‘Sinners’ Is for the Sickos, the Cinephiles and You, with Ryan Coogler!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Picture – ‘Sinners’ Is for the Sickos, the Cinephiles and You, with Ryan Coogler!

Released on April 17, 2025, "The Big Picture" hosted by Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins delves deep into Ryan Coogler's latest film, "Sinners." This episode features insightful discussions with Coogler himself, alongside contributions from Van Lathan and occasional remarks from fellow Ringer colleagues.

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1. Introduction to "Sinners" and Ryan Coogler

The episode kicks off with Amanda Dobbins introducing "Sinners" as Ryan Coogler’s fifth feature film and his first entirely original story. Described as a "sexy, violent, complex, entertaining vampire horror movie," it intertwines themes of twin brotherhood and the duality of men, set against the backdrop of an erotic Deep South musical exploring the American blues.

Amanda Dobbins [01:48]: "It's an exploration of the American blues. It's a lot of movie. It also looks and sounds phenomenal."

2. Initial Reactions and Authenticity

Van Lathan shares his admiration for the film, highlighting its authenticity and daring execution. He appreciates how Coogler balances originality with cultural authenticity, making each element purposeful rather than mere representation.

Van Lathan [04:53]: "Parts of the movie are effective because they aren't perfect. They're trying to be deeply authentic."

Amanda Dobbins echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the film's balance between genre conventions and profound thematic exploration.

Amanda Dobbins [06:40]: "Coogler does just. He finds the perfect balance between genre and movie ideas."

3. Michael B. Jordan’s Dual Performance

The discussion shifts to Michael B. Jordan's portrayal of twin brothers Smoke and Stack. Both hosts commend his ability to embody two distinct characters, showcasing his versatility and depth as an actor.

Van Lathan [18:08]: "The perfect usage of him. That's why it works."

Amanda Dobbins [19:14]: "Michael B. is a great facial and expression actor. He can use visually what you need."

4. Music as a Central Element

"Sinners" places significant emphasis on music, particularly blues and Irish folk traditions. The hosts discuss how music not only serves as a narrative device but also bridges cultural and temporal gaps within the film.

Zach Lowe [16:15]: "This reminds me of when Oppenheimer hit. The power of cinema language."

Amanda Dobbins [43:14]: "It's a dream ballet, a recognizable part of a Hollywood musical."

5. Themes of Duality and Morality

Throughout the conversation, the hosts explore the film's central themes of duality, sin, and morality. They delve into the characters' internal struggles and the broader societal implications portrayed through the vampire motif.

Van Lathan [28:07]: "Interracial love and the confrontation of sin and morality."

Amanda Dobbins [29:48]: "What is the real sin? Which is the devil?"

6. Box Office Expectations and Industry Impact

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the film's potential box office performance and its implications for original, genre-blending films in Hollywood. The hosts express optimism, drawing parallels to the success of "Black Panther" and emphasizing the importance of supporting original storytelling.

Zach Lowe [62:45]: "Horror is one of the most underrated in terms of tracking."

Van Lathan [63:23]: "It's time for race eyes. We need one."

7. Interview with Ryan Coogler

In an exclusive segment, Ryan Coogler shares his motivations behind creating "Sinners," emphasizing the need to tell an original story amidst his successful franchise work. He discusses the challenges and creative decisions involved in blending genres and the significance of music in the narrative.

Ryan Coogler [73:19]: "I realized I had been making movies that were all me, and that scared me."

Coogler [75:48]: "The movie needed that scene to buttress the cosmically beautiful with the horrific."

He also touches upon his dedication to the theatrical experience, lamenting the closure of favorite cinemas and the importance of watching films on the big screen.

Coogler [94:21]: "It's a giant empathy machine, the best experience with strangers in the dark."

8. Concluding Thoughts and Future Prospects

The episode wraps up with the hosts expressing their hope for "Sinners" to perform well both critically and commercially, highlighting its potential to influence future original films. They also tease upcoming discussions and thank Ryan Coogler for his insights.

Amanda Dobbins [65:27]: "This is a vampire movie. Please go see it in theaters."

Zach Lowe [98:07]: "Ryan, I appreciate you. Thank you so much for the time."

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Notable Quotes:

• Van Lathan [04:53]: "Parts of the movie are effective because they aren't perfect. They're trying to be deeply authentic."

• Amanda Dobbins [06:40]: "Coogler finds the perfect balance between genre and movie ideas."

• Ryan Coogler [73:19]: "I realized I had been making movies that were all me, and that scared me."

Timestamp Highlights:

• 01:48: Introduction to "Sinners" and its themes.
• 04:53: Van Lathan praises the film’s authenticity.
• 18:08: Discussion on Michael B. Jordan’s dual roles.
• 16:15: Importance of music in the film.
• 28:07: Exploring themes of duality and morality.
• 62:45: Box office expectations and racial dynamics.
• 73:19: Ryan Coogler on creating an original story.
• 94:21: Coogler on the theatrical experience.
• 98:07: Closing remarks and gratitude to Ryan Coogler.

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Conclusion:

This episode of "The Big Picture" offers an in-depth exploration of Ryan Coogler's "Sinners," blending critical analysis with personal insights from both the hosts and Coogler himself. By examining the film's intricate themes, standout performances, and the pivotal role of music, the podcast provides listeners with a comprehensive understanding of why "Sinners" is poised to make a significant impact in the cinematic landscape.

Transcript

[Zach Lowe]

Welcome to the brand new Zach Lowe Show. That's right, I'm back to have the same in depth NBA conversations you're used to. We're going to talk about the games, the X's and O's, the drama. The playoffs are coming up and now.

[Van Lathan]

You get to see every episode in.

[Zach Lowe]

Full on video on Spotify and on my own YouTube channel. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday with a collection of guests you're going to love. So make sure you follow and subscribe.

[Van Lathan]

To the brand new Zach Lowe show on Spotify or wherever you watch or listen.

[Zach Lowe]

Listen to your podcast. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. It's tax season and we're all a bit tired of numbers, but here's one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it, guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com podc terms apply.

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[Zach Lowe]

See site for details. I'm Sean Fennessy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the.

[Zach Lowe]

Big Picture, a conversation show about sinners. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Ryan Coogler, the writer director of Sinners, his fifth feature film and first wholly original story. It's a sexy, violent, complex, entertaining vampire horror movie. Also a story about twin brothers and our duality as men. It's an erotic Deep south musical and it's an exploration of the American blues. It's a lot of movie. It also looks and sounds phenomenal. If you want to know how and why he did it, stick around for my conversation with Ryan. I met Ryan in 2017. Never had him on the show before. He's been at the top of my wish list for many, many years. I hope you'll stick around for our conversation. Seated now with us is Van Lathan. What's up, Van?

[Van Lathan]

What's going on, guys?

[Amanda Dobbins]

How Are you doing the duality of men before me?

[Zach Lowe]

Yes.

[Van Lathan]

The Smokestack Twins.

[Zach Lowe]

Right. Who's. Who is really the question here. Who is going to turn and who is not going to turn? Interesting question. So, Van, it's been a minute since you've been on the show.

[Van Lathan]

A little bit.

[Amanda Dobbins]

When was the last time?

[Van Lathan]

I can't remember what we did last. I don't remember.

[Zach Lowe]

We had a very fun conversation about Joker Folia. Duh.

[Van Lathan]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

I think that might have been the.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Last time I was on.

[Van Lathan]

That's been the last time I was on. Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

And Amanda was on leave at that time. So you guys haven't been together in forever.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Six months. Yeah. Because that was. That was s first. I mean, Sai hasn't seen that movie, but that was his movie weekend.

[Zach Lowe]

So you should show him Joker too, See what he thinks.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, he'd be excited.

[Zach Lowe]

Kind of made for the mentality of a six.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I never watched it because I listened to your podcast, which I very much enjoyed, but it didn't really even seem like you guys cared about it or.

[Van Lathan]

Liked it, so no one cared about it. It's almost as if the movie never happened. It's a weird phenomenon.

[Zach Lowe]

It is a very strange thing. It is notably the same movie studio that is releasing Sinners Joker Foliadew, Huge bomb Sinners, a movie of incredible importance to Warner Brothers this year, as I said, written and directed by Coogler stars as most of his films star. Michael B. Jordan, of course, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles caton, newcomer Jack O'Connell, Wanmi Masaku, Jamie Lawson, Omar Miller, Lee Jun Lee and Delroy Lindo. Stacked cast for this movie. He also has reassembled the Black Panther department heads murder team. Just some of the best in the business. Production designer Hannah Buechler, cinematography by Autumn Derald Arkpaw, Michael P. Shawver, his editor and Ludwig Goranson, the composer who is now, I think has just kind of grabbed the belt. And we don't need to necessarily start the full conversation around music, but the music of this movie is way more crucial than I ever would have expected based on the marketing and essential to the movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, it is a movie about music. I mean, literally in the plot there are blues musicians and a blues club and then other musicians who show up.

[Zach Lowe]

They certainly do.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And also the themes and ideas of the movie. So I think you can talk about the music.

[Zach Lowe]

We definitely will. We'll go in depth because it's not just Goranson who's making music in this movie. There's all kinds of different genres and different cultural traditions that are portrayed in the movie. But let's start very simply. Dan, I'll ask you, what did you think of the movie Sinners?

[Van Lathan]

I thought it was phenomenal. I really enjoyed it. I had talked to you about it because you had seen it before me. I went to the LA screening. I think it was last week, week before last, a complete cultural experience. And look, I'm not saying that the movie is perfect, right? But what I'm saying is parts of the movie are effective because they aren't perfect. And they're not, to me, trying to be perfect as much as they are trying to be deeply authentic. And as we talk about originality lacking in Hollywood now with some of the IP stuff, I think people are saying originality, but they're actually meaning authenticity. They want a story from a filmmaker that feels like they have to tell a story. And you know, when you're watching a movie that someone feels like they have to tell a story because they take great tale and great care. Should I say they take great care and tell it in great detail. And not always like you would want them to tell it, but always the way they do. Yeah. And when you come away from Sinners, you got like, this guy had something to say, and he packaged it in something that is very watchable, sexy, but it's not easy, right? He's got something to say. So I was actually blown away, not just by the execution of it, but by how daring the movie was and how it elevated a lot of the performers in it. It's as good as Micah's ever been. The music is fantastic. I haven't seen music used in a film like this in a while, so my expectations were high, and the movie still managed to exceed them.

[Zach Lowe]

What'd you think, Amanda?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I completely agree with Van, but I think because I saw it third of this group, and my expectations were very high for it as a movie of ideas and a movie of. And Sean, you said to me at some point, and I hope this is not a spoiler, you were like, this is a movie about the blues. And I don't think people know that. And I really admire Coogler's work as well, and I know him as someone who can create, like, big, broad studio movies with a lot of, you know, with ideas and themes and things to say inside of them. So I was expecting all of that. And the movie totally delivers on that. It is also just like a straight up fun vampire movie, you know, like it is. And it really? And so I almost went in. And I say that in a. In a complimentary way as well. I think Coogler does just. He finds the perfect balance between genre. Not even, like, a balance between. He managed to do, like, full genre movie and full, like, movie movie, like, ideas movie. We're serious people, like, all in one. You can have it all if you're Ryan Coogler. So I really, really liked it. But as we're talking about it for other people, I just don't want to undersell the fact that just the vampires go for it and, you know, and he sets up a whole world, as Van said, and characters and stakes. And then. And it is really. I had this moment because I was so immersed in this world that he builds in, like, 30s, Mississippi. And then I realized, oh, I see, now we're all assembled here. And now, like, the vampires are, like, just gonna go for it. And. And. And I, again, I was like, wow, I didn't even realize what you were doing and how deftly you were putting together this framework that I like, that I do recognize. But, like, there it is, and here we go. So that's cool. And we, like. I really enjoyed it. And also, like, we need movies like this, though. You know, the world does.

