‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ and the Movies That Feel Like Our Lives

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Picture

Episode: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ and the Movies That Feel Like Our Lives
Date: May 1, 2026
Host: Sean Fennessey
Co-Host: Amanda Dobbins
Guest: Chandler Levack (segment two)

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Overview

This packed episode of The Big Picture focuses on two films—The Devil Wears Prada 2, the much-anticipated legacy sequel, and Chandler Levack’s Mile End Kicks, a semi-autobiographical indie about young adulthood and music writing. Hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins dissect "Prada 2" with industry and personal insights, explore the impact of movies that mirror their own lives, and later welcome Levack to discuss her new releases and the state of music journalism and filmmaking today. The tone is witty, deeply personal, and loaded with behind-the-scenes knowledge from people who’ve lived the media life the movies depict.

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The Devil Wears Prada 2: In-Depth Review

Legacy, Plot & Expectations (02:33–09:08)

• Sequel Details:

  • Directed by David Frankel and written by Aline Brosh McKenna.
  • Main cast returns: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci.
  • Plot centers on Andy Sachs’s return to Runway as the magazine—and journalism—face existential threats.

• Initial Impressions:

  • Both hosts “liked it” (04:16, 04:18), but Amanda notes:

    “I’m at peace. … [It's] not a disaster of a movie. … It’s obviously not as good as the first movie, but it's not embarrassing and it's fun and very entertaining and interesting.” — Amanda (03:52)

  • Amanda: compares the original as "a modern masterpiece … about being good at your job."
    The new film is “about how being good at your job doesn’t matter because the world is falling apart… compelling, but also kind of a bummer.” (05:14)

Tone, Themes & Generational Perspective (06:02–08:39)

• Move away from light rom-com; “slightly more melancholy” and realistic about the collapse of media/fashion industries.
• Both hosts see the film as “shockingly real for a fizzy rom-com legacyquel” (07:11), especially for those who've worked in media.
• Amanda on genre debate:

  “There has been a lot of argument and discussion over whether the original Devil Wears Prada counts as a romantic comedy… If it is a romantic comedy, it's between Miranda and Andy, and it’s a romantic comedy about the workplace.” (07:07)

Easter Eggs, Nostalgia & Fan Service (09:08–10:59)

• The sequel “includes all of the people and the scenes that you remember in mostly clever ways… less forced and more winky.”
• Explicit nods to first film’s iconic moments and even meta-references for super-fans (“that is a reference to the opening of the movie when she’s brushing her teeth and all the other girls are… counting out their almonds” – 08:01).
• Both note the sequel is less about fashion and more about “trying to keep Runway afloat.”

Visual Style & Technical Critique (09:54–11:32)

• Sean says,

  “It looked like an episode of The Morning Show… there’s a kind of glossy, otherworldly digital photography… just a tremendous amount of drone shots… It just creates a kind of, like, sameness that feels like a hotel commercial.” (09:54)

• Stars “look fantastic” (11:02); aging is present but “believable and look very beautiful.”

Miranda Priestly, Industry Commentary & Character Evolution (11:32–20:39)

• Miranda is now “shepherding this dwindling empire… Now it just seems like they have their own Zoom account into every single Condé Nast meeting.” (12:03)

• References to real industry events (e.g., budget cuts, McKinsey, and industry consolidation):

  “The narrative conflict of the movie is about how the magazine industry is falling apart and the ways in which it is impacting essentially every single character in the movie…” — Sean (13:54)

• Amanda:

  “The first movie is all about her being at the top of her game … This one is all humbling. … At one point she says the word ‘social pins.’ She flies coach…” (16:02)

• Miranda in sequel: Less cutting “one-liners,” more “emotion and shows gratitude to almost every character”—which Amanda calls “the real sin.” (18:16, 19:30)

  “She says ‘that’s all’ once in a moment of defeat.” (17:21)

• On Meryl Streep’s performance:

  “She has the same... performance here, but with fewer one-liners… she just seems kind of low energy, delivering lines with … directness. … It’s not just about cutting people down.” — Sean (19:40)

Generational, Workplace & Media Satire (20:22–22:53)

• Amanda:

  “There is a little bit to the reconception of the character … that she cannot fully express or be herself anymore because of, you know, the world… It is a very Gen Z movie.”

• Sean:

  “It’s a Gen Z movie insofar as it’s a bunch of people in their 50s and 60s trying to throw some candy at Gen Z and be like, it’s gonna be okay. … It’s a little like making a Dirty Harry movie in 2026. But he doesn’t use a gun.” (21:03)

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The Devil Wears Prada 2: Workplace, Nostalgia, and the State of the Industry

Behind the Scenes: Fashion Cameos & Realism (34:10–39:44)

• Unlike the first film, fashion and media are now “all in" (34:10).
• Major cameos:
  • Fashion icons (Marc Jacobs, Donatella Versace, La La Roach, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell)
  • Media notables (Kara Swisher, Tina Brown, Vanessa Friedman)
  • “The moment where I actually started physically hitting you… Tina Brown, my girl Tina is in Devil Wears Prada 2.” — Amanda (35:13)
• Integration is both “comic book movie feel” (37:17) and “a little cheap”—especially the Lady Gaga performance at the faux Italian Met Ball (38:01).
• Real-life and movie echo each other—especially industry power, “billionaires playing chess in beautiful locations” (14:24), and modern media consolidation.
• Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez–like characters (“pretty interesting, given the portrayal… in this movie”) (38:47).

Andy Sachs: Then & Now (27:01–32:24)

• Amanda’s personal connection:

  “This movie came out the summer after I graduated college… I left Columbia Publishing course early one day to go sit and see The Devil Wears Prada… As a part of the Columbia Publishing course, we got to meet Anna. So I remember deeply freaking out about what I was gonna wear to meet Anna.” (27:01)

• In the sequel, Andy is a lauded but laid-off journalist who returns to Runway—facing the industry’s realities and modern career instability.
• Amanda:

  “I don’t really identify with her that much. … I don’t think I’m going to be able to save journalism.” (29:11)

• Sean points out the character’s paradox:

  “She’s exceedingly confident. And also completely falling apart at the same time.” (30:28)

• Amanda:

  “I think that just when I watch this movie, I watch it for aspiration, not relatability.” (32:01)

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Metatext & Movie-as-Event: Audience, Fandom, and Marketing (42:21–45:03)

• Amanda compares the audience energy at the screening to “Barbenheimer for Cool Moms… There were more ladies in that screening than I can recall in any press screening in Los Angeles ever.” — Sean (42:50)
• The film has become an event for professional women, complete with coordinated red wardrobe following press tour cues (42:56).
• “Bags are not dead”—Amanda, responding to fashion trends introduced in the movie (43:33).
• Marketing blitz includes extensive tie-ins (appliances, fake Runway magazine at Cinemacon, etc.), reminiscent of pop culture phenomenon Barbie (45:01).

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Movie Structure: Criticism, Realism, and Character Arcs

• Both hosts analyze realism and working conditions for journalists (“Are you typing into the CMS on Substack? … That stresses me out.” – Amanda, 32:24), bringing their own editorial experience as grounding.
• Amanda and Sean debate the movie’s core message: Is it about reclaiming lost power or finding solace in the “found family” of old colleagues (49:47–50:49)? Amanda thinks the sequel is about togetherness at the industry’s end, rather than a true return to glory.

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Box Office & Impact Predictions (54:02–55:13)

• Amanda shares tracking:
  “180 million globally on opening weekend” (54:05)
• Both expect the sequel to be a major international success, though unlikely to reach Barbie levels—thanks to the film’s fashion, legacy cast, and broad resonance (54:53).

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Segment: Chandler Levack on Mile End Kicks and Roommates (from 67:40 onward)

On Cinema About Music Journalism and Autobiography

• Chandler and Sean share personal, formative stories about working at Spin, idolizing Chuck Klosterman, and realizing “all criticism is autobiography” (75:16).
• Levack’s take on making movies from life:

  “I think the reason I made I Like Movies was because I wanted to be, like, have the sensation again of pushing the little video store cart full of jangling VHS tapes … With this film … it was more like … the aesthetics of indie sleaze photography, that was kind of personified by Vice magazine and the Cobra Snake.” (89:14)

• Making art about “the canon [of pop culture] shaped by my male colleagues who were men in their 40s in Hold Steady T-shirts… Me at the time was, like, 21 years old, staff writer… I felt like if I learned all the right nouns and verbs, then they would kind of welcome me into their circle.” — Chandler (74:07)
• The film’s premise: “a very personal coming of age story about a young woman trying to find love, trying to be professionally successful, obsessed with music and the culture of music. But the closer you get… the more you realize… people… can take advantage of you, can treat you poorly.” — Sean (60:15)

Quotes and Moments

• Chandler on seeking advice from Klosterman:

  “He was like, instead of being like, leave me alone, he was like, well, you should start writing for your school newspaper… and also like, don’t worry about what’s cool.” (70:57)

• On writing for music mags:

  “Other than Almost Famous, I don’t think it’s a profession that gets memorialized in cinema that much. Probably because it seems glamorous but is actually just you, kind of hunched over a laptop, looking despondent…” — Chandler (70:59)

• Amanda’s recognition:

  “You have to feign interest in what’s considered ‘cool’ and … you have all these other things on the side that, you know, basically like, aren’t acceptable for the canon, which is true. Devil Wears Prada being one of them. So, you know, it’s a full circle moment.” (61:23)

• Sean on making the jump to screenwriting/filmmaking:

  “The thing that you just said, the advice that he gave you, that’s so resonant, because I feel like it took me a long time to really actually achieve that… get comfortable with my own taste and talk about what I thought was good and why I thought it was good.” (73:30)

On Making Roommates for Netflix

• Chandler’s journey from personal filmmaking to a big streaming comedy:

  “So my agents call me and they’re like, Chandler… who is the person you said you most wanted to work with in the entire world? … Adam Sandler. … He saw like movies. … [He] really liked it. … And he has this project that he wants to shoot this year. It stars his oldest daughter, Sadie.” (91:05)

• Adam Sandler as creative partner and auteur:

  “He really is, like, the auteur of his own movies. … They’re Adam Sandler movies and they have a very specific altruistic kind of themes, aesthetic, actors that kind of like travel through his work.” — Chandler (99:07)

• Chandler’s experience:

  “I want to be like a personal filmmaker, like writer, director. … If I could make, like, two personal kind of semi-autobiographical films a decade until I’m 80, like, that would be just great.” (103:04)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Devil Wears Prada franchise’s place in culture:

  “It is like Star Wars for professional women.” — Amanda (44:46)

• On the state of media and relatability:

  “This is about Andy typing straight into the CMS, which stresses me out.” — Amanda (32:24)

• On generational anxiety:

  “There are plenty of movies over the years where you see something personal happen to a character and you connect to it… But this is different. This is like there’s something mechanized about this that also still kind of gratifies us.” — Sean (56:45)

• On the power of nostalgia and aspiration:

  “When I watch this movie, I watch it for aspiration, not relatability. And so I’m drawn to the Miranda character, you know, and that’s a little bit about how the first movie is also about fashion, which is the ultimate aspirational business.” — Amanda (32:01)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:33–09:08]: The Devil Wears Prada 2 review and setup
• [11:32–20:39]: Miranda Priestly, modernization, and work culture
• [34:10–39:44]: Fashion/media cameos, industry realism
• [42:21–45:30]: Audience reaction, event-film energy, product tie-ins
• [54:02–56:33]: Box office and phenomenon predictions
• [67:40–89:02]: Interview with Chandler Levack, Mile End Kicks deep dive
• [91:05–103:38]: Behind the scenes: Roommates, Netflix, and scale
• [107:03–112:54]: Reflection on nostalgia, what’s next, favorite movies

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Final Thoughts

Both “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Mile End Kicks” underscore the changing nature of aspiration, work, and nostalgia in movies. The hosts laugh, commiserate, and provide rare insider perspective on what these films get right and wrong. Chandler Levack’s stories highlight how art both shapes and is shaped by personal (and generational) experience, while industry shifts make even legacy icons feel like underdogs. The episode itself is a wry meditation on memory, status, reinvention, and why some stories feel so personal—right down to the CMS.

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Recommended for:

• Prada superfans
• Anyone who’s worked (or wanted to work) in media, fashion, or music
• Movie lovers fascinated by how fiction and reality blur, and how movies shape identity

Favorite moment:

• Amanda spotting Tina Brown in her cameo and “physically hitting” Sean in the theater.
• Sean and Chandler’s mutual recognition of the strange, mythic aura of music journalism—but also of getting through to the other side.

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Transcript

[Sean Fennesee]

I'm Sean Fennesee.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the

[Sean Fennesee]

Big Picture 8 conversation show about angels and devils. Today on the show we are digging into two films that excavate our mid aughts past. The big one is the highly anticipated sequel The Devil Wears Prada 2. Later in this episode I will be joined by Chandler Levesack, the writer director of not one but two films coming out this year, Mile End Kicks her portrait of a young music writer in Canada circa 2011, as well as the Netflix comedy Roommates, which comes from Adam Sandler's Happy Madison. Chandler and I had eerily similar young adult experiences as music writers and movie nerds. Had a wonderful talk about these worlds colliding and how she put them in her movies. Stick around for that conversation, but first we gotta talk about Amanda's past and her future right after this. This episode is brought to you by the Autograph Journey Credit Card from Wells Fargo the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo is built for travel. You can earn rewards wherever you book your favorite hotel site your go to, airline and more. You get five times points with hotels, four times with airlines, three times on restaurants and other travel, and one point on other purchases. Whether it's a big vacation or a quick getaway from booking your stay to that first meal when you arrive, you you're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more@wells fargo.com autographjourney Terms apply for

[Amanda Dobbins]

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[Sean Fennesee]

okay Anna Wintour, you ready for this?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, it did feel very Fitting to be sitting silently in my sunglasses throughout that entire intro. You know, maybe I should do that for every episode.

