahon walks. This is how his arms look. This is how his hair looks and is cut at times. This is Vince McMahon.
- [55:46]
D
He also reminded me of Michael Flynn, totally.
- [55:49]
A
There's huge parts of that, for sure. Sean Penn. Something I keep hearing about his performance in this movie is that this is the movie that will remind people why Sean Penn is Sean Penn. Because it's been a very long time since he's given a performance. One that a lot of people have seen, two that has been acclaimed, and three, that is outside of the context of the kind of chaos of his life.
- [56:12]
C
Right. Like interviewing El Chapo and stuff.
- [56:14]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [56:16]
D
Thank you for your service.
- [56:18]
A
He was in Licorice Pizza in a small part. And PTA's always said fast Times is one of his favorite movies of all time. And when he saw Sean Penn, he was like, I'll follow that guy anywhere. I love that actor. And he's an actor who, like, I would say, roughly until about 2015, other actors venerated so deeply. Like you would. Young actors would be interviewed and they would say, I just want to do what Sean Penn does. You don't hear that as much as you used to.
- [56:43]
D
I kind of moved into like making either Taken Ripoffs or not Ill Advised, but just unsuccessful independent acting showcases.
- [56:53]
A
Yes. He directed a couple. He directed like an action movie. He's. He's. He's had a kind of a curious decade or so.
- [56:58]
D
Yeah.
- [57:01]
A
I. There's a case this is his best performance in Scarletto's way. Like, this is the most. The scariest, the most immersive. Like, he disappears into the part. That's the thing that people used to say that he did. He disappeared into parts and you couldn't see him.
- [57:14]
C
All of the little ticks and the actual physicality of it.
- [57:18]
A
He's so gestural. His voice, you know, he looks like a piece of burnt beef jerky.
- [57:25]
C
He's really, really very gross. Yeah. And he just gets grosser looking as the movie goes on intentionally. But he is. They do a lot shout out to the hair and makeup department of this film, but he is really committed to using his.
- [57:41]
D
He gets disfigured in the cause of washing. Whitewashing his past.
- [57:45]
A
Yes.
- [57:45]
D
Basically.
- [57:47]
A
Which is, I think, a big theme about the people who are in power, who are trying to control other people, is their own.
- [57:53]
C
Yeah.
- [57:54]
A
You know. Yes. Their hidden shames about the things, the way they really feel about things, but are afraid to tell anybody or let anybody know. And it's tried and true, but very effective. And the Christmas Adventures Club stuff is so good because it's the most pinchonian part of the movie, in my opinion.
- [58:10]
C
But it's not. Have you read Vineland?
- [58:12]
D
It's not that in the book.
- [58:14]
C
It's not in that.
- [58:14]
A
But.
- [58:15]
C
Because the first time I saw it, I was like, is it spiritually pinching? Yeah, but it is very. It's a nice marriage of.
- [58:21]
A
The only thing in the book that is really the same is this triangle, like love triangle, slash, like familial triangle that evolves over the movie, as far as I can tell. Like, obviously, the sentiment of the characters and the idea of revolution. But. And you could tell the movie would not exist without Vineland. But a lot of people named all these people, right? Yes.
- [58:44]
D
You know.
- [58:44]
C
Yes.
- [58:46]
A
This episode is supported by FX's the Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke. Allow us to introduce you to Lee Raybon, a quirky journalist, rare bookstore owner, slash unofficial truth seeker who is always on the tail of his latest conspiracy. This time, his most recent expose puts him head to head with a powerful family that rules Tulsa, meaning only one thing he Must be onto something big. FX is the lowdown. All new Tuesdays on fx stream on Hulu Lockjaw. Because he is being asked to join this initiation and knows that he's going to have to go through a fairly thorough vetting process. Needs to clean out his past, he needs to get rid of. He needs to find out if he is the father of Willa, he needs to get rid of Bob, he needs to close open business so that he can join this club.
- [59:30]
D
And I think one of the more bracing commentaries on, like, contemporary politics and the militarization that we see going on in this country is how much of his own personal animus is animating, like, national policy. So he's able to just be like, yep, this is a big narco terrorism and sexual human trafficking hub. And it's not, you know, and he's just like, so we're just gonna have to go in, right? Delta Force and wipe it out.
- [60:00]
A
He literally says to his lieutenant, make me a reason to have to go to back cross. Which is, I think, how many people feel like national politics and the military state operate sometimes, you know, that there are. There are conveniences. I think, especially in the aftermath of W's Iraq war. The, like, incredible cynicism about the way that these decisions are made that has been coursing through the country for the.
- [60:21]
C
Last 20 years, and lack of oversight and lack of. And just the amount of power and tactical force available to just people who you've never heard of, who can just do whatever they want.
- [60:35]
A
They take over a small city. In fact, during that protest sequence, there's a. A funny chilling moment where they say, activate Eddie Van Halen. And a guy jumps out of a military vehicle and he's got a Molotov cocktail, but he's dressed like a protester, right? And he throws the Molotov cocktail at the police to incite violence, right?
- [60:55]
C
Yeah.
- [60:55]
A
And then that leads to tear gas and rubber bullets and the, you know, the police moving forward with their shields. And it's terrifying stuff, but it's terrifying and it's happening alongside of Bob being funny, you know, and the movie is able to walk this tightrope of this huge Sean Penn performance, of this really comic, nervy Leo performance, of Chase Infinity's performance, which is very steely, you know, not comic at all. She's very pretty much under threat the entire movie. And it's all like, he spins the plates effectively again. I can't overstate how hard this is to do in a movie. Like most movies like this have to be one thing or the other, you know, they have to be incredibly like hard bitten and straight or they have to be really over the top. And Mel Brooksie, and he's synthesized these two genres types like so amazingly well. Where should we go from here?
- [61:47]
C
All right, so we did Christmas Adventures and we did.
- [61:51]
A
We do see them again.
- [61:52]
D
Can we talk a little bit about Regina Hall?
- [61:54]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [61:56]
D
First of all, watch her own good hang. She's incredible.
- [61:59]
C
She's fantastic.
- [62:00]
D
She's one of. One of the best working actresses. This is like a supporting role where she kind of fills in as a, you know, surrogate mother figure midway through the movie and also a, you know, suspicious interrogator of. Of Willa as she exfils her from Bacton, takes her to a convent, a revolutionary convent in the California mountains.
- [62:26]
A
And.
- [62:27]
D
And I find that she just does so much remarkable shit emotionally and just reactively with very little. Sometimes, like she's in a mirror, sometimes she's watching two people look at each other. And she does amazing work in this movie. So I mean, she obviously becomes like a major part of this sort of second act here.
- [62:47]
C
She's incredible. She also. This is a very, very funny movie at times, but she, who is an incredible comedic actress, does not get one laugh line. She's just wearing an awesome sweater and. And watching people.
- [63:00]
A
That's what it is.
- [63:01]
C
So much of what she is communicating is through just the way that her face look.
- [63:06]
A
Yeah, I had the exact same thought is. It's fascinating to not. When I heard that he wanted to work with her, I was like, he's gonna write her the funniest part. Imagine, PTA was born to write funny shit for Regina Hall. And the choice to not have her do that is actually more powerful to make her just watchful through the entire film and sort of like a guardian angel and sort of like a person who is still fighting the good fight, but has also been left behind in some ways. You know, like, she doesn't have the wherewithal to look for Willa's phone. Like she asks her, but she doesn't have the force to root it out.
- [63:39]
D
Yeah, and I think there's also like that this is the difference is like, you know, if you live in a revolutionary cell for most of your adult life, like, being honest with one another is probably a condition of survival.
- [63:51]
A
That's right.
- [63:52]
D
It's like you don't come across a lot of teenagers who are like.
- [63:54]
C
But then she also, she has the scene with the, you know, mother superior of the Brave Beavers and is like, I didn't have the heart to tell her that her mother was, you know, was a rat. And it's her revolutionary duty kind of going up against the surrogate, you know, mother figure. And you can tell she has a lot of. So the personal versus the political just in that moment. And she doesn't really know what to do.
- [64:19]
A
Very, very nuanced and very powerful.
- [64:21]
D
So because she holds onto this phone surreptitiously, lockjaw's able to track her essentially to this cond.
- [64:27]
A
So did you guys happen to clock who the Mother Superior is, who that actress is?
- [64:32]
C
No.
- [64:32]
A
This is another lost figure in the PTA filmography. That's April Grace. She played the journalist who interviewed Frank T.J. mackie in Magnolia.
- [64:41]
C
Oh, my gosh.
- [64:42]
A
So that's 26 years ago.
- [64:45]
C
Wow.
- [64:46]
A
And she is also a very striking actor.
- [64:48]
D
It's also interesting in that exchange that Mother Superior has with DeAndre. DeAndre, right. Where they're like, we might need to get rid of this girl because we can't have another loose end running out there.
- [65:08]
A
When you are part of a revolution, that tacit trust is essential.
- [65:11]
C
Yeah.
- [65:11]
A
And this idea that there's something genetic about Perfidious Rat Dum is, you know, that explains how. How tight, by the way.
- [65:21]
C
We didn't talk about that. Her name is literally Perfidia, which, you know, is really. Is right there. And like all things in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, you know, the obvious is actually not obvious. And you're supposed to, but that is pretty funny.
- [65:36]
A
All of the names are insightful in one way or another. Jungle Pussy, the rapper and actress Shana McHale is in this movie as, like, her cohort, you know, Jungle Pussy says it all right. She also gets that incredible speech moment where she is taking over the bank.
- [65:52]
D
May West.
- [65:53]
A
Mae West.
- [65:53]
C
Yeah.
- [65:54]
A
Really good. Harris is Laredo.
- [65:57]
C
The wig shot is just really, really.
- [65:59]
A
Her in this convenience store.