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah. I fully agree. Over the years, I've had a lot of conversations with people. Bill is somebody who asks us about this from time to time. Sort of like, who is the next generation of people that are going to make the kinds of movies that we want to go see? And the list was always very short, but it was the same handful of names. It was Damien Chazelle, it was Greta Gerwig, it was Barry Jenkins, it was the Safdies, it was Ari Aster, Denis. Denis Villeneuve. It was a pretty short list. Coogler was always on the list for me. I like all of his movies with some serious reservations about Wakanda Forever, which we talked about on the show some years ago. So interesting to me that this is the film that he has chosen to do after Wakanda Forever, because it feels like a real palette cleanser for that movie, which is not to say that it's a rejection of Wakanda Forever. It's not. But it is so outside of any of the mythological framework that he has lived in as a writer and director for the last seven or eight years that you can really feel him flexing his muscles. He's very loyal to vampire stories in the movie, but everything else in the movie, I've never seen a vampire movie like this. The setting, the time period, the characterization is all a new take on 100-year-old story type in movies. And it's phenomenal. It's like, it's. This is basically exactly what I'm begging for. This reminds me of like when no Pit, when Oppenheimer hit. Like, there's a handful of movies over the last few years where I was just like, this is what I'm looking for. Somebody with a really strong take, with an incredible visual sensibility, who knows how to direct actors, who understands the way the music has a relationship to drama, and also just wants to have fun. This movie is really fun. And it's, you know, there's lots of homage to From Dusk Till dawn and the thing and movies that we love that some people who love vampire movies might see this movie and be like, this is like a From Dusk Till dawn ripoff. But this is like in the lineage of what these kinds of movies do. That movie's 30 years ago, but it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Is also like a old school Hollywood musical for half of it. And there are musical set pieces. So I, the musical nerd was like, oh, look at that. Oh, look at that. This is so exciting. I mean, there is something for everyone, including stakes to the heart.

[Van Lathan]

So I enjoy movies like this. I really enjoy it. From Dusk's Dawn.

[Zach Lowe]

I love it. It's a fave of mine.

[Van Lathan]

Rewatchable movies ever, right? And I really enjoy, for as campy and kooky as it is, Tales from the Crypt Demon Knight, right? Which are two movies where you have people, a ragtag, a bunch of people trapped inside of a building with a horde of vampires waiting outside. The most interesting thing about those movies are the vampires themselves are very interesting, right? You have an all time Billy Zane performance in Demon Knight. Demon Knight, you guys, I'm telling you, your guy Billy.

[Zach Lowe]

Billy Z. Rocking. Okay?

[Van Lathan]

And then you have so much about From Dusk Till dawn that is rememberable. Salma Hayek, Tarantino, Clooney's ascent, the whole deal. But it's always kind of about why are those guys in those situations and how they rise, those characters rise to heroism. Jada Pinkett Smith, in the case of from in Demon Knight. Now, this movie gives you all of these different elements of a very complicated and untold culture, which is the culture of the Mississippi Delta, right? The music of it, the look of it. A lot of people are gonna watch the movie and go, huh, there are two Asian American grocers that exist down there. Is that real? It is. And it's a very interesting piece of it and then when you get to the vampires, they take over. Now you're full on in a vampire movie and the backdrop of all of the characters just feeds the reasons why everybody makes a decision. It gives you a lot, but it doesn't waste anything because every single thing that it gives you, if it's cultural, if it's about the blues, you're thinking they're just packing a bunch of stuff in there to make their movie hit with people who want to see more representation on screen. No, it all matters. It all has something to do with story.

[Zach Lowe]

I think that specificity and authenticity that you were talking about is there. It feels like it is researched and accurate. Also, it's a vampire movie and it's a very classical style of film writing and filmmaking. This is a three act movie. The first 40 minutes of the movie are entirely setting the scene, letting us understand this world, letting us understand these twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who they are. They've just come back from Chicago. They are originally from Clarksdale, Mississippi. They're coming home to open this club and we're learning about what Clarksdale is like. This time we meet these grocers, we see this young cousin of theirs who's a preacher's son, who's a, you know, an aspiring musician who wants to help them open this club. We see the woman who Stack had been in love with when he left. We see a woman who preacher boy will soon fall in love with. At the train station, we meet an old blues musician clearly modeled after like a Sonny Boy Williamson type. Like, there's just a lot of detail and specificity that goes into the first 40 minutes of this movie. A lot of times when you watch a movie like this that has that formulaic structure, the first 40 minutes are boring because it just feels like setup. This movie does the great thing that a lot of genre movies do, which is that you don't know anything about the vampire stuff for the first 40 minutes. And in fact, as I was watching it, even though I'd seen the trailer, I forgot it was going to be a vampire movie. I wasn't like, when's a vampire going to come around? Because I was trying to figure out what they were doing with the story. And then 40 minutes in, Jack O'Connell arrives and the film's energy shifts and I mean, he's just fantastic in the movie and we can talk about him. I mean, all the performances are great, but I love what they did with him in particular. And then the next 40 minutes becomes this escalation into that musical that you were talking about, Amanda. And then you get to that end of the second act when something awful happens. And then the final 40 minutes is about survival. This is a very, very classic thing. This has been happening in movies for a very long time. It's not going to be surprising the way the movie is shaped, but how it feels is always so alive and so, like, there's a sense of humor about it. There's like, a real sexiness to it that I find is so unusual in modern movies now, especially modern movies from quote, unquote, important filmmakers, like, characters are going down on each other. There's explicit conversation about how to have sex in the movie. You know, there's like, literally, you know, turns in the storytelling around a sex scene that felt, you know, kind of like the stuff that we are always like, why isn't it like 1997 anymore?

[Amanda Dobbins]

People also have actual chemistry.

[Van Lathan]

You watching people on screen that look like they actually want to fuck each other. You know what I mean? And it's a part of. Of the actual story. Even getting down to the way that Jack O'Connell, who is just, like, really scary and awesome. Like, we're talking about the expression of the blues in here. This movie made me look up Irish jig dancing and songs and whatnot. Cause they look like they were having fun, too. Out there, going nuts. I was like, do I want to. Which party do I want to be in? When they were out there as vampires getting it out and he's dancing around.

[Zach Lowe]

I'm like, yo, that looks like that's pretty to me. That is the. You know, for obvious biased reasons. My favorite example of why Cooler is so great is that the scenes where you see Jack O'Connell, who plays an Irish vampire, is singing and dancing and exploring the Irish folk tradition are so good, is because they're just very entertaining. They're fun to watch. And it's sort of a sequel to an earlier musical sequence. It's sort of the other side of that coin and sort of the light and the darkness, like in any vampire story. But, you know, the Irish folk tradition and American Black blues is like, they're two musical forms that are totally related to each other. They're interconnected. They're both born of impoverished people who have to use culture to find a way to reckon with and to tell their stories and to express themselves in the face of really difficult things. I asked Coogler about this. He noted, for example, that his first name is Ryan, which is an Irish name. And that he, in fact, is like, this was very much on his mind when he was making the movie. But that's like a heady idea that if you care about that sort of thing and you're into musicology and you're into the origins of American music, which this movie is just filled with, it's a lot of fun. If you don't care about that stuff, it's just Jack O'Connell going off dancing and it's super fun. And I should say, I guess, that we're going to spoil this movie as we have the conversation throughout, because I feel like it's kind of necessary to give it its proper due. So if you haven't seen the movie yet and you don't want to hear any more about what we're discussing, go see the movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Go see the movie on the biggest screen possible.

[Zach Lowe]

Yes, it is. If you can see it in imax, you should see it. It was shot on film. Coogler has taken great pains to talk about how and why he shot this movie with IMAX cameras in 65 millimeter format. You can see it on 70 millimeters. Some places. I got a chance to see it in that way. It was very much worth it on a big screen. Let's talk about the movie itself, specifically. So you said this is the best. You think Michael B. Jordan has been in a movie, period, do you think?

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

So he's got a tall task because he is playing dual roles. Similar, but different brothers. Very Cain and Abel framed. I think here there's like the sort of more aggressive leader type talking about.

[Van Lathan]

Cain and Abel from the Bible or Cain and Abel from no Limit Records. It's gangsta fi. You ever heard that?

[Zach Lowe]

Right? You know that? I have. I was more of a Silk the Shocker guy personally. But. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Thank you. But I was referring to the Bible, but if you want to talk no Limit, we could do that too. Mia X. I was a fan.

[Van Lathan]

Oh, shout out to Mia X. The baddest Mama Mia.

[Zach Lowe]

Were you a big no Limit fan back in the day?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I missed that one, yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

Were you a fan of the tank? You know Mr. Servo?

[Van Lathan]

You with Mr. Servo?

[Zach Lowe]

You like him? What do you think of Michael B. Jordan? What do you think about him in general?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I had a similar thought to Van that I don't know if it's his best ever. But there was a revelation to me in this movie in which I do think he's quite good. And I don't always think that that's the Case, I realize that. I think that Michael B. Is a great facial and like expression actor.

[Zach Lowe]

He's a movie star.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He's. Well, he's a. But. But he can use, he can give you visually what you need.

[Zach Lowe]

He's Steve McQueen.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, well, but like dialogue.

[Zach Lowe]

But that's what I'm saying.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Zach Lowe]

Like, he doesn't need to talk.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's not the only definition of movie star, is what I'm saying. You're right. He's, he's, his powers are visual expression. And you know, like in Black Panther, he's doing what I would call like an all caps acting style, which is kind of where like a lot of dialogue can go. So this movie uses what he does well and even uses. There are two of him. So you're looking for the visual, like the tiny tells of each character, which are in expressions, you know, like mannerism, physicality. And he can do that. And so I thought it used him really well. And obviously, like, he has presence. He is a movie star. He fills the screen. And when there are two of them, whatever they did digitally, good job because then you just have two Michael B. Jordans. So I thought it was great. I agree with fans.

[Van Lathan]

So the reason why I like this so much is because obviously, once again, Coogler's intentional with this. Right? He's never done a movie without Mike. Yep, Mike's in every movie. So he knows him very intimately. Once again, this proves the reason why great directors go back to their guys so many times. They have frequent collaborations because they think in terms of character, of course, first, but they also think in terms of the strengths of the people that they know that can embody these characters. And so when you have Smoke and Stack, one brother that's more of a fast talking type of wink and a nod brother. And this other guy that is very grounded and solemn and dedicated to protection and a little bit rougher around the edges. You have two parts of Mike's personality. You have Michael B. Jordan that we know as the really polished movie star. And then you also have a guy who is a very serious craftsman, a very serious artist, and somebody who cares and puts a lot into roles, gets beefed up for roles, really works at it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Works a lot of anime. Yeah, he does.

[Van Lathan]

I don't mean that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He took that very seriously.

[Van Lathan]

And so Coogler knows that. And so he gives you the two differing forms of who Mike is and he gets to fall into both of them and essentially make one character. And so when I watched it, I thought it was the perfect Usage of him. That's why. And it sounds so nuts to me even when I say it. It's almost like the movie to me where he arrived to where I'm like, oh, this now is proof of concept. For as much work as he's been putting in, this is proof of concept of actually where he is going to go as one of the biggest, maybe the biggest star like of his generation, you know, but. And it all comes together and it works because it was such an intentional choice to have this guy played these two characters and the world that was built around him.