[Sean Fennesee]

Consider it. Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm going to leave them on for, like, the big question, and then I'll be a normal person and take them off. Also, I should just say the sunglasses are the one thing I'm wearing. That's not Prada. I'm sorry. It didn't occur to me until this morning that I should source Prada sunglasses along with everything else. I don't know why I'm a.

[Sean Fennesee]

Who were you just talking to? Were you just speaking to the camera?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Various cameras. People watching my other selves, you know? Regrets? I have a few. But here we are. I'm doing the best that I can.

[Sean Fennesee]

We're here. Your fandom has come for you in your 40s, just like it came for me.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

And we're here to talk about the Devil Wears Prodigy. The film is directed, as was the original, by David Frankel. It's written, as was the original, by alien Brosh McKenna. It stars Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci. They were all in the first one. And this movie is about Andy Sachs returning to the world of Miranda Priestly at the famed magazine Runway. It's also about the future of journalism, especially at magazines.

[Amanda Dobbins]

True.

[Sean Fennesee]

So we've been waiting months to ask you, what did you think of The Devil Wears Prada 2?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm at peace. I am. And much like Miranda Priestley, I'm learning that my expectations and standards cannot be met in the same way in 2026. And maybe that's okay. Mostly it's not. Mostly, it's a referendum on how the world is fucked. But it's not a disaster. It's not a disaster of a movie. Right. If I can speak for you, we both.

[Sean Fennesee]

I'll tell you what. Yeah, I liked it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I liked it, too. I think that it is obviously not as good as the first movie, but it's not embarrassing and it's fun and very entertaining and interesting. And maybe interesting enough, at least to me and you, to reformed Kani Nast editors, to make it good. Because there's a lot that I want to talk about. The first Devil Wars. Prada is, to me, a modern masterpiece for a number of reasons. It's obviously, like a light, fizzy, fun concoction about fashion and has multiple makeovers. And you get to go to Paris and you dump your bad boyfriend. It's got amazing performances, including one of Meryl Streep's best performances. Ever, in my opinion. But also the supporting cast, you know, kind of announces Emily Blunt. It's really funny, it's really fizzy, obviously really quotable. And then is also a very good movie about being good at your job. And even what the definition of being good at your job is and what that requires, what it costs, what you are willing and willing to give up in order to do that. This second movie is about how being good at your job doesn't matter because the world is falling apart. And that is compelling, but also kind of a bummer. And so this movie is slightly more melancholy. This. It's. Everyone is not on their A game, especially Miranda Priestly. And so I think that it's smart and way more insightful about the world than I expect about media specifically than I expected this movie to be. But, you know, you don't walk out with the same high.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. It gives you many of the things that the first film gave you in that fan servicey way where the characters are almost specifically repeating actions from the first movie to remind you of the legacy of the film. Yes. But the tone and subject matter is surprisingly different. And a lot of times when you have a legacy sequel like this, they tend to be overly exuberant in trying to get you back to that feeling that was so important to you when you first saw a movie. And this movie is ultimately not that interested in making you feel as happy, as buoyant as the first film did, which, as a man in his 40s, I relate to, I think that there's something practical and sincerely honest about the movie in a way that I'm very curious to see how the world at large feels about it, whether or not they receive it as excitedly. But as you say, having worked at Conde Nast myself, having been a magazine editor, having watched the world of media transform in ways that have been, you know, very beneficial for us, but not so beneficial for a lot of people that we've worked with over the years. The movie is pretty real, like shockingly real for a fizzy rom com Legacyquel.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right. It's not a rom com, but that's okay. I understand it stars. This one is a bit more than the first. Sure. But you know, we'll talk about that. There's calm, there is comm. But there has been a lot of argument and discussion over whether the original Devil Wears product counts as a romantic comedy or is it just a successful movie starring and about women. There is a distinction. If it is a romantic comedy, it's between Miranda and Andy. And it is About. And it's a romantic comedy about the workplace.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But, you know, potato, potato.

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, where would you like to begin this dissection?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I have some sunglasses off.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. Probably a good idea.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Do I have, like, sunglasses, Mark? I don't know how Anna navigates this.

[Sean Fennesee]

No, you're.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Good day. Thank you so much. Okay. Yeah. So it's good. Like baseline. Let's just talk about the fact that the movie is pretty good. Not as good, but pretty good. It is funny. It includes all of the people and the scenes that you remember in mostly clever ways. Even when it is kind of recreating beat for beat moments from the first film, it does it, like, in a smart way. And it feels less forced and more winky. Winky. It was very strange to be leaning over to you throughout the movie and being like. So that is a reference to the opening of the movie when she's also brushing her teeth and all the other girls are putting on, you know, counting out their almonds. So it does have a lot of Easter eggs. But it is, weirdly, not about fashion, which I thought was. It's set at a fashion magazine and has way more fashion cameos than the first movie because, famously, the original movie had difficulties getting clothes and fashion personalities because of their fear of Anna Wintour. And now Vogue and Anna Wintour are very much on board with this sequel.

[Sean Fennesee]

We should definitely talk about that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. So lots of cameos, but it's really just about trying to keep Runway afloat. And it has that forced sequel thing where you gotta bring everybody back together. It's 20 years later. It's not particularly natural that any of these people would be in the same place. And that feels a little bit of a bummer. You know, Emily Blunt, who is the Emily character, no longer works at Runway, which makes sense, but that means she's always kind of a satellite to the show. And I think that happens with any sequel. There's no way to get around that and that new people kind of feel tacked on. It's not the most beautifully photographed film that I've ever seen. Would you like to read your own comments?

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. Thanks for writing those down so that I can have them forever. At a certain point, I did note to you that this looked like an episode of the Morning Show. I think there is a kind of glossy, otherworldly digital photography that has creeped into a lot of modern movies, especially movies like this, that are set in the real world. And so it looked like an episode of television at times. Also just a tremendous amount of Drone shots. And I understand why there are so many drone shots. It's because this movie, which I know you love, travels all over the place. It's capturing New York City on location. It's capturing several places in Italy on location. You know, there are these great vistas, but the way that those are all captured now are in the same kind of consistently repetitive. Like you're in on a location and then you're pulling away and away and away and away and away, and you're seeing the scope of a city. I think we get that shot about 10 times in this movie. And it's nice that we have that technology now to show the real world, but it just creates a kind of, like, samey ness that feels like a hotel commercial. And so I didn't love that. I think the stars in this movie, though, look fantastic.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They do. It's kind of astonishing.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And not in digitized or, you know, what was happening here. They have all aged and aged well and with aid, I would say, but believably and look very beautiful. And there still is that joy of getting to watch both Meryl's outfits and Anne Hathaway's outfits, like, and Anne Hathaway just being both of them being so very beautiful, like, up on screen, larger than life in these places and these outfits that we would not normally.

[Sean Fennesee]

And in that way, it feels like an event movie. Right. Like, everyone looks amazing in that respect. Let's talk about Miranda and the way that Miranda is characterized in this movie. Because I guess I felt I should have seen this coming. But I was quite surprised by the way that they evolved or devolved this character. And I've even read a little bit of criticism about it, and it sounds like it echoes your own. So who is she in the movie in 2026?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, she is shepherding this kind of this dwindling empire that is Runway, which just bears a startling, at this point and amazing level of resemblance to Vogue. Obviously, they've always been leaning on that. And the appeal of the first movie was that it was based on Lauren Weisberger's novel Devil Wears Prada. And Lauren Weisberger is a former assistant to Anna Wintour. And so you know that you were getting, like, an unimproved peek behind the scenes of how this very glitzy, exclusive fashion magazine and this larger than life woman operates was part of the appeal. Now it just seems like they have their own, like, zoom account into every single Conde Nast meeting. I thought the number of specifics from Taking the Town Cars away To management consultants coming in, McKinsey is name checked. Which for those of you who don't know, after the crash in 2008, McKinsey, the consulting management firm, was brought into Conde Nast and the days of yore and the unlimited budgets and the glamorous lifestyle portrayed in the first Devil Wars. Prada was cut, slashed in very much the way that is described in this film.

[Sean Fennesee]

Just for the listeners at home. You and I also began working at Conde Nast right after that happened.

[Amanda Dobbins]

After McKenzie. Yeah. So which is, you know, which is our tragedy and maybe why this movie speaks so much to us because we were raised on one version and, you know, we wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be Tina Brown. You can, I don't know who you

[Sean Fennesee]

wanted to be, but any number of GQ and neighbors, they were living large

[Amanda Dobbins]

and by the time we got there, it was, you know, just waiting for someone to bring you back some printed out stuff at one in the morning so that you could then take the subway home. It was tough stuff.

[Sean Fennesee]

So it is quite accurate and specific. The level of specificity that is lent to these details around what has happened to the magazine industry ultimately constitutes the drama of the movie. Like the narrative conflict of the movie is about how the magazine industry is falling apart and the ways in which it is impacting essentially every single character in the movie, which to us is of course an ongoing concern and something that we think about and talk about and gossip about throughout our friendship. Do people care about this?

[Amanda Dobbins]

So it's opened up a little bit where that at some point the magazine becomes a pawn between a very Jeff Bezos like character played by Justin Theroux, who is committing to the.

[Sean Fennesee]

So funny. He's very funny.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And. And he has an ex wife played by Lucy Liu, who's like a combination of Mackenzie Scott, formerly Bezos and Lorraine Powell jobs in terms of she's now reinventing her own life and she has a public philanthropic arm that she's working on. So there is then without spoiling too much like the Next Generation, there is a David Ellison like character who shows up to oversee Elias Clark, which is the stand in for Conde Nast. And there is, you know, a decent amount of, you know, billionaires just playing chess in beautiful locations while the jobs and passions of many people are at stake. So it's both specific to magazines and also recognizable to a lot of us

[Sean Fennesee]

at this day and time in the age of consolidation.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But it is, but the specifics again, Miranda Priestly, her personal tension is that she's up for the quote, unquote, global content director job, which is the job that Anna Wintour has now. And so they're really just cribbing Barry specifically from this place in a way that I did not expect and was also a little bit like. To your point, is anyone who's not us going to care?

[Sean Fennesee]

What about the nature of Miranda, the way that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, well, so that's the other thing, because she's saddled with all of this. And Runway is not once what it was and the company's going to be sold off. And magazines are not once what they were. She's just reduced. And the first movie is all about her being at the top of her game and being like the best in the world and being terrifying. And she's confident and funny and a terrible boss also, but then sort of an anti hero. And there's. She has two moments of weakness, of threat, obviously, her personal life. That scene with the divorce, you know, Rupert Murdoch should cut a check for all the newspapers he's sold off. And then also that there's a threat of the French editor taking her job, which she bats away. And she's like, no, no, I've known what was going on for some time.

[Sean Fennesee]

And both of these things are also very closely based on real life. I know, in our experiences, but, you

[Amanda Dobbins]

know, in both of those.

[Sean Fennesee]

Was it Karine Roitveld? Was that her name?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I believe so.

[Sean Fennesee]

I remember that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So they. She's, you know, briefly humbled, but then she fixes it. This one is all humbling. This is all. She's always scrambling. She has to talk about page views just an alarming amount of times. At one point she says the word social pins. She flies coach, which, like even now at Kanye Nast and as like, maybe if you work at Spotify, but not at Conde Nast.

[Sean Fennesee]

Still, that's the one note that really strains credulity, is her sliding into a three seater with her assistant.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Also, then she's sitting in the middle next to her assistant, which, you know, it's for a visual gag and it's fine, but it's like, come on, we all know that Anna's still flying first. That's fine. But she's not as funny because she's not as confident and she's not on top. So she doesn't have the one liners. There are almost. She's not in it quite as much, but she doesn't have, you know, she says that's all once in a moment of defeat. I think it's wise to not do that many, like, florals for spring. Groundbreaking. Or like, why is no one ready? But she doesn't have any of those big moments. And then she has a shocking amount of, like, emotion and shows gratitude to almost every character in her life. And that, to me, is the real sin. Like, by the third one, Okay. I was glad that Nigel got a moment.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, I was, too.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's really nice. Nigel's great. And for a moment, actually, and I thought that they were leaving Nigel behind. And I was like, I will walk right out of this theater. That to me, is all the people being like, I can't believe they let that woman in. Lilo and Stitch get an education. And to me, leaving Nigel behind, I'm like, that is my line. They don't need Nigel behind. It's okay. But that's fine.

[Sean Fennesee]

Nigel is Stanley Tucci's character, for the record.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, okay, I'll listen.

[Sean Fennesee]

He's not a real man.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And then it's fine that she has to have, like a moment.

[Sean Fennesee]

You're in your comic book era with this.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's really, really funny.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I've been training my whole life for this. This is it. You know, I got one movie. I gotta make it count. But she's nice to basically everyone else. Kenneth Branagh is her new husband, who's a concert violinist. I believe he's in a quartet.

[Sean Fennesee]

Ludicrous character.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He only shows up to be nice to her and tell her to do what you want. I mean, I guess he's good at it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. You can see why she likes him. Cause he has no interiority. He's just a kind guy who's handsome and older.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He just flies in from Stockholm and is like you. Imagine what you want to do when you wake up tomorrow and go do that.

[Sean Fennesee]

That's what I say to you before every episode.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So to me, the greatest sin is not that she's vulnerable or reduced in status. It's that she's deeply emotional.