- [66:01]
C
Yeah.
- [66:02]
A
There's so many moments like that. Also, the Sisterhood of the Brave Beaver is also just an incredible PTA joke straight out of her advice, or Pynchon joke, for that matter.
- [66:10]
C
At the DGA screening we went to, Paul told Steven Spielberg and the rest of us the story of Chase Infinity, not understanding the name the sisters of the Brave Beaver and him having to explain why he had chosen Beaver being a. Yeah, but that was not something that Chase Infinity's generation has picked up. Was up on yet. So that is special.
- [66:30]
D
Unlike the DVD Beaver.
- [66:32]
A
I was gonna say, she's clearly not a visitor to dvdbeaver. Dot Com. Chase Infinity.
- [66:35]
C
Tough stuff.
- [66:38]
A
Yeah. And then the movie starts to culminate because the second encounter with the Christmas Adventures Club, someone has been brought in to eliminate Lockjaw.
- [66:49]
D
It's clear that Lockjaw is trying to cover something up. He has now gone basically rogue, even within the MKU military unit that he controls.
- [66:58]
A
Yes.
- [66:58]
D
He overreached and is taking guys with him to go specifically just find Charlay and Willa. And they have a stunning confrontation in this. In this convent where he runs a DNA test on her. And they have their first ever conversation, which goes about as well as you can imagine.
- [67:19]
A
Yeah. And that to make a. The act of a paternity test visually interesting.
- [67:24]
C
Right?
- [67:25]
A
Sounds hard.
- [67:25]
C
Yeah. A lot of little test tubes.
- [67:27]
A
Yes. All the little tubes and droplets and the spinning wheel and the. The lines coming down. But he makes all that stuff work. And there's a real tension because we're watching. Well, we don't. We don't want her to be him.
- [67:41]
C
But we know, because, I mean, just the visual language, it cuts from them having sex to her, you know, nine months pregnant, shooting the machine gun, which is in the trailer.
- [67:49]
D
And it's probably also a huge reason of why she leaves.
- [67:52]
C
Yeah. And you're like, right. Yeah, there we go.
- [67:54]
A
Yes.
- [67:55]
C
So we know.
- [67:56]
A
We know. And it is revealed, in fact, that. That Lockjaw is Willow's dad and that that sets him off. And he knows that she also needs to be eliminated. She needs to be.
- [68:05]
D
But crucially, he cannot do it himself. He cannot bring himself to do it himself. So he hires. Well, we can go forward step by step if you want.
- [68:12]
A
Yeah. We are reintroduced to this character of Avanti Q, who is a bounty hunter and tracker, who is played by the great Eric Schweig, which PTA mentioned he first saw in Last of the Mohicans. I haven't seen him in a movie in 10 years. And Avanti won't kill a kid, so he's told to take him to take her to 1776.
- [68:36]
C
Great.
- [68:36]
A
Which is apparently the compound nationalist group to have her killed. And that sequence is incredibly tense. Maybe the most tense thing in the movie because she's been handcuffed to a bench and the world is operating around her. All these military men are coming in and out. And she knows what her fate is going to be in Avanti has gotten back into his car, but he hasn't left. And he has a change of heart and he decides that he's going to save her and that he's going to take these guys out in Part because they show us that the 1776 guys are racist. They make note of his Native American heritage. They mock him and his.
- [69:12]
D
Those guys prefer the original version of the Searchers. Yeah.
- [69:15]
A
Yes. He's literally called Wagon Burner in the movie, which is clearly a callback.
- [69:19]
D
And firewater.
- [69:23]
A
And that is happening in this series of intercutting moments where Bob, who has been freed from prison, escaped, transported by Sergio while they're driving drunk, drinking Modelos and talking about revolution. And I think at certain point, Sergio says, saved a French 75 or twice in one day. Really. Remarking upon the wildness of their experience together.
- [69:52]
C
Then there's a stop, drop and roll.
- [69:54]
D
And a very funny Tom Cruise joke.
- [69:56]
A
Yes.
- [69:57]
C
Yeah. And a great. And Sergio sacrifices himself for the cause.
- [70:05]
A
Bob jumps out of the moving car, hotwires a car. He goes on the chase.
- [70:08]
D
Celica.
- [70:09]
A
Yeah. Was it a Celica?
- [70:10]
D
Looked like that.
- [70:10]
A
That looked familiar to you?
- [70:12]
D
It was just a great car.
- [70:13]
A
It had that home clicking sound.
- [70:15]
E
And a spoiler.
- [70:16]
A
Yeah. And then he goes on a hot chase. And that hot chase is happening simultaneous to what we learn is Tim from the Christmas Adventurers Club, who's been assigned to eliminate Lockjaw. So Lockjaw has left Avanti.
- [70:29]
D
Q.
- [70:30]
A
And he's off to go to the next stage of his life, hopefully joining the Christmas Adventurers.
- [70:34]
C
Lockjaw. And also, the implication is also Willa. Right. They need to clean everything up. So there's, you know, it's a pretty grim.
- [70:43]
A
Yeah. And everyone. And Deandra will be killed. Howard Somerville will be killed. All the French 75 will be eliminated so that this can be all clean for him to join his club. And out of nowhere, Tim shows up speeding down the road. Is he in a Dodge Mustang?
- [70:56]
D
Dodge Charger.
- [70:57]
A
Dodge Charger.
- [70:57]
D
I believe that Avanti and Tim are both driving Chargers.
- [71:03]
A
Or.
- [71:03]
D
I was like, I would love to see what a Dodge Charger does on a drive. That's right.
- [71:07]
C
Because Willa takes Avanti's car.
- [71:09]
D
Yes.
- [71:10]
C
Right. And then he's also driving, like, a bright blue.
- [71:13]
A
No, he's. Avanti's is white. Tim's is blue.
- [71:15]
C
Yeah. Yeah. Tim's is blue. Yeah.
- [71:17]
A
We're talking so much about these cars because this movie is leading to a huge car chase.
- [71:20]
C
Yeah.
- [71:22]
A
Eventually, Tim shoots Lockjaw in the most bracing moment of the movie. Shoots him in the face while they're driving. The car crashes off the side of the road. We think Lockjaw's gone for good. Tim circles back. Bob arrives, since he's on the chase to Discover lockjaw. Lockjaw's dead. He thinks.
- [71:40]
C
Yeah.
- [71:41]
A
He turns around. Moment of panic. He's got. He's uttering the Green acres line from the Gill Scott Heron song and trying to get somebody to counter show up to show him that somebody's on his side, that someone's going to help him. And he's all alone. He doesn't know what to do. And then the final act of the movie is this chase scene which takes place in Borrego Springs. A highway. Just an incredibly loopy up and down highway in California. And would you guys say it's like a roller coaster?
- [72:13]
D
Yeah, I just want all our Lords of Letterbox out there. If you're thinking about making a road trip, just be careful.
- [72:19]
C
Yeah.
- [72:21]
A
This is not. Not a safe roadway.
- [72:24]
D
And there's a lot of highway driving in California where you will just be like, holy. Like you come over a hill and then the sun is eight feet from your face. And this really captured it, but also made it feel like Inception and also made it feel like the. Is it the California Adventure ride? What's the ride at Disney where you're hanging over California as you're being kind of like flown through the air?
- [72:54]
A
I think. Are you thinking of American Scream Machine?
- [72:57]
D
No, it's not. It's like you're. You're looking at a screen.
- [72:59]
A
Oh, Soarin.
- [73:00]
D
Soaring. It reminded me of soaring.
- [73:03]
A
Yeah, Soarin. No G. Okay.
- [73:06]
D
Soren.
- [73:07]
C
Okay.
- [73:07]
A
Have you been on Soarin?
- [73:08]
C
No.
- [73:09]
A
You've been to Disneyland?
- [73:10]
C
No, I've been to Disney World when I was seven.
- [73:13]
D
Anyway, she skipped right past that because she does not want to get into two sons who want to get their picture taken with Iron Man.
- [73:18]
C
Yeah, she's coming. And you. It's you in an Iron Man. I might be busy.
- [73:23]
A
Okay.
- [73:24]
D
Because it might be good content if you have to go.
- [73:28]
C
No, but this. Watching this in IMAX definitely had an amusement park feel. Like you actually did become as the. The camera like goes up and down, makes you queasy. You start feeling like the motion. And again, at the DGA Q and A, Paul Thomas Anderson said that they did not have this ending until they went location scouting and that they were just around in a van for all. And they found this road and he was like. And then it all came to.
- [73:52]
D
I wonder how much of this movie is a result of, like, finding a place to put it.
- [73:58]
A
Like, he talked a lot about that in the interview. You'll hear that.
- [74:01]
C
Okay.
- [74:02]
A
It wasn't as much on the page as you might think.
- [74:03]
C
Yeah.
- [74:06]
A
I've never seen a chase sequence like it. Yeah, it's one road moving straight.
- [74:09]
C
Yeah.
- [74:10]
D
Three cars, but you trying to catch each other.
- [74:12]
A
Yeah. It's not. Nothing like this has been done before.
- [74:16]
C
Yeah.
- [74:16]
A
With that, you know, the closest comparison is probably Steven Spielberg's duel. That's. Which is a straight chase movie of a truck and a car and that's it. And not. And moving at a consistent high speed together. You know, not necessarily whipping around turns and flying across things. You know, it's not. And then the conclusion, which is incredibly exciting and incredibly scary and sad and incredibly savvy. It shows. Willa is also practical knowledge. Yes.
- [74:41]
C
She has been schooled well, despite everything that she would say about her dad.
- [74:46]
D
It's for as much as it's a great car chase movie, it's an amazing car crash movie. The crashes in this make me really want to buckle up.