[Zach Lowe]

I think part of it is just that Michael B. Is just a grown up now. We've been living with him since the Wire, since he was a teenager. And he's 38 years old now. I'm not sure how old the Smokestack twins are supposed to be, but these are guys who served in World War I who were in Chicago during the Great Depression and were presumably bootleggers working for Alsters and quote, working for Al Capone. We don't know if that's actually true, but the film frames them as these guys who've lived and they're coming home after having lived. You know, particularly Smoke has lost a son and in part has left Clarksdale because he's lost a son. I guess he's married or with. When we miss Aku's character Annie, and that has like forced him to flee. Stack, on the other hand, who's like, you're right. The more sort of like enterprising hustler type has also left and he's left behind a woman, Mary, played by Haley Steinfeld, who was the daughter of the woman who helped raise them after they lost their father. A lot of this information is communicated like really well. It doesn't feel expositiony. It feels, it feels very natural to the storytelling because you've got these, this reunion framework of all these characters who haven't seen each other in a long time. So the things that they say to each other feel like they need to be communicated. Very good writing in this movie that like makes I think the performance of somebody like Michael B. Who to me sometimes can be limited as a performer. But as I always like him in, in Ryan's movies because he understands like where he excels. He can do hardened alpha leader type. He can do like slick cool guy if he wants. He can do guy who's got like, is almost obsessed with his own ideas. I feel like both Adonis and Killmonger are like kind of consumed by their own idea of the world and smoke is the same way. Smoke is like, we have to do this. We have to make this project the project. I was wondering how you guys felt about this in the movie. Because the movie presents it as in two ways. Are they starting Club Juke because it's a get rich quick scheme? Are they starting it because it's like a way to give back to the community and plant roots? Is it both? Is it neither? What is the purpose of them buying this killing floor from this KKK leader and trying to build up this place?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Good question.

[Van Lathan]

You want me to take it?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

There's absolutely no reason for them to come back to Mississippi. That's key. And understand.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, unless they are on the run because they stole everything. They stole the Italian wine and they stole the Irish beer. So they played both sides, and now they got to get out of town.

[Van Lathan]

Los Angeles, New York, all of that. When you are electing to come back to Mississippi, they talk a little bit about it. In the movie, you're reinserting yourself to being at the bottom of the social order, which they found out was kind of the same in Chicago. But they're choosing familiarity to come back down to Mississippi and to reinsert themselves into the life that they left for some reason. Right. He talks about the fact that he went to a different town of freed slaves and he understood what it was like there. He's been to Chicago, been all around the world, but they come back there, the club is them setting down roots. For whatever reason, they've seen all the other evils of the world. The evils of the war, the evils of a certain liberalized metropolitan brand of American racism, the evil of black freedmen in a town that didn't accept them. And they're choosing the devil they know. And so they're gonna be there for a while. And what actually they realize is that there is a completely different devil that they have never met before.

[Zach Lowe]

This is the not so subterranean idea of the movie that I love and that I think has played really well. Jack O'Connell is a vampire, presumably hundreds of years old. He's from Ireland. He somehow made it to America, and he is attempting to grow his flock. He's killing people in an attempt to escape the Choctaw Indians that are, you know, trailing him throughout Mississippi.

[Van Lathan]

Could he use more of them?

[Zach Lowe]

I agree. And I got the impression Cooler was very interested in them, too, and maybe just didn't build the movie out around that. Maybe sinners two. Anyhow, OConnell's character, you're going to laugh at me. But you're not. Reminded me a little bit of Thanos because there is a little bit of. Are we sure he's wrong about this character in this movie? Because the whole movie is about temptation and the other side. The allure of living on the other side of the law. The allure of living in another city that is different from yours. The allure of another race, the allure of another kind of music, another kind of culture. Is the grass greener if you go over here, Is the grass greener in vampiric immortality? And the movie makes a really strong case for vampiric immortality all the way up until the post credits sequence.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

Which is extremely alluring.

[Van Lathan]

They look like they having a good time to me. Yes. They can't go outside during the day, but they look like they chilling.

[Zach Lowe]

But you're also placing the movie in the context of the black church, gospel, faith and spirituality. There's an underpinning of Christianity that runs through some of Coogler's films. There's a lot of messianic imagery in all of his movies. This is deep stuff, using a vampire story to tell it. And I came out of the movie a second time. Loved seeing it a second time. He worked even better feeling like this vampire. He's got some points. He's got some points. I don't know.

[Van Lathan]

Well, the title of the movie centers right, and it seems to be litigated with every character. Like, how much sin is enough for you? Like, how much sin are you? Like, are you willing to completely become a vampire to be beautiful forever? But there was even still mortality with the vampire. Because I swore that they were gonna kill Creature Preacher boy. But then they go, nah, I told him, I will let him live. And I am. I still love my brother. I'm a vampire. But I still love my brother enough to like keep his promise. So I'm like, oh, maybe he's not that bad, you know, because he's. He's kind of more. Because he's that Stack, right? That smokes.

[Zach Lowe]

That's Stack. Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

Who lives. Yeah, that's Stack. So he's kind of more Stack as a vampire than he even was as a human being. Because he's. He's carefree. It didn't seem like he thought things out. Well, now he doesn't have much to worry about, right. Besides the son. And maybe if there's some kind of Abraham Van Helsing in this universe somewhere, maybe that guy, the Choctaw Indians are going to come back. But Preacher Boy falls In love with Pearlene. She's cheating on her husband. One of the guys in the movie, Del Rondo's character, who does the most heroic thing in the movie is a drunk and a violent and all of those things. So when you start litigating everybody's morality in the movie, it kind of comes back to a central idea of, like, what's your version of worse? Like, what's your version of bad?

[Amanda Dobbins]

And the two. The twins, the Michael B. Jordan characters also, ultimately their ends carry that out as well.

[Zach Lowe]

Right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Of, like, what. You know, like, what would you pick?

[Zach Lowe]

Who.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like, who are the real sinners? Like, what is the real sin? Like, which. What is. What is the devil? You know, what is the lesser of the two evils? You know, like, and. And some of it is exploring, I guess, you know, probably the different two sides of, like, of each of us. Like, which way would you go? You know, because the twin is like, one person divided. And I like the movie. I mean, we're fully spoiling it, right?

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So one person becomes a vampire, one twin becomes a vampire, and the other person is dead, but also gets to be reunited with his, like, his wife and child.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

So incredible scene.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Incredible scene.

[Zach Lowe]

And he falls to the ground and shoots up the KKK leader and he sees the vision of Annie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. And that's also, you know, that's another thing where it's like, you finished the movie. Like, the climactic nighttime scene is the, you know, the humans against the vampires at night. But then it's like, oh, wait, there are other daytime vampires, right, that come back. And so we have to, like, one person. You know, you get your nighttime vampire shootout, and there's a twin. There's a duel for everything. But so his actual death is not played at all like a death. It is played. I mean, he dies, but it's a release. It's a release. He gets salvation. It's a happier life. So in, like, in both cases, the Jack O'Connell character is right. And it's like, well, this is definitely better than your current life. And then the movie portrays the other option, which is just dying, as, like, definitely better than your current life, which is sort of. I mean, you know, it's. The thesis of the movie is basically that just like, staying the. The. The participation in the everyday is actually the. Is. Is the worst case outcome.

[Zach Lowe]

Well, there's one other. There's one other, like, critical element of this that kind of splits the difference between these. This. Yeah, this. This duality idea. The movie set in Clarksdale in 1932. In 1932, Robert Johnson, famed blues musician, goes to Clarksdale. It's the last year before he decides to become a traveling musician, go down to the crossroads, meet the devil, be granted his incredible musical powers, and then basically change music, change American music, change all music.

[Van Lathan]

Ralph Macchio.

[Zach Lowe]

Change Ralph Macchio in Walter Hill's incredible film Crossroads, which is a film about a white kid from Long island who, quote unquote, meets Robert Johnson and is touched by the blues gods.

[Van Lathan]

You guys never saw that movie. That movie's great.

[Zach Lowe]

Crossroads is very good. Thank you for acknowledging it. It would be a great movie to watch in a double feature with sinners. Anyhow, the point is, obviously, this is not a mistake that this movie has set in that year. This is not a mistake that Robert Johnson, who bears a passing resemblance to Preacher Boy, who then becomes, we find out later, basically, Buddy Guy who moves to Chicago, one of the innovators of Chicago electric Blues. All of these kind of intersections, I think, are showing you that you kind of need to confront evil before you can transcend and become something bigger and better. And that maybe you can become Buddy Guy or maybe you can become Preacher Boy, or maybe you can become Robert Johnson. But that you need the dark to have the light doesn't mean the dark goes away, but it means that you can kind of confront it and go forward. I think that's ultimately the big takeaway of the movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. I mean, that's the very brief. By the way, no one told me there was a post credit sequence, so you missed it. Yeah, I didn't know.

[Zach Lowe]

Oh, my God.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, listen, it's not very fun, okay? I was trying to respect Ryan Coogler, okay. He's freed from Marvel.

[Van Lathan]

No, but this is. I'm glad this happened to you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, thanks.

[Van Lathan]

I'm glad this happened to you because this happened to you because of your rebuke of the Marvel movies.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, okay. Is that what it is?

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah. Pay your penance.

[Van Lathan]

And since you rebuked them, you missed a great part of the movie.

[Zach Lowe]

It is very cool.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I just. I didn't.

[Zach Lowe]

I thought it was gonna be really silly and honest. So here's what happens.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Someone told you to stay.

[Zach Lowe]

Literally, I was told to stay.

[Van Lathan]

But throughout the credits, though, they're showing you him playing.

[Zach Lowe]

They cut to Buddy Guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is meant to be Preacher Boy. He's got the scar on his face that he gets to play.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, I got that.

[Zach Lowe]

I saw that's.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And then I was like, cool. Good movie. I'M gonna drive home now.

[Zach Lowe]

Perlene also, by the way, a Sunhouse song. So that's where that character's name comes from. In the post credits sequence, Stack and Mary show up in 1992 in the back bar of a club where Preacher Boy has just played, where Sammy has just played. And he's now in his late 80s and incredible coogee sweater and like hardcore 1992 hip hop outfit Door knockers on door knockers. Okay, but they, they look like they've just walked off the set of In Living Color. They look amazing.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Incredible. But they also, they haven't aged because they're vampires.

[Van Lathan]

They're vampires.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They're vampires. You know, listen, I'm. I'm here with you. I'm learning and we're learning and growing together.

[Zach Lowe]

It's a funny thing though. Not that Marvel invented the post credit sequence or whatever, it had been done before, but I like the idea of Coogler taking a little piece of that and putting it in this movie. Because in this he basically Stack sits down next to Sammy and he asks him, you know, he tells him that my brother told me that he would let me live if I didn't fuck with you, if I let you live. But you're now at the end, you've lived a good life. Would you want to turn and be a vampire? You keep playing music forever, you can make some money, you can live the life you want to live and be celebrated. And he says, you know what? I'm good. No, thank you. And then Stack sort of reflects for a minute and says, you know, I like what you're doing here, but I miss the real. Like I miss. And then we flashback to Sammy as a young kid playing the acoustic guitar and that slide guitar in the car when he has this great moment of reverie when he's singing, traveling and buddy guy breaks out the acoustic guitar and he just plays for them and. Very amusing, Hailee Steinfeld just being like, ooh, damn, I do love the blues kind of moment from her. Really appreciate her white girl efforts for all of us.