[Sean Fennesee]

I wouldn't say deeply emotional. So to me, my perspective on this is that performance in the first film, which is so interesting in that she said she based on Clint Eastwood. Right. And she never really raises her voice. She has almost that kind of burning whisper when she's talking. She has the same. Meryl Streep is giving the same kind of performance here, but with fewer one liners. And so that acting approach is less effective because she just seems kind of low energy, delivering lines with some. Some degree of maybe not sincerity is the word, but directness. It's not just about Cutting people down. It's about trying to solve a problem at the company that she works at. And so it's just a little less fun to watch Miranda through the movie.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They also hint at the fact that she has been somewhat refor. And there are a few scenes where assistant is played by Simone Ashley, whose job is essentially to tell her when she said something inappropriate and that she's no longer allowed to say anymore because of, you know.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, a lot of shared, like, yeah,

[Amanda Dobbins]

like, no, no, no. What? I can't say New Jersey, which are, like, moderately funny. But there is a little bit to the reconception of the character Justin, that she cannot, like, fully express or be herself anymore because of, you know, the world and the way it is outside. It is a very Gen Z movie. And I find that which makes sense, Right? This is.

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, I think it's a Gen Z movie insofar as it's a bunch of people in their 50s and 60s trying to, like, throw some candy at Gen Z and be like, it's gonna be okay. Your bosses are not gonna alienate you and punish you. Which I think is not the best lesson to take out of this entire world. There's something really intriguing about Miranda Priestly becoming an iconic movie character, but knowing deep down that there's something quote, unquote, wrong about that character. And it's a little like making a Dirty Harry movie in 2026. But he doesn't use a gun. You know, like, it kind of doesn't make sense to do that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I've been thinking a lot about. To me, the original Devil Wears Prada is sort of. It's like the girl, the suitcase, the Mad Men episode, which is, you know, Don Draper and Peggy Olsen in a room kind of yelling at each other about how they work together, their relationship as, you know, collaborators, but also as boss and employee. It culminates with the very famous, like, that's what the money's for. But, you know, Don Draper is. Is the main character of Mad Men, but he's definitely not someone that you want to be ultimately. Or do you. Exactly.

[Sean Fennesee]

Something interesting about that. There's an anti hero, a completely destroyed man who makes a tremendous number of mistakes, but he's swaggering and handsome and brilliant at his work. They're very similar archetypes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

There you go. And Devil Wears Prada came first. I agree that. And I don't think when the movie was originally released that Miranda Priestly was the kind. The reference point that she is today. And I think, honestly, Miranda Priestley in The film has paved the way for Anna Wintour's, like, total rehabilitation since the book itself, because over time, people started to realize, wait a second. When I watched this movie, and he's kind of annoying, you know, and she's not taking her job very seriously. I don't know if you saw one of the many, many pieces that Vogue has done about this movie was finally interviewing the real Emily. There's been a lot of speculation over the years.

[Sean Fennesee]

Oh, who is the real Emily?

[Amanda Dobbins]

The real Emily is a stylist named Leslie Freemore. She's a very successful stylist. And she shout out to her for giving this interview. And she says. She says that she did, in fact, say the quote of a million girls would kill for this job. And she said when she read it that she recognized a lot, but from her own perspective, which was that she felt like Lauren Weisberger. It was very clear to her that Lauren Weisberger didn't want to be there and didn't want to be doing her job. And so she was like, I probably was mean, and I definitely was very stressed out because it's a hard job.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But I could tell this person, she

[Sean Fennesee]

even kind of resembles Emily Blunt.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She does. And so the more that people watch it and thought about it, and I think also it's just an age thing, the older you get, you start to realize just how annoying Andy is and how much she has to learn. Well, you know, can you please spell Gabbana?

[Sean Fennesee]

I revisited the original film last week, and I don't have the same level of affection for it that you do. I think it's a very entertaining movie. I do think that there's a series of moments in the movie where I'm just like, this is just complete poppycock. And, like, maybe it is true to Lauren Weisberger's experience, but that that joke, can you spell Gabbana? Is like, you would never, ever, ever get that job if you didn't know what that was, or if you did, then actually, Anna Wintour is not as impressive a person as I thought she was. It just. It just makes no sense. It's illogical in that world, which is so cutthroat.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Don't you feel, though, maybe this is just getting older? Like, every once in a while, don't you, like, interact with your own version of, like, can you please spell Gabbana? You know, when you're working with people and you're saying, I do, but they're

[Sean Fennesee]

almost never proximate to power.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's true.

[Sean Fennesee]

There's something about the people who get to be in that inner sanctum, who get access to that kind of a person where, like, that person needs to be vetted. They really need to be vetted.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I agree.

[Sean Fennesee]

So the movie, I find, is a little wobbly. The other thing that I find very wobbly about the movie, though, with credit to this new movie, it follows through on some of it, is everything in Andy's personal life I find to be, like, ridiculously overdrawn and silly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Sure.

[Sean Fennesee]

But it might inform some of that core theme that I think you've always very smartly talked about, which is that it's a movie about being good at your job. Right. And how sometimes as a young person, you can be really drawn into the world of your work at the expense of other things because you realize how important it is and how it makes you feel alive and it gives you a sense of purpose. That's ambitious, too. Yes. And I completely relate to that, and I love that about the movie. But the Adrian Grenier character and Rich Summer and Tracy Thomas characters in the movie, I'm like, I don't who. Those are not real people. To me, they're like very poorly written characters.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Nate is very ambitious because he spends a week learning how to make French fries, you know, which is actually an important skill. Too many frozen, pre frozen French fries on the market these days.

[Sean Fennesee]

And as parents of young children, of course, we know how important that is. But Tracy Thomas character comes back into this movie, actually, and pretty credibly, I thought. I was like, yeah, I buy that. They stayed friends for 20 years, despite the fact that she scolded her after Simon Baker gave her a kiss on the cheek some 20 years past.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, sure. I mean, that was weird. And I was. I was explaining to you, I haven't read the book in 15 years, and the book is just okay. I think that both films improve on it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But there's a whole side plot with that character getting in a car accident or something and having a lot of personal problems that the Andy character, the front character, doesn't really. Yeah. Doesn't really support. I guess in the book, she's maybe merged with the Emily character. But the point is that Andy is, like, not a particularly good friend. That was translated in the movie into slut shaming.

[Sean Fennesee]

2006. Amanda, did you relate to Andy? Did you feel close to Andy?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Sue, I saw this movie. This movie came out the summer after I graduated college and I was attending the Columbia Publishing course. Do you know what that is?

[Sean Fennesee]

I do, of course. Explain it to the listeners.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, so it's essentially, it's a six weeks sort of summer school slash. I mean, finishing school, for lack of a better word. Program for people who are interested in book and magazine publishing. And it primarily focuses on book publishing. And I think a lot of book editors go there. And in addition to teaching you how book publishing works, there's a lot of networking. And I guess it's like a field team or something. I was interested in magazines. And so I remember I left Columbia Publishing course early one day to go sit and see the Devil wears Prada at 86th Street AMC, I believe. Cause it was closest. And then also, as a part of the Columbia Publishing course, we got to meet Anna. So I remember deeply freaking out about what I was gonna wear to meet Anna. I wore heels. I wore an actual outfit. Unlike Andy, I took it seriously. And I knew the target that I was going for. But I think the idea that, oh, you're supposed to be an assistant at one of these magazines, like an apprenticeship, pay your dues for a couple years, and then you get to be the New York magazine journalist writing amazing pieces, was how I understood what was coming my way. So in that sense, yes, I absolutely did.

[Sean Fennesee]

Do you relate to 2026? Andy Sachs? And maybe you should situate her.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Sure. So it's funny, this movie's actually mostly about her, which is the other interesting choice.

[Sean Fennesee]

Good news for you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Well, listen, Anne Hathaway looks amazing. Every single outfit is dynamite, including the one that I purchased off of paparazzi photos and felt really good about. It did make it into the final cut.

[Sean Fennesee]

Is that the shiny blue dress?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, but you know what?

[Sean Fennesee]

I like the dress.

[Amanda Dobbins]

One of the Cannes dresses. You remember the gold dress that I bought in Vegas that I told you I was like, this morning I got up and bought a dress on the real. Real, for sure. No, you didn't see it, but I told you that this was happening. Very similar, but gold instead of blue, but shiny.

[Sean Fennesee]

Great.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I felt really good about that. Thanks. Yeah, I'll be wearing that to the premiere of Paper Tiger. Could someone from Neon please get in touch? Anyway, we're going to be okay.

[Sean Fennesee]

Don't worry.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I know she looks great, but the movie starts with Anne Hathaway winning a journalism award. She works for a newspaper. And then she's laid off while accepting the award. Her entire newspaper team is because hedge funds are similar. A very familiar, similar structure to what happens in the real world and to journalists. And so she comes back to Runway because she Needs a job because Runway needs some credibility after a bad journalism. After a journalism scandal. They've written a flattering piece about a company that uses sweatshops. And so she's there to figure her life out and save journalism. I sort of have my life figured out. And I don't think I'm going to be able to save journalism. So I don't really identify with her that much.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think I admire her. What about her emotional core where she doesn't. She loves her work more than her personal life. Can't attach to anything. And doesn't want a renovated building.

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, those are specific details about her life. But I think there's something very unusual about Andy. Where she's exceedingly confident. And also completely falling apart at the same time.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

And I just having a chat with my wife last night about that. And just. I feel like I encounter a lot of women in my life. At this stage of my life.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You think I'm falling apart.

[Sean Fennesee]

Not that's unkind. But that there's, like, under siege. But powering through is, like. Is a mark of. Just in the very limited experience of my life. Yeah. And we were. And you know, Eileen, it's called having it all. Yeah, I know. I know. And I'm asking you this. Cause I'm kind of wondering. Will the people who grew up on this movie. Who are very excited about this sequel. Will the decision to actually make this movie. Very much about Andy's conflicts. And her inability to kind of go to do certain things. But also her, you know, she's clearly extraordinarily intelligent. Right. And she's actually able to situate herself in this job that she has not a lot of training for. In an environment where, like. How long did she really spend as Miranda's assistant in the film? 3 months, 6 months? How long are we supposed to believe that took place?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Maybe a year.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. And she's like, you know, still able to fall in love. And is very comfortable and confident. In these high end, high market environments pretty quickly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right.

[Sean Fennesee]

But also has, like, a real kind of daffiness. I think this is a great character for Anne Hathaway. So I've never really been like, well, it's Miranda's movie. I, of course, love Anne Hathaway as an actor. But I was happy that we spent so much time with Andy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's the perfect balance for the Miranda character. And you need someone who. They both have it together in different ways. And they both have skills that the other doesn't. And that's why both Movies end with a moment of reconciliation between the two of them in the back of a Town car, which, at least in Europe, is still available to Miranda.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I agree with you. I think that just when I watch this movie, I watch it for aspiration, not relatability. And so I'm drawn to the Miranda character, you know, and that's a little bit about how the first movie is also about fashion, which is the ultimate aspirational business. And this is about Andy typing straight into the cms, which stresses me out. Are people still. Are you typing into the CMS on substack? You're not doing a Google Doc first?

[Sean Fennesee]

I've done both thus far. The thing that. Not that anyone cares, but the thing with the CMS and substack is once you just drop a YouTube link or a podcast link in there, it just instantaneously populates. And there's something very gratifying about that, like, visually, while you're at it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So you understand the format. I mean, that's cool. But publishing into the CMS? Listen, I'm blogging one. I'm like, 1.0. You can't be doing that.

[Sean Fennesee]

Look, I've been in many CMSs over the years. That's a content management system for those of you at home, which is effectively the tool used for publishing platforms. And we've actually circled back to the ease of use of a blogger circa 2006. So I enjoy that about it. But this movie is so specific about things like that. It is like no one knows what a CMS is. You know, 0.01% of the population knows what that means.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Probably like an entire generation of Tumblr kids knows what a CMS is because Tumblr was a cms.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes, they have certainly been inside of publishing platforms, but they don't call it that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Anyway, I do know what social pins are, though. So Miranda is.

[Sean Fennesee]

What is a social pin?

[Amanda Dobbins]

You don't know what a social. When you pin a post to the

[Sean Fennesee]

top of your ear, that's just called a social pin. I mean, of course I do that. She didn't know it had a title.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, we're on the glacier now.

[Sean Fennesee]

One thing that you mentioned is that the first film did not have a lot of participation from the fashion community. And this film has a lot of participation, clearly from Vogue and from the fashion community.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

Why do you think that is? Does the movie benefit in a meaningful way from that at all?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think the fashion community and Vogue are, at this point, kind of different. There are a tremendous number of Cameos of people who just want to be in the movie. Some of them fashion related. Marc Jacobs, Don Nutella, Versace, La Roach, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell. The New York Times critic Vanessa Friedman is both name checked and then in profile.

[Sean Fennesee]

Huge look.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And then, you know, just people like Karl Anthony Towns love to see him. Sarah Swisher. And then the moment where I actually started physically hitting you in the middle of the screening. Tina Brown, my girl Tina is in Devil Wears Prada too. And that's when I was really just like, I don't know what I'm gonna do right now. I don't know how I'm gonna handle this.

[Sean Fennesee]

That was Cap catching the hammer for you. You freaked the fuck out.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But I was also like, this is weird that things are so in. The things in my mind are now on the screen and I'm pretty uncomfortable about it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. Have you met Aileen Brosh McKenna? I've wondered that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I've never met her, but I've been big admirer Morning Glory Forever. Um, Tina wrote a great substack about the experience of being on the cameo, which was. Which had great details including that you

[Sean Fennesee]

subscribed to her substack.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Excuse me, Day one subscriber to Tina Brown's substack. Fresh. Hell, everybody get involved.