- [74:53]
A
Yes. There's a crash that the car that Perfidia is in escaping from the bank robbery is a wild car crash. It feels like you're sitting in the seat when it happens. Anyway, Willa decides once she's gotten to the top of a very tall part of the Borrego Springs highway, that she's going to park the car, quickly come to a hard stop so Tim cannot see that she has stopped her car. And then he crashes into her. And as he stumbles and gets out of his car, he survived, but she attempts to find out whether or not he is on the team and he's not friendly. And she shoots and kills him with the gun that she has found in Avanti's car. And I said this to you last night. I heard the scream that she lets out when she shoots him for good is very emotional, very upsetting and raw. And you see that, you know, this is the real toll of the things that have happened that her parents have done. Like this is really. She's now taken someone's life and has been under this incredible, terrifying threat. And also has this terrible knowledge that her father, her birth father, is a monster. Eventually, Bob does show up in the Celica. He arrives and she doesn't know what to think and she's confused and she almost shoots him.
- [76:03]
C
Right.
- [76:05]
A
Until he finally convinces her that it's me, it's your dad. Keep saying, I'm your dad, it's your dad.
- [76:10]
C
And then he does also quote part of the the girl Scott Harrington back.
- [76:15]
A
Then will no longer be relevant.
- [76:16]
C
Yeah.
- [76:17]
D
Can I ask you guys when you first saw it? So the next sequence, you're kind of like, great. So we've gotten to the end of the movie and. And he's gotten her away from this. And then, like a Terminator, Lockjaw has. Has returned and he's storming through the desert, blood all over him, holding a machine gun. And he's got more to do. So when you first saw that, were you like, oh, are we gonna have another, like, confrontation action sequence between. Bob has to kill Lockjaw and take.
- [76:47]
A
I'll tell you why I didn't. Because of the music that is used in that scene. When we see the roadway and you see the sun haze and then you see his head come up over the hill. It's a laugh moment.
- [76:59]
C
Right. And do you know what that song is called?
- [77:02]
A
Tell us.
- [77:03]
C
Perfidia.
- [77:04]
A
There you go.
- [77:04]
C
Yeah. Yeah.
- [77:06]
A
He's surviving for her as well. And because it's funny, I didn't think that we were headed toward a Robert Patrick moment. It could have happened. But in fact, that's an unexplained part of the plotting that you can ask that question. What happened between that moment and Lockjaw learning, determining that he is going to join the Christmas Adventures Club because he's actually not been successful. He thinks he's been successful, what he's doing, but he hasn't confirmed it.
- [77:36]
C
Right.
- [77:36]
A
We don't actually know. Tim has also been killed. And has that feedback gotten to the Adventures Club? This is all unexplored. There's, like. There's a. There's a gap here in information.
- [77:47]
C
It does seem like a pretty expansive organization when you get right down to it, because that's just the Southwest office. And, like, they introduced, like, the 5th, like, Fleet Commander, just of the Southwest.
- [77:58]
A
That's true.
- [77:59]
C
So there are a lot of levels here.
- [78:00]
A
Yep. I don't think that's actually the Southwest office. For the record, that's where he's murdered. Yeah. Lockjaw does eventually get into the club. And by get into the club, we mean gets gassed. Yeah, he's gassed to death in a very funny moment.
- [78:16]
D
His moment of finally arriving at, like, he's been accepted in corporate America. He gets to the corner office.
- [78:21]
A
Yes, he gets the corner office. And, you know, that's what you learn about that character, is that that's somebody who's been fighting wars to feel accepted.
- [78:28]
C
Do you think the Christmas Adventure Club has a gas chamber as part of its office?
- [78:33]
A
I don't know if that would be an office you would want others to occupy on a regular basis if you used it as a guest.
- [78:38]
D
I thought Lockjaw could have been like, where is everybody?
- [78:42]
C
Right, Right.
- [78:43]
A
There's something very eerie about that entire sequence. And you're meant to feel like, oh, no, something terrible is about to happen to him. And something does. Maybe on another floor that might just be the gassing floor for the Christmas adventures. We don't know. And then the movie's denouement is one last conversation at the kitchen table between Bob and Willa where Bob gives Willa a card, a letter that is written to her by her mother. And Tyana Taylor in voiceover reads this letter to her daughter. And it's incredibly moving and powerful. And I think it's a big part of what this movie is about, which is don't give up. Maybe you can change the world in the way that we were not able to. And this moment of exciting inspiration comes where we see Willa a little bit later on getting a CB radio call about a protest that is happening in Oakland. And she jumps out of her chair and grabs the car keys and goes and drives up and leaves her dad drives America.
- [79:40]
C
And then American Girl starts playing. And my heart grew 10 sizes.
- [79:44]
A
Yeah. A very simple, straightforward and conventional needle drop. Not a wow, look what I found in the crates. You know, But.
- [79:53]
C
Oh, yes.
- [79:54]
A
You know what I mean?
- [79:55]
C
I meant, is it like, is there any. What does it mean? You know, like, what does the whole ending mean? Is something we can talk about. But yeah, no, it's. It's a crowd pleasing moment. Yes. I think that it. That will seal some Oscars. Just that one song choice.
- [80:09]
A
You walk out of the movie feeling a sense of relief and happiness and maybe even inspiration for some people.
- [80:16]
D
A little bit of melancholy as Bob tries to figure out how to take a picture with his new iPhone.
- [80:20]
A
Yes. But how nice for him that he finally got an iPhone.
- [80:23]
D
Oh, I kind of. I mean, it's fantastic. And I'm glad that they've figured out that they can be, you know, on 5G and.
- [80:30]
A
Right. But he's moving into his dotage.
- [80:32]
D
Like, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [80:34]
C
And he can't make the flash work.
- [80:35]
A
Nope. Yeah, I mean, you know, comes for us all. Like, it's very much a movie about passing the baton. That's.
- [80:40]
C
But also what's equally great about that scene is the instructions that she's giving are like, useless.
- [80:45]
D
You know, I was like, that's how you taught. Realize that, like, if they don't know this natively, you cannot explain, like 25 years ago.
- [80:54]
A
How do I get the flashing midnight off the vcr? You know, how do I it fix the tracking on my. On my tape player. All these things. This is what kids and their parents and you have to do for them. So the movie is very, very insightful about all those things. Your teen adjective used to describe an individual whose spirit is unyielding, unconstrained, one who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions. They know the rules, but behave as if they do not exist.
- [81:33]
C
New Team the new fragrance by Miu.
- [81:36]
A
Miu defined by you this episode is.
- [81:38]
B
Brought to you by NBA 2K26. A favorite of my sons and me. All right, quick break. NBA 2K26 stacked this year. Gameplay new motion engine smoother catch and chew. The rhythm shooting is dialed in. My team added the W. So now you can get Caitlin Clark pulling up from deep. Larry Bird talking trash mid game. Jokic casually dropping triple doubles. It's absurd in the best way. My career has a whole new storyline. The city's tighter and you're on the court way faster. I've been playing video basketball games. I think the first one was early 80s. I'm stunned. Like when I go and my son's playing with his friends and I go in and I barge my moon and I start playing with them. I'm just amazed by how good, how detailed all the games are, how they really look like NBA players. 2K26 is finally here and yeah, it is absolutely loaded. If you care about basketball even a little, you're checking it out today. Ball over everything.
- [82:33]
A
Bear with me as I read through why this. I think this is the culmination because there's.
- [82:37]
C
Wait, you can't talk about the ending. Yeah, no, I just like, you know, this. It does feel like how happy is it of a happy ending? Do you know what I mean? Like what are. Because there is so much in it that is there. There is hope. And I do find this movie to be very open hearted. But especially on my second watch, I, you know, I told her I found it very like I was taken by the comedy and the spectacle the first time and the second time was more emotional. It's more upsetting. There's a lot of dark stuff here. There was a lot of messed stuff going on. There was a lot of regret. There is, you know, to Chris point, like at the end, Leo's just like sitting on a couch trying to figure out like he's out of the. And in Perfidia's letter, there is a lot of regret. So, you know, and the last line, he yells like, be safe. And she's like, I won't. And it's very cheerful. So, you know, I don't know, maybe is it supposed to be just purely like, hey, it's Tom Petty. Are we supposed to give over to that? Is like that the question just, you know, are we supposed to.
- [83:42]
A
I think you can read it very clearly. Paul Thomas Anderson thinks that a young girl that looks like Willa is the American Girl in 2024. So that part of it, I think is very sweet in that I'm sure she looks somewhat like his kids.
- [83:57]
C
Yes.
- [83:57]
D
And maybe it requires having your whole life in front of you to imagine a better world and to imagine anything is possible if we push back hard enough. Whereas, like, once you get older, I think you have all these reasons why. Well, I can't push back that hard because I have this right, you know, we have to do that.
- [84:14]
A
Absolutely.
- [84:15]
C
And also the first line of that song is, she's an American girl raised on promises. Which, you know, has its own bittersweet perfect writing, by the way.
- [84:22]
A
I do think. I do think it is hopeful, but I think it's also very wide eyed and. Or I should say eyes open. About the fact that Willa now knows the cost.
- [84:33]
C
Yeah.
- [84:34]
A
That she has fired a gun, that she has seen what the monsters really look like and that she has made an active choice to try to make that change. Maybe inspired by her mom's letter, maybe inspired by her experiences, maybe inspired by what she knows now about her dad and what her dad did to go save her. And she probably knows that it's not. It's going to get worse before it gets better. I think that's a big part of this too, that you have to. If you want to make the change, you're going to have to get into some shit. I don't know if the movie actually thinks that that change is possible or plausible.
- [85:07]
C
Right, right, right.
- [85:07]
A
But I think it does want to believe that it.
- [85:09]
C
For the character.
- [85:10]
A
Yeah.