[Van Lathan]

She's not as white as we thought. Apparently not.

[Zach Lowe]

At least not according to this film.

[Van Lathan]

According to her. She said that she was. You didn't see this?

[Zach Lowe]

No.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. That this is.

[Zach Lowe]

She's descended from.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think whatever descent that they use in the film is what is accurate.

[Van Lathan]

She said that she got some black and Filipino.

[Zach Lowe]

Well, God bless, that's great. In this film she's 1 8th.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah, yeah, OK. Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

Her father's mother was black.

[Van Lathan]

Her mother's father, her mother's father was black.

[Zach Lowe]

Was half black.

[Van Lathan]

Was half black.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm just looking at the quotes and according to Wikipedia, that's also what she's citing in real life.

[Zach Lowe]

That's dope. She has a tremendous amount of swag and I wish her all the best.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Not to be like the white girl, being like you like it, but she was very good. I didn't know she had that.

[Van Lathan]

Some lines in there. Haley, you know, was stirring up.

[Zach Lowe]

Turn it down a little bit.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah, no, no, no, I'll turn it up. Yeah, I was.

[Zach Lowe]

She's given some of the raciest style in the movie.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah, she's going for it. And like this all growed it up.

[Zach Lowe]

The post credit sequence is fun.

[Van Lathan]

It is fun.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm sorry I missed it.

[Van Lathan]

You know, it's fun and it also kind of like, it's meaningful too, because when they're listening to him play, they start to reflect a little bit. They've lived for a long time. They're never gonna get any older, never see the son. They're never gonna see the son. He says, this is the last time I saw the son. They're not ever gonna be human again. But they. You wonder with vampires, do you miss your humanity? So when they're sitting there talking, they offer him, you know, eternity. He says, no. And then they reflect a little bit about how they were once what he is. And then they leave without massacring the whole bar, which I thought that they maybe might do. And so they're outta there. So it was kind of a way to let us know that the central tenets of the story still exist, even though the characters don't anymore. And just to go back to that, I think the term sinners, because, you know, we have all sinned and fall short of fallen short of the glory of God. I think the term sinners just means this movie is just about people. Because unlike Marvel movies, good doesn't win in the end, evil doesn't lose. Life just goes on. Every character has a different sort of fate that they meet. There's the forever fate. There's the fate of the human. There's the fate of death. Every character shows a tremendous amount of frailty, but it doesn't button itself up in a way where you think everything's gonna be okay. It doesn't button itself up in a way where you think everything's gonna be terrible. We live in a really complicated world with a lot of complicated people who, if you put them in an extraordinary situation, might do some Things that are heroic or some things that are monumentally stupid, but they're like just people living through this thing. Even Preacher Boy's backstory with his dad and how his dad views religion. You would have thought that Preacher Boy would have been like, I've seen the devil, so let me run to the church. Not what he does. I've seen the devil. I'm not going to be here forever. Let me go live out my days in the way that is the most meaningful to me. Let me do the thing that they're telling me not to do. He still rejects God, basically, after he's seen Satan, because he chooses himself. Very, very interesting choices all around. Interesting movie from that perspective to me.

[Zach Lowe]

Let's talk a little bit more about Preacher Boy because he's portrayed by Miles Caton, who I'd never seen before, who is phenomenal. Here's what I wrote down. He looks like a young Derek Luke and has the voice of a young Shine Poe.

[Van Lathan]

Oh, wow. Shout out to Shine president of Belize.

[Zach Lowe]

It's a huge, huge episode for 90s rap so far. He's very, very good in this movie. He has a tricky role because he's opposite some very experienced heavyweight movie stars. You know, he's opposite Coogler twice. He's opposite Hailee Steinfeld. He's opposite Delroy Lindo. Like, he's really confronted by some, and.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He'S like the framework of the movie and also sort of like the audience stand in.

[Zach Lowe]

Exactly. He's kind of our surrogate first character we see. Yes. And his music and his desire to make music and his struggles with God and struggles with the church is at the center of the story now. He is the agent of change in what I'll describe as what will be the most controversial scene in the movie, which is a scene that I love, but I think will be a big talking point coming at us.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's so funny because. So the day I went to see it, before I went, you guys were talking about this, and you were not using, like, you know, specific nouns. You were speaking in abstract, but you were clearly signaling to each other about some big scene and really controversial.

[Zach Lowe]

Van asked me, what did you think of that scene?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you guys were talking about it and you said you really bought into it. And Van, you were like, some people were not going to.

[Van Lathan]

I liked it. But some people that left the screening were like, it was too much.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. So I spent the whole screening being like, okay, so when is the really fucked up thing gonna happen?

[Zach Lowe]

Oh, you thought it was gonna be a fucked up thing.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's the way that you guys were describing it. I was sitting there, all right, like, what's the scene? What's the scene? And it didn't occur to me until the very end of the movie that that was the scene.

[Zach Lowe]

It's more so that it is an audacious moment in the movie. Obviously, this is a movie that has vampires and supernatural elements, so audacity in storytelling is kind of a given. But what is portrayed in this one scene that we're talking about, which is the centerpiece of the second act, is preacher boy gets on stage to finally play his music at Club Duke. And he starts playing the blues. And it very quickly transforms into this very acrobatic camera moving through the club as the people are dancing and as they are dancing, we are basically seeing the evolution of music both hundred years ago in both Africa and China, and, you know, performance style and musical style and also into the future, into funk and into hip hop and everything in between. And it is twerking, too. Twerking.

[Van Lathan]

Don't ignore that dick shit.

[Zach Lowe]

There's Bay Area stuff in there for sure. Like, you can hear all the different textures of music that he's playing with. It's a crazy sound mixing in that sequence, but it is, for lack of a better word, weird. You know, it's completely out of the context of the narrative of the movie. It is a, like, almost like a psychotronic, like, hallucinogenic kind of feeling. Now, if you love music and you're interested into the history of music, as I at least was once upon a time, I'm like, this is fucking awesome. This is so cool that he. And what he. The phrase that he used to me was using the power of cinema language. Like, you can only do this in a movie. You can only say, here's how all of these things, not just African and black music, but Chinese music and American rock and roll and all these other things are all related to each other. They're part of a lineage, a cultural lineage, a sonic lineage. And people having a good time and getting something off of their chest with music is a fundamental human experience. I loved it. I got. I felt like I got it immediately. But it is a. It is a. It is a bold choice.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I did. I did have a moment when it concluded of being like, did I miss something narratively? Because it is at a point in the movie where you're still doing a lot of exposition. And so I was like, okay. I mean, listen, I love a dream Ballet. And that's what it was to me. It's a very recognizable part of a. Like a Hollywood musical.

[Zach Lowe]

Absolutely.

[Amanda Dobbins]

An expression of, like, the joy of cinema, color, music, movement. Like, I. Like, I was totally into it, but then I was like. My only hesitation was, do I not understand everything that's going on? Because. But I imagine.

[Zach Lowe]

And it's transcended in another world or something.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, no, no. But it's just. There's still a point where he is putting out the. You know, the movie is building. Okay, here are the stakes. Not literally, you know, pun intended. Not intended, but like, intended, you know, And I know, like, my vampire stuff. Like, I know somehow I knew. How do I know that they have to be invited in? I don't. I don't know that.

[Van Lathan]

It assumes that, you know, it assumes.

[Zach Lowe]

That, you know, it's critical to.

[Van Lathan]

Assumes that you are.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I did know that, but I couldn't tell you where I learned that. So I think that I was always trying to make sure that I had all of my lore and. And the basic framework of the movie set down. And for one moment I was like, okay, is. Is. Is the. Is the shack really on fire or is it not? But. But then I. Then I just got back into it and I was. And I was rocking and it was okay, and I thought it was really cool.

[Van Lathan]

So this is the thing. I loved it. Loved it. To her point. I was wondering. And the one thing that I do feel like the movie doesn't really explain is we're told that Preacher Boy's music is so special that it can thin out dimensions or bring people from another place or whatever. And this is why the head vampire's so interested in him.

[Zach Lowe]

It's a siren song to this vampire. Yes. That. That will bring him back to his. His ancestors.

[Van Lathan]

Right. That's underplayed. First of all, that idea, that detail. Yeah, that detail is underplayed. That scene I thought was going to connect us to that. It's demonstrating that, but not in a way that is more meaningful than what the scene does visually. The scene doing that visually shows us the power of music. Right. It shows us the connectivity across different eras of culture and humanity through sound. Like a sonic prayer session, like, throughout the years. Awesome. It was great. But for about five minutes after, maybe even 10, I was wondering, well, does Preacher Boy have special powers? Like, did that really happen? Did that happen for us or did that happen there? Like, is Preacher Boy gonna be able to play the guitar and then two dudes from Oakland gonna come out with AK47s and kill all the vampires. You know what I mean?

[Zach Lowe]

It's an interesting idea.

[Van Lathan]

I was wondering if he.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I didn't think of it that way, but sure, yeah.

[Van Lathan]

Preacher boy had the ability to like Kincaid from Nightmare on Elm Street. Remember King? No, no, it wasn't Kincaid. It was Alice. She could call other people into her dreams and that was her dream power. You guys, I'm getting. I'm sorry, I apologize, but I just.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Remembered that I had a dream last night that I was supposed to interview Anne Hathaway and I didn't bring my tape recorder. And it was really stressful. Sorry. And I meant to tell you about it. Continue.

[Zach Lowe]

Why was I not there?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't know. Isn't that really weird? It's really. Speaking of like calling people into your dreams.

[Van Lathan]

Okay, so, you know, she could. She would be like King K. Joey. And then they would show up in her dream and help her fight Freddie. So I was like, can he do that? And so. But after I was like, oh, they was just getting their shit off.

[Zach Lowe]

I was like, okay, you know what I thought? I'll tell you how I read it specifically and why it doesn't do that. And I'm glad it didn't do that. Even though it is still a vampire movie. I. This is expressed in the post credit sequence that Amanda missed. But when you're sitting close to someone that has a talent, especially a musical talent, and they start showing you their musical talent up close, it feels supernatural.

[Van Lathan]

Nuts.

[Zach Lowe]

It's like, especially me as someone who does not have any musical talent. When I. When someone plays the guitar in front of me or even when someone's DJing in front of me. That's a great example. I'm like, what is this warlock doing? Yeah, you know, the sense of time, this sense of rhythm, sense of connectivity across music. Like there is something about it that. It seemed clear to me that Coogler was like preacher boy has something that like one out of every 20 million people have.

[Van Lathan]

I see.

[Zach Lowe]

And.

[Van Lathan]

And those people in that scene are the people that have that.

[Zach Lowe]

Yes, exactly. They are manifestations of the past and the future. You see the, you know, Parliament Funkadelic style guitarist, like that's something, you know, Bootsy Collins had it something like that. And I like that idea. And we. That idea is made manifest at the end because we see that he had a 70 year long career as a beloved and celebrated musician. So he actually was the real deal. It would have been interesting if it went like one tick further into the. This is all connected to the story, but I think just instead the sort of like siren song to the devil made sense to me.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I. I don't. I don't think it needs to, though. Ultimately I'm with Sean that it. Like, it's just a. It's a cool thing that I really. And I. And I also think that the. A thing I really like about the movie is that for all its, you know, dream music sequences and characterization and specificity, it does all that within a recognizable three act framework and uses enough stuff that you do know. So it doesn't matter if you and I were confused for five minutes, because then the rest of the story is built there and we can just latch back on and we know where it's going. And it uses that to its advantage to just then be able to do wild, cool stuff.

[Van Lathan]

The movie was able to elicit your surrender, which it's like, what did George Clooney say that time? George Clooney says you sit down and you make a deal with the movie. And the minute that the movie breaks the deal, you're like, I'm out. You know what I mean? What you're saying on the screen is true and whatever by that point the movie had, you'd already surrendered to the movie 100%.

[Zach Lowe]

So to me, I was gonna be in no matter what. I'm very interested in movies like this. I'm very interested in music and the history of music. But there's a great moment at the end of the first act after Jack O'Connell's character has sort of invaded this family's home. By the way, Lola Kirk in that scene, I love Lola Kirk. She's wonderful. She has a great scream at the end of that scene. But as soon as that scene happens, and right before Club Duke opens and we cut to that, there's like a doom metal musical cue and we get a hard shot of a full moon. And it's the most like, you're in a fucking vampire movie moment. And you didn't know you were in a vampire movie until now, but you are. And I was looking at the official Sinners playlist on Spotify for this movie. And it's a lot of what you might expect. It's a lot of Delta blues, you know, it's a lot of Sunhouse and Sonny Boy Williamson, and you hear Pickapoor Robin Clean, which is sung in the song. And then there's like some Zach Bryan in there. And then there's some the Dubliners and some Irish folk music. And then there's A little stretch where it goes. Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Metallica. In the official playlist.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

And then at the. All the way at the end, there's a young Dolph song, right? And I'm like, this is why Coogler is the best that he sees these intersections of in vampire movies. There is a fucking metal aspect to these movies that you kind of have to represent to really fulfill it. It's not overdoing it. There was no guy playing metal in the blues club. But it is a. It is a quality of these movies, and he gets it. He's willing to put it on screen.

[Van Lathan]

It's time for race eyes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Oh, okay.

[Van Lathan]

Race eyes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Hi.

[Van Lathan]

Okay.

[Zach Lowe]

Is this a character or just a tool that you have?

[Van Lathan]

It's. I'm looking. It's me using. Looking at things through the lens of race. It's time for race eyes. If you guys are watching, you see the race eyes are coming out. Ryan Kluger is able to do something that's really, really fascinating to me. He's able to portray black characters as people. That sounds stupid. I know it does. When I say black characters, I mean fundamentally and very deeply black characters. He's able to play them as people, as people that are in a story. It's hard to do. It's hard to do because there's so much that sometimes black creatives and artists want to express, and so much of it has to do with our condition, the uniqueness of it, and the specificity of the black experience in America. Right. This movie has all of that. But as we're watching it, we're watching them as people and not as black people. They are black people. I am a black person. My mother is a black person. My father is a black person. I am insanely proud. Wouldn't have it any other way. Love my culture so much. Like, worship my ancestors. Right? But sometimes I just do stuff, and then stuff just happens to me. And sometimes it doesn't have very much to do with anything other than me being Van right now. Me being Van is incredibly informed by where I'm from, by the sacrifices of the people that came before me. And if you guys don't know that by now by listening to me, then you haven't been listening to me. However, there is something beautiful about being able to tell a story that is this distinctly black and is also broad because it taps into themes that are so unifying as human beings that you forget that you're in the Mississippi Delta. You forget that you're in these different Places. You're watching a story about people, and there's so many black performers. And they say it in weird, crude ways sometimes, like, I don't want to be in a black movie. And then we go, we don't wanna hear you say that. We don't wanna hear you say you don't wanna be in a black movie. Or, I don't wanna play a black character. I just wanna play a character. We know what you mean. But it's grating to hear because some of our power is in our identity. But he's able to do it, and in this movie, he does it. It's a very distinctly black film about black culture with black music that I don't feel like one person will be alienated from.

[Zach Lowe]

I also don't think it will be described as a black movie, even though 90% of its cast is black. I think it's the same reason that whether it's Martin Scorsese and Italian American identity and the Mafia and faith versus violence, or Celine Sciamma and being a woman of a woman from France and interested in queer stories, or Wong Kar Wai and being Asian and looking at the idea of, like, yearning versus what is natural. Sean Baker being somebody who's interested in people that are very different from him. Yeah, it's basically just any good filmmaker that has really core ideas, like, Coogler has already done this in Black Panther. It's a story about nationalism versus isolationism. It's a.

[Van Lathan]

It's a tension in the diaspora, right in.

[Zach Lowe]

In Creed. It's about male identity, vulnerability. It's about finding purpose in this movie. It's about faith versus making your own luck. It's about death, duality that we're talking about. But also, these are all fun movies to watch. You need to have had the exact same experience of the people. You better understand the experience of the people by enjoying the movie. So, I mean, I think it's interesting because he is. He is pretty clearly the most commercially successive successful black filmmaker ever. Like, there's really. He's, like, so far ahead because of the success of Creed and Black Panther. He is. There's never really been anyone like him in American movies.

[Van Lathan]

Not shy away from race at all.

[Zach Lowe]

They're about it.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

But they're not about it at the same time. Like, there are so many things in Creed that are just like, this is what it's like feeling stuck at this stage of your life. This is what it's like having a complicated relationship with your father and his legacy. This is what it's like, not knowing how to be a dad. And Creed 3. There's all this stuff in these movies. There's just human stuff. So I really like that. And I really like that he's like, also, it's a vampire movie with a doom metal music cue and there's some Irish dancing in it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And it is both those things. And that is true. Black Panther is about the diaspora and nationalism. And it is also a superhero movie where, you know, they like, all battle at the end. Right. And the other.

[Zach Lowe]

There's a magical metal.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Exactly like it. It has. Yeah, I. I remember. You know. Yeah, sure. You love vibrating is what was. What's the one in the new Adamantium? Thank you so much.

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah, they found that in the Celestial.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. And that one's, you know, more like that's.

[Zach Lowe]

That's an unbreakable metal that Wolverine has binded to his skills.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, that's right. Because Chris leaned over me and said, that's what Wolverine's claws are made of. Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

And soon his.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But it's like. It's not even that. He's like. He doesn't have to pick and choose between the two of them. What?

[Van Lathan]

Yeah. When you say it out loud, it's hysterical.

[Zach Lowe]

A little silly. It's a little silly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I get mocked for leaving before the cruise.

[Zach Lowe]

No, it's not your fault.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I get mocked for saying it out loud.

[Zach Lowe]

Oh.

[Amanda Dobbins]

When I hear it.

[Zach Lowe]

Just in general, the fact that we have devoted a lot of our. Our time.

[Van Lathan]

We started this when we were nine. It's core lore. But when you say it outside, it's funny. We say a lot.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's funny.

[Zach Lowe]

When you say it, it feels different. Which is not an insult to you. It's in fact a compliment to you.

[Van Lathan]

Right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Thank you so much. Anyway, despite Vibranium or Vibranium, which I guess is cooler than Adamantium, I liked that movie. And it was both. It was pure superhero and also pure ideas.

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Same with Creed. Like, that is a movie that just, like, made me weep because it hit that music, you know, cue right as he, like, hit someone in the. You know, it is. It is like pure sports movie, sports genre pleasure and also big ideas. And I really. Coogler has a unique gift to not to. To make them. One thing as you're saying, Van, like, it's really. It's awesome.

[Van Lathan]

And it's just interesting that he wrote this movie. And it's interesting that this is a movie that he wrote and came up with. And it's completely out of his head. It's just interesting that this isn't some, like, somebody else's take on. Because he was very smart to do something in his career, in my opinion. So Fruitvale Station comes out great movie. Proof of concept that this guy's a good director. Creed is kind of a cheat code. It's a cheat code because it's.

[Zach Lowe]

He gets to leverage some of the coolest lore in movie history.

[Van Lathan]

In movie history. Right. Then Black Panther, the movie is better than anybody could have imagined that it was going to be in the hands of Ryan Coogan. Wow. This guy can really handle this. But at this point, we are seeing he's doing stuff that we're familiar with. Right. And comes back with Wakanda Forever. Divisive movie. I loved it. But divisive movie. Then by the time we get to this one, this is totally out of his brain. Right. And it's so specific. It's specifically blues and horror and all of this stuff. And he came up with it. What I'm trying to say is that I wouldn't have thought that his first original film would have been this. I wouldn't have thought that it would have been this. I wouldn't have thought that it would have been something that the degree of difficulty is so high on.

[Zach Lowe]

Well, I think he's obviously really, really in love with genre. If you've read any of the interviews that he's given on this round, he's talked a lot about John Carpenter and Robert Rodriguez and a lot of classical horror that he really likes. So it's great to hear that as somebody who's kind of obsessed with that stuff. But I'm not terribly surprised because he so clearly understood the mechanics of superhero storytelling and of sports movies. That's one of the reasons why those movies are in the kind of upper echelon, especially this century, of those kinds of movies. It is a big challenge. I think there's an important part of this story that is outside of the text, but related to the text, which is that it's been reported quite a bit that he negotiated after he wrote this script, he sent it to the studios and he said, highest bidder, you know, whoever will pay me the most money for this movie. And in the negotiation, he was able to leverage that after 25 years, the copyright of the film returns to his ownership, which is incredibly unusual. We know that this is something Quentin Tarantino did for Once Upon a time in Hollywood. Very few filmmakers in the history of studio filmmaking have been able to get this. Now he's been a little bit circumspect in the press as to why he wanted that. But I'll just make a conclusive leap than a movie about blues, which is an art form that was adopted, transformed and stolen in America and turned into white profit. Making a movie that is essentially about the origins of that and the way that that is like there was a temptation and there was like a desire to transgress. But that transgression can be a beautiful art. And then owning that after making that movie, I'm sure is very metaphorically and financially rewarding for him. You know, he has said that he's not going to be asking for this on future movies, that this is a one shot deal. We'll see if that's true. I remember last year I was at Cinemacon and talking to people about this, which is around the time when that news broke that Warner Brothers had agreed to give him the copyright back after 25 years. And they were like, yeah, yeah, not a big deal. One off deal. One off deal. If I was somebody like Coogler, and they're not a lot of them, but if I was a young filmmaker who had a lot of promise, I would push for this every time. This will break movie studios.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

But it is the next step in artistic ownership in this kind of way. And it can only happen in an original story. It can't be based on a classic novel. It can't be based on a superhero. Pre existing ip. You can't own that. Somebody else owns that. This is his thing, he invented it. And people like the script so much and they saw so much promise in this movie that went from probably being like a $50 million movie to like a 90 or $100 million movie with a reversion of copyright. So it's a huge gamble for Warner Brothers. That leads me to my question, which is like, do you guys think this movie is going to be a big hit? Do you think people are going to go see it?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't think it's going to be a Minecraft movie, I'm sorry to say.

[Van Lathan]

Minecraft, yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

Did you see that yet?

[Van Lathan]

I have not.

[Zach Lowe]

I'm surprised to hear that.

[Van Lathan]

But I saw people going nuts about it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, yeah. Including this guy.

[Zach Lowe]

I wouldn't say I went nuts about it, but I did see it in a movie theater with people who were going nuts.

[Van Lathan]

I saw my good friend Diallo Riddle shout out to Diallo. So I saw Diallo when Everybody was at CityWalk to see Sinners. And I thought that Diallo was there to see Sinners and He goes, now I'm here with my kids seeing the Minecraft movie. And I just laughed because everybody's seeing it. It's interesting. Everybody who I know is going to see this movie, everyone's talking about it. People are very excited. I am a nerd enough to follow tracking. Like I'm hand wringing over the tracking for thunderbolts. We need one, guys. And so we're gonna find out. We need one.