[Sean Fennesee]

Just, just asking.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's wonderful. Listen, Tina forever.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay, all right, simmer down.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But I think some of the great details included that there wasn't enough like food on the set. So then Kara Swisher organized like a group delivery order.

[Sean Fennesee]

And also they doordashed to a Hamptons estate.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I believe so. I mean, the company in question was not named, but Kara Swisher did organize the. The order.

[Sean Fennesee]

And they got Jersey Mike's probably.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. And then also that Tina provided her own outfit, but then accessories were provided by the film in the costume department.

[Sean Fennesee]

She wasn't given any lines.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Unfortunately, she does talk about that. She says that she did her line so many times and was so bad at it. She was like, I understand why I'm silent because I just. I couldn't do it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Acting is very hard.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She also said that she was seated next to Karl Anthony Townes at the fake dinner and that she did not know who he was. And then learned a lot about athletes lives and how they can be traded at any moment.

[Sean Fennesee]

Oh my.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's really funny. And then she.

[Sean Fennesee]

She just learned that. She just learned that she employed Brian Curtis for years. That's so surprising.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, well, I don't. I think they were talking about other things.

[Sean Fennesee]

That's probably true. First of all, shout out to Kat. He's been having a great series. Hopefully the Knicks triumph over the Hawks before.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He's on the Knicks now, Kat.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, he's been on the Knicks for years.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I didn't know.

[Sean Fennesee]

Is this his third season with the Knicks?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, I thought he was great in this. I was happy to see him.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. He just recently went on a double date with your boy Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner and his girlfriend Jordyn Woods.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, really?

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I was just reading about this after the game.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's stressful. Maybe the night before.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, well, either way, it stresses me out how often professional athletes are just like, out late, even though the next stresses you out. Stresses you. They need to use. You know, they need to be in fit physical condition. Yeah, it does.

[Sean Fennesee]

Given the way he's been performing in this series. I don't wanna. I don't wanna jinx him.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm glad to know.

[Sean Fennesee]

But it was nice to see him. It was nice. Jenna Bush Hager was in this movie. There were a ton of people who got like, one line. And it similarly has that comic book movie feel of like, all your faves are all together at this one fun party. Felt a little cheap to me, though, you know, in the way that these things often feel cheap.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I agree. And it was a real like, now this is a sequel. We gotta do something. Everyone wants to be a part of this, so we'll farm it out. I think the cheapest part of it is that there's a Lady Gaga performance as well as a cameo at the event that they host in Milan that is sort of like, it's. I guess it's akin to an Italian Met Ball, which does often have a pop star major performance. I'm sure Lady Gaga has been the chair of the Met Ball at least once.

[Sean Fennesee]

And what does one do as the chair?

[Amanda Dobbins]

You put your name on a lot of things and then you get photographed. Can I tell you who two of the chairs of the upcoming Met Ball, which is on Monday, the first day in May, are? They are Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.

[Sean Fennesee]

Oh, interesting.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So that is pretty interesting, given the portrayal of Jeff Bezos or the Jeff Bezos esque character in this movie.

[Sean Fennesee]

You know, we're in full spoiler territory here, but there is a kind of Lauren Sanchez esque character in the movie as well. And it's a character we know.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes. Spoiler, I guess. Yes. Her name is Emily, played by Emily Blunt, who now is an executive at Dior and Dior. Features prominently. She is shown chastising Miranda Priestly for the legitimately bad journalism and then extracting the price of several free ad pages and a feature story about the OP store opening, which I really wonder how everyone at Dior and Louis Vuitton LVMH feels.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. Let me ask you this, Paul Knower. Does that happen in real life?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't know if it happens at that level.

[Sean Fennesee]

I know that that is something that was oft rumored.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Sean Fennesee]

When I was working at Conde Nast across many publications, but certainly never confirmed because it's a decision that's made at the absolute highest level.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Sure. I mean, no one ever told me, yeah, this ad page was free. You know, we all know that advertisers have to be featured in fashion spreads in certain ways. And I think the companies have had like, an increasing amount of, say there's now in Vogue, at least what's called a full look commitment, which is that you can't mix and match as they do in that famous cerulean speech in the first episode. You have to wear head to toe Dior or Prada or et cetera, even in an editorial. I don't know whether that happened specifically. I feel pretty confident that lvmh, the conglomerate that owns Dior, is not thrilled about the portrayal of anything. And there's also a new, very cool, very movie invested designer Jonathan Anderson, who has done the costumes for some Luca Guadagnino movies, who now runs Dior. Wondering how he's feeling about that. Seems like that was all this was all inked and scripted before he came on board, but yes. So Emily, in addition to being a corporate fashion person, is now also dating the Jeff Bezos character and helps Andy plot a takeover of Runway, which Andy thinks is going to be to protect Miranda. And then it turns out to be so that Emily, the Emily Blunt character, can be in charge of Runway. So, but there she dresses not. She wears more Dior, but she dresses not unlike Lauren Sanchez does and is portrayed in a similar way. I mean, they even talk about how the Jeff Bezos character, I can't remember his actual name, has had, like, a real physical transformation. And all of his workouts, it's. It's really, really very specific. And in the meantime, Vogue, the magazine, is going to have them, like, on the steps of their. Their quote, unquote biggest night of the year on Monday. I wonder if there will be any phone calls. Vogue's decision to embrace this is fascinating to me and makes sense and is just really about how Vogue and Kanye Nast, like, have no power anymore. And I think that. So there's a new American editor, Chloe Mal, who's been doing a lot of this work. And I think she's been very savvy and just knows that it will be a big thing and that it'll kind of up the profile of Vogue at a time when it really needs that. But it's a real, like, balance of Powers has shifted situation.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Which the movie then confirms, which is what's so fascinating.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's a really unique document of the real life. Echoing the movie. Echoing the real life. Yeah. The other interesting thing about that power dynamic is that it certainly feels like this movie is gonna be a huge hit. And the screening that we went to was quite interesting. It was Barbenheimer for Cool Moms. You know, there were more ladies in that screening than I can recall in any press screening in Los Angeles ever.

[Chandler Levesque]

Correct.

[Sean Fennesee]

Also significantly more stylish people in that screening. I don't know. You can talk about it in some detail.

[Amanda Dobbins]

A lot of people wearing red, which has, you know, been established as the signature color of the press tour. And it's what Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep and then Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci, when they joined, have been wearing on this really extended and to me, Barbie esque press tour. Margot Robbie was on the road for weeks in various Barbie inspired outfits, which I thought was very clever and playing to an audience that is not usually marketed to in movies, but that both films really deliver to. So they did a lot. We had a lot of people in red. Lots of good bags. I think bags are not dead.

[Sean Fennesee]

Is that something that's been discussed?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, there is. There is.

[Sean Fennesee]

Bags are dead.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. That people don't want. You know, the fancy, like, ooh, the new Marc Jacobs. That's a Devil Wears Pride in one reference that you either need a laptop bag or a tiny bag. I'm gonna go the other way. I'm post laptop and I have a new normal bag that I like. So.

[Sean Fennesee]

Sitting in front of a laptop.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. But I just. That's, that's when I'm here.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. Gotta be careful when you say your post something when you are using that thing actively.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's a state of mind.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. I'd love to be post laptop. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of

[Amanda Dobbins]

laptop bags at this screening. There were a lot of bag bags.

[Sean Fennesee]

No. Well, thankfully no one was using their laptop during the screening. I thought that was quite fascinating. It felt like there was maybe some more influencer invites. Shout out to The AMC Burbank 16, my one true Home. I thought it was indicative of the fact that there's more opportunity to do this kind of thing for this audience and that not every movie is the Devil Wears Prada. And it doesn't loom as large and most movies don't loom as large as that movie does.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It is not as marketable.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Are you aware of all the tie ins? Like, are you?

[Sean Fennesee]

No, but I mean, that makes sense. Of course.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Of course it makes sense.

[Sean Fennesee]

And it's like Star wars for, for, for professional women.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But it is a little surprising when to suddenly be on the other side of it. And you know, Juliet Lippman was talking about how she was on the GE website because she needs a new appliance and there's a Devil Wears Prada.

[Sean Fennesee]

She was shopping for an appliance from GE's website.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think she was just looking at the options. And some of the options were featured in the Devil Wears Prada too, which was noted on the website. Cool. So, you know, and there is like a very literal, like 30 rock vibe to that. But it also makes sense. Also, as soon as she said that, I was like, oh, I know where the appliances were. They were in the flip of the, you know, the new apartment. And it wasn't totally tacky the way it was included.

[Sean Fennesee]

Let's talk about that strain of the story.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That was Colin from Accounts. That was Colin from Accounts.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. I've not seen that show. I know that's a show, but I haven't seen that show. Who is that person?

[Amanda Dobbins]

So Colin from Accounts is the name that. I don't know his actual name. I'm scrolling. Where is it? Let's go. Patrick Brammell, AKA Colin from Accounts, who is the contractor who renovated a beautiful building on Henry street, the corner of Henry and Amity. I know because they were filming there when I was there visiting my sister in law Ruthie last summer. And they showed Knox some of their cameras. They were very nice. Thank you to everyone in The Devil Wears Pratta 2 set. So he's renovated this building and Andy goes to see it because she has enough resources to buy a luxury building despite being an out of work newspaper journalist turned features editor at Runway, which just 20 years later. Just being a features editor, that's tough in the era of title inflation.

[Sean Fennesee]

Let's not scold Andy Sachs, please.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, but I just, I want more for her.

[Sean Fennesee]

She's a bitten journalist who's telling real stories in the real world.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, I'm just saying that's tough for her. So she goes.

[Sean Fennesee]

How high up on the masthead do you think she was at Runway when she got that gig?

[Amanda Dobbins]

What do you mean? Like, oh, how high up is features editor? Yeah, so as I haven't looked at Vogue's bastard in a while, but I do think that I guess features comes before. Well, I don't know. Maybe they do it. I don't know. I don't know where it is. Not that high.

[Sean Fennesee]

Maybe it's a. Maybe it's a side by side situation where the story journalists are over here and the fashion team is over here.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, it's always been that the fashion team is just so much bigger and then the beauty team and then you've got all the online stuff. I assume that they've renovated this over time. Okay, but she's not in the top grouping, you know, like with the editor in chief or global content, whatever, creative director, so and so. And I just think 20 years later, I want more for her. Anyway, she can afford this apartment, so she goes to see it. She says that she likes old things instead of new things in the world's most obvious metaphor. And she says it directly to the contractor himself, but it counts as a meet cute. And so they start a very innocuous relationship that is just fine until she yells at him for no reason and goes to Milan. Okay, I guess.

[Sean Fennesee]

Did you want more for Andy's life in this movie?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, I saw paparazzi photos of her filming outside Long Island Bar, which is two blocks from the building in question and a great Brooklyn establishment. And I wanted Long Island Bar in the film. And it was cut. And I assume she went there with this guy, Colin from accounts. What was his real name in the movie?

[Sean Fennesee]

Couldn't tell you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Peter. Okay. Good luck to him. Yeah, sure, he seemed nice, but I don't care about her personal life. You do. What did you want for her?

[Sean Fennesee]

I wanted her to realize all her hopes and dreams. I'm rooting for her.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Don't you think she is?

[Sean Fennesee]

No, I don't think so.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. What?

[Sean Fennesee]

I think she was fired from a dream job because an industry collapsed and she was dragooned for financial and quieted personal ambition. Reasons to return to her origin story and try to make good on it. She was very happy to have some success in that space and reconnect with some people. But by the same token, the movie is slightly cynical about. It's kind of the inverse of the original where the original is like, goodbye to all that. What I don't need are these Quite literally, yeah. You know, this accoutrement of lifestyle to feel like a real person. And I assume that that's kind of the core theme of the book. As a person, as an author who abandoned that space to go pursue what she really wanted to do.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right.

[Sean Fennesee]

But the movie is sort of like. This new movie is like, actually, yeah, it is kind of great to be at the seat of power and to look beautiful and to be styled just so.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But are they at the seat of power by the end?

[Sean Fennesee]

Close enough. I mean.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Or are they working together? Is it a. It's more of like a Found Family movie, which is silly, but they're all.

[Sean Fennesee]

This is actually your Guardians of the Galaxy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They're all, like, there together at the end. And she even has this lunch with Emily where Emily is like, I really wanted to be friends. Which. What? That's the second biggest sin of the movie.

[Sean Fennesee]

Just a completely false note. Completely false. We were just like, no, I love Emily Blunt, too. So I was like, I'll roll with this.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But not a real that. It's so hard to get her in the same frame as all of these people. Which is always a sequel problem. Right? Because characters would have moved on, but, yeah, it didn't make sense. But it does feel like the movie. And it's probably just because of that, like, sequel mandate that we have to get them all back together, that the reason we want to get them back together is because they all want to be together.

[Sean Fennesee]

You know, Can't Andy just try to go work at the New York Times or the Atlantic? Like, why are we pretending like it makes any sense for her to go work at Vogue?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I. You're right. But even that is revealed, as it's revealed later in the movie, that it was Stanley Tucci's character, Nigel, who suggested that she be hired because she's always been his number one, and that's really meaningful to her.

[Sean Fennesee]

Had they spoken to one another in 20 years?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't think so. That's a bit curious and also unrealistic. So I agree with you. But the movie really does seem to. This is why I'm like, it's kind of a Gen Z movie. It's about. It's all forcing them together to be like, love each other.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. Gen Z loves when you speak for them. I've learned that that's something they really enjoy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

This episode is brought to you by Apple and at&t. Scroll long enough and you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple, watch You get meaningful insights from a very trusted source your body. You can track sleep quality, cardio, fitness and more. Then unpack all the information in the health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health. These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out [e-mail] health Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice.