- [85:11]
D
I think. Why did it get called one? Why did he arrive at one battle after another? And I think that that title gets brought up like in little ways explicitly. And then also it's basically one fucking thing after another. And what is the. Is it ultimately the conflict that forges us and not the result?
- [85:31]
C
Right.
- [85:31]
D
And what side are you on, you know?
- [85:34]
A
Yeah, yeah. And I guess I'm kind of curious about how the. When the movie goes out into the world, how much of that is tangled with, you know, like, whether or not that's a takeaway, I think having seen it multiple times, it's very clearly.
- [85:51]
C
Right.
- [85:51]
A
It's an older guy looking at what he did or did not do in his life and what impact that did or did not have and what it means for his family and younger people. Yes, exactly. What's. Now what is their responsibility? Which is a scary thing to think about, but also happens to anybody who cares deeply about the world and people and also is like maybe a little bit. Feels a little guilty about what they didn't do or couldn't accomplish, I think.
- [86:16]
C
I mean, I think that's a big part of it.
- [86:18]
A
So this is an amazing movie. I mean, we haven't talked about a lot of, like, the mechanics of it. It is shot on VistaVision with IMAX cameras, which must have been extremely challenging. Those cameras are huge and loud, Right?
- [86:29]
C
And they're also moving up and down those hills.
- [86:31]
A
Yes. We also heard that there's a special thanks to Giovanni Ribisi in this movie. And that is because Giovanni Ribisi has a hobby of restoring old movie cameras. And he is a lover of film and celluloid, which J.T. molnar talked about on this show when he. He helped shot and he rebuilt and gave PTA a VistaVision camera to shoot this movie on. And I have yet to see the movie in VistaVision. I'm seeing it in VistaVision tomorrow. I'm excited about that at the Vista. It's only playing in that format on maybe fewer than 10 theaters in this country. But I've seen it in IMAX twice now. Once at the Chinese and last night at CityWalk at CityWalk. It's overwhelming because that screen is so tall and the movie, like you said, in the chase scenes and in the whipping action, but also in the close ups, you know, one of the big influences on PTA is Jonathan Demme. And the into camera, close up. There are several of them. You know, Teyana Taylor's face, the detail that you can see in her eyelashes is wow on an IMAX screen. The same for Leo's face. Holding the screen. Regina Hall, Benicio Del Toro. And then to be making a movie that is in constant motion with those kinds of cameras, too. It's not a chamber piece. It's out in the World is pretty impressive. Also, kind of an unusual color palette for pta. Very dusty, very brown. Bob's robe. It's kind of the. Like, it's the Dust bowl of California.
- [88:01]
D
Yeah, it looks like California to me. I mean, this is the kind of the Real California.
- [88:04]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [88:05]
C
The Inland. Yeah, yeah.
- [88:07]
A
And we haven't mentioned Johnny Greenwood. I was gonna say.
- [88:09]
C
Yeah. You wanna do the score?
- [88:11]
A
It's really interesting. I mean, it's. I think it tells you a lot about how he views how. How PTA views the movie. Cause it's very David Shire, Michael Small. Like, it sounds like Clute. It sounds like the conversation. These like single plinking piano notes that are played like very rapidly and kind of getting your. Your heartbeat up. Cause you know something is happening. Like we're headed somewhere is kind of the energy that it gives you. There are a couple of orchestral moments. It opens with this kind of like, like big orchestral dirge. When we meet the French 75. I don't know if you guys remember.
- [88:39]
C
That, like usually in those close up shots, like when there's one with Willa, there's one with Lockjaw when he comes up. And it's. It like is a recurring motif.
- [88:50]
D
There is also one needle drop that producer Jack was particularly excited about, which is when Mo Bamba drops at the school dance.
- [88:58]
A
I laughed so hard.
- [88:59]
C
It's really funny.
- [89:00]
A
I think, you know, the inclusion of someone like Dijon in the movie and the Mo Bamba drop. There's a lot of like my daughters told me about this stuff going on in the movie too, which I really like, you know, Like, I don't think PTA is really banging Mo Bamba at home, but I bet his kids were at a certain point in the last 10 years still a movie that is like about all of his same stuff. You know, I wanted to mention this to you guys. So he gave. PTA gave an interview with Dazed this week. And he acknowledged that he participated in some way in the scripts for Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon, which is something that had been rumored for a long time. I've told you, I've gotten separate private phone calls of people being like, it's true. It's true that PTA worked on these movies. And when we talked about those movies, we talked about the fact that it's very plausible that pta, if not contributed, wrote them wholesale. Because they're about dumb guys who love to fuck and can't get out of their own way with the women that they're in love with. And they also do terrible things and have to kind of cope with their decisions around those terrible things. And they're all. That's like one of the hallmarks of all of his movies. Bob is yet another PTA guy. Like, there's just. Every movie has a guy like this, like what I wrote down is like unsure, creative, horny, sincere man boy who subjugates himself to a woman and then has to reckon with what it means to have subjugated himself to her. Right? Phantom thread, that's what Phantom Thread is. A lot of these Punch Drunk Love. That's what Punch Drunk Love is. All of these movies are about a guy turning himself over to the idea of love and passion and then shit going wild. There's a million things like this in the movie, though. All of his movies are about families breaking up and mom and dad can't be together anymore. And then what does that mean for the man boy at the center of the movie? Or the tangible connection between radical politics and satire and how things that seem like they could change the world also seem ridiculous. Like he always talks about Robert Downey Senior. All the Robert Downey Sr. Movies are about that very idea.
- [91:07]
D
I think he also. I mean, I'm thinking of the Master and There Will Be Blood in Magnolia specifically. But like sexual trauma and unclear patriarchal parentage comes up a lot in his movies. And that's obviously something that's in this film, but then is on the other side comes out. It's just like, we can get through it. If you love each other like you can, you can conquer that.
- [91:31]
A
That's it. The movies are so humanist, you know, they're all about flawed people trying to figure it out. I go back to Perfidia and how she kind of like haunts the movie, certainly for me. And the fact that her voice is one of the very last voices that we hear and the fact that the, you know, her. Her identity in the world as a rat, despite the things that she did and the way that she talked and the way that she acted and the fact that other people kind of define her agency in the aftermath of everything that this happened is a really interesting concept. And like maybe the way that we think about people who try to make change in the world and then get villainized and the things that they have to do to survive. It's very complicated also when she find out.
- [92:14]
D
You can go back and chart different interactions with Lockjaw after they've had sex, obviously. And you know that there's a really amazing scene in a hospital after Perfidia has been captured and Lockjaw comes to her and is basically like it's this, you know, or life in prison. You know, it's like you have one chance here. And the decision that she makes to save, you could say, like she makes a selfish decision. She rats these guys out, she goes to witness protection. She eventually escapes is also probably to keep Charlene away from Lockjaw, you know?
- [92:47]
C
Right. Yeah.
- [92:47]
D
Do whatever she can to kind of keep him away from. From her daughter.
- [92:51]
A
Yeah.
- [92:53]
C
What else do you want to talk about? Oscars at all?
- [92:57]
A
Yeah.
- [92:57]
D
I also want to talk about, like, how this has been presented and how it will be received to the extent that it's possible.
- [93:04]
A
Okay, let's do marketing in box office and then we'll close the Oscars. The second trailer, which is the predominant trailer for the movie, does not feel like a trailer that Paul Thomas Anderson cut. The first one does. The first one with the Johnny Greenwood score and the phone call. That feels like a PTA trailer to me. The second one does not. People don't seem to like the second one. That's the one they're running before movies. That's the one that I think has failed to ignite a ton of interest. I think it is not a bad trailer, but not very representative of the movie. And so the movie is now tracking for somewhere between 20 and 30 million dollars in opening weekend. It's a very expensive movie. Costs anywhere from $115 million to $180 million, depending on what you read and who you believe. I definitely don't need to have a long conversation about whether or not this movie needs to make money or not. For me personally, I don't care. But I am quite curious about what the world thinks this is and what they're going to get. I don't even know how to talk about that. But it is a movie with the biggest movie star in the world.
- [94:07]
C
Yes.
- [94:08]
A
And it is an action movie, great scenes.
- [94:11]
C
And he is selling it in a way that I have not seen him do or really a major movie star do since late 2000s. He is on every podcast, he is doing junkets, he is doing magazines, sort of. And, like, he's just on my Instagram way more than Leonardo DiCaprio has ever wanted to be.
- [94:36]
D
There's like, a chase. Infinity has been putting him in her TikToks.
- [94:40]
C
Totally. They are like, we need to sell.
- [94:43]
A
This movie the way that other movies are meant to be marketed. And. And Paul Thomas Anderson doesn't do a lot of press these days. Yeah, Leo, of course. He hasn't been on a talk show in almost 20 years. He went on Jimmy Fallon this week or. Excuse me. Yeah, Jimmy Fallon this week.
- [94:57]
D
Hasn't done it in 20 years.
- [94:58]
A
Yeah. And they're working hard.
- [95:01]
C
Yeah.
- [95:01]
A
This movie comes from the same studio that is on one of the most legendary runs of the 21st century at the movies, where Warner Brothers has six consecutive movies that have opened at $40 million or more. There's not much else going on at the movies this weekend. Yeah, we're in weekend three of Demon Slayer. Chris will be running it back for a fifth time.
- [95:21]
C
And it is three hours.
- [95:24]
A
It's three hours.
- [95:24]
C
Yeah. And I. But so you ask like, what do people think they're getting? And they are selling it and you know, the trailer and then the very Leo forward strategy may make a lot of people who aren't really in the habit of going to the movies being like, oh, Leo's like in an action movie. Like, I guess I would go see this, but then they are going to get something slightly different than what that would. But I actually wonder whether, whether that kind of marketing, you know, whether the random person is like, oh, Leo's in an action movie. Like, sure, I'll go out to the theaters, you know, versus the more specific PTA heads or the, you know, premium format people or all of the, you know, that the IMAX of it or.