[Zach Lowe]

Ten days, we're gonna find out.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You going in Burbank?

[Van Lathan]

Yeah. No, no, no, I'm going to the Grove. Oh, yeah, yeah, the Grove.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Zach Lowe]

Sad for you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's sad. Just come sit next to me.

[Van Lathan]

The Burbank is a little bit of height, guys.

[Zach Lowe]

Not for me.

[Van Lathan]

So. But R rated vampire movie still has. You have to set expectations in terms of what a hit is.

[Zach Lowe]

Let me zag on your point. Cause I think that that is the conventional historical point of view.

[Van Lathan]

All right?

[Zach Lowe]

Horror is one of the most underrated in terms of tracking. And as you know better than anybody, black audiences are always underrated when it comes to movies like this.

[Van Lathan]

We go, we going to see Sinners.

[Zach Lowe]

Yes. This is the same thing that happened with Black Panther where everybody was like, this should be a double for Marvel. And it's now one of the biggest and most important Marvel movies of all. All time. So I don't know, I want, I choose to be optimistic. And I, I, to me, give me.

[Van Lathan]

A number, give me a number. Give me a number. First week, because I, I was, I.

[Zach Lowe]

Think it's tracking like 40.

[Van Lathan]

I can't. It's no fucking way, bro. It's going to make more money than that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It is. I agree.

[Zach Lowe]

I think it's going to make like 52 million.

[Van Lathan]

Okay, 52 million is a win.

[Zach Lowe]

I think so.

[Van Lathan]

Okay, okay, now, now let me, this.

[Zach Lowe]

Is an original story, but let me.

[Van Lathan]

Tell you why I'm asking. It's because we think with Marvel brain a lot of times when we think about this. So we're thinking, does centers get to $600 million? Does centers. You know what I mean? But for this, we're talking about a night.

[Zach Lowe]

I can't get that. That would be, I mean, if that happens, phenomenal. Like, that's amazing, right?

[Van Lathan]

So I guess when we say, are people going to see it? I guess I'm trying to set a standard to what would be a win.

[Zach Lowe]

Over the long term on the box office.

[Van Lathan]

Box office for the movie, $90 million budget. And then you got to think about the marketing. Like, what's a win?

[Zach Lowe]

The movie people 150.

[Van Lathan]

Really?

[Zach Lowe]

I think 150 would be a huge win.

[Van Lathan]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like overall domestic.

[Zach Lowe]

I don't know what international is. The one thing historically is black stories don't travel that well. It's just a fact.

[Van Lathan]

Like international, it's been a big thing. When you talk about how you get.

[Zach Lowe]

A hit overseas, it's the inversion of the underestimating the black audiences in America. Overseas, they. One of the reasons why these movies are not marketed in the same way internationally is they underperform. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So total. God. I don't, I don't. It's hard to say. Yeah, I feel like it can do 50, which I think is a win for an original horror movie in the middle of April. I think that's a. Would be a great success. You could make the case that a movie like this shouldn't cost 90 million. That's what some people will say. I don't really care.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's not your money.

[Zach Lowe]

It's not going to be our money. One of the reasons why I. It would be great if it got into that $200 million range is not only would there be financial success, I think he's also getting first dollar gross, which is like Tom Cruise territory. Like, he's in rare territory in terms of negotiating. Not only great for Coogler and his team, it's great for movies like this getting greenlit. It's great for movies like this being possible.

[Van Lathan]

Y'all need this bad.

[Zach Lowe]

Badly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's like, so it's really important. Desperate.

[Zach Lowe]

It's really important.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like it really.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But that's why I was like, yeah, ideas, rich text, whatever. This is a vampire movie. Like, please go see it in theaters. So they were like, we can all keep talking about shit like this.

[Zach Lowe]

The other thing is we've had these like all these hand wringing conversations about Warner Brothers over the last couple of years and everybody's demonizing. David Zaslav, recently featured in New York magazine in a long profile this week. Settle that aside, Mike DeLuca, who runs Warner Brothers, like works with good filmmakers and lets them make cool movies. Like, this is a cool movie. You know, one battle after another. Sounds like it's gonna be a cool movie. Like he takes risks with original stories. That's his whole thing. He's been doing it since New Line. I don't want him to get fired. People who want Mike Diluca to get fired don't love movies. That's fucking crazy. If you like studio movies, most of.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The people who talk about tracking and box Office and everything. Don't love movies.

[Zach Lowe]

I'm the sort of person who actually looks at tracking and cares about box office performance, but cares about the quality of the movie first. So to me, the premise of the show is the interconnected nature of is your movie good and how well did it do so we can get another one? So this, to me is such a perfect test case for that big question. I would implore people to go see it. I liked what you said at the very top of the conversation, though. This is not a perfect movie. Genre movies by their very nature are complicated. They're hard to make them make sense. We've been rapturous for an hour while discussing the movie. You're probably going to see it and take quibble with some.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Can I ask a question related to this? Okay, so all the vampires that are, you know, outside for sunset and thus are lit on fire at the end of the movie. But there's. They come back that did the fire doesn't kill them?

[Zach Lowe]

No, none of them come back.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, those. So. Oh, I thought that only two survived.

[Van Lathan]

They ran away.

[Zach Lowe]

They ran away. They survived.

[Amanda Dobbins]

All right, thank you.

[Zach Lowe]

I was wondering if they were hiding in the. In the club.

[Van Lathan]

They might have been.

[Zach Lowe]

And then even when. When Smoke gets killed at the end, they're still hiding in the club. But they can't come outside and help him.

[Van Lathan]

They can't. They're watching them. Yeah, they ran.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Van Lathan]

They were able to get away.

[Amanda Dobbins]

All right.

[Van Lathan]

They're in love, so.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But yeah, that's beautiful. And love and that's great. That's beautiful.

[Van Lathan]

Interracial.

[Zach Lowe]

Well, I mean, yes and no.

[Van Lathan]

Yes and no.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I would watch like their. Their Twilight, you know, I guess there.

[Zach Lowe]

Is definitely a sequel that they could do. If this movie is a massive success, which I would watch.

[Van Lathan]

I would watch it. I think a sequel set in contemporary times would be dope.

[Zach Lowe]

What if it was 1970s, like shaft style blaxploitation movie with vampires?

[Van Lathan]

That would be amazing too. The only thing is I want now to. I don't know how you orient the sequel if it's around them. Are they the heroes? Are they the bad. Same thing. Good question. You know what I mean?

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah. We know they survive too.

[Van Lathan]

We know they survived.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I want to be a Bonnie and Clyde type thing.

[Zach Lowe]

Right, right, right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well.

[Zach Lowe]

Well, present day would be the way to do it then. Or immediately after the events in the post credit sequence that I mentioned.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And then you could play the post credit sequence at the beginning so I could see it.

[Van Lathan]

I thought about you Guys, when I watched I see Buddy Guy play, I.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Was like, fuck, it was cool.

[Van Lathan]

I thought about you guys when I watched this movie recently. As we talk about original films, did you guys talk about Companion on here?

[Zach Lowe]

We did.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We sure did. We really liked it. We responded to your text.

[Van Lathan]

Did you?

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah, I like that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's a great movie.

[Zach Lowe]

Also, Warner Brothers.

[Van Lathan]

So here's the thing. When I saw Companion, I thought about myself 1992. I thought about myself, 1992, watching a movie that I love and will watch. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years wishing you had a sex robot, the whole thing. There were movies like that back then.

[Zach Lowe]

There were.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah. So. But the movie, to me, which has a awesome script, which has a good villain turn from Jack Quaid.

[Zach Lowe]

He's great.

[Van Lathan]

What the shit?

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah.

[Van Lathan]

I felt like it came and went and people didn't really support it.

[Zach Lowe]

We did talk about it a couple times. I had Drew Hancock, the director, writer, director on the show, super, super smart, nice guy, One January movie. So not a lot of fuss made over it. I think they also moved it to streaming very quickly. I imagine it did pretty well in streaming or on pvod, I should say, but it did okay business. I just. I used it as an example of, like, movies are fucked up now because that movie should be in movie theaters for two months.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

And it wasn't. It was out of movie theaters real quick.

[Van Lathan]

It just, to me, all the bones of a good movie. And I just wonder, as much as we talk about this, I'm not gonna go on my old man yells at Cloud, the moon thing. Do you guys just like good movies? Because it's a movie with a very inventive script that gives you a surprise every 10 minutes. Great performances, cool people to look at.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Very funny.

[Van Lathan]

Very funny.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Clever. Like the, you know, and uses the builds, follows its own rules very well. And, like, with a lot of fun.

[Zach Lowe]

Right.

[Van Lathan]

And I just wonder. We'll see. Is. Are good movies enough anymore?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No.

[Van Lathan]

You guys say no.

[Zach Lowe]

I'm telling you, I'm holding my thought. This year is important for me.

[Amanda Dobbins]

This is like. It's finally maybe turning a little bit. But it's been, like, a tough year. I mean, it has been. It's just been a.

[Zach Lowe]

This cuts both ways. This cuts both ways. Because if Thunderbolts and Superman and Fantastic Four underperform, then what?

[Van Lathan]

Well, then that's. Then the question is, are movies enough anymore?

[Zach Lowe]

Well, we can save that existentialist conversation for a future episode. Van, you're the best. We can hear you on Higher Learning.

[Van Lathan]

Higher Learning.

[Zach Lowe]

Midnight Boys.

[Van Lathan]

Midnight Boys.

[Zach Lowe]

The Rewatchables.

[Van Lathan]

The Rewatchables.

[Zach Lowe]

What else?

[Van Lathan]

Anywhere else?

[Amanda Dobbins]

You're gonna come on Jam Session soon?

[Van Lathan]

Jam Session.

[Zach Lowe]

Jam Session. You were on Press Box recently. I was on Press. That was fun.

[Van Lathan]

That was a lot of fun. I think maybe I brought too much heat. But, no, I'm extremely thrilled.

[Zach Lowe]

How come I haven't been invited on Higher Learning?

[Van Lathan]

Really? You could be. You know what? Let me tell you why we need to. So we had Omar Miller from the centers on Higher Learning today. Today. Today.

[Zach Lowe]

No kidding.

[Van Lathan]

He'll be out tomorrow.

[Zach Lowe]

You know, he's great in 8 mile. He's great white representation.

[Van Lathan]

Thank you.

[Zach Lowe]

He's actually very good in this movie.

[Van Lathan]

Very good.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He's really good in this movie.

[Zach Lowe]

He's a key role.

[Van Lathan]

We have to do something for Rachel. What we need is the big picture. Because I've been saying that she doesn't watch movies. She doesn't watch movies.

[Zach Lowe]

I know this about her.

[Van Lathan]

We did top five Black vampires on Higher Learning.

[Zach Lowe]

Okay.

[Van Lathan]

He said Blade, and then he was astonished because Rachel has never seen Blade.

[Zach Lowe]

That's really sad.

[Van Lathan]

And so you guys need to help her by making a list of essential movies she hates. The Princess Bride. She hates it.

[Zach Lowe]

Does essential movies ever well.

[Van Lathan]

Essential movies for her to watch. Well, I'll give you the year of her birthday and then.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And what movies. Are there any movies she does like.

[Zach Lowe]

That would be helpful?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Princess Bride is a.

[Van Lathan]

No, she doesn't like Princess Bride. She likes.

[Zach Lowe]

So she doesn't like fun.

[Van Lathan]

She doesn't like movies that are perfect.

[Zach Lowe]

Okay.

[Van Lathan]

Which the Princess Bride is in every single way, except for the fact that they ain't got no black people in it. We'll allow it. So that's what you can do, you guys. We can bring you guys on and we can have a. A conversation with Rachel about the movies that she has to see. We'll do the big pics. Essential Rachel. Rachel movies.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah. Racial movies.

[Zach Lowe]

You're not going to bring me on to talk about Trump.

[Van Lathan]

We could. We could do all of that.

[Zach Lowe]

Okay. The police noting that. Yeah, the police. Yeah. I got a lot of thoughts about the police. I got inside information. There you go, Van. Thank you very much, Amanda. Thank you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You're welcome.

[Zach Lowe]

Let's now go to my conversation with Ryan Coogler. For the first time on the Big Picture. The great Ryan Coogler. Very happy and honored to have him here. Ryan, I want to start with this after two Black Panther films. And Creed, was it important for you to make an original story at this stage of your career with sinners?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, I would say absolutely, man. And like, it was more like at this stage of my life, like I work with a lot of my friends and I could feel us all kind of like transitioning into like a different, a different mode, you know, Everybody's life was changing around me. Like people who didn't have kids, man, having kids now and they big and they getting ready to start school and they joining baseball teams and you know, like taking piano lessons and people buying minivans and shit, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, like, you know, we got companies now and we no longer like the youngest people in the room when we walk into it, you know. And I realized, you know, I had been making movies, you know, for 12 years now that had been, you know, going into international cinemas and I still hadn't done anything. I was like, that was like all me, you know, and that scared me, bro. I had a conversation recently with Michael Fleming, remember, where I talked about that. But what scared me more was realizing that pretty soon I wasn't gonna be able to pick up the phone and call everybody who I wanna make a movie with and get them to like fully commit just because like the direction that their lives were going, you know what I mean? Like, people were starting to get offers to direct movies in different type of full time positions, you know what I'm saying? Like my picture editor, Michael Sharper, who's cut all my stuff, you know, his son's like, like I mentioned, man, joining a baseball team and like, like getting serious about it and like, like it was, it was, it was, it was starting to become so complicated that, that, that I kind of panicked a little bit, realized I had this really cool story I wanted to tell and you know, realized Ludwig was free and had Zenzi, my producer and my wife call around and check on Hannah and Beechler and my production designer, Ruth Carter, costume designer, Autumn Arkapal, cinematographer, call in, check on them and see what they schedule looking like. And I checked in with Mike B. And realized, man, we might have an opportunity to go, you know. So we went, we went like, like, like, like a bat out of hill, bro. Like I used to return kicks, like kickoffs when I played football, you know, that was one of the things I was, I was really good at. And like, I remember sometimes I would, I would like think I saw something, you know, like in the, in the, in, in the way. It's like sometimes somebody was slipped, you know what I mean?

[Zach Lowe]

Or there's a hole A hole opened up.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not there yet, but I think it might be there, you know? You know what I mean? And then, and you just gotta go, you know? You know what I mean? Run like it's. Run like it's gonna. Run like it's gonna open up. And that was what this, that was what this process was, man. Like, and I was. And I picked just the right time where everybody could kind of run with me, you know? I don't think it'll happen like this again, to be honest.

[Zach Lowe]

It's so interesting to hear you say that because I know you're a very modest person, but I. A lot of those people are getting a lot of big looks in part because of the work that you guys all did together on these movies over the years. So I, I have to assume they still have a kind of loyalty to you and want to come together to make something when you're like, I have an idea.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, but the thing is, bro, it's like as much as they owe to me, I order them first and foremost. But the other piece is like, when it comes to people's kids, bro, in their lives, like, it doesn't matter, you.

[Zach Lowe]

Know, I have a 4 year old. I hear you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it don't matter what our history is, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like, like, and it's the same for me, you know, I got a couple kids now and like, if, if I gotta choose between them and anybody else, like, you know, the answer is them, you know? You know? You know what I mean? And like, like that was what I was, I was watching, like, I was watching like the kind of people we were going to be for like the next 20, 30 years. It was solidifying, bro, you know? You know what I'm saying? And like, you know, look, faces like one of my closest friends, Louvie, he's also, he's also Chris Nolan guy. He's also John Favreau's guy now, you know? You know what I'm saying? And like, if I catch him at the wrong time, he's not gonna have any time for me, you know? You know what I'm saying? That's just, that's just the reality, you know, like in, in, you know, and I had a gap, bro, where I needed a commitment from him, very different from any other time I called him before. I needed him to be an executive producer on this one. I need him to move his family to Louisiana, you know, I needed his wife to work on this, you Know what I'm. You know what I'm saying? I need his all in a way that he could probably never give it again, you know? You know, like. Like, you know it. Bless these folks, man, once they understood the urgency of what I was trying to do, you know, I mean, everybody. Everybody showed up for me, man. And at that point, you know, you look up and you in Louisiana, man, and everybody. Everybody's kids is down there. Then you realize, oh, man, I can't let these people down.

[Zach Lowe]

You know, it's an amazing, amazing thing that you're able to assemble these people. You know, we met a long time ago around Black Panther, and we had a conversation, and one of the stories that you told me at that time was that before you were starting on Black Panther, you had a conversation with Francis Ford Coppola. He told you to check out Brigadoon. I remember you telling me that. And I was wondering if you had any version of that, if you went to anyone, if you linked up with anybody who told you to look at something or if you just looked at something for yourself before you started making a movie like Sinners.

[Sean Fennessy]

I looked at something for myself, bro. I like that. I like that. Don't look now, which is a movie that I've been hearing about, and I owned it, you know what I mean? I bought it a long time ago. It was something that. It was. It was actually something like. Like, really. It was oddly, like, clawing at me, you know? You know how that is, bro, when you buy a movie and it's like, I'm get to this at some point, you know? You know what I'm saying? I was watching some YouTube video. It came up, and I said, man, let me look at this thing, you know? And I. And I watched it. I watched it right before. Like, I didn't really. You know, I was so green, bro, when I did the first Panther, that I consulted with a lot of people, man. Like, I consulted with Chris, and Francis was the big one, you know? You know, he had this. He had this history of, like, taking on larger than life things and coming on the other side with them, feeling original and bespoke, you know what I'm saying? And that was what I was trying to. That was what I was trying to figure out, man. Like, throwing myself into the gauntlet, you know? You know, coming out with someone on the other side, that. That still felt like me. And he gave me some incredible advice when it came to his number one piece of advice to bring my family with me. And I followed that for I followed that since that initial conversation. We've had several since, you know, but, but, but, but for this one man, I talked to Chris and Emma about the format, you know, when large format became something that we were discussing and thinking about because they had just navigated, you know, both camera packages we ended up using. We used different lenses for them. On our System 65 package, we used the Ultra Panavision 276. You've seen the film, I imagine.

[Zach Lowe]

Yep. What did he tell you? What did he share with you about working in those formats?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, man. He basically told me not to be scared. You know, don't let anybody. Don't let anybody bow down to the camera on set. You know, he acknowledged that it's an intimidating piece of equipment, you know, in that. Because he uses a lot of handheld camera work in his history. And on those cameras, you can't handhold the sync sound cameras. You can hand hold the imax, the high speed. That will. All right, so I'm a nerd out.

[Zach Lowe]

This is the place. Do it.

[Sean Fennessy]

The catch of IMAX camera package is that it is technically not a sync sound camera in that, in that, you know, I think the new version that he has on Odyssey is, you know, but the one that they shot Oppenheimer with is the same one they shot Dunkirk with, is the same one they shot the last two Dark Nights with. You know, these cameras are massive cameras that are ripping celluloid through the gate. 15 perfs per picture at 24 pictures per second, right? They sound like somebody took seven weed whackers and, you know, and tied them in a steel box and have them going, you know, you know, synchronized. You know what I'm saying? That's what you know. So, so, so if you, if you want to shoot over the shoulder dialogue scene, you know, that camera is gonna be all over the dialogue. It is automatically gonna be ADR, you know what I'm saying? The 5 perf 65 millimeter camera package. The system 65 has two sync sound camera bikes. Sync sound. So now these, these sound like action in this role. And you don't hear anything, you know what I'm saying? Unless you put your ear all the way up to the blimp. Now, all of that soundproofing, because that, because that, that, that, that, you know, that that camera is doing a lot of work ripping that 65 millimeter Kodak celluloid through the gate at just 5 perth per second, you know? You know what I mean? Like, so, so it's a little less mechanics Happening there, but still very violent, still very loud. But all of that soundproofing is heavy. It's insanely heavy. So it becomes. It becomes 100 pound camera system with zero ergonomics. So it is impossible to handhold the sync sound version of that camera, you understand? And Chris comes from the school that I also come from, the school of like, you know, whatever works for the scene. So you'll see some of those movies, you know, he's hand holding that camera a lot, you know what I mean? And when you decide to shoot system 65 and you want to sync sound camera happening, you're not hand holding that, right? And you ain't steady camming either, you know? You know what I mean?

[Zach Lowe]

You just need a setup.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just too heavy. You got. You are on sticks, you're on a crane.

[Zach Lowe]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Or the camera on the ground, you know? You know what I mean? And so he was like acknowledging that, you know, there's another version of this camera that is the high speed system 65 camera. Now this is especially the same camera without the soundproofing, okay? So now this camera is about 60 pounds. That camera can be handheld. That camera can be put on a steady camera. But now your dialogue with that camera ADR immediately, you know what I mean? Because it's almost as loud as maybe if not louder than the IMAX camera, you know what I mean?

[Zach Lowe]

I actually had a question about this for you because I talked to Hoyte on Hoytema about Oppenheimer and carrying that thing around and what that was like for the actors and the intimacy that. How intimacy is hard. And like this movie in particular that you made is very sexy, very sensual, very up close, you know, like, it's very physical. Like, don't look. Hearing you say don't look now is not surprising when you see the movie. But when you got this giant piece of machinery up in someone's face, when you're trying to do a scene like that, like, is that hard for the actors? Was it different for you than what you've done in the past?

[Sean Fennessy]

So Chris's advice to me was to use it like a Super 8 camera. He said, use like you would normally use your camera, you know. And he told me straight up, he was like, man, you will see scenes in Oppenheimer. I got that camera right up against Killian's face, you know, and yeah, but we got close with that thing, man. That was a part of what the movie had to be, you know, it had to be, you know, it had to be the sexiest movie I ever made. You know, we knew we were gonna get intimate with these cameras, man. And to be honest with you, everybody brings their A game with that, you know, when you're shooting film in general. Like, I missed it since I, since I did Fruitville. Like, like digital, to be honest, man, it's hard for people to take it serious, you know what I mean? Like, like, because, because you just take, people just take it for granted, bro. You know? You know what I'm saying? You gotta, you gotta go, you gotta go out your way to, to, to, to, to, to have folks really, really respect when the camera's rolling, you know? You know what I mean? And because you got that, you know, your DP is generally in the tent and everybody's got these, these, these high def monitors everywhere, man, you know? You know what I'm saying? It's, you know, you know, when you, when you bust out that, that, that, that film camera, bro, and you hear it rolling and you know, it's, you know, man, you on the clock for real. And if you don't get it right, you're gonna miss it and we'll have to reload, you know? You know what I mean? Everybody's right there, you know? You know what I mean? And, and, and you know, the focus that you get, man, the attention that, that, that, that, that goes. People hold their breath, bro, you know, and it's the same thing when it's, when it's close to it, when it's close to the actors, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like, it just, it feels like, like you're doing something timeless. Especially with these cameras, bro. They look old, you know? You know, I mean, like, like the reality of it, man, I'd never seen a lens that looked like that ultra Panavision lens, you know? And I'm in a lot of movies, bro, busting that thing out and knowing, okay, man, that shot being her on this thing, you know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, it does something to you.

[Zach Lowe]

I'm interested in kind of like the inversion of the intimate stuff too. I have to ask you about. There's a sequence in the middle of the movie, the sort of musical centerpiece of the movie, which I thought was like one of the boldest, coolest things I've seen in a studio movie in forever. And I was like, this is just so outside of the pocket of what this movie was, and it's taking it to a totally different place. But it's also like very acrobatic in the filmmaking and you're taking like big visual risks with it. And I was trying to figure out how you actually did it and why doing something that is. That sort of like fantastical and historical inside of this movie was something that you wanted to do.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, man, that's a great question. You know, I believe in. Look, like when I do my job, bro, I got certain responsibilities, right? It's an expectation of me as a writer, director to be fluent in film language. Like, like what are the, what are the points where like I must do the thing that can only happen in this movie, you know? You know, like, like in communication through film language, you know what I'm saying? If you, if you're making a good movie, you get a few moments like that, you know, the great movies are chock full of, you know, you know what I mean? Like things that you can. Things that can only, that can only happen in a movie number one, and in this movie number two, you know what I mean? And while I was writing the screenplay, it was after. I haven't, haven't done the research about, about this music that my uncle was obsessed with and realizing that this, this music changed the world. But these, these people who are living this, this reality had no idea that, that, that, you know, that this music that they lived for just for Saturday nights, you know what I'm. Would have the type of outsized global impact that an art form could have. Maybe the most impactful American art form, you know. And for this time it was just theirs, you know what I mean? But they also had the luck of being born black so that their adulthood was going to be experienced in the 30s, you know what I mean? They wouldn't know anything other than sharecropping Jim Crow, you know, you know what I'm saying? Backbreakingly racist laws, you know, back, back breaking the racist economy, you know what I mean? That's what you know? And they will live for the hope that maybe their, their descendants will have it better. And I'm realizing, like in this movie I'm about to have them. These characters encounter cosmically horrific vampiric violence, you know what I'm saying? That's coming in this movie. And I have to buttress that with something cosmically beautiful, you know? You know what I mean? It's something that's true that can only be communicated through film language, you know what I'm saying? And that was how we came up with that. That was how we came up with that. We realized that the movie needed that scene.

[Zach Lowe]

I love that choice, that part is incredible to me. One theme I wanted to ask you about in your movies that I feel like occurs a lot is this moment when two disparate cultures, like, confront each other and are forced to understand each other, right? So, like, you got the Jabari and t'challa. You got, you know, Sly and Adonis. You know, you got people coming from different walks of life. Like, you know, you got the Talikan and you got the Wakandans. You got. There's always a sort of, like, confrontation in this movie. You've got black American blues and Irish folk music and this, like. And obviously vampires and humans, right? These two different cultures that are kind of, like, forced to meet each other. I was hoping you just kind of talk about, like, why you tend to synchronize the movies that way. And what's interesting about it in this one.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, I never thought about it as a student. You just described it. Yeah, Sean, like, that's incredible. But look, man, like, I'm a black man from Auckland, California. You know, My grandmother's a probably gonna second wave of the Great Migration. I got an Irish first name, bro. Not only do I have an Irish first name, but my baby brother has an Irish first name. His name's Keenan. And I'm from the Bay Area, which I think, with the exception of, like, Long beach or something, is like, the most diverse place in the country and one of the most diverse places on the planet. You know what I mean? So every day I've been. You know, every day of my life, I've been encountering, you know, cultures that were different from mine and negotiating that and having family members that married in the other cultures and cultures that married in the mind, you know? And that's my reality. But that's also the reality of the Delta blues. You know, it's a lot of literature written about the fact that Charlie Padme was likely part Choctaw. Everybody knows, man, Irish people were around and were influencing that music, you know? And, you know, the banjo comes from Africa, but now it's most associated with Appalachian, you know what I mean? And those are people of Irish descent there. It's so ironic when you look at the history of those people. It's a ton of crossover, you know what I mean? Like the dichotomy of living in a place of extreme agricultural abundance but starving under as a result of a backbreaking colonial and capitalist system that's not your own, you know, having your way of life outlawed, your way of worship demonized, you know, the way that you dance. Demonized, you know what I'm saying? Like all of these things. And it was, it was exciting for me to have a character who presents as a 30 year old Appalachian, but really a centuries old hero, Irish Irish vampire, who, who's finding himself in 1932, Clarksdale, Mississippi. Who does he want to hang out with? Who does he identify with? You know, like these questions I was asking myself, you know, that, that, that, that, that, that made a lot of, that made a lot of sense. What music is he going to be attracted to? At the time I was listening to a lot of music, man, like a lot of Delta blues music, but also just like a lot of black music from different areas. And I was getting obsessed with this Marvin G, which a lot of people consider like the sexiest song ever written by a man, you know. And the lyrics are I want you, but I want you to want me too. Which is like so powerful and sexy. And I was thinking of, you know, I knew I needed that for my villain, you know what I mean? This idea of, you know, I'm strong enough to take, you know, but that's not satisfying for me, you know, I need to, I need to convince you to want to be taken, you know what I mean? And that felt synonymous with the vampire. It felt synonymous with blues music, you know what I'm saying? Like, it just made sense. And bro, when we brought Jack on board, you know, his late father was an Irish immigrant to the uk and he's just up the end like, you know, so far with his own personal truth. Like I'm dealing with the love and the grief from my uncle, he brought the love and everything, his father, you know, and when we shot that scene, the counterpart to that, to that other scene you talking about, you know, the rocky road to Dublin scene, Man, bro, we shot that scene, man, and he pulled me close and he whispered in my ear and said, man, it's my father's birthday today. And I just became a baller, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know everything. But you know, it was something else that I worked on this movie that I like. I'll be crazy to try to repeat, you know, you know what I'm saying?

[Zach Lowe]

I just love, yeah, I loved how you twinned those two things. It was really, it's just like amazingly effective. And you know, Sean Fennesee, you might imagine is Irish. So I saw a little of myself in there. One thing I need to ask you about is you're one of the few filmmakers that I've Talked to on this show, who's under 40 years old, who's directed five features that have been released in movie theaters. That is becoming a rarer thing. And I know theatrical is really important to you. How are you feeling about movie theaters? The movie going, experience where it's at right now? Because there's been a lot of talk this year.

[Sean Fennessy]

Look, man, it's just a subject matter I can't talk about without becoming emotional, bro. Look, man, when I was researching this movie, I found out that mom, my grandmother, who's 96 years old, I found out where her first date with my grandfather was, took her to the movies. He took it to the movies and he tried to make out with her in the movie. And she told him, she told him, we can do that after. I'm trying to watch this.

[Zach Lowe]

You know what the movie was? What was the movie?

[Sean Fennessy]

She couldn't remember. But, but, but, but, but she remembered the conversation she had with him. You know what I mean? And me and Zinzi, you know, who's my producer on this. Most important person in my life. Our first date was to the movies. We went to go see Bring it on. Oh, Peg Reed. Yeah. Starring Gabrielle Christian Dunst. Yeah. Like, look, bro, for me, it's everything, man. My favorite, my favorite cinema in LA has been closed since the pandemic, man. Arc like Hollywood.

[Zach Lowe]

So painful sucks here.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, man, like, I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for the experience of watching, you know, these movies at a time when, you know, I was pre social media, man, when you couldn't get a movie spoiled 45, you know, seven ways from Sunday, you know what I mean? And every time I set the camera up, bro, I'm thinking about the feelings that great filmmakers gave me, you know, in my formative years. And now. I love you. I think, to quote a friend of mine, Miriam Bakabza, who I went to school with, you know, it's a giant empathy machine, you know what I'm saying? I think it's best experience with strangers in the dark where you can't judge each other, you know what I'm saying? Even though it's getting incredibly expensive and I'm making an IMAX film, man, this thing is gonna be on every PLF imaginable, you know what I mean? And the, the, the cost, bro, coupled with him inflation of taking, you know, a date to the movies, man, you know I'm saying, by the time you get your parking in your, in your. And you and your babysitter, you know what I mean, and all that stuff. Like. Like, I know it's. I know it's substantial, but it still is such a democratized form of entertainment, man. You know what I mean? Like. Like, it was always the thing for the people, for the working man, you know? You know what I'm saying? To go have a. To go have a nice night out and travel somewhere and experience something, you know, I'll fight tooth and nail to keep that. To keep that. To keep that around, you know? You know what I'm saying? Like. Like, you know, I don't know what I would do without it, to be honest with you, you know? And I always consider myself fortunate that my movies have come out in theaters, and it was not. It's really got nothing to do with me. It's just the timing, bro. Like, have Fruitville been made a calendar year later, you know, we might be having a different conversation, you know, straight up. And I think about these things, man.

[Zach Lowe]

I'm really glad that you're still putting movies in movie theaters and making them for them. Ryan, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what's the last great thing they have seen. Have you seen anything that's moved you recently?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's a great question, bro. I've been incredibly busy.

[Zach Lowe]

Could be new or old. Doesn't have to be a new thing.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. No, no, no. It was One of these Days.

[Zach Lowe]

Yes. So fun.

[Sean Fennessy]

It was one of these Days, man. And Sharita Singleton wrote that, bro. I know. Obviously, I know her father, rest in peace, but I was blown away by it.

[Zach Lowe]

What did you like?

[Sean Fennessy]

I like that it felt like Friday, which is. Which is. Which is a movie that I love, but it felt so feminine, you know what I mean? I love Kiki, you know, And I was, like, blown away by her performance and. Scissors. Performance. I was blown away by filmmaking, bro. Like, the. I love, like, how I celebrated, like, the resourcefulness of black women, you know what I'm saying? Like, I love, like, one of my favorite scenes is, like, when you realize her mom has a store in the jungles, you know what I'm saying? People come in like, I love you, man. You know what I mean? It felt very in conversation with.

[Amanda Dobbins]

With.

[Sean Fennessy]

With our scene with Henny, you know, I love. I love the cinematography. I love the humor. Like, I. You know, it just made me. It just made me feel alive, bro.

[Zach Lowe]

It's a great pick. One of my favorites of the year. Ryan Coogler, I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for the time, man.

[Sean Fennessy]

Thank you, Sean. Thanks for having me.

[Zach Lowe]

Thank you to Ryan Coogler. Thanks to Van. Thanks to Amanda. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his work on this episode. Next week we have our next 25 for 25 entry. I will not reveal what it is.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Do you want a guest fan?

[Van Lathan]

25 for 25.

[Zach Lowe]

25 best movies of the century.

[Van Lathan]

People have been really telling me they've been peppering me. Tell Sean to do this movie. Tell Sean to do this movie. Tell Shawn to do this movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I can't think I'm involved too.

[Zach Lowe]

What? Oh, what did they tell you that we should do?

[Van Lathan]

Yeah. Oh, so many different movies.

[Zach Lowe]

Guess what? Guess what we're doing.

[Van Lathan]

Yeah. Somebody told me y'all should do Ghost Dog. Like they're not gonna do Ghost Dog.

[Zach Lowe]

I would love to do Ghost Dog. I don't if I could get Amanda on board with Ghost Dog.

[Van Lathan]

Next movie, Moonlight.

[Zach Lowe]

It's not Moonlight.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Yeah.

[Zach Lowe]

Spoiler alert.

[Van Lathan]

Spoiler alert.

[Zach Lowe]

See you then.