[Sean Fennesee]

Any other thoughts you want to make Any box office predictions for this movie?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No. I want to do things that I learned about the Devil Wears Pride at Universe that I didn't know.

[Sean Fennesee]

Fire away.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Number one, Miranda drinks, which makes sense. It does. But I'm not sure I expected to see a scene of Miranda Priestley in the Hamptons. And they've recreated Anna Wintour's mastic estate pretty faithfully according to at least photographs that I've seen. We're in deep cut territory here and so she's just in the kitchen pouring and like telling Andi about her ambitions. Two things I never really expected to see happen. Also in that scene, the third false note of the movie, she's wearing Pumas.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. No, I thought you wrote down Stan Smith's. Was it actually Pumas?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, I investigated it because it had the little blue back, but they were flatter and smaller. So I think they're Pumas.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It went pretty quickly.

[Sean Fennesee]

If they were Stan Smiths, would you feel differently?

[Amanda Dobbins]

But they weren't as chunky as Stan Smiths. They have the very narrow brow.

[Sean Fennesee]

That doesn't answer my question. If they were Stan Smiths, would you feel differently?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't really feel that Miranda is wearing Stanley sneakers to host 20 to 30 luminaries for a lobster lunch in the Hamptons. I personally think that there would be a sandal.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Probably an Hermes sandal. Anyway. And as my as our friend Molly who came to the screening with us, turned to me and said I guess we all have to wear ties now.

[Sean Fennesee]

That was funny.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Which I thought was a really great observation by Molly. Thank you for coming. Also to speak to the event of it all. Molly turned down attending a. Not turned down, but she was supposed to go see Devil Wears Prada too, I believe with a book club and was already coming to see it with me. I have another friend who's like, well, I have tickets at this time. There's a real people are making plans reservation group quality to this movie that I have not seen since Barbie. So to your point, I don't think it's going to be Barbie big, but I think it's going to be really big.

[Sean Fennesee]

What does that look like to you? Have you looked at the tracking?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, I know that it's tracking for 180 million globally on the opening weekend.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay, that's quite good.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's quite good. I mean, what numbers do you want? Do you want what? I think domestic opening weekend.

[Sean Fennesee]

I guess I'd be curious to know where this movie lands. I didn't really do like a Lego sequels comp thing here, but you know, what are some recent ones? Blade Runner 2049, Mad Fury Road and Furiosa. You know, we've got the social Reckoning coming out later this year. It's obviously something that's gonna be happening more and more where I think, especially for grownups, that this is a way to kind of feed a quasi prestigious crowd, but also serve just that childlike brain of. I know what that is. I like that. So I'm quite fascinated by how this movie does.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think it'll also have pretty broad international appeal because of the world of

[Sean Fennesee]

fashion and taking place in Europe.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes. Because I think these are high profile characters and they've also, I mean, they have been serving it everywhere. It has been a very international strategy. Smartly, I think.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. Will it cross $500 million worldwide? That would make it pretty damn big. Maybe. Okay. Kind of fascinating. So, I mean, this dovetails into the conversation I want to have about mile end kicks. But it is something that I have been thinking about quite a bit. A few years back when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out, the animated movie that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg produced, they wrote this long, emotional letterboxd review about it coming for us, so to speak. You know, these remnants of our youth kind of starting to echo deeply in ways that seem cynical but are also very personal. Like that animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie had a couple of musical cues, a couple of gags in it that felt like it was really scratching something very personal. Which seems silly, but you very eloquently illuminated for an hour all of the ways in which this movie kind of tapped into or failed to tap into certain aspects of your personality and your experiences as a person or how you aspire to things and how that may be like you down over time. And we're in this rich moment because of our age and because of the state of the movie business where like this is going to keep happening. We're going to keep having feelings like this. There are plenty of movies over the years where you see something personal happen to a character and you connect to it. Like, I vividly recall with ease the dinner table sequence in Boyhood where they're seated with their new stepfather or mom's boyfriend. And I'm like, that's just like a chilling movie moment for me to watch that and to feel that and to think about the characters at that table. But this is different. This is like there's something mechanized about this that also still kind of gratifies us. And I'm trying to get my arms around the feeling.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Do you mean mechanized in the sense that it is so. I mean, it is so big and broad and certainly corporate and the number of tie ins. And they made a fake Runway magazine that they've been handing out at Cinemacon and. Oh, oh, it's here. Yes, hello, hello, Emily Charlton. And you know, at the screenings and respectfully, it's not a very good magazine. You know, they've done tie in articles. The Lucy Liu character is in there. The ads that are inspired by the original memes are much better than the, you know, kind of Spawn Con features that they've done to tie into the movie. But yeah, it does have like a fake orchestrated quality to it, which has been the source of most of my anxiety about this movie. I gotta be honest, I feel fine on this one. I mean, it's a little strange. And with respect to ge, I'm not gonna go buy a new appliance. I don't need a new appliance right now. And most of the tie ins and the merch and the marketing stuff is just. Has not really been for me, but the fact that it's considered valuable enough to spend all that time on it, and it does mean that more time and money was spent on the thing itself. So I get to have a fun time watching something as opposed to that money and time and all that marketing stuff being spent on a bunch of things I don't care about.

[Sean Fennesee]

Right.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's a new sensation. But I'm okay. If it were really bad, I would obviously feel differently. But it's not.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, it's not really bad. It is a little bit duplicative at times, and it also is a little bit of a downer at times. But it's very watchable and entertaining in a way that you don't usually expect from a movie like this. You know, I think this movie has a kind of like action figures quality for you. And a lot of the things that you enjoy, where it keeps popping up in most of the movies that I'm referring to are about totems of my youth comic book Characters this. In June we'll have Masters of the Universe and my own kind of personal. I don't know about anxiety, but just kind of like that personal cringe of like, ah, this is a thing I loved. And now it's being made for people 40 years later. There's something very odd about that sensation. But this movie Mile and Kicks to me is probably the closest that I'll get to the feeling that you have with the Devil Wears Pride. Right where Chandler Levesque wrote and directed this movie that is clearly very autobiographical about her experience working in the world of music journalism and working for music magazines like me. She worked for Spin for a period of time. She went back to Canada and worked for local music magazines and reviewed records. And her character in this film, played by Barbie ferreira, attempts a 33 and a third book. I never wrote one of those, but I certainly thought about it and I certainly thought it was important to write one of those.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Who would you have wanted to do?

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, that's a generous question, I think. Probably Check your head by the Beastie Boys I think would have been interesting.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I would have to talk about it for forever.

[Sean Fennesee]

I know what a shameful moment that was. There's any number of interesting albums I would have liked to have spent time on. But you know, this movie is like, Is Francis Hametes Almost Famous? It's a very personal coming of age story about a young woman trying to find love, trying to be professionally successful, obsessed with music, obsessed with the culture of music. But then the closer you get to it, the more you realize that the people that are inside of that world can be kind of shitty, can take advantage of you, can treat you poorly. I didn't have the exact same experiences that the Barbie Ferreira character had. I'm obviously not a woman. But to see music journalism circa 2011 and like, kind of like the shithole career that that was, you know, the way that you were paid for things, the things that you got so excited about getting free CDs, going to go to, going to go to a show. At the time I was having, the time of my life I wasn't having. I made all my best friends during that period of my life. I to this day love music and think about it all the time. But it also shows just kind of like how dingy all that is and how it's the opposite of the divorce product where there's no glamour.

[Amanda Dobbins]

True, yes. And you find yourself just standing around cubicles with groups of men trying to get a word in edgewise. And that doesn't happen. I saw a lot of myself in this movie, even though I never worked specifically at music magazines. I worked at various websites and more general interest magazines. But I knew that's when I met all of you guys was kind of at the tail end of that time when you were growing up. And it's like it was incredibly familiar from the perspective of being the young woman who doesn't have things figured out in this world and has a lot of interest, but her interests are similar but not the same as all the men. She gives a great speech at the end that really, really spoke to young and old Amanda. Just the ways in which you have to feign interest in what's considered quote, unquote, cool. And then you have all these other things on the side that, you know, basically like, aren't acceptable for the canon, which is true. Devil Wears Prada being one of them. So, you know, it's a full circle moment. And now this is Devil Wears Prada is finally being accepted, even though it's for girl stuff. Thought it was very, very charming. Is there really not a 33 and a third on jagged little Pill?

[Sean Fennesee]

I don't know.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I haven't googled and I can't find it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, that is the. The Alanis Morissette album is the one that Barbie Ferreira's character wants to write and plans to write. And then things happen along the way. I think I had very similar experiences. I'm not sure how much I like, feigned my taste per se, but I certainly felt very intimidated in those circles. In 2000, the summer of 03, I was an intern at Spin, and that was a very, to me, a very hallowed period of time at that magazine because of all the people that worked there, many of whom people know, Chuck Klosterman was working there at the time. Siah Michael was the editor in chief. Karen Ganz, who's at the New York Times now, Alex Papademus, David Itskoff, John Dolan, Charles Aaron, who I idolized a ton of magazine writers and editors who knew I thought everything about everything and whose taste was superlative. And I was really, really intimidated. And I'm really. I have no shortage of ego, but I really didn't know how to talk to. I was afraid to talk to those people. And I wish I had spent more time talking to them. It's like very. I always think of it as very fortunate that later in life I got to be friends with Chuck and got to know him because I just loved his writing so much and the way that he thought about things. But I completely related to the experience that that character is having in that way. And that sense of, like, how do I contribute in any way that makes me useful? Which is such an insecure feeling, but is a very real feeling when you're in these scenarios and you're a young person and you don't know if you totally have anything to add. And then you get older and you do a couple of things for yourself that you feel happy about and you kind of shed a lot of that anxiety. So it was really interesting to talk to Chandler as somebody who clearly has figured out who she wants to be or at least in part what she wants to be doing with her time and is not afraid to just say, I just said out loud that I like things I didn't like. And, you know, there's a certain modicum of bravery and honesty about doing that that I really appreciated.

[Amanda Dobbins]

There is also a romantic subplot in this one that unlike Devil Prada 2 is perfectly handled and recognizable and archetypal in a way, but also specific and funny, and you're rooting for it to resolve in the right way. I really. I really dug this. I was very charmed by it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Stanley Simons plays the lead singer of the fictionalized Canadian indie band. And, you know, I guess this is around the time of, like, clap your hands. Say, yeah, maybe like that era of indie pop rock. And that guy is giving one of the most accurate performances I've ever seen. That is a dude I knew.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's so funny.

[Sean Fennesee]

That is a guy who is in bands that I covered, and he's really, really, really funny. The other thing, too, I mentioned this in the physical media High Council episode that is coming later this month. But Juliette Gareppe, the actress from Red Rooms, is in this playing a completely different person. And I was like, who the fuck is that? She can also be like this. She's kind of doing a Julie Delpy kind of quality to her character that I really enjoyed. I really liked this movie. You know, I really enjoyed Roommates as well. I don't know if you got a chance to see that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I hadn't seen this yet.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay. This is the other movie that Chandler directed which is stars Sadie Sandler, Adam Sandler's daughter, and Chloe east from the Fabelmans and Heretic, who an actress I have stock in. Very goofy Happy Madison movie just told with female characters instead of older male characters about two girls who become roommates at college and seem like they're going to be best friends forever. And then maybe, clearly they're not. And what happens from there? Found it very enjoyable and it was really cool hearing Chandler talk about the ways in which she got the opportunity to do that and the relationship that she now has with Adam Sandler, of all people. So I hope people check that out. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that. Bullspend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn Ads generates the highest roas of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads you can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull. Spend advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com thebigpicture that's LinkedIn.com thebigpicture Terms and conditions apply.

[Amanda Dobbins]

This episode is brought to you by Apple and at&t. Scroll long enough and you'll hear it all. Miracle diets, fitness trends, you name it. But with iPhone and Apple Watch, you get meaningful insights from a very trusted source, your body. You can track sleep, quality, cardio fitness and more. Then unpack all the information in the health app on iPhone to get a picture of your overall health. These health insights are developed with clinical experts from start to finish. Find out [e-mail] health Apple Watch is not a medical device and should not be used as a substitute for professional medical advice.

[Sean Fennesee]

Very quickly, the state of music criticism.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, good, Bad. Thumbs up, thumbs down.

[Sean Fennesee]

No idea.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Where are you?

[Sean Fennesee]

No, I haven't been reading a lot of it. I respect people who do it. It's some of the hardest easy work you can do.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think it's quite hard. Was never on my aspiration board.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's pretty tricky. I'm relieved to not be thinking about it too much. You think I should write about music in the newsletter?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think you should write about whatever you want to write about. Are you glad to be writing again? That's the other way in which I don't relate to Andi. She's just like up all the time writing and I was like, no, no, no.

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, I do love that feeling.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Not for me.

[Sean Fennesee]

I do. Yeah, I do.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm happy for you.

[Sean Fennesee]

I. It's so hard, which. It sounds like the whiniest thing ever when writers talk about this, because it's like, well, don't do it. If you don't want to do it, don't do it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Quite literally how I felt.

[Sean Fennesee]

And I understand that. But there is something specifically, even with this new experience that I'm having where when something is published, it's tremendously gratifying in a way that this can't be. In a way that other stuff I do professionally can't be.

[Chandler Levesque]

Okay.

[Sean Fennesee]

So I'm liking that part of it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm glad.

[Sean Fennesee]

Which is kind of how I felt, you know, when I was writing in 2006.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I need you to be doing more things that you feel happy and gratified by and, you know, less threatening to move to the Mosquito Coast. So let's just get to a place where we're enjoying what we're doing.