- [96:10]
D
People who are susceptible to the critical response being, to this film being almost uniformly in a way that I have not seen certainly since Oppenheimer, but even Oppenheimer had. It's like, well, you know, there will.
- [96:23]
A
Be a well about this movie. I just want to point out.
- [96:24]
C
Yeah, no, totally.
- [96:25]
D
There's going to be.
- [96:26]
A
We are going to get a lot of feedback that is, you oversold this and that everybody oversold this. That's going to happen. That's okay. It's just because we've not had this level of unanimous acclaim from critics. I'm trying to think of when's the last time. Probably Parasite. Parasite's probably the last time. Everybody was like, we're all on board. This is. Let's make this a movement.
- [96:45]
D
But there's a big difference between Parasite bubbling up as a foreign film that then just becomes a phenomenon to the biggest movie star we've got is in the movie with one of the best living filmmakers and we're going for it and we're advertising it on Sunday Night Football.
- [97:00]
A
There have been examples of this that have. Have become tremendously successful based on that power. The movie I think of is Gravity. Gravity is a little bit like Lost a Time now because it's such an in theater experience and the script is only okay. But that was a movie with platinum reviews. It was two huge stars and a huge, super celebrated director. And I don't remember Word for word every review that came out. But people were or gaga over Gravity and it worked like that. Machine. Now, that movie had space spectacle on.
- [97:34]
C
Its side and it was also 90 minutes long.
- [97:36]
A
That's true.
- [97:37]
C
Which.
- [97:38]
A
That is a factor for sure. And also it's a different time in movie going up.
- [97:40]
C
I'm not saying this movie should be shorter. I'm not saying that that actually does.
- [97:43]
A
But now we do have this. I asked Paul and Leo about this too. This large format in theater cult thing that is happening. Coogler really pushed a lot of that along with explaining the formats and the film stocks. See Benny Safdie doing this now with Smashing Machine last night, people.
- [98:01]
C
I mean, we were like@nerd HQ, but people. By the way, thank you to Corey Everett for my ticket.
- [98:06]
A
Shout out to Corey. He's the other real one who's now seen it three times. He's going a fourth time.
- [98:10]
C
But we. People applauded at the IMAX teaser. You know, just. It's like the IMAX brand thing and like all the men. And it was about 80% men were applauding. And I was.
- [98:21]
A
Some ladies there.
- [98:22]
C
Oh, no, there were some.
- [98:24]
A
There were some ladies there.
- [98:24]
D
I get a little nervous about this. I don't want it to become too stratified.
- [98:28]
A
I get it. I get it.
- [98:29]
D
There's just not IMAX theaters everywhere. They're not good or whatever.
- [98:32]
A
I mean, they do need to build more. That's a separate episode. The only other thing is, I think that there's one. I had a long conversation with Van Lathan about this yesterday. He hasn't seen the movie. He's been on a jag about how it needs to make money. I don't agree with him. He and I have had that debate many, many years. This movie probably needed to do a better job of marketing to black audiences because it's a movie about black women and like, Leo is definitely the star of the movie, but it is about Perfidia and Willa and to a lesser extent, Deandra. And activating black audiences is something that really works at the box office and they just didn't. I don't think they've really done it. I don't think they've really. The fact that Van is like, I'll go see it, you know, but isn't like, I can't wait to see it is. That's not good. And I don't know who that's on specifically, but maybe there will be a word of mouth thing that helps with it over time. And the other Thing is, we can use this as a trailway into it.
- [99:31]
D
Will have long legs, but it's going.
- [99:32]
A
To get around for a long time. There's a case for 10 Oscar nominations, and I can certainly see the headlines on March 18, 2026 that are one battle after another wins Best Picture and Best Director. Paul Thomas Anderson crowned King of Hollywood this year. That is possible.
- [99:53]
C
Yeah.
- [99:53]
A
I'm not saying it's going to happen.
- [99:54]
C
There's a road where this is like an Oppenheimer thing. And, you know, the minute it comes out, it's like, okay, a celebrated director finally, and it just is kind of a steamroll through.
- [100:06]
D
It would also be interesting if this gets sucked up into the culture wars at all.
- [100:09]
C
Yeah. Which it could also happen.
- [100:11]
A
I think it will. Will. I think it will. I mean, it is about radical politics.
- [100:16]
C
Sure.
- [100:16]
A
Yeah.
- [100:16]
D
But that Lots. Lots of people watched Jimmy Kimmel this week.
- [100:19]
C
Yeah.
- [100:20]
D
So.
- [100:20]
A
Oh, yeah, there's. There's more than enough people to. That could just support the movie that believe that, agree with its politics and it could be a success. Sure. Question, but. And honestly, from a box office perspective, that would probably help.
- [100:31]
C
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
- [100:32]
D
I mean, it almost would be helpful if somebody was like, this movie. Are you fucking kidding me? Like, yeah, yeah.
- [100:38]
A
But they're like exploding the power grid in a major American city, you know, and they're like, this is the hero of the movie.
- [100:43]
D
But that will probably, I think, become a bigger issue or a bigger talking point when it's award season and movies are under a little bit more scrutiny. And then there's the usual dirty tricks.
- [100:53]
C
I would like to start the Benicio del Toro Oscar campaign here. And now, please vote Benicio del Toro for Best Supporting Actor for One Battle After.
- [101:03]
D
Not Sean Penn.
- [101:04]
C
You can nominate him as well.
- [101:05]
D
Interesting.
- [101:06]
C
And I know, and that is like the showy performance and obviously he's one of the three, but, I mean, Sensei is incredible in this movie, and that's also like a quintessential supporting.
- [101:19]
D
It sure is.
- [101:20]
C
You know, he shows up. The movie does not work without him. Memorable. He's on his own kind of wavelength.
- [101:26]
A
Yeah.
- [101:27]
C
And then he goes away. So. Thank you.
- [101:30]
A
I don't think that will happen because supporting actor is a knife fight this year.
- [101:33]
C
Well, that's fine. But I, you know, I have a platform.
- [101:37]
A
You do have a platform, and I.
- [101:38]
C
Don'T have a vote.
- [101:39]
A
I support you.
- [101:39]
C
Thank you.
- [101:40]
A
Stellen Skarsgard and Sentimental Value, Sean Penn, Adam Sandler and Jay Kelly, Paul Mescal and Hamnet Jeremy Strong and Springsteen.
- [101:47]
C
Yeah.
- [101:47]
A
Elordian, Frankenstein.
- [101:49]
C
So Hamnet, you brought up, which is the other.
- [101:52]
A
That's the collision course right now.
- [101:54]
C
And so we either have like an Oppenheimer year or we have a saving Private Ryan vs Shakespeare in Love year. And, you know. But which is. Which is interesting because in a lot of ways, Hamnet is Shakespeare in love. But as Sean pointed out, like, Chloe Zhao has already won an Oscar and.
- [102:12]
A
She'S kind of Spielberg in this race.
- [102:13]
C
Yeah. So what are you gonna do?
- [102:16]
D
It's like nobody sees Hamnet still. Like, we're. It'll still be like.
- [102:20]
A
I think it's a specialty release that speaks deeply to artists.
- [102:23]
D
Okay.
- [102:24]
C
You know, the Telluride at One Toronto. It's like it'll be in the mix.
- [102:29]
A
It will definitely be in the mix. I think it's also.
- [102:32]
C
I know how I feel, but, you know, I just. We're talking about, like, like Oscar, the models for Oscar season.
- [102:39]
A
PTA is 0 for 11.
- [102:41]
C
Yeah.
- [102:43]
A
It's very easy to tell that story. There's definitely a world where it's like, Hamnet wins best picture and he wins best director. I could see that. I could see that very clearly.
- [102:51]
D
Sinners is not going to be in the mixer.
- [102:53]
C
It will.
- [102:54]
A
Yeah, definitely. It'll definitely be nominated for best picture. Everything after that, I don't know. I thought it would fall away a little bit when a bunch of movies started coming out, but some stuff that I thought would be big was not as well received. Whether or not Cooler gets in, I don't know. But adapted screenplay seems likely. Editing seems likely. Whether or not they decide to run Chase Infinity or Teyana Taylor for supporting actress, I don't know. They're gonna have to probably make a decision there, which is tough. You've got production design, you've got best casting.
- [103:33]
C
That's right.
- [103:34]
A
We have the new Johnny Greenwood score.
- [103:35]
D
Colleen Atwood for costumes.
- [103:37]
A
Costume design. That bathrobe is legendary. There's definitely a 10 or 11 or 12 Oscar nominations potential. Warner Brothers has a lot on their plate.
- [103:50]
C
Right. And they're running campaigns for. They announced sinners, weapons and one battle after another.
- [103:56]
A
Yes. So what's going to get the most time and energy? You know, Warner Brothers did campaign Dune Part two, but not very well.
- [104:03]
C
Right.
- [104:04]
A
So they haven't really run the race. This. This era of the organization hasn't run the race in quite this way. We'll see. Leah will be nominated.
- [104:13]
C
I mean, they won. No, that was Universal for Oppenheimer. They lost Barbie. You're right. Because that was the switch.
- [104:20]
A
Yeah.
- [104:20]
C
Yeah.
- [104:22]
D
I take solace in the fact that we will be talking about this movie in 20 years.
- [104:26]
C
Yeah.
- [104:26]
A
Yeah. It's pretty exciting. It's pretty.
- [104:29]
D
So I hope it makes money and I hope it wins awards just for everybody's benefit.
- [104:33]
C
But where are you in the PTA rankings right now with this? You want to do this? You want to save it?
- [104:38]
A
I would like to save it for Monday.
- [104:39]
C
Okay. Is it minute to minute?
- [104:42]
A
It always is.
- [104:43]
C
We'll also be having that conversation again throughout this year.