[Sean Fennesee]

Part of the Mosquito coast thinking is like, this is something I can do from the Mosquito Coast.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Sean Fennesee]

You know what I mean? I don't need anything else to do that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Do they show movies with the regularity that you.

[Sean Fennesee]

Maybe not, But I have 5,000 movies at home.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Right. Have you considered that you're gonna get them? What? I can't even. Coming up soon on the High Council, some AV guy insights to be shared.

[Sean Fennesee]

Wow. No spoilers.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Chandler Levesque. For the very first time, Chandler Levesque is here with not one, but two feature films. We're going to talk about both of them, but I watched Mile End Kicks first because I am also a recovering music journalist. And this is a very interesting, sometimes very sad vocation. And I think you captured some of the sadness in that vocation in your film. Just tell me a little bit about why you pursued that line of work before you started becoming a film director.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah, I mean, you were kind of my ideal audience for the movie. I was like, what is Sean Vanity gonna think of this film? And then you just posted on letterboxd. One word. Uncanny.

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, it is. I mean, it is, like, eerily accurate, both in terms of, I think, the perspective of the characters, the scene, and just the general angst in the relationships. Like, I thought you got all that stuff so. Right.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. Because I think you were writing for Spin when I was interning there under the great Charles Aaron.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes. And Kyle, one of my earliest mentors.

[Chandler Levesque]

God, the coolest person just the smartest guy ever am of all time, a great writer. And so, yeah, I certainly like idolize you and Chuck Klosterman and all the roster things.

[Sean Fennesee]

Oh, don't put me in that league, please. I was a lowly 20 something back then, Riley.

[Chandler Levesque]

And there's so many great writers.

[Sean Fennesee]

Karen Ganz, you have nice tributes to various music writers in your film, actually. Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

Little Easter Eggs.

[Sean Fennesee]

I love that.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I mean, other than Almost Famous, I don't think it's a profession that gets memorialized in cinema that much. Probably because it's something that seems glamorous but is actually just you kind of like hunched over a laptop, looking despondent, like, seeing if your editor will acknowledge your invoice that you have been asking for for a month and a half. And you know, I think I imprinted on Almost Famous when I was 15 and I just like, was like, how do I live in the movie forever? Okay, well, I'll just become the main character. And so as soon as I. And then it was at the same time that I was like, I saw the Strokes on the COVID of Spin magazine in Blockbuster and I was like, how? How is this on the COVID of magazine? Like, I thought I only knew about this Spin. And so I bought the magazine and there was a huge excerpt from Chuck Klosserman's book. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs. And so I immediately got that book. And then I was like, I want to be a pop culture critic. Like, I didn't even know this was a job that existed. But, like, this is what I want to be. And so I emailed Chuck and I was like, I read your book and it completely changed my life. How do I, like, have your job? And he was like, instead of being like, leave me alone, he was like, well, you should start writing for your school newspaper. And he said this really beautiful thing that I'll never forget that was like. And also like, don't worry about what's cool. Like, everyone thinks that, like, this was 2005. So everyone thinks that, like, Paul Banks from Interpol is like the arbiter of cool right now. But, like, journalism isn't about telling people what's cool. It's just about, like, saying what you like. It's all about your own critical taste and your authority. And so that really like galvanized me and kind of set me on this path where I'm like 16, reading Mystery Train in the back room of Blockbuster while eating a pizza sub and just getting obsessed with popular culture. And then, yeah, I followed Chuck's advice and immediately started writing for my school newspaper, the IDIS Herald. And by the time we met, like, two years later, I was like, an intern at Spin.

[Sean Fennesee]

So we have eerily similar paths.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yes.

[Sean Fennesee]

Joker origin stories, Sort of. Yeah. I mean, I was on Chuck's desk as an intern at spin in 03.

[Chandler Levesque]

Wow.

[Sean Fennesee]

When he was out reporting what became Killing Yourself to Live his book.

[Chandler Levesque]

Oh, yeah. That's crazy.

[Sean Fennesee]

So I never interacted with him at that time. He's now good friend of mine. But at the time, I also really, really looked up to him, and he really. I really loved what he was doing. The way that he was kind of, like, colliding pop culture.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

The thing that you just said, the advice that he gave you, that's so resonant, because I feel like it took me a long time to really actually achieve that. Like, get comfortable with my own taste and talk about what I thought was good and why I thought it was good. And I feel like I've read you talk about this a little bit around this film and in general, this anxiety of wanting to have the right opinion and then getting comfortable with what you feel like is the real opinion. And I feel like Barbie's character in the film, too, does a really good job of sort of, like, knowing when it's time to try to fit in, but then also having this voice inside of her of, like, here's what I really like and here's who I really am. I want to hear you talk about that a little bit.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I mean, the movie is kind of about taste and, like, how much I think the canon of, like, movies and music were kind of shaped by my male colleagues who were, like, men in their 40s in, like, hold steady T shirts.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

And me at the time, when I was, like, literally 21 years old, you know, as a staff writer for this alt weekly in Toronto, like, thinking that I was their peer and, like, now realizing now that I'm, like, almost the same age as those guys. Like, no, I was like a dog that could, like, walk on its hind legs, that had, like, cute, fun opinions about, like, I don't know, per ubu or something. And I didn't know the bands they were talking about, and I didn't care about Bellatar movies, but, like, I felt like if I learned all the right, like, nouns and verbs, then they would kind of welcome me into their inner circle.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, it's like a secret society a little bit where you want to feel

[Chandler Levesque]

like you're of weird guys in fedoras.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

And why did we look up to them so much? I don't know. I don't. Some of them are people that I really care about, but some of them too, I was like, like, why was I interested in that person's opinion in any way when they don't. We actually didn't have that much in common, even though we were pursuing theoretically the same thing.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

And it seems like that's. You were kind of like writing through that idea too.

[Chandler Levesque]

Totally. I mean, I remember Chuck saying something, I don't remember where, but he said something about how like all criticism is autobiograph, autobiography, ultimately. And how like when you have an opinion about an album or a movie, it's like you are asserting how that relates to you at that definite point in your life. And I think because I was a really messy woman in my early 20s, I was a lot of the time using the Passion Pit CD to talk about the 30 year old standup comedian who had just broken up with me for the fourth time. It was this weird venting tool or something or mechanism and both being kind of rewarded for that by my editors, but then also kind of scolded for at what point did my writing feel too feminine or self indulgent? And so it made me feel extremely confused.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's not always the most lucrative line of work.

[Chandler Levesque]

You get paid in CDs sometimes, which

[Sean Fennesee]

I love, just as I love being paid in film screenings now, but. So can you just tell me how you made the pivot out, how you decided to pursue filmmaking and maybe not spend your time as a cultural critic?

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah, I mean, I think it was really getting let go from the All Weekly and then living in Montreal for the summer in 2011, it was kind of like the first choice I ever made. Kind of. That wasn't a professional decision. I've been this young professional for so long, since I was 18, writing for the Village Voice and Spin and always with my little notepad at the back of the show waiting to interview Sharon Jones with my dad there. And then she'd be like, do you want to smoke weed? And I'd be like, I can't, my dad's here. Even though my dad probably would have been cool with it and like rushing back to the office to, you know, write the story at three in the morning before my deadline. Like, it was just how I lived my life for like eight years and everything else like became secondary to that. And then when I moved to Montreal in 2011, it was like the first time that I actually realized that I was like a young person and suddenly got immersed in this incredible scene of these underground shows at DIY warehouses where the birth of all of these incredible bands like Mac DeMarco and Grimes and Topps were just starting. And I was like, oh, wow, I can have friends that are the same age as me. I can party all night and I don't have to write an article about it. I can just experience things.

[Sean Fennesee]

So how do you go beyond that into like writing I love movies or I like movies and I, you know, want to make movies professionally.

[Chandler Levesque]

I think it was just like something I'd repressed for so long and it was really kind of, I think a collision of seeing Lena Dunham make girls and watching that like it was kind of my film school and realizing it was the first time that I was the same age as someone who was making art on such a public stage. And her voice and like tone as a filmmaker I like so desperately connected to. And then I think Greta Gerwig also making Lady Bird. I would like watch the promotional video of her being like, now kiss her, Kiss fo. And I just would weep unexpectedly. And I didn't know why. And so I think it kind of felt like. I think I've said this before, but the way that other women know they're ready to have a baby, I was just like, I need to make a coming of age film. It's like my biological clock is ticking. And so I'd gone to film school at the University of Toronto, but I just had completely redirected my focus and dropped out of school. And then my last class to graduate was this screenwriting class that was taught by Patricia Rosama, who's the legendary Canadian director, made this incredible movie. I've heard the Mermaid Singing. That's was one of the, maybe the first female Canadian film to ever go to Cannes. And semi Chellis who ended up writing all the best Mad Men episodes like the Suitcase. And it was just like a total hero of mine. And so yeah, for the class you had to write a feature screenplay. And I think my years of as you can probably relate to writing profiles about people and kind of investigative features. Like that's sort of the backbone. I think for a lot of screenwriting you get 10 minutes with someone and you have to tell the entire story of their life based on a 10 minute call in conversation at TIFF, in a conference room or something.

[Sean Fennesee]

Done it many times. Yeah, I always feel bad. I'm like, this is not accurate, but this is all you've given me. So how Do I do my best with it?

[Chandler Levesque]

Armie Hammer, let's go.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. I read you had an interesting chat with him.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah, I remained intact.

[Sean Fennesee]

You're safe. You're safe now.

[Chandler Levesque]

But, yeah, it was just. I think it just was the first thing that made sense for my brain, and I totally fell in love with screenwriting and just the structure of it and stuff. And then after that, they said I should apply to the Canadian Film center, which is Norman Jewison's film school. Kind of like what AFI is in the States.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Chandler Levesque]

And then, yeah, it was the first time I ever saw a camera. And I wrote three scripts that got, you know, immediately produced, and I got to be involved in all the sort of casting conversations and be on set for it. And I think I was so, like, bossy and opinionated about stuff that it was clear that I. It was kind of like I was like, oh, I should be a director, because I have, like, too many thoughts about stuff.

[Sean Fennesee]

What year was this?

[Chandler Levesque]

2012.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And.

[Chandler Levesque]

And then I started making music videos after that.

[Sean Fennesee]

Ah.

[Chandler Levesque]

So that was kind of like, really the origin for this incredible punk band, Puppy, with Jeremy Shalomrio, who was someone I met at the cfc, and we were dating at the time. He was in the editor's program. So we kind of came together and made, like, eight or ten music videos.

[Sean Fennesee]

Amazing.

[Chandler Levesque]

But at the same time, I felt like I just had never made anything that was honestly my true voice.

[Sean Fennesee]

So I've had, you know, Sophie was on the show recently, and Matt was on the show earlier this year. And I'm really interested in how you can raise funds to make movies in Canada. And if that's specifically how you've been pursuing it, I suspect Roommates was a little bit different. But at least for your first two features, can you just kind of talk me through a little bit how that works and how you are able to accomplish something that often, at least in America, feels very, very hard to do.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting talking to American independent filmmakers, because your whole process of just getting rich people to give you money seems equally bananas.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

I mean, it's kind of weird that the Canadian government, like, gives artists funds to make films, but I also think it's like, we're so, so lucky. And I think the last couple years have proven, like, what an incredibly rich, like, idiosyncratic, you know, pool of filmmakers and talent are out there that are really getting to do things, like, very freely, like, you don't have to pay the money back. I think you better hope Not. I could be wrong, maybe some of it. There's no studio system where they're telling you should cast and stipulating rules on your script. They give you feedback, but you don't have to take it in the same way that Netflix or I'm sure 20th Century Fox would. And it's just very liberating. And I think you're just seeing a lot of these movies kind of enter the world stage over the past couple years. And it's tremendously exciting.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's really cool. Let's talk a little bit more about Myelin Kicks. I found that you had a real facility with the fragility of the male ego.

[Chandler Levesque]

I wonder why.

[Sean Fennesee]

Why do you think that is?

[Chandler Levesque]

That's so interesting? What do you mean?

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, there's like a certain kind of a guy who's a very recognizable guy from that time. You mentioned Paul Banks from Interpol. He was literally the first famous person that I ever interviewed.

[Chandler Levesque]

Really.

[Sean Fennesee]

And I. I think he's a very nice guy. But even some of that vulnerability I felt when I was talking to him when I was 20 years old. I was 20 years old with my friend Ryan Domble, who worked at Pitchfork for years together. He and I interviewed Paul and the guitarist from the band in the basement of the Bowery Ballroom. And I felt a little bit like I was flashing back on that moment. Watching some of the interactions that your characters are having where it seems like this is supposed to be intimidating. And then it very quickly becomes clear that the person that you're interviewing is just as nervous and awkward as you and just has just as many foibles and maybe even more than you do. And how do you protect a person in that situation? Because you feel like you need to do right by their art, but also, shouldn't you honestly portray who they really are and how much empathy or sympathy do you have for the place that they find. I just thought it was very perceptive. The mapped a lot of that in the movie.

[Chandler Levesque]

I mean, I'm just having flashbacks to every musician I ever interviewed. Because you're totally right. It's such a weird power dynamic because, I mean, you know, when you're 20 years old, like you, I certainly. I felt like, completely powerless all the time, like, over my parents, over my bosses, over the people I was dating. Like, could not hold my own in, like, a conversation unless I. But there was something about, like, being on the list and having access and the tape recorder and, like, as a way to, like, make friends and also feel like, you know, it's What? Almost Famous says, like, that you're cool.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, I belong. Yeah, totally.

[Chandler Levesque]

And so. But then, yeah, it's weird to be, like, 20 years old and talking to, like, Badly Drawn Boy, and he's complaining about, you know, how he doesn't even like the sound of his own voice anymore. And you're like, he's being so vulnerable with me, and this is such a gift. But, like, now I am, like, the keeper of the secrets. And, like, what do I do with all this information? Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

I've always thought, like, what do I do with this? Like, I can write it down in a piece, but it's not gonna properly convey. It's like, a real difficult thing to convey. Humanity, too, in those scenarios.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I always felt myself, like, accidentally getting into these very deep conversations with people. Like, remember Wayne Coyne telling me, the lead singer from the Flaming Lips about, like, how when his wife's mother died, they had, like. They were both consumed so much by grief that they just started having sex all the time. And there was the combination of, like, sex and death that, like, gave them the best sex of their life. And I, like, was like, wow. And then I, like, wrote it in the article. My bosses were like, why are people

[Amanda Dobbins]

telling you these things?

[Sean Fennesee]

That's an amazing anecdote, though.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I was like, I don't know.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's such a strange thing.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I think it had something to do with maybe just how unassuming I seemed or something. I mean, I think that's what Joan Didion said, too, that she's just like. When you're kind of like a small person, that's like. I think people just want to tell you their secrets.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people in that situation also really want to do what your character in the film wants to do, which is write a 33 and a third and somehow thinks that that's, like, the affirmation of your insight and that you've reached some sort of critical mountaintop or something because you've written an extended personal essay about a piece of art. That's another thing that I feel like if you're not old enough, you might think that you made that up. It's like, a thing that people do, but in the time, it was the

[Chandler Levesque]

cultural currency of our day.

[Sean Fennesee]

Isn't that quite strange?

[Chandler Levesque]

Absolutely. Did you ever write one?

[Sean Fennesee]

No, I never wrote one. I never pitched one. I certainly thought about pitching quite a few, but I didn't have the gumption that Barbie's character has in the movie.

[Chandler Levesque]

Well, neither does she, ultimately.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. Yeah. Was Alanis, like, a lodestar for you, being from Canada?

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I mean, I remember just being on the playground and someone, like, coming over to me and just telling me that they'd read this article about this woman from Canada who was 19 and made this album, and she's really mad, and she, like, talks about having sex and has a lot of. It's swearing. And I was like, I got. I gotta get my hands on this.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like.

[Chandler Levesque]

And so I, like, after school, just, like, begged my mom to, like, take us to, like, the big box, kind of, like Canadian equivalent of a Best Buy, and, you know, listen to, like, the album on, like, little, like, in one of those little, like, players where you can sort of preview the song.

[Sean Fennesee]

The Listening Station, which I'm so nostalgic for now. Those are nice.

[Chandler Levesque]

I would kill for a listening station. And then I. I begged her to buy me the cassette, and then we put it on. I remember we were in Brantford, Ontario, and my. My mom had a minivan at the time, like a Forest Green 1996 Wood Windstar. And my sibling was in the backseat, probably like, three and a half years old, in, like, a, you know, baby's chair, car seat. And, you know, I hit play. And, like, you ought to know, it's the first song on Jagged Little Bill. And immediate Alanis is like, would you go down on me in a theater? And my mom is like, what did you want me to get you? And I had no idea what she was talking about. But I was also like, this is the prophecy of what my future is gonna be. There's something about this album that is telling me what it's like to be a woman. And even though my problems are having attention deficit disorder and having a messy room and my mom not letting me watch Power Rangers with my brother anymore because we got too violent, this. I relate to this so hard.

[Sean Fennesee]

It's funny, though, just hearing you tell that story with the level of specificity that you have. It was very obvious that you have to tell stories, right? That you remember where someone's sitting, what they're wearing, what they were doing at the time, what you were doing, where you were when you heard about something. Not everybody can do that, too. That's kind of a weird superpower where you.

[Chandler Levesque]

Oh, thanks.

[Sean Fennesee]

And so to make such specific recent history period piece is such an interesting feat. I'm always so intrigued by them because this is it. It's 2011. Is that when the film is set? How did you think about putting that on screen and making sure. That it was right.

[Chandler Levesque]

Well, at first it was just because, you know, that's the summer that I lived in Montreal. And when I wrote the first draft of the script 10 years ago, it was only like 2015.

[Sean Fennesee]

Right, right.

[Chandler Levesque]

And then over the, you know, decade that it's taken me to make the movie, suddenly that's like a codified aesthetic on TikTok known as indie sleaze.

[Sean Fennesee]

Indeed. I never would have imagined that's what it would have become.

[Chandler Levesque]

I know. So it's very interesting. I mean, I think I'm always making movies to be back in the memory of something. I think the reason I made I like movies was because I wanted to be like, have the sensation again of pushing the little video store cart full of jangling VHS tapes along a carpet and rewinding things and like, just all the kind of, like tactile, like, things that I remembered about, like working at Blockbuster in high school. And it was like, very exciting to me to like unearth all these like, like the Jones soda, you know, pops that, that we had that I remember like stacking in the back of the mini fridge and. Yeah, and then with this film, yeah, it was more like, oh, wow, there's those, like, ill fitting disco shorts again and, you know, the specific vape that my friend Tyler used to smoke out of and stuff. And so I think I was really blessed with a great costume designer, Courtney Mitchell, who's a genius, and production designer, just Hart, who's extraordinary. And even just to look at the aesthetics of indie sleaze photography, that was kind of personified by Vice magazine and the Cobra Snake.

[Sean Fennesee]

Cobra Snake, of course, who shot all

[Chandler Levesque]

our promo pics for Mylene Kicks.

[Sean Fennesee]

Really?

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. Like Jeremy Cox, my DP, who just shot A24's backrooms and is an extraordinary collaborator. It was just fun to be like, okay, what does this look like aesthetically? How do we make a memory and step back in time a bit?

[Sean Fennesee]

I did. I said uncanny for a reason. It's really quite something. So how did roommates happen?

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. So I was in the middle of editing Myelin Kicks, teaching a screenwriting class that I had originally taken at the University of Toronto, teaching the same class that made me want to be a filmmaker.

[Sean Fennesee]

Can I ask you something about that time then, when you were teaching that class, were you thinking, I'm going to be a professional movie director for my life and I'm going to be successful and be able to sustain myself, or were you thinking, I need to have multiple irons on the fire at that time? Just to pay the rent or whatever.

[Chandler Levesque]

I have like, no, I don't conceive of my career in any way. I just think of it as like a random amount of things that just keep happening to me and I continue to fail upwards. And that's great.

[Sean Fennesee]

We are different in that way.

[Chandler Levesque]

I feel like I was so much more like craven and ambitious when I was like 18.

[Sean Fennesee]

So like, what, what phone call did you receive? What email did you get? What, what happened?

[Chandler Levesque]

So, okay, it was 10 o' clock at night. I was marking my students assignments at this 24 hour diner in Toronto called the Lakeview. My agents call me and they're like, chandler, when we sign you, who is the person you said you most wanted to work with in the entire world? And I was like, Adam Sandler. And they're like, yeah, well he saw like movies. And I'm like, what the fuck? He saw like movies. Like, what are you talking about? And they're like, yeah, he really liked it. And he has this project that he wants to shoot this year. It stars his oldest daughter, Sadie, and it's written by these two really funny SNL writers, Kira o' Sullivan and Jimmy Fowley. And if you like it, you know, read it tonight and if you like, he's gonna call you on the phone tomorrow. And I, like, was just utterly stunned. Like the, I didn't even like the fact that he watched this movie that, you know, we shot in the Pandemic that didn't have lights and had my parents as extras and my elderly dog like in the movie, and my brother doing an Adam Sandler impression of the Hanukkah song when they watch snl, all of this was just fundamentally shocking. But the movie's also kind of a love letter to Adam Sandler. So maybe I secretly manifested it in some way.

[Sean Fennesee]

Did you? Well, I want to hear what your conversation with him was like. But did someone slide it to him and say, hey, there's some Sandler stuff in here? How did it come across as Transom?

[Chandler Levesque]

I think one of my, I think Adam has a lot of agents at wme, so one of his agents is my agent. So it was a Nepo agent situation.

[Sean Fennesee]

That's wonderful. But did he watch it and say, oh, this is gonna make sense?

[Chandler Levesque]

Also relieved that they finally got me a job after like four years.

[Sean Fennesee]

So what did Adam say?

[Chandler Levesque]

So, okay, so I'm freaking out. I read the script in one sitting. I'm really blown away by how funny and kind of surprising it is. It really is like a, you know, it had, like, this kind of honesty and, like, felt like a real reflection of sort of Gen Z and what it's like to go to college now. But then it also takes these absolutely insane sort of happy Madison esque turns. And, you know, I was thinking a lot, too, about, like, female comedy directors in the 80s and 90s. Like, women like Penny Marshall and Amy Heckerling and Tamara Davis, who directed Billy Madison. Sure did. And how Penelope saw a music video director.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Chandler Levesque]

And how there was a brief, brief window in time when those women got to shoot.

[Sean Fennesee]

And Betty Thomas.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. Million Dollar Studio comedies. And now that never happens again.

[Sean Fennesee]

So crazy.

[Chandler Levesque]

So, yeah, I just freaked out, went to bed, and then woke up at noon to a call from a number I didn't recognize. And I unlocked my phone and I was like, hello? And then the other line was like, like, chandler, this is Adam. And I was like, hi. And he's like, I really like. I like movies. It's a really fucking good movie. And I was like, oh, my God. And then for like, 15 minutes, he, like, was like, quoting lines of dialogue back at me. And he was mentioning, like, specific edits in the film and, like, performance beats and, like, how I covered, like, a scene. And I was just utterly shocked. Shocked that, you know, this is, like, my idol. Like, I used to walk around my high school listening to the Punch Drunk Love soundtrack of my, like, CD player, just, like, imagining that I was in the movie. Like, I just worship at the throne of Adam Sandler. So for him to see me as, like, a peer and an equal was, like, absolutely astonishing. And then, yeah, we talked for, like, an hour and a half, and, you know, three days later, I was, like, being flown to BE to LA to pitch the movie to Netflix with him. And we, we, like, sat in this, like, hotel room in Beverly Hills, and, you know, luckily I'd made a lookbook in, like, the three days that I had to prepare. But it was just, like, incredible and so surreal. Like, kind of talking about, like, our shared vision for the movie. And one of the Netflix execs was like, that's the calmest, like, I've ever seen someone in a pitch meeting. And I was like, Adam really grounds me, but I think it was just because I had, like, felt like I'd be fully gone to, like, a different, like, you know, timeline or multiverse or something. Like, this was not my life. So, you know, I was in, like, Canadian micro budget timeline. You know, I read that, like, the gap for most women between their first and second features is like eight years. And so I was like, perfectly content to kind of like, you know, I'd already made, like, MyLink kicks, like, very quickly by those standards. So to make another and have that jump was just utterly surreal.

[Sean Fennesee]

So I imagine it had to have been somewhat challenging because you're making a movie for a big streaming platform. Plus, also, the producer of the movie is Daughters in the film. That's complicated. Plus, you're making a movie honestly about a generational experience that you're now a little removed from.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

I don't know where you want to start from those challenges, but what was the most trickiest thing to unlock in making the movie?

[Chandler Levesque]

Well, I mean, there's just so many things. There's like, you know, he. I felt like he recognized the potential in me as a filmmaker that, like, I didn't even know that I had, you know, because I read that script and I'm like, okay. There's like a whole, like, pyrotechnic, like, fire scene. There's, like, crazy stunts at the ropes course. There's, like, a turkey that explodes. There's like, you know, this giant ensemble, these big spring break, like, set pieces where, you know there's going to be, like, 300 extras. Like, I don't know how to do this, but Adam's like, oh, you'll figure it out. No problem. You got this. And booby. I'm like, okay. So I think it was really Adam's belief in me that just kind of made it possible. And then, of course, you work with such a great group of collaborators that you realize that the key to doing that is, oh, well, you work with an incredible stunt choreographer like Mark Fisher or our cinematographer Maria Ruschi, who shot Shiva Baby in Bottoms, was just so impeccably smart about how to break something down and make something funny comically in an image and really innately elevated kind of what was on the page with really strong cinematic ideas. And then, yeah, then it just became fun to have all these resources to do crazy Magnolia inspired, like, crane shots and, you know, Steadicam oners and have, like, four cameras for, you know, on a day. I mean, it was like, unbelievably, like, I felt like I kind of suddenly was, like, doing my PhD in, like, studio comedy filmmaking. But everyone around me was so experienced and supportive, and, you know, it becomes, like, very collaborative. And I think one thing that is interesting about Adam that people might not think is, like, he really is, like, the auteur of his own movies. Like, you know, and no one thinks of those movies happy Madison film is like being directed by the director. They're Adam Sandler movies and they have a very specific, like, altruistic kind of like themes, like aesthetic, like actors that kind of, like, travel through his work.

[Sean Fennesee]

All that stuff is. Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

Like, you know, an Adam Sandler movie when you see it.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yep.

[Chandler Levesque]

And he's, like, working in the same

[Sean Fennesee]

tradition that, like, Jerry Lewis was working in, that Buster Keaton was working in, where it's just like they've built a Persona and. No, everything is Marx Brothers. Yeah, exactly.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. So you, as a. You are, like, co directing the movie with him, you know, and one thing that I was really surprised by was that much, you know, Runway he gave me to kind of have my own ideas and instincts about things. And if I, you know. But yeah, of course it's like very, like, specific, you know, when it's like your daughter's the lead actor of the movie. And, you know, sometimes I had instincts about how I wanted her to play the scene, and sometimes he had different instincts. And then I'm like, what are Sadie's instincts? And so I think we all had to kind of just try different options and explore from different angles. And that was kind of an interesting process because I think I've been so monolithic in my other two movies.