- [104:47]
A
This is the first movie that it really impacts 25 for 25 where we have to look at it and say, do we have to do that? Is this the right choice? I think we're going to. We'll probably talk about it for the next couple months.
- [104:58]
D
So you guys are allowed. Did you have a caveat that you can. You can break in case of emergency?
- [105:03]
C
It's until the episode is done. Like you once reported, it's the basement tapes. We can't go back and change it, but we have changed things.
- [105:14]
D
Interesting.
- [105:15]
C
Yeah.
- [105:15]
A
So if we wanted to choose this film, there's still time. There's 10 more movies to go.
- [105:21]
D
I had one last one.
- [105:23]
A
Yeah.
- [105:24]
D
You know, I think. I don't know if you're going to do a syllabus for this.
- [105:28]
A
I made one. I. I don't. I didn't want to put one out because I don't want to spoil the movie for people. But I have a long list right now that I can talk through.
- [105:35]
D
PTA talked about Searchers Running on Empty, Midnight Run and Battle of Algiers being inspirations for this movie or being movies that you could watch along with this. I can't get over how much this movie made me think of the Searchers. Like, I think I will watch the Searchers this weekend and then I would like to go back and see one battle.
- [105:50]
A
Lovely 4k from Warner. I have.
- [105:52]
D
Yeah, it is.
- [105:54]
C
Did you get a copy of Witness?
- [105:55]
D
Yes.
- [105:57]
C
You can just bring that right over.
- [105:59]
D
As, like, a bloating to my situation.
- [106:00]
C
No, no, no, no. I just like. Do you need it?
- [106:02]
A
Yeah. Do you need it? Is the question.
- [106:07]
D
Any movies that this movie made you think of that you.
- [106:12]
A
The Christmas Adventurers Club and Lockjaw just could not be more Dr. Strange love like Colonel Ripper, the sterling Hayden character. And especially the speech that Pen gives at the end where he talks about being raped in reverse and her wanting his power is just pure Ripper. So that's a big one. There's a really great Jules Dassen movie called uptight from 1968 that I would highly encourage people to check out. That is about. It's essentially a remake of John Ford's the Informer, and it's about a black revolutionary group and someone who turns and informs on the group. That is an imperfect movie, but is an incredible time capsule because it's made simultaneous to the movement, to the rise of the Black Panther movement, and is really powerful. There's a bunch of other movies from that time, like Medium Cool and Zabriskie Point, I think, are both in this movie to some extent. And then there's all the comic stuff, too. Like, he mentioned Midnight Run, but, like, Something Wild.
- [107:17]
D
It has Cheech and Chong in it.
- [107:19]
A
Cheechong, totally. Lebowski is all over it, I think. I tried to think about some other movies that are about this, because there's just not a lot of movies set in these worlds.
- [107:29]
C
Oh, well, there's not. It's not about this specific thing at all. But there's a lot of Casablanca in this movie, including both. Like Perfidia. The song is also played in Casablanca. He orders a French song. Like, there's the Easter eggy stuff, but, like, cocktail. A love triangle. Like three people, you know, during revolution. Yeah. And what are your responsibilities to.
- [107:49]
D
And Bacton has some of the, like, hidden. Hidden passageways.
- [107:52]
A
Yes, the Morocco. Yeah, yeah. No, it's completely true. I mean, that's the other thing, too, is making a movie with a light motif. You know, like having an idea of, like, the characters are always moving across bridges or moving through tunnels. There's that moment when Tim goes through Alice's house and goes downstairs into the basement and into the tunnel. And it's this large circular tunnel so that he can get into the meeting room for the eldest member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, played by Kevin Tighe. Right. Kevin Tighe, who's so good, where he's like, I want to be able to eat it off the floor. That's how clean I want it. That is like pure movie making stuff that you can make. You can have 10 examples of this feeling racing across the rooftops, skateboarding into World War Three. Just the idea of being dragged on a line for 90 consecutive minutes on the movie is so great and hard to pull off. I mean, also just obvious stuff like all the President's Men, Sorcerer movies that give you that feeling of paranoia and anxiety as you're trying to get to where you need to go to solve this. This mystery. Any other thoughts before we go to the guests of this episode?
- [109:06]
D
I wish I could Make a fool of myself before you introduce them, but I can't think of anything.
- [109:10]
A
Okay, thank you both for your thoughts on this film. We'll talk more about it very soon. Let's now go to my conversation with Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson. It is an honor and a delight to be joined by Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Guys, thanks for being here. Paul, I know you've been working on this movie for 20 plus years. Why was now the right time to actually make it?
- [109:41]
F
There's a few answers to that. I think one of the first answers is that after we finished Phantom Thread, Adam Sumner, producer and assistant director, legendary assistant director and producer, said, it's time for us to go make that one. And I went over to see Leo after coming back from England. I said, I don't think we're getting any younger. And I think. And. But then I didn't. I started to look for a Willa and I just. I got distracted and I didn't seem. I just didn't. I couldn't quite feel like I had it right yet. And got distracted and made licorice pizza. Got to work with his dad, but not him. And then it just sort of seemed like I felt comfortable with where the script had landed. And Adam was really forceful and saying, enough, you've searched enough. And I think it's really time, we have to do this film now. And so I got him. I said, all right, I think we've got to get started, you know, but that was also years before, really. I mean, honestly, it was probably a couple years before. So the search began to find Willa. And then we got slowed down a little bit by the strike, but we kept working. So we were ready when that was over, and here we are. But there's also a shorter answer. Would just be, I don't know. It just felt right. And thank God everything seems to have happened the way it was meant to happen. And I'm just so grateful for the way it's all turned out.
- [111:19]
A
So Leo in 2018, I talked to Paul and he said, I love Leo. And I loved him then. Which is around the Boogie Night's time because I was obsessed with Gilbert Grape and he said, this boy's life was a fucking amazing film. And he said, leo and I will work together one day and it will be the right thing. It will happen. So when was that? Eighteen.
- [111:41]
F
Okay. The Phantom Thread time.
- [111:44]
A
So you were thinking about it.
- [111:45]
F
Yeah.
- [111:46]
A
What was it that you connected with. With Paul's work? And why did you want to ultimately work together.
- [111:51]
E
His body of work, you know, his unique storytelling. You're transported into worlds. I remember watching the Master, and it's very rare where you get that moment of. How do you put it? Detachment from feeling like you're in a theater where you feel immersed. And I don't know what it was, but I felt like I was in that time period and I felt. Felt that these people were real. And, you know, even with a film like this, you know, the fact that Paul's been working on this for 20 years, you say. Right, 20 years. There is so much intricate thought put in and layering to what is essentially, you know, a sort of action film about a father trying to get back to his daughter. But there's. I've compared it to Star wars in a lot of ways. You have the Bounty hunters, you have Princess Leia, you have Yoda, you have, you know, Darth Vader. But it's saturated and real world. You know, the world that we live in right now, it's holding a mirror up to society. And it's the fact that he wrote this, started thinking about this 20 years ago. The fact that it's so incredibly topical to the world and the struggles that we're dealing with now in society. The fact that no one seems to be listening to one another, that, you know, there's extremism on both sides and the conviction that. That all these characters believe in their ideology, that they feel that they're right. And I know I'm just.
- [113:21]
A
Really.
- [113:22]
E
To me, you can see films that have a lot of thought put into them, that have had ideas put in that maybe he's taken out and replaced with something else. And what was great about working with him on this one was the malleability that he had for new ideas. I think, you know, Regina talks about a moment where you're, you know, action sequence, tbd to be determined or something like that. There were kind of little moments in the movie with Sensei and I where we kind of didn't know what direction to go. And then you get the actor in. You know, we. We waited three months to get Benicio because we knew he was our sensei, Carlos. He was our man. And then he came in, yeah, fully cooked with his idea of who Sensei was. That he would have confused connections in the corrections facility and at the hospital, and that he's got a sort of Harriet Tubman immigration system going down in his basement. And we go, okay, yeah, let's follow that direction.
- [114:17]
F
It's highly ironic that 20 years of writing. And we basically. Benicio came in and wrote that in a day with us, like, huh, okay, so a day and a dinner. We just wrote the best sequence in the movie. Let that be a lesson to you. Don't write for 20 years. Thinking about something for 20 years is okay. I guess that's what gets you there. But it's true. Benicio, that sequence was so stagnant before he kind of came in and brought all of this energy. It was much more isolated to that apartment. I can't even remember what it was exactly at this point. It grew so quickly, and the whole.
- [114:53]
E
World sort of just sprouted out of nowhere. And then the fact that we're in these communities working with real people, real shop owners is like, okay, this is.
- [115:01]
A
Is.
- [115:01]
E
We have a relationship here. It was, like, made on the spot. It was improvisational, and it was fantastic. And that flexibility was just so much fun.
- [115:12]
A
Part of it feels so real, despite the tone. And even though you started writing it 20 years ago, you haven't made a contemporary movie in over 20 years. The novel is set in the 80s. It's about the 60s. Why the decision to set it right now?
- [115:28]
F
Well, I mean.
- [115:31]
C
I think.
- [115:34]
F
In a practical way, in a very, very practical way, not even an artistic concern is. Jesus, wouldn't it be nice to just walk into the street and shoot a movie and not have to think about all the things that you have to think about when you're making a period film? That is a kind of relief and I think enabled us to do the kind of things we're talking about, to be fast on our feet, to kind of make up things. You can look over here, you can look over. You can do anything. But more to the point, beyond a practical thing is, I suppose as I started to get much more serious about writing this film about seven or eight years ago, I had kids that were becoming teenagers. I could understand in a deeper way the relationships to teenagers and the gap that's between generations. So it sort of became impossible to ignore that. And the fun of making a film, I think right now is when we first started talking years ago, I was still tiptoeing around, really embracing that it was a contemporary film. I had a kind of. I had icon of safety nets and I didn't want to talk about phones, and I was too nervous of all these things. And between him and Chase, especially him, it was pushing it and leaning in more and more to grounding it as a contemporary film. I mean, really just having to shake hands with it and look it in the face and say, we can't get away from this. There's nowhere to hide. And if we hide, we're doing ourselves in the story a disservice.
- [117:08]
A
Yeah, there's a lot of people talking on phones but not looking at their phones, which is a very. A big difference.
- [117:15]
F
Yeah.
- [117:16]
A
Leo, you haven't played a dad in very many movies and certainly not an older. Having an older child, and I have a young daughter. This is an amazing father daughter movie and I think will hit a lot of father daughters very heavy. But I'm curious what conversations you guys had about the father daughter relationship and kind of getting into the mind state of somebody trying to take care of a kid at that age.
- [117:39]
E
I've played dads before, Revenant, I think I played a father. Revolutionary Road, Inception, movies like that. But yeah, this centrifuge of this entire story is this sort of makeshift father that is, you know, trying to relate to his, you know, trying to relate to his daughter. And that's the driving force of this entire movie. You know, I. When I was thinking about this character in movies to watch, we watched a lot of different movies not based around father's father daughter dynamic, but I remember watching. What did we watch? Running on Empty.
- [118:18]
F
Yeah.
- [118:19]
E
Which was, you know, sort of revolutionary. Parents running with their children. We watched Battle Valgiers. I think I remember watching a lot of Dog Day. I watched Dog Day Afternoon a lot because that urgency of the great Al Pacino in that movie with those phone calls, the franticness of trying to get your loved one back at all odds was a big influence.
- [118:45]
F
Did you watch lion in the Winter?
- [118:47]
E
I watched lion in the Winter too.
- [118:48]
F
That has nothing to do with it, but it's great because it has the best acting ever in a movie with Peter o' Toole and Katherine Hepburn. And they can be so gigantic and so fun and so hammy. But, like, that switched to an intimate thing that's like. That's razor's edge. And I'd like that as an idea. The movie's very different, but in similar ways that we could go from really big and broad and all over the place to, you know, keep it real and make it really, you know.
- [119:20]
A
Is that something you would literalize when you were preparing to make the movie or even on set?
- [119:24]
F
No, I don't think so. I think those things just sort of come because you're feeling your way through it and you kind of. Of, you know, just try to play loose and see where it goes. And, you know, most of the times you kind of you kind of, you, you feel, you feel good and you go, this, this feels right. I will not say in six months when we're looking back at it, right? But we, but we have to keep moving forward. And so this instinctually feels pretty good. Or from time to time you do do something and at least within 24 hours you go, maybe we should revisit that. And that can happen too, from time to time.
- [119:59]
A
I was curious about something related to that. This is a really big movie for you in terms of scale. You've worked on a ton of movies, Leo, with huge scale. When you're working on something that is this big, that this has this many moving parts, do you know when you're getting it? Do you know when you're getting what you want? Because you have to have so many various moving pieces going as opposed to just two people sitting in a room talking to each other.
- [120:20]
F
Yeah, I do. As big as it is, it was still the same 15, 20 dopes around the camera that it always is. It was all just us making the movie, you know, I mean, things would grow, we would have bigger days. But we started the film in that little cabin in the woods shooting three days. There was only room for four of us and Chase and Leo. So, you know, and we would watch dailies every night and sit and, you know, have our dinner and, and look back and, and say, okay, this is feeling good and keep progressing. So yeah, you do, you do. The scale kind of becomes inconsequential. You know, you kind of. If we were prepared, we knew what the goal was. So you're just really focused on getting what you need, looking for inspiration and keeping your shit together.
- [121:11]
A
Really, Leo, it feels like Killers of the Flower Moon. This film don't look up Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. There's a strain of comedic drama that you seem really interested in in the last few movies. And this like, like kind of nervy, very funny, but kind of anxiety riddled figures. Like, does anything account for that? What is drawing you to these, these kinds of guys?
- [121:35]
E
What's drawing me to them? To be honest, it's, it's not a, it's not a conscious choice. It's, it's, it's reading the material, working with the director and trying to do this story justice and bring out. My hope.
- [121:50]
A
My.
- [121:51]
E
My hope is the comedy comes from real life circumstances and real life, you know, scenarios that make it funny. Otherwise, it's never funny to me when it's a setup gag or a setup joke. I mean, just the opening of Bob's character, it's kind of like, I love the fact that, you know, it's like you're 15 years, 16 years later, his past comes back to haunt him. What would Bob be doing? He'd be smoking potential, you know, on his couch watching Battle of algiers for the 50th time. And that would be. And he would have an argument with his daughter about the fact that he got drunk last night. You're right. You know, there's the setup for that is. And then of course, you know, the gag of my character not knowing the password is a brilliant choice. You know, you think you're going to be with this sort of traditional hero who's going to use all his revolutionary techniques from his past to save his daughter in a profound way. And he can't be get. He can't get past over the first hurdle of the race. You know, he tripped on the first hurdle and then he continues to trip on every single hurdle all the way around the track. And then we kept on doing that too. There are moments in the original screenplay where like, okay, maybe he does this. And Paul was like, nah, no, I think that the mirror for our protagonist, our flawed protagonist, I think the mere act of just propelling himself forward against all odds is his heroism. And through that is a lot of hilarious moments. You know, a lot of comedy comes naturally from that, from those, from that.
- [123:30]
F
Situation, I think, to that. Or say, you know, we had an idea. It didn't exactly kind of emerge like this, but it was good for us to go into it. Thinking about it this, this way is that what if, like the sixth most important member of the French 75, you know, like, and ended up being now suddenly the last man standing and the guy with the baby, you know, like, of all these people who you'd really rather see, you know, in an action position, guy number six, choice number six, who's really kind of just involved in shooting stuff off and maybe that was his job, is the last man standing and also has the child. It's like, what happens then? You know, and that was good for us to just have in our body and our mind approaching the story.
- [124:17]
A
He's not like a full blown buffoon, though. I love the Mexican hairless moment where it's like, this man's a hero, you know, just like DM it.
- [124:24]
F
No, no, that's exactly right. If you go full buffoon, then that's preposterous. You know, I mean, he's sharp enough, but he's also stuck in what he's done to himself in 16 years to disengage has definitely slowed his game down.
- [124:41]
A
I want to ask you guys about that because I do think one thing that I really connected with that I think a lot of people who are maybe 40 plus will, is you're very young, you're hopeful, you're idealistic, you're maybe even radical. You get older, you turn a little inward. Maybe you don't turn conservative, but you become just a little bit more into your own stuff. And Bob is not conservative at all, but he's kind of stuck where he was in some ways. And I'm curious about that dynamic and developing that dynamic. And even talking to someone like Chase, who has a much more limited life experience and I would assume is maybe a little bit more idealistic and kind of making sense together out of that in the movie.
- [125:19]
F
You're touching on one of the main things that we always talked about, that and the fatherhood aspect. We just mentioned it, but there was. Up north, they have a type of character that is Bob, and they refer to them as Hypnex, which is. Is half a hippie and half a redneck. And generally, probably when they were younger, they were miles apart in terms of what their ideology is, but they become closer and closer and end up being the same exact person in middle age. And they share the common theme of just leave me alone, I do not care. You know? And so, yeah, I mean, it's a natural. I don't know, you put miles on you and you slow down, and it's a funny one.
- [126:08]
E
And probably his inability to relate to his daughter's generation whatsoever, you know, the fact that she's off into the stratosphere with, you know, her own ideology, and he's trying to pull her into his. But at the same time, just the setup that we have of this guy in a log cabin that can't make a phone call. He's. I almost thought it would have been interesting if he put in the laser disc of Battle of Algiers. He's not online. There's probably no connection to the Internet. And here he is trying to exist in today's society. It's just a brilliant setup in that regard.
- [126:47]
F
I think we're finding them two at a time. I bet you can kind of see in the backyard the remnants of little toy slides and things like that that are now overgrown and everything else. I would imagine that their life from, like, 0 to 10 was absolutely idyllic. She knew nothing else except this. This. This. This. This doting dad. And he's going to take her, and maybe we go to the market and we come right back. And he's taught me all this stuff about how to survive. But as you start to emerge in young adulthood, you start to. You are forming your own path. And, you know, a friend of mine recently took his daughter off to college, and his heart was broken. And he said, you know, if I had known she was gonna break my heart, I wouldn't have gotten this close to her. You know, this is sort of premise that the best thing that he can do is let go, you know, is let her go out that door, no matter what danger she might end up facing. That's his job.
- [127:48]
A
One other thing I really loved about the movie is it's set up to be a showdown movie. You incurred Darth Vader, you know, this idea of good versus evil, but you actually only get, I think, just the one scene with Shawn. Yeah. And I was wondering if you guys could talk about the decision to kind of keep them apart ultimately to make this not High Noon and something a little bit different.
- [128:09]
E
Well, I think that was Paul. I mean, I remember us talking about the varied possibilities, not only for the ending, but the midsection of. Of my character. And I remember him just saying, look, I just don't know how to do that. I don't know if I want to do that with this character. And I think to him and not speaking for him, but it would have robbed that moment. And not to give away the ending, but of the sheer relentlessness that Bob has for just being there and being present and being that father figure that becomes his heroism at the end of the day. I mean, there was a lot of traditional tropes that we could have done a little, but it took a lot of discussion, and I think I had to let go of a lot of those ideas as well into the process, and it kind of naturally occurred. And there we. I don't think we even decided until we're right there on that road in Borrego Springs with her, with the three cars sort of following each other. And he said, no, no, this is.
- [129:11]
A
Is.
- [129:12]
E
This needs to be passed on to the next generation. I remember him saying that the trauma of what, you know, Bob is now. She's now paying the price for Bob's ideology right here. Boom. And it's the next generation dealing with all of this right here and what happened. And then not to give away the ending again, but the. The idea of her being in complete shock, you know, that the. The. Who is. Who is this man? She's. She's been put through such extreme traumatic events. And I thought it was a brilliant choice at the end of the day.
- [129:47]
F
Yeah, it was it and it was, it was sort of discovered. You, you know, you're stand, you're standing there and you're just faced with logic. You just ask yourself, he's like, let's get back to common sense. Forget the moviness of this. What is common sense? What is she, what is she asking herself? We know what he's after. He's after just protecting her. That's quite simple, you know, but now it was her time, you know, after all this time of being thrown around in the movie and handcuffed, she's got a blossom and she's got a few fucking questions of her own to ask around here, you know, and that's to his point before, I think what took so long over 20 years, is trying all of these versions, maybe more traditional things that you felt like you were supposed to do. Wait a minute, you got a bad guy and you got a hero and I wrote all these things and all these things. And there's a certain point you can really try to do things that you think you're supposed to do. And they're terrific exercises because inevitably they will let you know, like, hey, it worked, or their characters aren't going that way. That's not what they want to do, you know, and you just have to keep listening to the story or the people in the story. And the more you listen to them, the more they'll speak back to you and help guide the story. Hopefully they're guiding it in an energetic and kind of action oriented way that has momentum and is interesting to an audience. Hopefully they don't want to be boring.
- [131:13]
A
Well, it's just interesting to hear you talk about finding it so much creatively in the making of it, especially because shooting on VistaVision and I know that those cameras are a little bit complicated to use and it's a little different from just grabbing a digital camera. Yeah. But on the other hand, like, something is clearly happening in Los Angeles, I think in other cities where there is a film fandom that really wants on film, large format. I want to be with 500 people in a room, community thing that is going on. And it's like Nolan's movies and Quentin's movies and the repertory scene here is like very crazy now and exciting. And I'm wondering, like you guys have participated in that. You always shoot on film. Most of your movies are on film too. Yeah. Like, what do you think that is about why are people, especially young people, into it?
- [132:05]
E
I think even young people are over saturated with the sheer amount of imagery and fast paced content. I mean, look at the amount of production that's out there on Netflix alone and no discredit to any of it. There's some brilliant stuff out there, but. But that, I don't want to say lo fi experience, but that theatrical communal experience of seeing something on that's got to be equally as vital. And I hope to me it's exciting because, you know, otherwise there's a huge gap in the art form. You know, all these things have to sort of coexist together. And this movie was. It's a truly original idea. You know, it's a big budget film and it's meant to have that communal theatrical experience. This movie is specifically made for that. You know, more than anything else I can imagine. It is made for the theatrical experience. In Benicio and I were talking about it the other day. You know, I love uncomfortable moments in movies. That's what I love the most. When I'm sitting there with the character feeling an embarrassment for them or not knowing whether to laugh or cry or. And that communal experience almost allows you to connect with the character. Oh, that guy feels that way about this moment. Oh, that's. Oh, that's actually funny. It's something that can only happen when a bunch of homo sapiens are together in a room feeling the energy of one another. And I think everything that Paul did to make this movie was for that singular experience. It is, is one of those movies that's not meant to be seen on a tablet or a small screen. It's meant to be in the theater, to be felt and witnessed and experienced in a theater.
- [133:57]
F
You said it best. I'm just gonna fuck it up.
- [133:59]
A
That was exactly right.
- [134:01]
F
I mean, no, that's what, that's why you, that's why you, you go through the pain in the ass of working with these cameras and doing all these kinds of things because it's, it's absolutely worth it.
- [134:12]
A
It.
- [134:13]
F
Back to your point about, you know, finding things with a VistaVision camera. Yeah, they're kind of counterintuitive. You know, you kind of. You would think you, you should be, but. Because I don't want it to seem that we were out there just kind of making it up as we went along. You know, this is a. The product of a schedule that, you know, if you have four days to do something, you can, you can do it as it's written. The first day, look at it back. You Come back the next day, you refine it. You better get it right by the third day and you've got that fourth one to really bring it home, you know, especially for key and important valuable scenes that you know are essential and that there might be something more to. That's just. That's. That's. That's what a great producer and assistant director brings you. That's what we had.
- [134:59]
A
We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great, great thing that they have seen? What have you guys seen recently that you've really dug?
- [135:08]
E
It's a film that I've seen before.
- [135:09]
A
Which one is that? Okay. That's okay.
- [135:12]
E
Vertigo.
- [135:13]
A
Why did you watch it?
- [135:15]
E
I'm working on a film where that's a reference point. Marty had a conversation with Marty about it. And, you know, anytime you get to sit and talk with him about movies is a religious experience, but when he talks about a movie that he's still trying to figure out, right. Even it's an even more. He's like, you know, each decade that movie means something different to me. Yeah, is she a ghost? Is she not a ghost? Is she there?
- [135:42]
D
Is he a ghost?
- [135:42]
E
What is it?
- [135:43]
A
Right.
- [135:43]
E
And, you know, listening and talk to him. So I rewatched it and I knew the moments, exact moments in the redwoods that he was talking about. I was like, that's the moment that Marty felt that.
- [135:53]
A
Right.
- [135:54]
E
So, yeah, there's something that we're working on that has been a reference to that.
- [135:59]
F
That's a VistaVision movie too.
- [136:01]
E
Yes, sir.
- [136:02]
F
You know, and we actually, funny enough, it was.
- [136:04]
E
Did we have one of our cameras from Vertigo or was it north by Northwest or was it.
- [136:09]
F
Probably not. I don't know.
- [136:11]
E
There was from that whole other.
- [136:13]
F
There was, but, but, but we shot a whole sequence that we cut out of the movie in the beginning of the movie. And we were in San Juan Bautista where they shot a lot of Vertigo. Very famous churches. Nah, the church is there. There's the kind of. There's the carriage that she goes and walks by. That's there. And there's an upper landing that they used for the courtroom scene. So we took our little VistaVision camera.
- [136:38]
A
There and we put her up there.
- [136:39]
F
And we stood there and we went, hmm. There was a camera here 60 something years ago shooting Vertigo. And we're standing in the same room. We ended up cutting the whole sequence out, but nevertheless, we really felt like hell. This is exciting. I saw for the first time a movie called Tom Horn, which is with Steve McQueen I'd seen. I'd saw. I guess there was a book about him later in his life. I think it was his second to last movie. And I said, God, I never even heard of this. I never even seen it. It's terrific, terrific film about. About Tom Horn, who was a real Pinkerton detective, but kind of protected a cattle rust. Kind of employed by rich cattle barons in Wyoming. So it kind of touches near where Heaven's Gate goes and stuff. It's a really interesting film, beautifully shot by John Alonso and recent enough that there was a gaffer named Jim Planet who I worked with many years ago. I got to text him and say, I just saw Tom Horn. He's like, we had a great time making that movie. It was exciting to see Steve McQueen in the movie. It's his second to last movie, so I think he was already ill. But he gives a great performance and Richard Farnsworth is in it. It's terrific film.
- [137:54]
A
Great recommendations. Leo, Paul, thank you so much for chatting.
- [137:58]
F
Sean, thank you.
- [138:04]
A
Okay. Thanks to Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Tom Thomas Anderson.
- [138:07]
C
Yes. Thank you, Leo.
- [138:08]
A
A normal. Thank you.
- [138:09]
D
Thanks, guys.
- [138:09]
A
I'll see you later. Thanks, guys. Catch up with you at your house. Thanks to you both for your contributions. This is a very special movie. We hope the listeners of this show go to see it. Thanks to our producer, Jack Sanders, for his work on this episode. Don't forget bigpickmailbagmail.com if you'd like to send us some questions about the film. Though we did talk about a lot of it here and see you in New York. And, yeah, next week we head to New York for a live show at the 92nd Street Y, where. What are we doing? Don't spoil what we're doing.
- [138:38]
C
Okay. We're not allowed to know.
- [138:40]
D
You'd like to show up and be like, tonight we are drafting wizards.
- [138:45]
A
Yeah, tonight we're drafting wizards. Former members of the Washington Wizards, the Gilbert Arenas. I'm not quite prepared for that. I know you are. You'll be there.
- [138:52]
D
I will be there.
- [138:53]
A
Thank goodness. Yeah.
- [138:54]
D
On stage. Not just in the audience, of course.
- [138:56]
A
And there will be other special guests. I'm willing to say that. So that'll be on October 4th. In between, then, we have nine episodes to record. So we'll do our best.
- [139:05]
D
Are you serious?
- [139:06]
C
Really?
- [139:06]
A
No, we have three.
- [139:08]
C
I mean, that. That would be possible. I'm like, oh, shit, I gotta check the spreadsheet. Okay.
- [139:12]
A
And hopefully everyone listens to all of them. We'll see you then. Foreign this episode is brought to you by the all new ESPN app. All of ESPN all in one place.
- [139:40]
D
Your home for the most live sports.
- [139:42]
A
And best championship moments. It's the ultimate fan experience. Step up your game and get even more than before with no annual contract request. Level up. For More on the ESPN app or at stream.espn.com sign up now.
- [139:59]
B
This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. You know what fall means, right? Game day parties are back. Whole Foods Market has everything you need. Kick off with impressive appetizers like heat and eat boneless chicken bits or a shrimp cocktail platter. Then score big with big flavors for big appetizers.
- [140:17]
A
Nights.
- [140:17]
B
Feed your team with made in house marinated chicken wings and Teton Waters, Ranch hot dogs and sausages and an oven ready 16 inch pizza that will satisfy even the extra large players. Host Game Day with help from Whole Foods Market both in store and online.