[Sean Fennesee]

I feel like she gives a really good performance and it's a hard character.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yes.

[Sean Fennesee]

There's a lot of turmoil in that character. And she's not always likable, but she's not always the hero. She has to be flawed. It was like, unused. Usually psychologically rich for a Happy Madison movie in that way. Conversely. Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

I feel like the tone is like Lady Bird meets TV Halloween in a way that I'm very proud of.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes, you nailed it. I couldn't have said it better. I also have a lot of Chloe East's stock.

[Chandler Levesque]

Oh, my God.

[Sean Fennesee]

As a Fabelman's boy. I think she's really quite special as a performer. And she's playing a real old school, 80s style movie character where it's like, why is this person such an asshole? But also something else is going on under the surface, and we want to know what it is.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

She's so charismatic at the same time and really likable. It is kind of like, to me, like a Regina George level performance. And I just think she's such a phenomenal actor. And Sadie, too. I mean, I can't imagine finishing your first year of college when you're about to star in a $30 million movie and just handling it with that Degree of, like, aplomb and preparation and just kind of like professionalism and just like, commitment to really going there, you know?

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. So the two films which came out on the same day, which is crazy, which we couldn't. Could we locate a single person who's released two feature films on the same day.

[Chandler Levesque]

We were talking about it. Yeah. I don't think Soderbergh, maybe with Traffic and Erin Brockovich, I think same year,

[Sean Fennesee]

but not same exact day. So, like, same exact day, Spielberg, is that good or was it bad? Do you worry about one blotting out the other? Would you like to have had six months in between? Is it easier to just pack up all this promotional moment up into a couple of weeks of time?

[Chandler Levesque]

I really can't say. I mean, I was making both movies at the same time, so in a weird way, it kind of feels fitting that they're both coming out on the same day. Because in prep for Roommates, I was still finishing the score and sound mix and color. Correct. So I was like on an iPad in a frat house trying to get WiFi to approve VFX shots and stuff. And while I don't Spielberg, when he made Jurassic park and Schindler's List at the same time. Both excellent comps to my two films.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, they're similar.

[Chandler Levesque]

I think George Lucas did the post for Jurassic park to kind of help him out while he's making Schindler's List. And I'm very lucky that my wonderful editor, Simone Smith really stepped in for a lot of the sound mix and kind of post stuff. Cause she. Yeah, she really is my best friend and invaluable. And also just that my producers were willing to kind of accommodate it. I think they realized it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. So now what? They're two very different movies, but obviously they have a tremendous amount of crossover with your point of view. Is there one path or another that you want to try to pursue? Are you doing another movie? What's next?

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah, I think that's a great question. Like, I always considered myself, like, I want to be like a personal filmmaker, like writer, director. And, you know, if I could make like two personal kind of semi autobiographical films a decade until I'm 80, like, that would be just great.

[Sean Fennesee]

Wow, I like that.

[Chandler Levesque]

And then when I'm 80, either retire or, like, find a younger, like, host body that I can sort of like being John Malkovich my way into. And so I never thought that I would be making like, any kind of studio movie or, you Know. Yeah. Like, it just. It never, like, kind of occurred to me. But, like, this was such an incredible, like, challenge. And I'm so, like, grateful for the experience and just all the genius people that I got to work with. I mean, every day was like, an embarrassment of riches to direct, you know, Carol Kane and Steve Buscemi and Janika Rafalo. And, like, it just goes on and on as well as this, like. Like, really brilliant young cast. I don't know. Like, I think I'm really inspired by, like, filmmakers like Zach Kreger, who kind of really retain their voice while, like, going to bigger and bigger stages or. Yeah. Or Greta Gerwig, who I, you know, was again, like, curled up in the feudal position being like, I just wanna be who. And especially Matt Johnson, who, you know, like, produced My Line Kicks with his producer, Matt Miller, as well as my producers, Pat Kiley and Julique Rouleau. And really, for 10 years, was telling me, we're gonna make this movie. Don't give up on it. And just to see him work with Neon and go into these bigger stages, it inspires me, I think. I'm always torn. Cause it's funny that Sophie's movie is coming out. Because I always feel like I want what Sophie has. I want to be a Giannis film girly and be having lunch with Ira Sachs and, like, you know, this, like, you know, I remember, like, seeing her, like, take a selfie with Jafar Panani. Meanwhile, I'm like, talking about VFX on a dog's butthole, you know?

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

But it's like, I don't know. No one's path is, like, linear.

[Sean Fennesee]

No, I mean, I relate to you because I think it's very normal to like and want both.

[Chandler Levesque]

You know, I think all filmmakers, like, we all project on each other. And everyone's career seems like it's different and better than ours. And the films I really love are just like Tony Erdman and the Apartment and Almost Famous and Punch Drunk Love. And I just. I don't know, I want to sort of maybe straddle that line.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, there's like a genre blur going on in all of those movies. Yeah, that totally makes sense. I was trying to situate how I like movies in My Line Kicks was making me feel. And it was like a little bit of Mike Lee, a little bit of Albert Brooks, like, you know, that kind of, like, there's some social discomfort, and you've got this really kind of charismatic but strange person at the center of the movie, you know, which, like, I

[Chandler Levesque]

You know, like naked.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah, like naked. Well, hopefully not as devious, but. Yeah. I don't know. I just. I think you have a singular perspective, especially on those movies, so you should definitely keep pursuing that.

[Chandler Levesque]

Oh, my God. Thank you. Well, from one Spin intern to another, you know, I remember we worked in. Did you have to work in this basement that was called the Pit?

[Sean Fennesee]

No, no. In fact, I was working by. When you were at Spin, I was at Vibe, and I think we were in the same building. Was it 215 Lex?

[Chandler Levesque]

Is that where it was?

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's right.

[Chandler Levesque]

You're all the yeshiva schools.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes, exactly. And then we split, and we moved to different offices. Like, a year or two later, you might have gone back to Canada.

[Chandler Levesque]

By that point, I was back in

[Sean Fennesee]

Canada, but that was very traumatic. Cause I interned at Spin as a college student. And then what was exciting to go back to that building.

[Chandler Levesque]

Absolutely.

[Sean Fennesee]

When I got the Vibe job. But then it was not. Felt like things had changed. A lot of the people had left that I looked up to, and things were evolving. And then that's the other thing, too, is, like, you get to the center of this stuff, and you're like, so this is it. This is what it is.

[Chandler Levesque]

Is that how you feel every day, really?

[Sean Fennesee]

I'm just getting. Trying to dig deeper and deeper, looking for the heart of it.

[Chandler Levesque]

What do you mean by that?

[Sean Fennesee]

Just waiting to see who's, you know, what's really gonna wow me, you know, when am I really gonna be knocked out?

[Chandler Levesque]

Spielberg at south by wasn't enough.

[Sean Fennesee]

Well, that was a rare exception, you know. No, it's not about that. It's not about, like, the people that you encounter when you're doing the thing. It's more like when you're inside the machine. What is inside the machine? Which I actually wonder for you. Similarly, when you're getting. Now that. I feel like making a big movie like this for Netflix is a big step in a person's career. It's like a big opportunity.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennesee]

Do you feel like you're a little bit closer to the center of how some of these things work?

[Chandler Levesque]

I have no idea.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. Ted Sarandos was sitting behind me at the roommate's premiere, and I heard him laughing through the whole film. And then afterwards, I shook his hand. It's the softest hand I've ever felt in my life.

[Sean Fennesee]

Right. Not picking up a lot of lumber.

[Chandler Levesque]

See you on the next one. Great job. And I was like, everything is just so surreal to me. I don't know, because I have no expectations. Maybe it's an easier way to go through. I'm sure my managers and agents are like, what are you doing together?

[Sean Fennesee]

You're blowing this.

[Chandler Levesque]

But it's like, I just kind of want to tell, like, personal, weird stories and characters that I love and, like, can't see enough of and kind of just like, continue to make movies and grow and, like, collaborate with interesting people, you know? And I think that's the same reason I loved journalism was, like, you get thrown in these amazing kind of situations that are so unlike your regular life. Like, you know, where all of a sudden you're like, you know, on the tour, on the road with a band, or talking to Nicole Hollis center over, like a buffet at the Radisson Hotel or something. And then. And. And same with film. Like, I'm always like, stepping on, like, a 40 foot ladder to, like, you know, riding on a crane or something. And it's like, so unlike my real life, which is literally just like, looking at my phone.

[Sean Fennesee]

Have you had a chance to meet Cameron Crowe?

[Chandler Levesque]

I met him very briefly at his book launch in LA and I paid $350 to get the extra pass.

[Sean Fennesee]

Oh, okay. I'm gonna try to get you guys in touch. I feel like you should talk to him. He's a very special person.

[Chandler Levesque]

I would be very grateful and respectful of his time.

[Sean Fennesee]

I think the way that you are living the legacy of Almost Famous would probably touch him. I tried to not lose it when I met him earlier this year, but I feel similar.

[Chandler Levesque]

I could tell from his aura that he was wonderful.

[Sean Fennesee]

He's very kind.

[Chandler Levesque]

It was just like the wrong way because I idolized him so much. And I think I'm a filmmaker because of him and writer because of him, and partially a human being because of all of the movies he's made. And so I think I just put too much pressure on him. And, like, he was really nice, but it was like, the wrong way to meet him.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

And Adam had, like, told him that I was coming. He's like, because they're buds. I think he had just, like, texted him because, like, a picture of like, Eddie Vedder's drum set or something, and he's like, oh, yeah, my friend Chaylor's coming. She's a nice girl. And then I went and I was like. And he, like, I met him, he was like, on stage and I went, walked over to, like, greet him and, you know, I was so, like, I've been imagining this moment for, like, 20 years. And he just like, the lady was like, oh, I really like your dress. I'm like, thank you. And then he's like, hi, I'm Cameron, which is also the same name as my dad. And I was like, I'm Chandler. And he's like, where are you from, Chandler? I'm like, toronto. He's like, oh, is Bloor street still around? And I'm like, the largest street in Toronto.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Chandler Levesque]

And then I'm like, yeah, you know, like the Yorkville Museum scene from the 60s. Joni Bishley. He's like, wow, you really know your stuff. And I'm like, mm. And he's like, so you wanna take a picture? I'm like, okay. And then we, like, took this picture. And then I was like, this is gonna be over in 25 seconds. Like, what do I do?

[Sean Fennesee]

That's not. That's never the right way to do it. Yeah, it needs to be a little bit more prolonged experience, you know?

[Chandler Levesque]

But, you know, like, I'm. I'm. Yeah, I'm. You know, I would be. I don't wanna. No one owes me anything. His movies have already given me so much.

[Sean Fennesee]

He should watch your movies. That's the next step.

[Chandler Levesque]

Let's make this a campaign.

[Sean Fennesee]

Okay, Chandler. We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing you've seen?

[Chandler Levesque]

Oh, wow, that's such a great question. I'm racking my brain. I want to say pillion.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

I loved that movie so much.

[Sean Fennesee]

What did you like about it?

[Chandler Levesque]

I keep describing it as, like, heated rivalry meets the office. Like the British officer. Or, I don't know, maybe an Antonioni movie or something. But I just thought it was so funny, so moving, so tender at the heart of it. I keep thinking about it. I think the way that it just. Yeah, I love that it's so audaciously queer. But it also just feels like. Actually, you know what movie it really reminded me of was Johanna Hogg's the Souvenir.

[Sean Fennesee]

Yes.

[Chandler Levesque]

Like, just a formative heartbreak and someone who really transforms out of a very painful relationship but is in some way liberated and closer to the identity of who they really are.

[Sean Fennesee]

So well put. And similarly, like, withholding and mysterious partners who are, like, unable to really give themselves over.

[Chandler Levesque]

Yes. And you're just like, do you see me? Do you see me now?

[Sean Fennesee]

It's a great comparison.

[Chandler Levesque]

Can I debase myself a little bit more for you?

[Sean Fennesee]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chandler Levesque]

And the potential.

[Sean Fennesee]

Why do you think we like these movies? Ooh, let's not do that.

[Chandler Levesque]

I think I made a film about that already.

[Sean Fennesee]

Chandler, congrats on two films and a great 2026.

[Chandler Levesque]

Oh my God. Thank you, Sean. You're a great cinephile. And thank you for consistently repping Canada. We love you.

[Sean Fennesee]

I'm doing my best. Thank you. Thanks to Chandler, thanks to Jack Sanders for his production work, thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for his production work on this episode, and thanks to Sarah Reddy for filling in for us. Next week I'll be talking about Andor, which is It's a TV show.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, I've seen several episodes and quite enjoyed it. But then I had to get on with the rest of my life.

[Sean Fennesee]

I understand that Chris Ryan's gonna join me. Chris has covered ANDOR quite well on the watch. If you want to hear that, you should check it out. But we're gonna dig into that. We're on the precipice of this Mandalorian and Grogu movie. Some tracking came out today. Not great, Bob.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, it could be an issue. Iger in my home. We're also getting ready for it. I am solo parenting right now. So my new trick is in the mornings to corral everyone into the kitchen and get them to eat their breakfast. I just start playing the Star wars theme as loud as possible and everybody runs in and then starts galloping around. So we'll be there. I don't know if anyone else will, but that's okay.

[Sean Fennesee]

We'll be there as well. We'll see you soon.

[Amanda Dobbins]

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[Sean Fennesee]

You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your [e-mail] to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever.