‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Is the End of 'Star Wars' As We Know It. Plus: The Winners and Losers at Cannes.

Summary

The Big Picture — Episode Summary

Episode Title: ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ Is the End of 'Star Wars' As We Know It. Plus: The Winners and Losers at Cannes.
Date: May 27, 2026
Hosts: Sean Fennessey & Amanda Dobbins
Guests: Van Lathan (The Midnight Boys), Daniel Roher (filmmaker)

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Overview

This episode explores the current state of "Star Wars" with an in-depth review of "The Mandalorian and Grogu"—framed as both a conclusion to the franchise’s current cinematic era and an emblem of its creative struggles. Sean and Amanda are joined by Van Lathan for a wide-ranging panel on the film’s meaning (or lack thereof) for fans new and old. The episode then recaps the Cannes Film Festival, highlighting its biggest winners and losers, industry trends, and award decisions. The show closes with a filmmaker interview featuring Daniel Roher (of "Navalny" fame) on his narrative debut "Tuner," his career shift from documentary to fiction, and the lessons he's drawn from both forms.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Cannes 2026 Recap: Winners, Losers, and Notable Moments

[13:19–32:39]

• Palme d'Or Winner:
  • Fjord by Christian Mungiu, starring Sebastian Stan & Renate Reinsve, wins the top prize. Amanda and Sean both highlight its subtlety and complexity, noting the jury’s intent to “spread the wealth.”
    • “It was top two. And it was top one of the films in competition. Eligible.” — Amanda [13:32]
    • “What you think Fjord is, says a lot about you. And I liked it.” — Sean [18:04]
• Other Main Prizes:
  • Minotaur (Grand Prix)
  • The Dreamed Adventure (Jury Prize)
  • La Bola Negra ties for Best Director (noting the upcoming Netflix campaign)
  • Fatherland (Best Director, tie)
  • Best Actor: Emmanuel Macchia & Valentin Camplay (Coward)
  • Best Actress: Virginia Fira & Tao Okamoto (All of a Sudden)
• Jury Politics:
  • Jury focused on “spreading the wealth”—“You don’t see a film gather 14 prizes as you do at the Oscars.” — Amanda [16:04]
  • A late-breaking festival: “A lot of late breaking prizes...Nothing really from the first week.” — Amanda [15:52]
• Notable Trends:
  • NEON maintains its Palme d’Or streak—7 straight years.
  • Renate Reinsve an emerging Cannes icon, “the new queen of Cannes.”
  • Club Kid by Jordan Firstman, the breakout hit.
  • Los Javis (Javier Ambrossi & Javier Calvo) win big and are poised for an extended awards run.

Memorable Quotes:

• “I want to be very clear, we will be calling it La Bola Negra and not The Black Ball...We will have self-respect and we will use the original language.” — Amanda [19:35]
• “Neon clearly the biggest winner of the festival. Their streak of seven consecutive Palme d’Or winners is intact. And I doubted them.” — Sean [22:30]

2. Festival FOMO and Critic Anxiety

[25:56–32:39]

• Amanda missed 5 of 7 main competition winners but caught the Queer Palm winner, highlighting the logistics and stress of seeing the “right” films.
• Sean admits he outsmarted himself by predicting the wrong Palme d’Or winner:
  • “This is just a true thing about me. I am so smart and so stupid. It is the absolute...I think it is part of my appeal as a human.” — Sean [27:44]

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The Mandalorian and Grogu: Is This the End of Star Wars as We Know It?

[33:35–73:01]

A. General Reaction and Emotional Temperature

• Amanda’s Review:
  • “This was incredibly boring for both me and the 4 year old sitting next to me… I knew that I didn't care at all at any point.” [34:39]
  • “His review was, there was a lot of fighting, but not in a way that was upsetting… This seemed like a big nothing to me.” [35:34]
• Van Lathan’s Take:
  • Admits to being "in the bag for Star Wars" but recognizes the film is “a nothing burger”—fun to see as a fan, but “you can't cape for the movie… it doesn’t take itself seriously.” [36:30–37:24]
  • “For me, Star Wars is an experience…and so being inside of the world, there are varying degrees of disappointment that you can have, but this movie is… a nothing burger.” [39:02]
• Sean’s Reflection:
  • Acknowledges the urge to justify the movie mythologically, but ultimately, “There’s a kind of nothingness to the entire thing…because it doesn’t even really change anything about the Mandalorian or Grogu. If this movie never happened…we would not really have felt a dramatic change.” [41:40]

Notable Quote:

• “It's not a good movie because it doesn't really give you anything that shows you, like, growth, development, an arc of progression in any direction, dramatically.” — Sean [52:55]

B. What Does It All Mean?

• Lack of Character Development:
  • The film neither advances mythology nor explores character depth. Instead, it's a sequence of loosely joined adventure setpieces.
  • “There are no characters and no emotion at all.” — Amanda [53:03]
• For Kids or Adults? Audience Confusion:
  • The tone whiplashes between children’s puppetry sequences and violent, high-intensity action. Both sets of parents (Amanda and Sean) share confusion over whether their kids (ages 4 and 8) found the film meaningful or engaging at all.
  • “I couldn't really figure out…who was this [movie] designed for?” — Sean [45:32]
  • “Star Wars doesn’t really know how to reconcile that.” — Van [49:23]
• Fan Service vs. Cynicism:
  • The trio dissect fan service: is Star Wars meant to “activate a new generation of fans,” or simply to hit cynical box office targets?
  • “Once there’s a lightsaber on the screen, I’m serviced.” — Van [65:54]
  • “This is like the death belch of an entire era of movies and TV making, where this is kind of like the best they could do.” — Sean [67:27]

Memorable Moment:

• Alice’s Kid Review (Sean’s daughter, 8), on her favorite scene:
  • “My favorite part was when the ship crashed into the Hutts’ tree home… I did like how whenever they bumped into the villain, they fought but did not talk… and I liked that Grogu was healing the Mandalorian.” [51:24]

C. The “Death of Monoculture” & What’s Next

• Industry Challenges:
  • This installment represents the “end cap on the streaming era,” with box office underperformance signaling a need for Disney to “reset.”
  • Star Wars as a shared cultural phenomenon (“monoculture”) is transforming—or dying.
  • “What Star Wars has to do, or what anything has to do, is segment itself.” — Van [59:40]
  • “My fear of Star Wars is not overabundance. My fear of Star Wars is the wilderness. Because I lived through the wilderness as a Star Wars fan.” — Van [61:13]
  • Sean: “We have 10 times the amount of Star Wars hours than we ever had… and it’s too much… What we should be worried about is… the watering down, the degradation.” [63:47]
• What Should Star Wars Be?
  • Van: “Tell a story that you feel like is important… I don’t need less Star Wars, I need Star Wars to remember the face of its father. His father is George Lucas.” [71:15]

Notable Exchanges:

• “We're in the dirt with Star Wars. We're in the dirt with Marvel. We're in the dirt.” — Van [79:51]

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3. Daniel Roher Interview: "Tuner" and the Art of Pivoting to Narrative Filmmaking

[91:53–127:03]

A. Career Trajectory

• Transitioned from acclaimed documentarian (“Navalny”) to narrative writer-director. Roher discusses imposter syndrome, expectations after winning an Oscar, and how he navigated into scripted features.
• “When you're 29, you win an Oscar… it's pretty sick. But also, it's really daunting… For me, it was very much like, okay, how do I cope with the feeling of what the fuck do I do now? And the way I chose to deal with that was by doing something completely different.” — Daniel Roher [92:34]

B. Making "Tuner"

• He wanted to make something “fun, heisty, crime movie”—very different than his nonfiction work.
• The idea sparked after meeting a real-life piano tuner:
  • “I thought it was a really interesting job… I went to work with him for a day… and I just thought the job was so interesting... That was the genesis and the nucleus of the piano tuner. And then I was like, how can I make this a crime story?” — Roher [109:25]
• Joanne Sellar (PTA’s longtime producer) came aboard, providing “a smooth endeavor” and shielding him from first-time director chaos. [115:28]

C. Reflections on Distribution & Indie Filmmaking Now

• Roher muses about whether good, original movies can still break through:
  • “The prize of the Oscar and the attention that comes with it is that I get to work. That’s the prize. That’s what I love.” [118:25]

D. Last Great Thing Seen

• Roher highlights "Cinema Paradiso" for its emotional conclusion, Sarah Dosa’s "Time and Water," and Josh Safdie’s "Marty Supreme." [123:50]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Cannes Festival Awards and Analysis: [13:19–32:39]
• ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ (Spoiler Review): [33:35–73:01]
• Filmmaker Interview – Daniel Roher: [91:53–127:03]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “This was incredibly boring for both me and the 4 year old sitting next to me… This seemed like a big nothing.” — Amanda Dobbins [34:39–35:34]
• “For me, Star Wars is an experience… This movie… is a nothing burger.” — Van Lathan [39:02]
• “It’s not a good movie because it doesn’t really give you anything that shows you, like, growth, development, an arc of progression in any direction, dramatically.” — Sean Fennessey [52:55]
• “Neon clearly the biggest winner of the festival. Their streak of seven consecutive Palme d’Or winners is intact.” — Sean [22:30]
• "I don't need less Star Wars, I need Star Wars to remember the face of its father. His father is George Lucas." — Van Lathan [71:15]
• Daniel Roher: “I always wanted to be making movies. Documentary was a tributary, the most amazing tributary. I love documentary, I love nonfiction. I will always be doing both.” [94:51]

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Tone, Flow & Final Thoughts

The hosts, true to form, blend insightful critical analysis with wry self-awareness, poking fun at their failures as festival critics (missing the “right” films), reflecting earnestly on franchise fatigue, and refusing to “fan shame” either the diehards or the cynics. The tension between nostalgia, commerce, and evolving audience expectations colors every topic. The Daniel Roher interview is warm and candid, offering emerging filmmakers a rare look into the mindset of a young director traversing the industry.

Summary Takeaway:

This episode is a thorough—and at times elegiac—reflection on artistic cycles: from film festival triumphs and heartbreaks, to the twilight of a “Star Wars” monoculture, to reinvention after professional success. Whether as critics, fans, or creators, everyone is asking: what’s next—and will it be special, or just routine?

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For Further Listening

• Upcoming episodes teasing a review of "Backrooms" (the new Gen-Z horror phenomenon)
• Sean’s newsletter, Projections, for deeper film analysis
• Related panels on "The Midnight Boys," "Rewatchables," and "Higher Learning" podcasts

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Toronto Movie lovers. We are coming for you this summer for the first time ever, the Big Picture is going to Canada.

[B]

The kind folks at TIFF invited us to participate in this summer's TIFF Lightbox series. Christopher Nolan Colon Grand Designs. We can't wait to join their slate

[A]

of programming on July 8th. You can join us for a live recording of a very special draft episode. We're with some friends of the pod, Canadian and not Canadian.

[B]

And then we'll run it back on July 9th with a screening and discussion of one of our Nolan favorites Tenet.

[A]

Now pay attention. There will be special limited pre sales for Big Picture listeners and TIFF members for both of these events. The Priest I'm still pointing the pre sale for the July 8 live show will be on June 3 at noon Eastern and the link will be [e-mail] events. If tickets remain after that, there will be a general on sale on June 5th at noon Eastern.

[B]

Then the presale for the July 9th tenant screening will go live on June 11th at noon Eastern and the link will also [e-mail] events. If tickets remain, there will be a general on sale on June 12th at noon Eastern. Further ticketing information will be available at theringer.com/events soon and more programming details are at tiff.net Nolan see you in Canada. I'm Sean Fennessy.

[A]

I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the

[B]

Big Picture 8 conversation show about Mando and the end of Star wars as we know it. Van Lathan will join us today to break down the Mandalorian and Grogu. Later in this episode, I will be joined by Daniel Rohr, the writer director of the incredibly tight and entertaining new thriller Tuner, about a piano tuner who finds himself entrenched in a criminal underworld. I had a chance to see this movie back at Telluride. I've been eager for the rest of you to see it ever since. If you know Daniel's name, it's because he's an Academy Award winning documentarian best known for Navalny and this year's AI Doc. I had fun talking with Daniel about pivoting to scripted features from docs, how he pulled Tuner off, and where he's going from here. See his movie. Stick around for that conversation. But before we dig into the Mandalorian and Grogu, we need to circle back to the Cannes Film Festival and everything that happened since we left that darn country right after this.

[C]

Did you know about one in three people with plaque Psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness and swelling. Does this sound like you listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away? Trimfya gusocomab taken by injection is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy. And for adults with active psoriatic arthritis, serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms or if you need a vaccine. Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about trimfaia. Tap this ad to learn more about trimfaia, including important safety information.

[B]

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, two, 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're turning your trips into rewards with the Autograph Journey credit card from Wells Fargo. Learn more@wells fargo.com autographjourney Terms apply. Okay, Dobbins, you want to talk Cannes first or movie news that we missed over the 10 days we were gone?

[A]

Let's do movies first.

[B]

Okay, movies.

[A]

I'm following what you have here in the doc.

[B]

I'm Doc Loyal Lucas Kavanaugh. Put all this information in the doc. Shout out to you. Lucas. Um, let's start with obsession.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

So C.R. and I recorded an episode about horror and obsession well before we went on our vacation.

[A]

Right? And let's, let's not say vacation, but well before we went to Europe to see movies and represent this great institution, the big picture, on the international stage.

[B]

That's true. It honestly wasn't a vacation. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. But you know what? It was fun work. And while we were gone, America got obsession fever.

[A]

They did.

[B]

And this very small film, $750,000 Buddhist budget, has earned $68 million in roughly 12 days. And Curry Barker, the writer director, was on the show and talked about his experience. I never in a million years would have guessed that the movie would have become what it is becoming when he and I spoke. You haven't seen it yet. You're gonna see it very soon, I

[A]

think tomorrow, I believe. Yeah. But the box office went up.

[B]

It literally went up weekend over weekend. Yes. Which almost never happens and virtually never happens in a non holiday period, like a non Christmas period, end with a non IP story or a non sequel. So this is like very rare air that the movie is in right now. And it has kind of caught fire on social media. It's got a very young audience thus far. I'm very interested for your take on it because it is kind of a rom com.

[A]

Okay, great.

[B]

Not in any way that you would hope for it to be one, but it's a fascinating testimony to the thing that we've been talking about, about finding younger audiences what they want, why they want it, the sustainability of horror storytelling at the box office. Right now we're on the verge of backrooms this Thursday, Friday weekend. And the fervor for that is at an all time high. We just had a chance to see the movie and we'll talk about it on Friday. So this is just delightful.

[A]

As a film fan, you shared with me that some of the Internet culture that is already developing around it, like people within the movie are breaking out. And it seems to be a whole thing, which I'm excited about. I hope he didn't spoil anything for me.

[B]

I don't think so either. But I do think that we can have an Indy Navarretti conversation. The female star, once you've seen the movie. Other news. David Fincher's Cliff Booth will premiere in IMAX before debuting on Netflix in November, which is going into the slot that Greta Gerwig's Narnia film previously occupied.

[A]

Right. So it gets two weeks in IMAX over Thanksgiving and then will be on streaming services December 23rd.

[B]

So roughly 1,000 screens in North America.

[A]

Here is my question for you. Why does no one else want the Thanksgiving date? Because as soon as the Narnia movie vacated that, we thought, oh, okay, well, Avengers, whatever will now move up and it can dump Infinity Vision or whatever. And they're not moving off December 18th.

[B]

It's fascinating.

[A]

It does seem I'm excited for Cliff Booth. You know, we're. We like Quentin Tarantino, we like David Fincher, we like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. But it does seem like they just took the screens because no one else wanted it. And I don't really understand what's going on with the Thanksgiving date.

[B]

I wonder if there was a tacit agreement when they made the Narnia move for IMAX to hold that space for Netflix that this was always the intention. I think I did speculate that this could happen. You did. And it does seem very logical. I wish it was a month or six weeks and not two weeks.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

But I don't know. Disney and Warner Brothers seem very set on having the Dunesday Showdown. That's Dune with a 3TM, the big picture Dunesday Showdown. And they're not moving. So this is the spot. December 11, also still wide open. There's not a single. There's no major release on December 11th right now.

[A]

What's going on?

[B]

Pretty weird.

[D]

It's.

[A]

It is strange and I feel like there's something that they know that we don't.

[B]

It does feel that way.

[A]

This, I mean, this is nice. It's good that Netflix is putting the movie on bigger screens as opposed to smaller screens. We are, we are pro that it doesn't. It's not that different from a traditional prestige release for a Netflix movie, which gets a more Limited, usually 2 to 3, 3 week run in theaters to qualify for awards and then gets its streaming date.

[B]

I don't know. I'm curious if they're going to have to report box office numbers for any reason if being on IMAX informs that. Because they don't have to report any box office numbers in the other forms of distribution that they do. Even though the companies tend to speculate like how much K Pop Demon Hunters generated. I just, I want this to be, at a minimum, the new normal that these movies that are of this scope and size that they're making are going in this way. And we talked a lot about when they were doing their Warner Brothers analysis, whether or not this would create a new opportunity for Netflix theatrical. I don't know what the downside is. It just feels like they're screaming into the ocean at this point. So I'm hopeful that this means we're moving in the right direction.

[A]

Yes, sure. I hope so too.

[B]

But also maybe not because, I mean,

[A]

I hope a lot of things until they don't happen.

[B]

I like that. This is the third thing on this list. Thank you, Lucas. So I'm seeing here Paul Schrader had, quote, an AI girlfriend who, quote, terminated our conversation. Colon, quote, what a disappointment. I don't have much to add beyond that. Have you explored AI partnership?

[A]

No, I followed the Zach Braff does not have an AI girlfriend, despite what comedians said on a podcast, and then was sent an article about how that actually works in real life when you have an AI girlfriend. But I didn't read the article. So that is kind of where my my knowledge ends. Tough to be dumped by the AI girlfriend.

[B]

Yeah, I don't have a lot of comments about this story. I do think it's funny to say those words out loud.

[A]

It's a great headline.

[B]

The Batman Part 2 confirms its cast and production has begun. How are you feeling? Are you ready?

[A]

I'm excited for everyone. I'm Team Robert Pattinson. Maybe I'll watch the first one again before it comes out. It seems like I still have a little while. Is this 28? 29? Will we still be podcasting?

[B]

It depends on if it comes before or after the Beatles films. I in Batman News watched the trailer, I suppose, for the new Lego Batman video game with my daughter yesterday, and now I'm a little worried that she wants that game. That game featured every single Batman villain and also was soundtracked by Seal's Kiss from a Rose. And my wife and I were rocking out. We were just like, remember being 13? That was very fun.

[A]

While we were traveling, I saw a friend and I saw two friends. One who has a son who is five. He's also my friend, and he was telling me about movies and he said that he only likes one movie and it's the Lego Batman movie. And then he tried to watch the Lego movie, but he didn't like it because it was the Lego Batman. It was not Lego Batman.

[B]

Understandable.

[A]

So this is great news for him and I'm excited.

[B]

More news. Adam Sandler's Grown Ups 3 is in the works. I'm writing and directing this film. Just wanted to let you know it's gonna be on Netflix.

[A]

But what will my part be?

[B]

You're gonna be Grown up number 12, which is gonna be a breakthrough performance. Dion Waiters esque. Matt Damon is in talks to star in the Daniels new movie.

[A]

Well, sure. So everybody's in talks until they're not in talks. We've learned this. Okay, let me know when something's signed.

[B]

Yeah, I'm in talks to have a conversation with Jessica Chastain. Image from Mel Gibson's the Resurrection of The Christ Part 1, sequel to his 2004 film The Passion of the Christmas, has been released.

[A]

Okay, clicking through right now. Skip ad. What is it a picture of right now?

[B]

How's Christ doing in the picture?

[A]

I don't see the picture. Why isn't it in this post? I see an ad for food. What? Where can I see this photo?

[B]

Lucas, that's tremendous podcasting. I'm sorry you'll be seeing these movies. No, I had actually an interesting thought about them. Because the timing of them is kind of strange. So part one is coming out May 6, 2027, which is the same day, the same weekend as the Legend of Zelda, which is like one of the most anticipated movies of all time.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And then the second one is coming out the same day as Star Wars. Starfighter.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I was like, wow, counter programming. Nell is really betting on counter programming.

[A]

I guess so.

[B]

I guess I'll watch them.

[E]

I don't know.

[B]

I have no respect for myself. Next news item, Sam Raimi to direct Modern update of Ventriloquist D horror movie magic for Lionsgate. Are you familiar with magic?

[A]

The concept or the movie?

[B]

The original film. No, the original film from the 1970s stars Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist whose dummy comes to life. It is based on a novel written by William Goldman. The screenplay is by William Goldman. Pretty cool little movie. Interesting that Sam Raimi's going back to it. Not much to say about this. I think that's all the news we need. To recap. Let's talk about Cannes.

[A]

Okay. That's news in its own.

[B]

There was a lot of news.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The biggest news, of course, was the winner of the Palme d', or, which was my favorite. And I don't know if it was your favorite. I don't know if you actually did your proper rankings, but Fjord Christian Monjoux's film starring Sebastian Stan and Renata Reinzva won.

[A]

It was top two.

[B]

It was top two.

[A]

And it was top one of the films in competition. Eligible.

[B]

Yes. And you were greatly relieved because you saw it.

[A]

I did see it.

[B]

And there were a couple others that were catching that email.

[A]

It was a late break in Cannes, huh?

[B]

It was.

[A]

We had to spend the first week, you know, pontificating about Europeans and their existence.

[B]

I did warn you about this.

[A]

Listen, it was when I was available. Also, you couldn't be there, so someone had to go and see what Lesedu was up to. Well, not up to.

[D]

Well, I was.

[B]

I just meant when. When A Nora premiered, I think on the Wednesday two years ago, I was like, I will not be getting ignored at my first can.

[E]

Okay.

[A]

Well, I didn't either.

[B]

Thankfully, neither of us did. Speaking of the film that you were nearly a Nora'd by, which was Minotaur, which. Which premiered while you were still on the ground, but you. You were not able to attend.

[A]

I had other work obligations.

[B]

Getting drunk. Right. Is that what you were doing?

[A]

Recording jam session.

[B]

That film won the Grand Prix. And I think we had talked about how it felt like that and all of a sudden that was really the race amongst the three of those films. The Dreamed Adventure, which is a film that I was not able to stay for. Valeska Griesback's new film, her first film in like 10 years since Western, won the jury prize. Other winners included Los Havis, which won in a tie for best director for their work on La Bolo Negra, and Pavel Pavlikowski for his work on Fatherland. Want to ask you about ties momentarily. Best actor went to Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin campaign from Coward, which you also were not able to stick around for good performances. Not my favorite movie. The new Lucas Daunt film. Best actress went to Virginia Fira and Tao Okamoto, which we may have suggested might have been a possibility for all

[A]

of a sudden, I think we picked it for a Grand Prix or we thought it would be in the top three. And then you sent me some speculation after the fact that I identified this as the. As a possible best actress.

[B]

Smart way to honor that movie. Very good performances. And then Emmanuel Mayer won for a man of his time, AKA Notre Salute.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

A film I saw and did not really enjoy at all and was deeply French about the rise of the French bureaucracy during the occupation of World. During World War II. Just any. What's your. Just quick glance on the way that they gave these prizes out.

[A]

Yes. They were also bored in the first week.

[B]

Yes. A lot of late breaking prizes. La Bolo Negra premiered very late. Coward premiered very late. The Dreamed Adventure premiered late. Ford and Minotaur were midweek.

[A]

Right. Nothing really from the first week.

[B]

Yeah. Other than Fatherland.

[A]

Yeah. So I left because I went to Paris. It's a tough life being me. And I saw a friend there who was asking about Canon, was asking about the awards in particular, and she was like, so is it just a lot less bullshit than the Oscars and is it a lot fairer and more, you know. And I explained, no, not at all. I was like, it's a very different system, you know, and because it's a jurors jury and it's closed deliberations, they're gonna. They're gonna make different types of decisions. But I explained that it usually did feel as though they were trying to spread the wealth that you don't see. See a film, you know, gather 14 prizes as you do at the Oscars, that, you know, you know, like, as. Like at the Oscars, you know, the filmmaker's history, like previous performances at Cannes, et cetera, can come into consideration. Certainly, like the jurors Relationship to the filmmakers or the previous work can also be part of the deciding process, at least as much as we can glean from the press conferences and from rumors. So, you know, in a lot of ways this seems pretty. Pretty can like it does.

[B]

I think the case for Minotaur would have just been that Andrey Sevagnitov had not won the Palme d' or before and that Christian Manjou had won before. And so while there had been 10 previous two time winners of the Palm that, you know, it would have been reasonable in that wealth spreading idea to give Minotaur the Palm. And so it was a little bit of a surprise, I think. Also Minotaur, I would say is very definitive in its political and social point of view, whereas Fjord is a little bit of. A little bit of like a political football.

[A]

I see everybody's getting a little itchy since it got released and like definitely

[B]

been some hard takes against it. I think it's gonna be much discussed over the next six to 12 months.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Some of you have never worked for a Scandinavian company and it shows.

[B]

Yeah, I think what you think. Fjord is what says a lot about you. And I liked it.

[A]

I liked it as well.

[B]

But this outcome is kind of fascinating in that they did not lean in that very clear direction and Park Chan Wook and Demi Moore and Paul Laverty, the screenwriter. And there's a lot of different interesting figures from different experiences in the film business who are making this decision. Stellan Skarsgrd, of course, who we know is close with Renata Reinzva from their work on Sentimental Value. But then with Minutes, you saw that

[A]

she wore his suit or the same suit. Yeah. You caught up with that.

[B]

I'm having an amazing week with Renata Ryan. So just in general, so to your point, what the jury's comprised of and what their experiences are and what they like and what they bring to it versus what the experiences of the filmmakers who've been here before is notable for. Something like the Dreamed adventure. I have no opinion. I didn't see it. Jury prize is usually like a recognition of something special and unique. But isn't most people think of the best director prize, as I understand it, as really more like third prize? And so in this case there was a tie for third prize. You're not a big fan of ties, as I understand it.

[A]

That's true. But in this case, when you're doing it to spread the wealth, it's not like a. It's not a democratic system or not a voting system where you could Just do a runoff. And it's not a sporting competition where you could just have another overtime or whatever, like play to the death. This. This seems fine to me. Yeah, I'm not mad.

[B]

It's so interesting.

[A]

I didn't see La Bolo Negra. And this is the other thing I texted you is I want to be very clear, we will be calling it La Bola Negra and not the Black Ball, even though it was acquired by Netflix and will become one of their awards season, you know, centerpieces and has like a very fun cast who will definitely hit awards season hard. I'm looking forward to that. We will stick to La Bolo Negra. We will have self respect and we will use the original language. We can say it.

[B]

I'm totally comfortable with that. For those of you who have not heard about La Bolo Negra, it is a story of gay men in three different phases of Spanish history. In the early 30s, the mid-30s, and the 2010s, and the ways in which their lives intersect in surprising ways through the Spanish Civil War and a number of other events. There's a lot of kind of literary history baked into it. There's a lot of social history baked into the film. It is a big, bold, chest out, audacious piece of filmmaking, I think very flawed, but very fun to watch. It'll be a rich conversation, I think, on the show as well. I really look forward to you seeing because there's a lot about it that I really admired.

[A]

But I got one of those texts from you. You walked out of it and you were like, I was kind of blown away by this. And then you know that you start thinking through it and not everything totally wakes through. But your instant reaction was very much like, this is a big deal.

[B]

And it 100% is a big deal. And not surprising and probably very smart for Netflix to make it up, being the worldwide distributor that it is, so that people around the world can enjoy the film. The thing about it is

[E]

it is

[B]

so different from every other movie they played at the festival, which was a fairly restrained series of chamber pieces. And one of the reasons why it popped so much for me was because it was a breath of fresh air. It was a big, sweeping war. And so I wrote in the newsletter that it reminded me of Atonement, that it had that kind of the character drama, but then against this huge canvas of battle and history and struggle. And that's a timeless thing in the Oscar race. So I'm excited. It'll be interesting to talk about as we Go along. Fatherland is the opposite. Fatherland is a post war film and has a very restrained, very meditative work about what's in our past and what's unspoken. And also a very beautiful movie in a lot of ways, but literally almost the emotional opposite of what Lobolo Negra is doing. So it's funny to pair them up

[A]

well, I mean, it's a showy filmmaking in its own way. In terms of it is incredibly beautifully photographed as like the Pawel Pavlikowski trilogy at this point. All are. And for all its moments of restraint, it has several very memorable or, you know, funny, or the ending is very beautiful. So it is. Even though we kind of were like, okay, this is a more minor work from Pavlikowski, it's really. It's showing off in a lot of different ways. Just different ways.

[B]

So let's talk about some winners and some losers from the festival writ large. Neon clearly the biggest winner of the festival. Their streak of seven consecutive Palme d' or winners is intact. And I doubted them, and we can talk about that momentarily. I doubted that they were going to have the one, and I thought that that instinct to spread the wealth would have extended to Minotaur, but they got it again. Renata rhymes with the star of Fjord and now the new queen of Cannes. I mean, she really is at the center of so many films that have premiered there over the last five or six years. We just saw her this morning in backrooms and kind of amazing the way that her star has risen in a very short period of time as a non native English speaker and someone who's kind of bouncing between countries in terms of her productions and primarily working with auteurs on honestly, more challenging material. Sure, but doing it right. I really appreciate what she's doing, but

[A]

you know, she's also. She's been lingering like she was in Presumed Innocent for whatever.

[B]

That's true. I forgot about that.

[A]

She's once worst person in the world, which was also a Cannes film, happened. She kind of very quickly became. Everyone's like, oh, I'm interested. I want to know more about her. She also just has a huge fashion following already, so it kind of seems. Did you see that she recreated the famous Justine Trie smoking, holding the palm door. Several people were doing that over the course.

[B]

Did you do it?

[A]

No, I didn't. Because.

[B]

Have you held a palm door before?

[A]

No, because that's the only reason that I have it. I didn't get to do it this can. I wasn't there for the Actual handing of the Palme d'. Or. But, yeah, she's kind of entering meme, you know, or not. Internet girlfriend territory is the way to do it. In addition to.

[B]

She's been in that position for some time for me.

[A]

International cinema.

[B]

Very big fan of hers and so happy to see that her performance in Fjord also is very different, I think, from what you. From the. The girl. From the worst person in the world.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

It's a very different character, and she transforms pretty ably. Jordan Firstman, clearly one of the big winners of the festival.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

His movie was acquired for $17 million. Club kid. And I think to most of the most. Not even most of the North American critics, most of the critics I met during the entire 10 days at Cannes were like, that's my favorite movie there.

[A]

People have been asking me, what was the best thing you saw? And I said, club Kid. And you'll. You will hear a lot about it in the next six months, and you'll enjoy it.

[B]

I agree. So great for him. And then Los Xavis, like I mentioned, Javier Ambrosia and Javier Calvo, who are these incredibly beautiful and charismatic men who directed La Bolo Negra, who, you know, are celebrities in their own right and have worked primarily in tv, have made a couple of films as well, and were judges on Spanish Drag Race.

[A]

Yes. And I believe, also International Drag Race.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I think they at least not up

[B]

on all the iterations of Drag Race.

[A]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but brace

[B]

yourself for nine months of them as well.

[A]

Also interesting for those Javis who were romantically paired for many years, including, I think, during at least part of the making of the Bolo Negra. And then. Or they have since split up, but then they won Best Director together, and now they're on a rocket ship for the next nine months.

[B]

Should be interesting.

[A]

I'm. Listen, it's gonna be great content. And I'm. And I'm happy for that.

[B]

Everyone always says, work with your ex. That's something you hear all the time.

[A]

Everyone also says, work with your ex in front of cameras yourself. Because what's. It's. You know.

[B]

And promote stories about the complicated, fractious relationships between people at times of great struggle. Okay. Losers.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we both lost.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Here's the way you lost. You missed five of the seven main competition winners.

[A]

Main competition. Yes. But I did see the winner of the queerpalm. You did Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. So I missed that one. That's one for me.

[B]

I'm seeing it next Week, so it's going to be okay.

[A]

We both missed the Uncertain Regard winner, even though I had tickets for it, because it was about a family going to Tenerife.

[B]

Is it La Benay every time?

[A]

No, that's Uncertain Regard.

[B]

Oh, La Gradiva.

[A]

No, no, I think you're Uncertain Regard is every time. Sandra Woolner.

[B]

Oh, the Sandra Woolner.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Tenerife.

[B]

This is the thing that you learn when you go to Cannes. You think it's really important to see every competition tight or like I thought it was. And then through the first three days, you're like, why did I skip all of these films in Director's Fortnight and in Uncertain Regard? Those are the movies this year. At least there were more good movies in those categories than there were in competition. And I'm glad I saw the competition movies that I did. But I'm regretful about missing a bunch of stuff, right?

[A]

I mean, the reason why is because we were terrified of having that missing anora moment, you know, like, in any way. Or it was there, and you just didn't go see it. And then it wins the Palm. You feel like an idiot, which I definitely would have felt like. You can't imagine how happy I was when I checked my phone at dinner Saturday night, and I was like, oh,

[B]

my God, I made it. You can't imagine what an idiot I felt like when I saw that Fjord won. Because.

[A]

Because the other loser is you. Who? On this podcast. And I told you in real time, as you were picking Minotaur, I was like, don't do this. You are f1ing it. And you f1.

[B]

I did.

[A]

I mean, it's okay. How can we correct this in the future? Like, what is. Do I just say F1 to you?

[B]

This is just a true thing about me. I am so smart and so stupid. It is the absolute. And I think it is, like, part of my appeal as a human. Sometimes you'll be talking to me, and I think people will be like, wow, that guy, he's really got some ideas. And then other times, people are talking to me, and they're like, why is this guy fucking such a moron? And there is something kind of charming about that. And this is a case where I was, like, in my bones before you were like. I was like, this is right. And then after we saw the movie, I was like, this is it. This is. This is exactly what.

[A]

We walked out, and we had to stop in the middle of the press center so you could get the tweets off and Then, yes, I did. Yes, you did. Yeah. It was in, like, kind of the trade show when they're like, come film in, like, you know, Ireland. And then the last moment, you got yourself a little bit talked out by other people.

[B]

I did. I did. You know, I did. Well, I bought into the narrative of. Of the filmmaker who had not won.

[A]

And that was your own narrative.

[B]

I was. You're right. I gotta believe in myself more.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I gotta be comfort with my own strengths and my own weaknesses. I'm happy for Christian Monju, you know, like, I think people should. I hope people will go back now and look at his movies. Obviously, most people have seen Four Months, Three Days. Like, that's a legendary film from 2007. But Graduation and Beyond the Hills and RMN, these are really, really, really good movies. And he was on the show in 2022 talking about RMN, so I hope that people will dig into his work ahead of what will probably be like, a long run of talking about Fjord.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Leah Seydoux did not win Best Actress. We suggested she might. She had two different movies. Both of them.

[A]

I saw both of them.

[B]

And you're a better woman for it. Sorry to her.

[A]

And now we have some good bits. I do believe that Gentle Monster was also acquired by Netflix.

[B]

It was.

[A]

Which makes sense.

[B]

Hilarious choice.

[A]

Well.

[B]

Oh. Because he said it was trashy.

[A]

It is trashy. And Netflix, you know, has the whole sideline of, like, you know.

[B]

Right, right. Wendy McMahon story.

[A]

Right. And all these sorts of things. And it is just European. That.

[B]

Right. Whoops. In my boyfriend's liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

[A]

It makes a lot. It makes sense. And, you know, I'm happy for Lea Seydou. She put in the work at both films.

[E]

Oh, no.

[B]

I ran over my stepdad with a snowplow.

[A]

Have you ever watched any of those?

[B]

No,

[A]

I haven't either, but many people have, so I guess it makes sense.

[B]

Okay, final can note.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

James Gray.

[A]

Really brutal.

[B]

No prizes. 0 for 7 in Cannes Competition history.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know. It's really. It's.

[B]

What are we doing?

[A]

First of all, we were, you know, we were so excited about it. Then everyone was so hot, and we were like, what's going on? And then no prizes. And we're also just, like, very confused. I don't know why we can't reach a happy middle with James Gray, which is just giving him some awards.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, they gave a man in his time the screenplay prize, and I'm like, really?

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

I know it's a French film festival,

[A]

but like I will say that Le Figaro, the French paper, posted that they were very angry, or they. The headline was they were very angry about the palm pick and that their personal palm pick was James Gray's Paper Tiger. So at least he still has the French.

[B]

I noticed that he had a very high score in the French grid of critics, which is historically the case. But that. That that festival has not been very good to him. Paper Tiger, very good movie. Look forward to talking about that. That'll probably. So now all of these movies enter the atmosphere where they are all going to be at the of festivals over the next few months. And then most of them will probably have October, November, December, January releases. And also probably 40% of them will never come to the United States. And the ones that we missed, we may never see.

[A]

Will people get to see the unknown? I need them to. Cause we gotta be able to reference it, you know?

[B]

I know. I hope so. I hope so.

[A]

I need that and I need the whiteboard to get out there. Okay.

[B]

Some people hated it and some people loved it. I've seen some people say, like, it is their favorite film at the festival and a masterpiece. I'm really right in the middle. I think it has a lot of cool ideas and I'm glad I watched it, but there's some absurdity and dullness to it. But I do think it would be good for the culture of this show to have bits about the young people.

[A]

We need that and we need the whiteboard released. You know, please put the whiteboard in the trailer when you release all of a sudden, which I do also think we could have called Sudan. Like, we can say, but, you know, that's. Yeah, but I guess it's being translated several times.

[B]

There are already so many things that are gonna alienate normal movie watchers from all of a sudden, you know, hey, Ken, we did it.

[A]

Loved it.

[B]

You feel good?

[A]

A plus, A plus. I thought it was so much fun. You didn't think it was. Did you just ask?

[B]

A plus. I mean, how many things in my life get an A plus?

[A]

Okay. An A or A minus if you want. Because we didn't get to the cap.

[B]

We did not get to the cap.

[A]

We did not get to the cap. And I did not go on a yacht. So there's always a.

[B]

No regrets about the yacht.

[A]

Yeah, but I would have liked to go swimming, you know, you going on

[B]

the yacht is like, that's the first act in a Taken sequel, you know, and it's like, I gotta get Amanda back cause she's with some Bulgarians who took her to some foreign island. Anyway, so.

[A]

Yeah, a. But I thought it was a great time and I also thought it was really lovely to just be in a different part of the world watching like very different movies than we normally see. Like, obviously I got a little over indexed on Europeans and their problems here and then and now, but when I was sitting watching Mandalorian and Grogu, I was like, well, you know, for two weeks I was doing something different.

[B]

I had the same exact feelings. And I'm glad you put it that way, because there is something about being captured by a festival that can be really fun. And when things started to get good kind of in the middle of the festival there, where we saw three or four films over two or three days and we were like, this is okay. Finally we've come around on something here. That's a great feeling. So I'm glad we did it too. All right, well, speaking of Mandalorian and Grogu, let's now bring in Van Lathan to talk about that film. Boom. Van Lathan is here. Hello.

[D]

What's up, guys?

[B]

Thank you for being here. You asked on and I love when you ask on this show because it's Mandalorian and Grogu time now. Amanda and I have seen the film. We took our respective children, who are Star wars fans, to this movie.

[D]

Yes.

[B]

I'm gonna give some brief details of the movie and then we're gonna dig right into it. Cause I've got some feelings and I bet you guys do too. So it is directed by Jon Favreau, who is the, I guess the official creator of the television series upon which this is based. It's written by Favreau, Dave Filoni, who is the new overlord of the Star wars universe, and Noah Klor. It stars Pedro Pascal, sort of Jeremy Allen White and Sigourney Weaver. The story is as follows. The evil empire has fallen, but Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. Hate when that happens. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the rebellion fought for, they enlist the help of legend Mandalorian bounty hunter Dinda Jaran and his young apprentice, Grogu. Amanda, I'm going to start with you.

[A]

Oh yeah?

[B]

What are your thoughts on the Mandalorian and Grogu?

[A]

This was incredibly boring for both me and the four year old sitting next to me, so. And obviously they are trying to, if not grab everyone, then grab as much money as possible. And then in the the consequence of that was grabbing no one and not as much money as they would like. So I have honestly no judgment on whether it's, quote, good or bad. I knew that I didn't care at all at any point. And I was interested to the extent that my 4 year old, who was vibrating with excitement when I told him we were going to see this movie and he brought his toy Grogu with him that Sean gave him. And anytime that Grogu was on the screen, he was very excited, but the rest of the time he was just not engaged. And I was a little worried after seeing the footage at Cinemacon that he would be scared because, you know, there was gun violence as opposed to lightsaber violence, and, and people like punching each other as opposed to, you know, lightsabers are fun. He's never scared about lightsabers. But I. And then, and then I didn't even know about the monsters, but there are monsters. Couldn't have cared less. Just absolutely went over his head. And his review was there was a lot of fighting, but not in a way that was upsetting to him or that has caused nightmares. So this seemed like a big nothing to me. And because Star wars is not as essential to my childhood and is because my child was fine with it, I'm not that upset about it. But I'm here to support anyone else who has any feelings that they want to go through, positive or negative.

[B]

Okay, well, what were your feelings? I told you, I haven't listened to your other podcast about this film. So we're coming in fresh. The podcast is the Midnight Boys, by the way, one of the very best podcasts here at the Ringer.

[D]

Thank you.

[A]

Thank you.

[D]

Nice little pew pew there. So look. So there's no way to look at the movie and say that it's like a coherent piece of cinematic art. You can't. Yeah, you guys, it's boring when I talk about this stuff. I'm in the bag for Star Wars. I'm in the bag for it. It is a part of my makeup, my creative and film. Watching makeup is Star Wars. It helped me form and understand story. So whenever I'm in the world, I am having a good time. Whenever I'm in the world, I'm having a good time. But you can't cape for the movie and act like the movie takes itself seriously. The movie doesn't take itself seriously. The movie doesn't try to advance the story of Star wars, the individual character story of Din Djarin or of Grogu in any way. It gives you a slice of their adventure and it hopes that you will be happy with that.

[B]

Right. That's a description of what it is.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Did you like. I mean, I'll share my thoughts at length, I promise, but, like, did you like that?

[D]

Well, so when you ask me if I like it, the question is gonna be for me is, how could I not? And so that's what I'm trying to say. It's like.

[B]

But just any Star wars movie, you would enjoy. Just anything that they served to you, you would say, good, I like it.

[D]

Interesting when you say they served, because I think that's the difference between me and a lot of.

[A]

I think they did not serve. No, as I understand.

[D]

Right. So that's the difference between me and a lot of people. Like, okay, you can watch boxing, and I'm a huge boxing fan. You can watch a bad fight, a cynical fight, a stupid fight, a mismatch fight or whatever, but if you are enough of a boxing fan, then the fact that the fights are on is why you're there.

[B]

Right.

[D]

And so, like, for me, that is the thing about Star Wars. So I don't want to. Come on, you guys. Very serious movie podcasts. Hey, hey, hey, listen. And like. And bullshit the audience. The fact of the matter is, I, for the most part, liked the Mandalorian and Grogu, but I know that you won't.

[B]

Well, okay. I think I've been trying to sort through my feelings.

[A]

Cause this is a defensive pose that you're taking. No, no, no.

[D]

Not necessarily a defensive pose. It's like I've accepted something.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

What I've accepted is that for some reason, the things that I watched first, the things that I watch first have this cynical control over me. People talk about like, howard the Duck is one of the worst movies ever made. Not to me. I know what you mean by yes, not to me.

[A]

The things Coyote Ugly, two thumbs up.

[D]

There's a lot of reasons to love that movie. That's all I'm saying. But what I'm saying is, for me, Star wars is an experience. And so being inside of the world, there are varying degrees of disappointment that you can have. But this movie is, at least from a story standpoint, it's a nothing burger. Right. But it's competently made enough that I enjoyed it.

[B]

Sure.

[D]

And the Star wars that I've not liked is the Star wars that actually isn't at all well made, that's not well acted, that seems a little stale or wooden. This movie, at points, seems like unnecessary and unfocused But I'm never sitting there going, I'm watching a scene and not having a good time with that scene. So that's kind of the conundrum I'm in when I'm talking about the movie. Cause I had fun watching him fight. I had fun watching a brolic hut with shoulders. I had fun doing it.

[B]

Brada.

[D]

Yeah, but leaving the movie, you didn't really take anything with you, which is, to me, the mark of a good film. The mark of a good film is not the experience you even had in the theater so much. It's what you take with you when you leave it.

[B]

You said something interesting that I leapt to when I was writing down some thoughts about the movie over the weekend, which is that this story doesn't really advance anything. It doesn't reveal any additional mythos about Grogu or where he comes from, or even Din Djarin or, like, who he is really as a person and why he's a part of the Mandalore way. It doesn't really reveal anything about that religion. It doesn't. And even a lot of this stuff was in the show, which I know you didn't see. But a lot of the directions that the show sort of pushed some of these characters is not really a part of the movie. And then I stopped myself as I was thinking about these things. And I tend to go down these rabbit holes when I'm thinking about, like, why was this movie valuable or not valuable? How did it get us closer to where we're supposed to be going with the story? And I was like, well, that's not the only thing that matters to a movie. It's not just pushing the mythology forward, but it is about how connected you are to characters and what their actions reveal about their humanity or their alien ness in this case. And this movie doesn't have anything like that. It is just a series of adventures and in fact, just feels like four distinct episodes of the TV show. And I know many people have said that, but it is what it feels like. And it feels like there are act breaks throughout the movie. And so if you just receive it in the way that you're describing, which is like, I'm going to turn my

[D]

brain off, spend time in the world

[B]

to go chill in this place with these people, and to watch this kind of level of craftsmanship, then it's fine. It's like, perfectly okay. I didn't think it was above average. I didn't think it was below average. I thought it was average. You use the word Nothing. I agree. There's a kind of nothingness to the entire thing because it doesn't even really change anything about the Mandalorian or Grogu. Like, if this movie never happened, you could just pick up the next season and we would not really have felt a dramatic change, aside from the fact that one of the characters, his life is threatened severely. But maybe that won't ever come up again. We don't even really know.

[D]

There's only one part of it that I think is useful and was emotionally resonant in a real way, which is. And this is a legit gauge on how much you care about these characters and your connection to the lore. Grogu will live to be 800 years old. His father will die. His father. He will outlive his father. Not like we will outlive our fathers, but he'll outlive his father by hundreds and hundreds of years.

[A]

By his father, you mean Din.

[D]

Din is his dad, basically, right now.

[A]

No, I mean, I saw the movie. You know, parents. Parents come in many forms. Right. Okay. Like, we honor the caregivers. He's your own father, so that's fine. I just wanted to make sure. I knew. I was taught there wasn't like. Like another. It probably is out there somewhere.

[D]

There's probably some things.

[A]

Yeah. How do Yodas, which is what we've named the species in my home, just to keep kids to bring you in.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

How are Yodas born?

[B]

I mean, we don't know anything about this.

[A]

Don't make that face at me. Okay. I'm sorry for asking questions.

[B]

No, it's a fair question.

[A]

But we don't know anything about, like, whale fall face. Okay.

[D]

And it's just.

[A]

I'm just asking.

[B]

There's just there. We only know about three of these.

[D]

We don't really know the name, all of this.

[B]

But this raises a point, which is, like, in this movie, I'm not sure that I thought I was gonna learn about what's truly in the heart of Grogu when they showed him the movie, but I thought I would learn a little something else about this world in some ways and shit. I love an adventure movie. I'm not against an adventure movie, but we don't learn anything.

[D]

You don't. But what I was saying was that there's a whole portion of this movie where Din is incapacitated, and then Grogu gets a little solo journey, and we get to see Grogu slightly, in a little way, grow up, like, live in a world where his dad is not There where he has to save Din, where he has to use his own resourcefulness, where he. And that to me, obviously, cause Grogu is so cute. And also because you know that eventually these characters are gonna say goodbye to each other. There's a final goodbye coming. And that goodbye is gonna be like heart wrenching. And who knows when that's going to happen. That, to me was important for that character, but also for the audience. That was priming the audience for a version of Grogu in the future where Dana's not around.

[A]

I mean, yes, but you have to bring all of that information to the movie. The film itself is not telling you, giving you any of that, either textually explaining where Grogu came from or how Yodas are born, but also emotionally, even in the moments where he's like taking care of what's Din.

[B]

Din.

[A]

Din. That's what we're calling him.

[B]

You can call him Mando.

[A]

Okay, yeah. Well, I noticed that he is, ah, Mandalorian, but they call him Mando. That seems confusing anyway when he's like burying him effectively or creating shelter for him. There's also a joke you know, embedded in that of like he doesn't make it quite large enough. And so it's going back and forth, which undercuts. That's the seriousness of this situation.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

To Amanda's point about taking your children to the movie and who the movie is for. There's a lot of confusing messages being sent because that segment in particular, I think really shows off the kind of puppetry and animatronics that this franchise is very acclaimed for.

[A]

Yeah, he's really cute.

[B]

And a lot of that stuff is done by hand. In fact, the sort of deus ex machina alligator swamp lord who creates some sort of healing medication for the Mandalorian that when he hands him that paste in the little green leaf, that's real. That's puppetry. Right. And so there's something kind of nice and nostalgic about watching a sequence that is made by hand in this movie that is full of all of this digital effects. And that stuff feels like it is, even though it's potentially about death. Like marketed to kids. It's like a sweet, cute Grogu sequence where he is, is getting some agency and has to figure out how to grow up. And then there are whole other chunks of the movie that are full of blaster battles and explosions and really high toned action and crazy monster effects work that is extremely violent. And my daughter thought scary and my daughter doesn't really get Scared of stuff and thought it was very intense. And so I couldn't really figure out was. I think back on the movie, it seemed like it was marketed to 5 to 9 year olds, but it was made for 25 to 45 year olds. But then it also doesn't gratify the 45 year olds who are like, I need my Star wars to have a certain kind of a feeling. And then you look at the movie in full and you're like, what was this? Who was this designed? It's not who was it made for? But it's like, what was it meant to be designed as? Because Star wars is obviously the biggest tent possible, right? It's the biggest franchise that we've ever had. And I'm a little confused about how a movie full of puppets and cute little guys, but is also overflowing with guns, gangsters, monster showdowns, Old school puppetry, but modern VFX shot on the volume

[A]

Martin Scorsese voice work.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Which I was like, okay, I mean, I guess this is for me and I'm here in the theater. But I was like, what? I thought about trying to explain this to my date. And then I was like, I don't really know how to even communicate what's going on here.

[B]

This is an octogenarian Italian American filmmaker who is providing this voice. This is funny because, you know, he made an enemy of Van Lathan when he talked about these films becoming theme park rides.

[D]

Tough Marty, you know, so, you know what is the most interesting thing about this question is this is a question that Star wars can't answer. This for kids, for adults, things, whatever. It can't answer. But it's also a question that wasn't being asked when Star wars was created, which is a reason why I can't answer it. See, when Star wars was first created and the movie comes out, Leia doesn't have a bra on. Okay?

[A]

No bras in space.

[D]

No bras in space.

[B]

So if you're looking back on that huge formative.

[D]

Not huge, but perfect.

[B]

Yeah, well, I wasn't being descriptive.

[A]

It's much like space wait list, you know, it's at the moment in time,

[B]

if they're perfect, wasn't there a T scenario going on?

[D]

All kinds of stuff is happening, Right? I want you to think about it. We all know they make the movie. The movie is not cutting edge cinema. It's actually bleeding edge cinema. Right? So a lot of Star wars now feels like a very safe, contained story. But at that time it was incredibly ambitious. So the Story itself had to be something that you could come to. But I mean, you have a guy in solo murdering somebody because he's a scoundrel, right? The first thing you see, boom. Kills a guy, right?

[B]

That's right.

[D]

Then you have a really scary with a red laser. And all of this stuff is very serious. However, it was more accessible to kids. It became for kids. It was more accessible to kids. Now our expectations for that stuff is a little different. And Star wars doesn't really know how to reconcile that. So the way that they've actually done it is to make stuff that's so cynical it can only be consumed by adults, which would be Rogue One or Andor. And then in other places to try to split the baby.

[B]

Yes.

[D]

It's not a question that Star wars can answer. It's also not a question that used to be asked as robustly as it is now.

[B]

So to me, because you have a generation of pundits such as ourselves, who grew up on this stuff, who are reckoning with it in real time, but

[D]

also because I think that media has changed in this time to where we've had stuff like was Saved by the Bell for kids. I certainly watched it as a kid. Jesse was doing dope. Okay?

[B]

That is the same to me as Star wars, which is. It is sort of behaviorally aspirational, but baked in a kind of childlike wonder. Like that is the intention of a lot of media that is made for kids that are basically like nine. I would say that seems like the ripest age for Star Wars. It's the ripest age for that sort of a TV show too.

[D]

The problem is that now wonder isn't enough to make it for children because it can't be too scary, it can't be too violent. Like, it can't be too anything. Wonder isn't enough anymore. Like, in animated spaces, that's an easier thing to do. What you can do in an animated space is you could have some stuff on there that's for kids. Then you can make a couple of adult jokes that the kids won't get. And if we laugh, we feel like the movie was for us. Right? Star wars cannot do this. It has not shown the ability to do this. The sequel trilogy was. It was complicated and it was this and it was that. And so we go, can't do that. So they come back, they don't really know how to do this anymore. And the reason why is. Cause we kind of are in a space right now where we don't know what is for children. And what is not for children? You guys just said that you went to the movies. Your kids thought that it was perfectly okay and it was too scary for yours.

[B]

I'll read Alice's review. Gave her a bath yesterday. We sat down, broke out the laptop, and I was like, just tell me what you thought. I want to know specifically what you thought. I've never done this exercise with her before. And she said, I said, what was your favorite part? She said, my favorite part was when the ship crashed into the Hutts tree home. We should talk about Hutts momentarily.

[D]

Huts, yeah.

[B]

She asked, then a follow up, what was it that the Hutts were trying to do? Which then had me explore the idea of them playing both sides. Both the New Republic, not the magazine, but the actual Republic being formed, and the Empire. And then she said, Radha wasn't trying to be like her aunt and uncle. Right. He was trying to be on the good side. I did like how whenever they bumped into the villain, they fought but did not talk. And I liked that Grogu was healing the Mandalorian. Now, the fought but did not talk thing is fascinating, was so interesting to me because that is what the movie accomplishes. The movie is actually not a series of human interactions. So you can compare this movie to the first movies or to the most recent sequel trilogy, but those movies, even if they did have violence in them and adult themes in them, they were about human behavior and character, using their actions to tell us more about who those people are. This movie doesn't do anything to show us who these people are. It shows us that the Mandalorian is heroic and that Grogu loves him, but we knew that already. That's not new. That's incredibly different from watching Luke turn literally from boy to man over the course of A New Hope. So I think it's fair to say this movie is very unsuccessful in that very specific way. Because even though it does accomplish a two hour adventure in the world of Star wars, which might be more than enough for some people, it's not a good movie because it doesn't really give you anything that shows you, like, growth, development, an arc of progression in any direction, dramatically. So that's to your point. That's the nothing.

[A]

Yeah. There are no characters and no emotion at all.

[B]

Except for Radha, I guess.

[A]

Yeah. Radha is there in the traditional Jeremy Allen White role of being completely pulverized by the men who came before him and trying to break free of their expectations. Whether it's in chef form or swole Jabba form or Bruce Springsteen or Hutt form. I'm sorry.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or Bruce Springsteen, which my husband watched on the plane back. And that is still not a very good movie. I have been trying to think about why my son was not scared of this, but is absolutely. He's had bad dreams in the past week from Ratatouille and Frozen, which are two animated movies where things not nearly as, quote, unquote, scary as what we saw in Mandalorian Grogu happens. And he keeps bringing them up, and he wants to, like, talk about and unpack what it is. And I think it is because much like his mother, emotions and sadness are the real scary part. And people being in mortal peril, he doesn't even know what that is. Or if he does, he just knows that it's going to be okay. I guess once or twice, when the fighting really started during this, he turned to me and he said, grogu. Grogu's okay. Grogu's okay. And he just thought by, like, willing it that it would be so. But I thought it was notable that he only cared about Grogu and that otherwise, because there wasn't any. Like, there weren't any feelings. He doesn't really know these characters because he hasn't watched the TV show. Hasn't watched the TV show. And there were, like, no emotional stakes whatsoever for him. And so. And there's just nothing to grab onto here until. Especially if you haven't watched the TV show.

[D]

Well, yeah, if you haven't watched the TV show, there's probably nothing for you. All of that stuff is. I acquiesce to it. I get it. It's difficult to connect with Den sometimes because his helmet's on the whole time. So it's a character that has a helmet on the entire time. You can't see him. Actually, some of the most emotional moments of the television show is him having to remove that helmet and then break the oath of his sect of Mandalorians. And all of that stuff. All of these things are built in limits that a story like this has. Which is why when this movie was announced, a lot of people were like, there's just not enough meat on the bone to tell a Star wars story about the Mandalorian and Grogu. I get all of that. For me, there's no real defense of the movie as a story. There's nothing there.

[E]

Right.

[D]

As a piece of Star wars and as the existence of a contemporary piece of the. A piece of the contemporary existence of Star Wars, I have to defend the movie because I believe in the world of Star Wars, I believe in the imagination that can go into that world. I believe in everything that the world can be and is. And I've just devoted so many hours to it in comic book, novel, in YouTube, in all of that stuff. And I think that's kind of the larger question that people are asking you guys. There's no way to say that the Mandalorian and Grogu is a fully formed movie. I'm actually surprised at the movie being as on the nose as what it was because of Jon Favreau's involvement. And if nothing, over the course of his filmmaking career, he's shown how to make you care about a character and then put that character in a different place than how it was when you first.

[B]

I'm a huge fan of his movies in general. I mean, he's made a few duds here and there, but I think he's not just a skilled craftsperson. But going back to swingers, like, I have always thought he has a real ability to capture human behavior. Like, that's something. And whether it's in a big world or in a small world, I like it. I think this just kind of. It feels like Moana 2, which was intended for Disney, and they kind of upscaled it a little bit and added a few more dynamic elements to make it more theatrical and to leverage a moment, maybe a weak open space in a calendar, to create something a little bit more theatrical. And I groused about this. When Solo came out in 2018. I was like, star wars movies are special, and Solo is not special, and this movie is not special. And so it kind of undermines the entire premise of the Star wars exercise. I think you could make a case that the streaming series in general, I think, kind of violated a lot of that. And we could probably look back at a lot of different things over the last five years that were undermined by making them streaming TV series. But this one, I think, would work really well if you were just moving from season three of the show, and then you were just like, you're on a binge, and you just binge the movie immediately after watching season three. And then maybe you go right into season four. And in that way, it's a totally viable thing if you like these characters in this world. But for the big Memorial Day weekend Star wars movie, this ain't good enough, man. That's just straight up what it is to me. It's just not good enough.

[A]

I mean, I agree, but I also don't have the standards of I Don't think there was anything. I mean, I guess if it were really good, I would be like, hey, that was really good. And I was excited. But I'm not bringing to it any sort of fan expectations or anything other than I went to see a movie and it wasn't really a movie and I won't think about it again. And with the remove, it just also becomes increasingly clear, the generous version, as Van put it, which is that the Star wars world is at such a disadvantage because they have to please everyone and they also have to please every individual age group, fan base all at once. And they have to be both niche and broad. And that's impossible. The ungenerous version is that they've just backed themselves into a corner and there's like no way to do anything interesting anymore at the scale that they have to do it for financial reasons.

[B]

So what do you. What is Star wars now then, with that in mind? You know, like, this was a seven year gap theatrically.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

We have obviously a very big movie coming one year from now, Starfighter, the Ryan Gosling, Shawn Levy movie. I do think that this augurs the end of an era of Star wars like we were in. There have been four phases to this point. There's the original trilogy, there's the sequel or the prequel trilogy, there's the sequel trilogy, and then there's the streaming era. This to me feels like an end cap on the streaming era. And it's underperformance at the box office, relatively speaking, feels like a clear signal to Disney, like, reset, you gotta reset. Now, next year probably is a reset. How are you feeling about it?

[D]

So I think what this signals for Star wars, where Star wars is right now is where a lot of these things are, which is a monocultural institution trying to wrestle with the death of contemporary monoculture. And what Star wars has to do, or what anything has to do is segment itself. And it's very difficult to do. When you want to make a movie and you want everyone to talk about it, you want everyone to go see it, this is best explained or expressed, or the best example of this, should I say, is the Last Jedi. The Last Jedi is a Star wars movie that did everything that serious highbrow filmgoers want to see. They subverted your expectations of what was going on. They went in new places, they established new lore, they did all of that stuff. And for the fans that are looking at Luke Skywalker as this father figure Jedi God who at his height would be able to overcome any problem and do whatever they went, that's not what we want. Right. And then as a film project, you had a whole bunch of people that were saying, that's exactly what we want. That's exactly where you have to go. And then Star wars splintered and didn't know how to do it. Then they made a really dark space opera in Andor and they went, yeah, that's what we want. But then people couldn't really connect with that. That wasn't for every Star wars fan. So I think what Star wars has to is realize that there are pockets of their audience that will watch anything that they put out. Like I will watch LSU versus Western Tennessee Tech on 3pm on Saturday and be up for every down.

[B]

Subscribe to Ringer Tailgate.

[D]

Ringer Tailgate. Because I love LSU football so much that I'm interested in seeing what the third string walk on quarterback does when he gets the opportunity to come in the game. So that's you. You have a. But not everybody's gonna tune in for that college football game. So if you want everybody to tune in, you might have to expand the lore or do some different things. I say all of this to say that as a huge blockbuster, $2 billion entity, there are questions to answer. But if you're not a Star wars fan right now, if you're out on Star wars right now, then you were certainly out in 1993 or 1994 or 1996, where there was no stuff coming out, where there was nothing that you could turn on your television and see, where you had to go to your bookstore and buy books and go seek this stuff out. And for me, my fear is actually going back to that. My fear is actually not having people bring new ideas, even if those ideas are poorly executed or under executed. My. My fear of Star wars is not overabundance. My fear of Star wars is the wilderness. Because I live through the wilderness as a Star wars fan. Where Star Wars. So that's my deal. And so that's the dividing line that I think I am on with a lot of people.

[B]

It's a very interesting way to frame this. And I would argue Amanda didn't care because she was not fully invested in the original trilogy, even as a young person. But I was, I would assume, as much as you, up to a point. And then I never really got into the novels. That was something that. That was like beyond what I was interested in.

[D]

Certainly.

[B]

Yeah. But I vividly remember being 11 years old, sitting on the floor of the Barnes and Noble in my hometown, reading the Star Wars Encyclopedia for two hours. Like just obsessed with every component of the lore. And the absence of new movies actually, I think might have helped. I think having fewer things as I got older to pick apart helped it grow in my estimation. And then when the prequels came along, which I actually always kind of liked and always kind of defended, you can check with Chris Ryan on this, because I knew him back then, I could see their flaws and the way that they were received, especially critically, made me feel like we were going again into a wilderness. Because it was like, all right, maybe we didn't need to go back to this. Now, what we've had since 2018, 2016, 2015, when was Force Awakens?

[D]

15, 15, something like that.

[B]

Yeah. So in this 11 year period, we have 10 times the amount of Star wars hours than we ever had for the first 40 years of my life. And it's too much. We're not going to the wilderness. That's never going to happen again. It's corporately held. They're never going to stop. There makes no sense for them to stop. So there's no reason to be worried about the wilderness. What we should be worried about is this is the, like the watering down, the degradation.

[A]

I mean, this is the essential tension or conflict of fan culture. Right. Which is like, do you actually want to get. What you want is fan service? Actually, fan service. And I think there are many people who watch it and who get the, you know, new movies and new iterations and the Easter eggs and everything and receive it as like, that actually is why I'm going to the movies. And then I think there is a different type of people who watch movies in a very different way who, who understand fan service to just kind of be spooning things out to you to try.

[B]

Are those people in the room with us?

[A]

Are those people in the room with us to try to get your money? But that's always the risk, right? Isn't that. I mean, that's the.

[D]

Yeah. You know, it's just like I'm not inherently a cynical movie watcher, so, like. Not at all. Right. So I just. It doesn't bother me. We're not going back to the wilderness. But this is the first Star wars movie in like seven years. Yeah. Right. So like as far as a big screen Star wars experience, we are in the wilderness, right?

[B]

We were. Yeah, we were.

[D]

Right. So this is the first one that's definitely used. Look, I would rather, with any of this stuff, any of the stuff that we're talking about, I would rather say, hey, do as Much as it as do, I don't want to limit on it because I don't necessarily believe that scarcity like breeds greatness.

[B]

Right.

[D]

What I would say for everyone, and this is despite my criticisms of the Last Jedi, what I would say to everyone is tell a story that you feel like is important. Tell a story that is meaningful to you. If fan service. Once there's a lightsaber on the screen, I'm serviced. Okay, yeah, like I'm serviced.

[B]

Interestingly, no lightsabers in this film.

[A]

No lightsaber.

[E]

Right.

[D]

And this is kind of not that story. Once there's a lightsaber on this, I'm serviced by being there in the world. That doesn't mean that me as a Star wars fan is gonna look at a movie and agree or necessarily think that every decision that was made was right. It also doesn't mean that I can't be glamoured. The Force Awakenings is a glamouring of Star wars fans. It is a retread of so many things that we had already seen to where it took two weeks after the movie till we went, huh? Was it very much in that film that we hadn't been accustomed to seeing before? That's kind of a remake of the first one.

[B]

I will say though, one thing that that film accomplished that I don't think this film accomplished accomplish as to the point about our own children, is that movie activates young imaginations for people coming into Star wars for the first time. And it makes you think about the fact that the Force Awakens wasn't just made so that you or I or you could have an exciting new Star wars experience in our 30s. It was made to create a new generation of fans. And I really question whether or not a movie like this can create a new generation of fans. Starfighter does seem like the kind of thing that could do that because it sounds like it's wholly original in this world. It sounds like it is outside the realm of the Skywalker saga and all this other stuff. But that's sort of why I question the intent of this movie a little bit. Is. Is it just like a mile marker? Is it just like, well, we just gotta get back in theaters and so let's do the best we can because we've had so many stops and starts throughout the Kathy Kennedy seven year corridor where nothing really was being made, and that actually it's hard to not see a movie cynically through that lens. I agree with you. People listening to the show in the last three or four years might be surprised to hear this. But if you listen to the show before that, I was very excited about a lot of the things that were happening in this kind of storytelling. And it's hard to not see this, to me, as like, this is like the death belch of an entire era of movies and TV making, where this is kind of like the best they could do. This is like. Like they ate a big meal and this is like kind of what's coming up. And it's not. It just doesn't. It doesn't sit right with me. It's not a fiasco. It's not the sky is falling. It's just like they just needed to put $600 million on the board this year, and this was the best way they could do it.

[A]

Yeah. And Favreau was willing and they had enough pieces in place to do it.

[B]

That's like, it's not exciting.

[D]

But you're absolutely correct. Everything that you're saying is right. Like, everything that you're saying. There's no way to push back on anything that you're saying. It's all right. This was the. The most film ready adaptation that they could put on the screen and make some money and say, hey, Star wars is back in movie theaters. That's absolutely true.

[B]

Do you agree then that audiences are smart enough to know that?

[D]

No, I think that true film connoisseurs are smart enough to know that. Right. I think audiences just will have a visceral response to whether or not they had a good time with it. And it's difficult to have a good time with something that doesn't have, like a really thrilling story. Right. It's like the Super Mario Brothers movie, which is what I compared Mando to. Super Mario Brothers movie.

[B]

Very similar.

[D]

Yeah, very similar. Right. They go to a place, you're like, okay, this is where the story of the movie's gonna get started. And then somebody makes a call and they go, mario, we're on this planet. Then they leave. And then you're like, wait a minute. This movie doesn't care. They give you Star Fox, they give you all of this stuff, and then they go, hey, if you liked it enough when you were a kid, or if your brain isn't developed enough, you'll have a good time. A billion dollars. See you next time. Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And so that has to be looked at with a certain cynicism, just like this does. I will say this, though. Like, take the film. Biopic. Like the biopic movie. So we've gotten Michael, we've gotten Bruce Springsteen, we've Gotten a complete unknown. We've gotten a bunch of different versions of this in the last. They've joked about it. We've gotten. And almost always with what's happening right now, these movies are bad. Almost always. Some of them are laughably bad, right. And to me, when I look at them, they have almost no excuse to be bad because you could literally make a movie just about Michael Jackson during the Thriller period and everything that happened and it would be a kick ass, unbelievable movie.

[B]

I think we might have even discussed

[A]

this was my pitch, which is if you had called it Thriller instead of Michael and you took this Springsteen approach, but to this material.

[E]

Yeah, right.

[D]

But these types of films are important for two reasons. Number one, they have built in audiences because people are really interested in these people. Number two, they are big, showy performance pieces for the leads in these movies. So they're never going to stop making them despite the fact that they're almost always bad. So when I see them I go like, even sometimes in the, the pictures, like the poster, I'm like, I'm signing up for a two hour ride. That's about to be some bullshit. I'm comparing them to Star wars only to say that it's not that I necessarily think that they should stop making that type of film. What I think that they should do is when they are taking in consideration the story and the stuff that they are doing, make that film with some actual artistic inspiration and ingenuity. Because there is a good Bruce Springsteen movie in there. There is a great Bob Dylan movie in there. So I don't need less Star Wars. I need Star wars to remember the face of its father. His father is George Lucas. And George Lucas was concerned with new worlds, new ideas and consistent storytelling. And that can exist in Star Wars.

[A]

But then he sold it to Disney and then, you know, and the problem with. The problem with Springsteen is that if you want the music and the like artistry that inspires everything else, there are a bunch of people who own all the rights to that and they have to. You don't get to do it artistically if all of these other lawyers are involved, which is a shame, well then.

[D]

Well then here's the deal. Then.

[A]

I agree with you. Make good things, right?

[D]

Like a.

[A]

Make good things, not bad things. And once again, according to my standards of them, I am available once again. Answer the phone.

[D]

Once again, I'd say it all the time.

[B]

Time.

[D]

I've read stories about Darth Vader trying to get his lightsaber and having to decide he's not going. The Emperor says, you're not going to bleed a crystal against your lightsaber. You got to go take it from a Jedi. Which means he then has to find a Jedi that's taking the Bearish vow. The bearish vow is when the Jedi swears off being the Jedi. So he has to get a list of every Jedi that's ever taken the Bearish. He has to find out where they are. He picks the wrong fucking guy. Cause that guy legitimately. His only job in the Jedi was to fight. And then he has to go and fight up to the top of a mountain. And get this I have seen exhilarating new, interesting Star wars characters and stories that are based on existing lore. I know that it can be done. I'm going to have a good time watching Star wars movies, but I haven't lost faith in the entire world because there's so much imagination that can be put to it. If in fact these types of movies can defeat the same thing that I'm saying other genres of films have to defeat, which is all the stuff that

[A]

Amanda just mentioned, this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Shout out to the friends with the same niche taste as you. You know, ones that will join you in watching a three hour silent film about the cats of Europe followed by a cheesy superhero blockbuster, State Farm brings that same supportive energy to ensure their 19,000 local agents are there to help you choose the coverage you need so you can spend less time thinking about coverage and more time in front of the big screen. Go [e-mail], like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by AMC. Entertainment Weekly calls AMC's the audacity a gripping, funny and sometimes chillingly of the moment tale. Starring Billy Magnuson and Sarah Goldberg, the Silicon Valley satire looks at what happens when the people building our future are falling apart themselves. From Jonathan Glatzer, a writer and producer on Succession and Better Call Saul don't miss the Audacity Every Sunday only on AMC and AMC. Learn [e-mail] 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, 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. I think one of the reasons why the Last Jedi resonated with a certain sector of the fandom and of filmgoers in general is the very famous Kylo Ren let the past die line. And that spoke to the Star wars mythology. But you could also apply it to this kind of broader component of culture and what you just described. There's a part of me, there's an 11 year old part of me that really wants to see the Darth Vader wrecking shit mid story movie where he's having battles and figuring out how to be the real true dark overlord of the Empire. Then there's a part of me that's like, I already know what happened to Darth Vader. I know how he died and I know how he saved the Rebellion and I know what he means to Luke and Leia. And I saw Return of the Jedi.

[D]

The story's over.

[B]

It's not that it can't be done and it shouldn't be done and I'm not telling people don't tell another Darth Vader story. But it's never going to be as special as that very specific feeling when something big and new arrives and it can take over for a while. And part of what I've been trying to talk through on the show for the last few years is like something is dying and something new is happening. We might not always like what the new thing is. In fact, Super Mario is one of the new things. It's something from our childhood, but in movie form it's one of the new things. But as we have gone through and credit to Amanda for sitting in that chair for like five plus years of pretty bad fandom stuff.

[A]

Ten years now, I mean going back to solo.

[B]

But more of that stuff was tolerable or interesting I thought from 2015 to 2020 than what we have had in the five years since. That's my perspective.

[A]

Just saying Rise of Skywalker was 19. So I think 2018 is when it starts itself.

[B]

Maybe it's been seven years of not Great stuff. Nevertheless, something's changing. Movies like this don't happen if they're not afraid. This is a scared move. This is a scared move.

[D]

Well, no, we know it's changed. What's changed is that you make a movie now. This is for all films. You make a movie now and you have. I was just talking to somebody about this. The amount of times I went to the movies and saw what's considered now to be a bad movie. We would talk about how bad the movie was for a day, two days. I was talking about a movie called Ride that my boy Derek Darensberg went to see. Derek Danzberg came out and said, man, how was Ride? It's like a hip hop type movie from the mid to late 90s, right? And he goes, man, that shit was an hour and 20 minutes long. It just didn't feel like it was an actual film. We went and saw it. Ride sucked and then we got over it. Now every time a movie comes out and that movie is bad, first of all, we hype these movies. Like, I mean, not the Star wars stuff. We hype these movies like there's no tomorrow. Every film is going to be this deep exploration or this is brand new, breathtaking new filmmaker that's gonna change everything, right? We hype this and then we rip them to shreds, which we should have conversations about. Movie. Any prestige in any art form is to me, oriented around criticism. If you have a low critiqued art form, it can have no prestige. Prestige is oriented around criticism. But now, like, we take the qualities of these movies, the quality of these movies a little bit more personally than we used to. And there is one or two places where people are allowed to direct all their vitriol and they sing very loud. And then the people who are A, creating them and B, marketing them and financing them get the shit scared out of them. The actors get fucking harassed. The directors get scared. I knew that they would make a movie like this because they have this political belief. I knew that they would.

[B]

Amanda gets clipped on Instagram and she's hectoring some poor young actress who's just doing her best, you know, trying to be a slave girl in a Star wars film, you know, Right?

[D]

So all this. So there's like, there is different. How do you make. You don't. What you do is you say, I have this. And I think the next group of Star wars, the next batch of Star wars stuff that we're getting is a lot more original. It's got some characters that we recognize, but we'll see how the story is told. You go, hey, I have a take on this world. Characters be damned. World decide how can I get this original takeout. And you let the people who are fans a part of the fandom, you let them go out and then people who don't want to fuck with it, don't watch it. Like it. Don't watch it. Don't go to it. Because I am, if only for a

[A]

man, I'm just like, you know, preach. Like, if we could get to that place that would be.

[B]

You have two young boys, so you're in for a penny, in for a pound here. This is it.

[A]

Even Psy knows who Grogo is now.

[D]

So to me, there is both the ability to be critical and be honest about the fact that we are in the dirt in terms of Star wars content that's coming. We in the dirt.

[B]

We're in the dirt.

[D]

There's no way we in the dirt with Star Wars. We in the dirt with Marvel. We in the dirt.

[B]

Let me ask you something. We in the dirt in the series. There's a couple of things that are. That were kind of Easter eggy fan servicey that you were describing. You know, Luke obviously appears in the series at a certain point.

[E]

Point.

[A]

Mandalorian.

[B]

Mandalorian and Grogu are in the Mandalorian series. So Katano, we get the, the, the, the Darksaber. Like, we get, we get things. The Dark Saber is a, is a, is a lightsaber.

[A]

But it's dark.

[B]

But it's, but it's dark.

[D]

Why don't you show some respect? Why don't you show some of that stuff?

[B]

Dark Saber, some of that stuff.

[D]

The single.

[A]

When you were talking about how.

[D]

And you get in. You rule the Mandalorian.

[A]

I had to stuff down so many questions about where you get a lightsaber. When you were describing the fan fiction or whatever it was about Darth Vader going to find his lightsaber. I mean, I just, There's.

[E]

But I would watch that.

[B]

You just reminded me because my daughter and I built a lightsaber three weeks ago at Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland. And I will say, not cheap to do. Well, it was promised, then it was delivered. That's what I'll say is we had been discussing it for a long period of time and she chose the white lightsaber because she loves Ahsoka Tano, not because she's a young white girl. Van Lathan, how dare you. No, she. She loves Ahsoka.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And so, but that was very special. And Then I saw you tweeting yesterday about being at Disneyland and ranking your favorite rides.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And. And Rise of the Resistance was at the top of your ranking, and it was your first time going on it.

[D]

No, no, that was my third time.

[B]

Okay. I was. I went on it for the first time with my family three weeks ago, and for the first time in a while, I was like, there's nothing like Star Wars. Star wars is the best thing that's ever existed.

[D]

There's a part of Rise of the Resistance that people that haven't written it before don't think is coming. And one lady cried, so. She cried because it's pretty cool. They put you inside of the world. There's a part that a door opens

[A]

and you're like, shit, are there people in costume running around? You have to interact with them.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I'll never do it.

[D]

It. Yes. Yes.

[B]

It's so cool.

[A]

You know, I hate that so much, though, when they. I. I really am afraid of audience participation and, like, character interaction.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So this would be tough for me, but it was. But I'm glad you guys loved it.

[B]

It was a. It was an interesting remind.

[D]

It.

[B]

It just. It. It transported me. It brought me back in a way that the movies and TV shows in the last seven years just never could. And it. It reminded me that, like, this does have a real power and that there's something really handmade about this world. And the idea of making a theme park ride that has that level of detail and tactility, you know, that you felt like you were on the ship in a way that no other ride has ever given me before, even though I was a Star Tours freak when I was five years old. I love Fleet Yesterday, too, and it's great now, too. They've updated and everything, but nothing is like this ride. And so it's got. I kind of got to jog my memory sometimes, too, where it's like, don't just be burned out, you know, Podcast guy who's like, I hate everything from when I was a kid. It is still special, and it can be special again, but just not this way.

[D]

This is what. You're right. This is what I'll say. Okay, so all of the things that you talked about in Mandalorian, in the early Mandalorian series, Skywalker comes into that. That is fan service, without a doubt, 100%. But it's also story meaning. Grogu is a Force being. He calls out to the force for assistance. If he did that at that time, who is the guy that would show up, crush everybody and save the day. And then tell Grogu about the Way of the Jedi, the thousands year old tradition that he has the opportunity to be a part of. Then when he has a chance to be a part of that tradition, Grogu actually making the decision not to be a part of that tradition. Both because of the shortcomings of what has happened to that order and because of his connection to his father. It is actually a real choice. So you use Skywalker and it was so great to see Luke. As soon as the X Wing, I was like, oh shit. Kaliqa's like, what's wrong with you? I'm like,

[E]

you know what I mean?

[B]

Not now. My stories are on.

[D]

Exactly. I know what's about to go. So yes, that is fanservice, without a doubt. That is fan service.

[A]

And that is something to hold onto. When Grogu in the Mandalorian Grogu is using the Force. I'm like leaning over, was it the Force?

[B]

It was the Force.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

I am leaning over to my 4 year old and being like, hey, that's the Force. And that's what Luke Skywalker does. And I, Star wars idiot mommy. Am having to explicate this to a 4 year old during the movie because the movie can't do the work for itself.

[D]

The movie assumes that you know about the Force. They assume that you.

[B]

What an interesting and weird choice. And it's.

[A]

It doesn't even. But it doesn't make the drama.

[D]

Right. But you can't. So this is what I will say about that. And I'll finish off that point by just saying, yeah, you're right. The early Mandalorian stuff was new. It was a new way to tell the Star wars story. But they also incorporated things about Star wars that we already knew. And it worked until it got cynical as a part of itself. Because there was people at, at Disney, respect to everybody that wanted to sell toys surrounding Grogu more than they wanted to tell stories. That's how you lose. You lose when you put the toy first and the story second. But I'm telling you in Star Wars Story can still win. Now, as far as Rise of Resistance, Rise of the Resistance has to play to people who are not massive Star wars fans. I was at Rise of Resistance with two people yesterday. One of them, Kalika, who knows about Star Wars. The other one, our friend Alexis, who is not in any way initiated with Star Wars. Right when we left, she had a million questions. I don't want to ruin the ride for anyone. Why did they stop us. Why did they do this? Why did this happen? She was exhilarated because the imagineers at Disneyland, they know that they cannot make a ride that is just specifically for Star wars fans. They have to put you in the middle of the world, make you feel stakes, make you feel overwhelmed, and then make you win at the end. That is still possible for Star wars. And I believe that it will be done. We just in the dirt right now, but out of that dirt, I'm telling you, something's gonna grow.

[B]

Rise of the Resistance is one of the first things. Forget about Star wars, forget about Disney. It's one of the first experiences I've had where I had been hearing about it for years, since they opened it. And I was like, wow, this is really fucking cool. And I'll just encourage people to check it out if they find themselves at Disneyland. All right, we gotta wrap it up.

[D]

Cause before we go, I have to say one thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

All right. There's something that the streets are really involved in.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[D]

And I don't know if you guys know all of the big pic heads like myself and shout out to the big picture Reddit. Y' all know how much I fuck with y'.

[E]

All.

[D]

Okay? We're obsessed with the latest beef on this show.

[B]

What's the latest beef?

[D]

The race for third chair.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Oh, sure. Yeah.

[D]

We're obsessed with this.

[B]

Did you raise your hand for this episode? Cause you really want Annie?

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

Are you?

[E]

No, no, no.

[D]

I'm the black chair, not the third chair.

[B]

No, no, no, no.

[D]

Okay. No, no. Okay. I don't want to be the third chair.

[B]

This is a clear.

[D]

This is a clear.

[B]

These chairs don't see race.

[D]

This is a clear two horse race between Tracy and Chris. Now, I'm of the belief that it is a one horse race because there's only one true third chair, which is the incomparable Chris Ryan.

[A]

Okay, okay.

[D]

However, there are those who believe that with the single minded focus and dedication that he has when he's on his podcast. This is a guy who has a great fucking life, by the way.

[B]

Talking about Tracy.

[D]

Yeah. This guy who has a great fucking life, by the way. Right? Married, beautiful, talented lady, has a fantastic career also on the screen and on the stage. But yet he.

[B]

This man is a father. He has a family.

[D]

He has a family. However, being third chair matters to him. I would caution Chris Ryan not to take him for granted in this. I would caution Chris Ryan to maybe look behind.

[B]

Zoo's coming. I think he's hearing some footsteps.

[D]

I think he's hearing some footsteps.

[A]

I mean, you saw it, right? You saw it when he closed the computer, you know, at the end of the draft. He knows. And that's the beauty of Chris Ryan, is that, you know, he's waiting, you know, for his moment. Tracy was on a heater in the month of May. I appreciate the work that he did, watching 85 million Robert Duvall films and giving us some travel time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But we are living in, like, the Tracy afterglow right now, you know, and he's also.

[B]

This was, like, rewatchables after CR Month, too, you know, where it was like, oh, okay.

[A]

Well, I would just.

[B]

That was then and this is now. You know, let's talk about in a few months.

[A]

Well, you know.

[D]

Well, how long would Tracy have to deliver this current level of performance? I'm a CR head. CR Is the third tier.

[B]

Here's the real challenge, and this is the absolute truth in this question. One, the third tier will always be the friends we made along the way. That's just how I've always thought about it, and we've made so many friends just doing this show. Two, if there is, in fact, a true race for third chair, the thing that Chris does and will continue to do, that Tracy has not yet shown himself willing to do, is that Chris will join us at 10:15am on a Tuesday after a holiday weekend to go see backrooms in Beverly Hills. That is the work of this. Making this show. In addition to hanging out, talking, making our little documents, having our strongly held opinions, you gotta go see the new movies at the annoying times and places where they're being held, and then come to the episode and record with us on a regular basis. You can't just say, I raised my hand for this episode and that's it. You gotta do the work. And cr Pre Big picture been doing the work with me for 20 years. So he will have an inherent advantage as long as he continues to do that. That's just a fact.

[D]

That's a gong.

[A]

Tracy's also shopping for third chairs on some other podcasts. I'll just put that out there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

A little third chair curious.

[A]

Yeah, there's a little bit of a loyalty question, Tracy.

[D]

A third chair.

[A]

I just.

[D]

What are you talking about? You trying to see?

[A]

Let's not slut shame anyone.

[B]

Let's just say the other thing is, I just don't. I don't want to discount the Van Lathans and the Joanna Robinsons and all the people, the Rob Mahoneys.

[D]

The people Rob Is great. It's a clear two horse race and Chris is way ahead. Like us big pig heads know Chris is way ahead. But what I liked more than anything, this is the last of my rabble rousing that I'll do. What I like more than anything is Tracy told Chris his face that he wanted. I'm like, yo, what is he on? He told Chris to his face, I'm coming for you. You know, it's like a movie. You know, it's like a movie. Like, I watched John Wick not too long ago. John Wick is all bound and all like that. And he's looking at Viggo and he's going, I'm gonna kill you. I always wonder in movies like that. Like, how you gonna kill him? Shouldn't. You're dead, dog. You're caught.

[B]

Dean does it in Mando when he's tied up in front of the heist.

[D]

Whenever somebody says, you can't wait. Can't wait till I hear you die screaming alongside. That's what Tracy did. Tracy was like in his face, looking at him. Chris has got the power. And he goes, yo, I'm coming for you, dog. I appreciated it.

[B]

I did too. I did too. Van Lathan, Tailgate Midnight Boys Higher Learning. Rewatchables.

[D]

Rewatchables.

[B]

What else you been doing everywhere?

[D]

I'm everywhere. I'm doing a lot of stuff. It's fun. I'm having a great time here at the rink. And so

[B]

hostage Video. Thank you for being here. No problem. Okay, let's go to my conversation now with Daniel Rohrer. I'm here with my east side of Los Angeles compatriot, Daniel Rohr. Welcome back. Hey, man, nice to see you on the show.

[E]

So cool to be here.

[B]

So you co wrote and directed a feature film?

[E]

I did.

[B]

Last time we spoke, that wasn't what you were doing. You were doing something mysterious. When we last spoke, you had directed Navalny, which then went on to become an extraordinary sensation and won you many prizes. Congratulations.

[E]

Thank you.

[B]

But I don't know that I saw this trajectory. What's been happening for the last three years?

[E]

Well, when we last talked, I was in my clandestine spy days. Everyone has to go through it. It's just a phase. I was in Kiev. I think it was a couple weeks. That would have been in January or February 22nd. So just before the war started and I was doing my clandestine.

[B]

And did you know you went because you knew that things were on the precipice?

[E]

I didn't know the war was gonna start. I was with Bell and Cat Christo, the guy in Navalny who's like, I got. We're doing this big expose in Kiev, and we wanna make a movie about it. And I was like, oh, gee, okay, great. I was like, I'm looking for something to do. That's why I was in Kiev when we last connected. And I was on a film set that. A documentary set, interviewing whistleblowers from the Department of Defense who wanted to blow the whistle on this clandestine operation that had gone belly up. And they were accusing Zelensky and his government of sabotaging this mission. And I was making a documentary about that. And we didn't end up making that movie. But, yeah, a lot of water under the bridge since that conversation. I'm no longer doing. I'm sort of, like, moved out of the spy genre, the nonfiction spy genre, and to your point of, like, whoa, didn't see this, like, fun heisty crime movie coming down the pike? That was kind of the point. I did Navalny. That film was a sensation. But, you know, when you're 29, you win an Oscar, it's really cool. Like, not gonna lie, it's pretty sick, I imagine. But also, it's really daunting. And it very much had this sense of like, oh, what do I do now? And people would come up to me and be like, wow, you just made the ultimate movie of your life. You should just retire. Ha, ha, ha, ha. But that made me anxious. And so for me, it was very much like, okay, how do I cope with the feeling of what the fuck do I do now? And the way I chose to deal with that was by doing something completely different. And the world knew me as a documentarian. My first film was about the band, Robbie Robertson and the Band. It was a music doc that sort of takes place in the extended Bob Dylan cinematic universe. And we saw this in the Chalamet movie last year. Bob Dylan was a folk musician. People loved his folk music. He did really well. Accolades. He was lauded for his folk music. And then he was like, you know what? I think I want to play rock and roll. And so he plugged in and he went electric. And in my own little tiny way, Tuner is me proving to myself that I can play electric, that I can do that too.

[B]

Was that always on the menu for you? Did you know you. Did you see yourself as being a lifetime documentarian, or did you know you always wanted to make scripted films?

[E]

No, I, Like, I can point to. So, like, anyone who knows me is used to see me With a book, like a little blue book like this. I carry my sketchbook wherever I go. It's sort of an important part of my creative process and how I. How I cope and navigate life. And I've been doing it since I was 14 and I can go back to being 15 or 16 and passages like, dear future Daniel, if you're not a Hollywood director, you will have failed me, you will have disgusted me, you will have really intense burden. Yeah, 15 year old me was dialed in. And so, no, I always wanted to be making movies. Documentary was a tributary, the most amazing tributary. I love documentary, I love nonfiction. I will always be doing both. I'm always making documentaries. I just premiered a documentary with Sundance and I hope to always be making fiction films. Different skill sets. Some of the fundamentals are the same same, but really not so much the same.

[B]

You know, I had Robbie, who. Who has since passed away on the show, actually, for once we're brothers. I didn't talk to you for that.

[E]

I was mad that they sent him and not me.

[B]

Yeah, well, I was happy to talk to Robbie, but I didn't know you then and I'm glad I got to have that conversation. But, you know, we didn't actually. I don't know how much we spoke when we spoke about Navalny, about kind of how you ended up at like 26 years old making a movie about the band. So maybe before we.

[E]

Dude, I was 24 when I got that joke.

[B]

How did that even happen?

[E]

Okay, so I was in Toronto. I dropped out of college when I was 18 or 19, I started making documentaries. So the technological revolution that I kind of clung onto was that in like 2010, 2011, 2012, DSLRs became a thing. So for the first time, you could put some stuff in a backpack, some equipment in a backpack, go make a movie that looked like cinema with a shallow depth of field and kind of that sort of cinematic air and feeling. And before then, documentary was like, you know, like Panasonic GH2s, where you're running around with like MiniDV and it kind of looks good, but kind of like shit, but you know what I'm talking about. It doesn't look like shit.

[B]

Often more handheld.

[E]

Yeah, yeah. And so here I was sort of coming of age when this technological shift's taking place, and it's like, oh, I can just go make movies. And for me, that was very empowering. So I'd like film a bar mitzvah in Toronto, where I was from, and make a couple thousand bucks. And then I Would go make a movie and I'd fly somewhere in the world. That was of interest to me. I did one of those on the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip. I did one in a slum in Uganda. I did one in the high, high Arctic in northern Canada. And I would just tell stories and make movies and, like, make a documentary. And I did probably four or five of those films. I'd send them to film festivals. They mostly got rejected, but I just keep making stuff. And that was sort of my film school. And so by the time I was 20, I had made enough of those movies that in Toronto, people kind of was like, oh, it's that kid who keeps showing up to the documentary film festivals. And the other thing about documentaries, I could just go do it. I found that very empowering. If I was doing a fiction film, I'd need, like, my mom to, like, do craft services. I'd need my friends to come act in them. I'd need, like, my dad to, like, let me use his car or whatever it is. And I did that in high school. But by the time I was, like, 19 or 20, it's like, I just want to be out in the world making stuff. And I was very motivated by that, that. And so I just did enough of those shorts that they knew me a little bit in Toronto. I knew that I wanted to find a film that was sort of bigger, that would put me onto a bigger stage. The first feature film Robbie Robertson had written, his book, his memoir called Testimony, came out in 2015. I read this thing and I just sort of lapped it up. It was like, he's such a great storyteller. It's an amazing musical odyssey. And I identified it as something that is Canadian. So I could get this thing financed in Toronto, but it would have a global, like, certainly an outside of Canada scale and scope. And so I went on a campaign to get that job. Took me like six or seven or eight months to get in front of Robbie. And I went to meet with Robbie Robertson. It's my first time in Los Angeles. I went to the Village studio. I met with Robbie, and I kind of just like, put up a mirror. I was like, dude, I am you. I will fucking die to make this move movie. Like, you can hire some, like, big wig documentarian. It'll be one of five projects that that person's doing. But if you, like, hire me, I will, like, literally leave it all on the ice. Like, come on. Like, I gotta do this. And he was like, you're hired.

[B]

So that is Shocking, though, he agreed to that.

[E]

Irresponsible, perhaps, from his perspective, like, if you think about normally who his guys

[B]

are, he's best friends with Martin's corset.

[E]

So he's like, that wasn't lost on me. But. But Robbie, to his credit, he just saw something in me. And when someone's sitting across from you and is like, look, on paper, I may not look like the obvious candidate to do this job, but I am telling you, look into my eyes. I will die to do this. I won't eat until the job is done. That is compelling. And so I gave him that sort of pitch. He hired me. That job took two years to make. I made it in a broom closet in Toronto with a couple of my buddies, which was a fun experience. And it turned out well. And it was the opening night film of Tiff. And Robbie was pleased with it. And Marty came to the premiere, which for me was, you know, he was the executive. Him and Ron Howard were the executive producers of that film, which is wild for me. And, you know, that sort of set me on the path which, you know, Covid hit just as that film was premiering. I think that film was in theaters. Magnolia released it Feb. 20.

[B]

He was one of the very last people I spoke to before lockdown.

[E]

Is that right? That makes sense. Yeah.

[B]

Maybe the second to last person I spoke to.

[E]

It could be. So that film premiered in theaters. I think we did a week in 800 theaters, Art House theaters. And then everything shut down. And so I was like, okay, my life is over. Like many of us thought. Any momentum. I had no momentum. It all stopped. I didn't have a career at that point. I had just done this one movie, and I was looking for the next thing. Thing. And by contortions of Fluke and Destiny and whatever you call it, I went out in the world. I flew to Vienna, Austria, on a hunch. I met someone who introduced me to someone. And I met. And I eventually met this guy, Christo Grozev. And meeting that person, meeting Christo was what led me to Navalny and the experience of making that movie, which was its own fever dream. Crazy. There's still the cognitive dissonance that I went and did that movie. And, you know, that film was pure chutzpah. It was just like, you know, courage and bravery, and I wouldn't have been able to do it now, you know, I'm at a different point in my life. It was just, you're 26. You have nothing that's holding you down. And like, the Leader of the Russian opposition is like, okay, come make a movie about me. And I'm like, okay, you know, again, I'm gonna leave it all on the ice here. Like, this is one of those things. I'm just gonna give it my all. We put together an amazing team. We made that movie. And that film was kind of like the rocket sauce that really propelled my life. And that film is the original miracle of like. It's extraordinary that that film happened. It's extraordinary that I met Navalny. It's extraordinary that he was as amazing a subject as he was that we were able to make that movie. In the rolling out of that movie, I met my wife. You know, we have a family now. Like, so it's like everything good that's manifested was because of the original sort of fluke of getting to do that film. And to the original question of you follow up Navalny with a film like Tuner. I was thinking about being 15 years old, being in Toronto, making movies, running around on the subways with our cameras, shooting stuff in the alleyways, getting our friends to be acting in it. That's what I was doing in high school. And I came to documentary not through journalism like many of my colleagues, but through like Tarantino and the Coen brothers and Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.

[B]

Yeah. Movies you liked.

[E]

Yeah, yeah. My cinematic heroes. And I always had in my head. And it was also Robby, after I did Robby's doc, before I found Navalny, Robby was like, you gotta go find a script. Go find a script you can sink your teeth into. That's what Marty would do. Enough of this documentary stuff.

[B]

He was a big cinephile too, Robbie.

[E]

He was. Oh yeah. And we talked a lot about that. And one of the something that I think about as we're here talking about it that's sad, is that Robbie never got to see me do that because he kind of saw that I could. And he sort of had that belief in me when I didn't always have it in myself. But he inspired me in that way. And Robbie's life is a testament to doing the impossible. Like this vision that you have for your life, it's like it can. It can be ginormous you can do. It's like the only thing that stops you from achieving something amazing is your own self perception of what it could be. And that's what Robbie's life was. This kid from Toronto who grew up and became this rock star. And so Robbie saying to me, go find yourself a script. Enough of this documentary Go do fiction. Go to a real. A movie movie that you can sink your fangs into. He probably would have said something like that. And that would have made me think, oh, maybe I could do that.

[B]

Well, okay, let's talk about it, because I was gonna ask you all these questions, like, Errol Morris did this. Steve James did this. They've all had their try at a scripted film, and they worked out or they didn't work out. Asif Kapadia, all great documentarians, legendary documentarians, people who kind of pushed the form forward. But you're describing yourself as somebody who always wanted to be making scripted films. And I'm curious, like, what if you had to learn anything or relearn anything having made these movies the way that you did as you prepared to make this one?

[E]

Well, look, on my first day of shooting Tuner, I got on set and I said to everybody, you know, spirit of transparency. Like, every single person here has more experience making movies than I do. You've all been on sets more. This was like, I've only been on set a couple times when I stepped on my own set set, but the button on that was. But I have more experience making this specific movie because I've been making this movie in my head and on paper and in drawings and in writing for two, two and a half years. And I really just tried to summon both the humility and the chutzpah required to get the job done. But it's a. Like, I had never worked with actors before. Leo Woodall, who is wonderful in the film, he really taught me a lot about. Leo's probably taught me more about working with actors than anybody else. And not necessarily overtly, like, this is how you direct actors, but more just in process. But, yeah, it's a different skill set. But as I look to. As I understand who I am and where I come from, I started out drawing comic books. I was 12 years old, 13 years old, going to comic book conventions with a portfolio under my arms, talking to big artists, being like, hey, will you look at my drawings? And I've always been a visual artist. And so the idea of making a fiction film always seemed like a very natural extension of what I've always wanted to do. The documentary. My documentary career was almost like a tributary. That is a reflection of my love of politics and history and current events and geopolitics and all of these things, where documentary is an amazing lens to explore those issues. But cinema has always been my first love, and making movies has always been my number one passion. So after Navalny won the Oscar for a second. I'm like, oh, my God, what do I do now? This is amazing, but scary. And the answer was like, okay, a door might open. That doesn't open for a lot of people. And so I wanted to go make a movie. And I wanted to make a movie that was, like, the films I loved watching, that was propulsive and fun and engaging and musical and romantic. A movie movie. And that was my mission for this film. That's what I set out to do.

[B]

I was trying to describe the movie to someone just outside earlier, and I was like, you know, it's like Rain man meets the shine meets Heat. You know? Like, it's not. It's a very.

[E]

It's tough.

[B]

It's a very odd collection of different kinds of stories. Like, where did the conceit come from? Like, obviously, you get this opportunity.

[E]

Yeah.

[B]

And you got to run through it, but, like, did you have a drawer full of scripts and things that you knew that you wanted to do?

[E]

No, not. Not at all. It was very much like, you know, I sat down, I really tried to, like, drop a game plan and quarterback it. Like, I had this dream that, like, you know, maybe with the success of Navalny, I could get to a point where I could make a real movie. And so, you know, it was about designing a movie that I would want to watch, and I wanted it to be a crime story. I had this idea of doing something auditory, like, that was just so interesting for me, but the sort of linchpin was that I had just met my wife. I had just become her boyfriend, and she was sort of taking me around to meet her friends. And one the of. One of her friends that I went to have dinner with was this couple called Michelle and Peter and Caroline and Michelle were, like, kibitzing and hanging out. And I'm chatting with Peter, and I was like, what do you do, Pete? Nice to meet you. What do you do? And he's like, I'm a piano tuner. I'm like, huh, Tell me about that. Like, that's interesting. And he took me into his little garage, which is like a piano exploded and its guts are on the walls. And he's like, well, piano tuning. I go and make sure the instruments are in good shape, and I keep them. And I'm like, no, I know. I get that, but what is. What's your day to day like? And he's like, well, I'm in my van, and I sort of bop around, and I have some clients who are, like, real musical people. And I have some clients who are just, like, rich people. And I prefer, obviously, like, the conservatories. He just started describing his work, and in no time he was talking about philosophy and spirituality and talking about entropy and atrophy and the forces of the universe that want to pull these things out of tune. And the natural order is chaos, and it's my job to restore order where there's wants to be chaos. And I was like, this is amazing. And it's auditory, and it's lonely. And he's by himself, and some people treat him like he's the plumber, and some people revere him. Like, he's like, oh, my God, thank God you're here. And I loved all of that. And I thought it was, like, a really interesting job. I liked the itinerant quality of it. I liked how it kind of, like, defied modernity in a way. Like, you know, there's no way to kind of, like, there's no, like, smart piano tuner, no apps. It's really just, like, a guy and. Right. You know, I really appreciated that. And I followed him around. I went to work with him for a day, and sure enough, you know, within 10 minutes, he's, we're in this, like, ballroom.

[B]

But wait, what did he say when you asked him, can I follow you around? Oh, like, you're a weirdo.

[E]

Yeah. Basically I was like, can I come to work with you? Can I just, like, do a ride along? He's like, I don't think he got Peter at that point. Hadn't seen Navalny. He didn't really. You know, I don't think he had a full understanding of who I was or what I was about or what I did. I just. He knew I made documentary, so he thought it was odd. But he was also like, probably not, because my clients would not be into that. I was like, well, maybe just ask, because I'd love to, if it's okay. And so I ended up doing a ride along with him. And we went to this. You know, the guy had a ballroom in Brentwood or something with this giant Yamaha, like, you know, a really expensive, big, beautiful piano. And I was just sort of sitting there and taking pictures and doing some drawings and being in the space and, you know, they were, like, doing construction next door. And Pete was like, a little like, oh, fuck. God damn it. They're making a lot of noise. And then within 15 minutes, the cleaning lady or the housekeeper was like, hey, can you take a look at the toilet downstairs when you're done? And Pete was Like, no, it's not. I'm the piano guy. Like, that whole. I just thought the job was so interesting and like, okay, this is a really interesting world and moving around and Montagy and Itinerant, and we're meeting different people and going different places. And so that was sort of the genesis and the nucleus of the piano tuner. And then I was like, how can I make this a crime story? Like, where is the crime part? And then I kind of had this epiphany that, like, what's tactile? And hearing safecracking? And then I was like, is safe cracking a real thing, or is that just a movie thing? So then I went down that rabbit hole and I started doing all this research in safecracking. And I called LA's top safecracking guy. And the reality is it's kind of somewhere in the middle. It's like the way you see it in movies is sort of fictionalized, but it definitely is a real thing. That it is.

[B]

There's something to it.

[E]

Oh, yeah. And there are people who can go in there with a stethoscope and do the thing and open a door. And I was like, okay, well, that's all I need. So I was just sort of off, and I sort of developed from that. And I wanted to make something that was musical, that was propulsive, that was auditory, where the sound design really helped elevate the production design. Because I didn't know how much money a movie costs to get made, I figured someone would finance a movie. It costs a couple million dollars. That's what I understood. But I wanted to make something that punched above its weight class. That when you'd watch it, you'd be, oh, that feels both refreshing and familiar at the same time. That's sort of what I was going for. And once Black Bear got involved, the whole thing sort of came into focus, and I was able to go do this impossible dream of making this movie.

[B]

Do you play music?

[E]

I learned a little bit of guitar when I was doing Robbie Robertson's movie.

[B]

Okay.

[E]

So I do play a little guitar enough that if a real guitar player was next to me for like, 15 seconds or 20 seconds, they'd be like, oh, hey. But that's it.

[B]

So that's really interesting. Cause the movie, obviously, in addition to having this incredible sound design, is very musical, the way it's cut. And obviously the music is a huge part. There's a lot of jazz needle drops, especially in the beginning of the film. It's a very, very. It Feels like a movie made by a musician.

[E]

Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. You know, there's this old convention of like, write what you know, I heard that a lot when I was trying to come up with a screenplay idea. And what I understood is, yeah, write what you know, but also maybe like, write what you're interested in. Write what you'd like to know more about and explore. And the idea of a conservatory and this woman who met this guy. But they seem great for each other, but maybe it's not the right time. All of these things, in a way, were metaphors for things happening in my own life. I met my wife just as she was embarking on her first feature film. And so it was like, hey, you're wonderful. This is really cool, but don't get in the way of this big dream. Like, I'm. And I was like, I totally get it. I'm only here to support all of these sorts of things. But, yeah, I wanted it to have the authenticity and lived in this. And I think that's what drives me to documentary in the first place. And overlap between fiction and documentary is just an exploration of something fascinating. I'm really interested in music. I'm really interested in classical music and jazz and learning more about the history of jazz through this film. And literally getting one of the great luminaries of jazz to do a cameo in the movie was really exciting for him. And while it's an unfamiliar world to me that I had to learn about, the sort of themes and emotionality of the film felt very real to me. And everything else was stuff I could learn.

[B]

Tell me about hopscotching in the kind of sub genres and tones and making sure that that was all working, because it is, like, it's a romance and it's a crime movie, and it's a movie about a person with a special gift.

[E]

Yeah, I mean, that was the scariest part of the movie. Movie. It's like, you know, it sort of starts off and it's like kind of, like kind of a. Not comedy, but almost a comedy. Like, it's kind of light, totally buddy

[B]

comedy in the first. Yeah, 20 minutes.

[E]

Buddy comedy in the first 20 minutes. And then, like, in the same movie, like, the guy's head gets blown off and, like, you know, carnage and death. And like, those films have to be in the same movie. And the sort of miracle of that, of that whole thing is that we were able to, like, get the tones and the frequencies right and thread those genres into one another. You know, I worked with Greg o', Brien, my extraordinary editor, who really helped us find that frequency and that was the biggest challenge. But at the script stage, I sort of just understood how everything had to bleed into one another and sort of like the elements that would adhere everything, like the music in a film like Tuner is like the adhesive that. That just brings everything together, right? And if you can sort of figure out those elements, figure out how you're going to shoot it, the sort of propulsiveness of it. We were able to get it all working when we were cutting the film, but those sorts of tonal shifts were certainly tricky. And the thing going into it that I was like, I hope this will work. If we don't figure this out, we're fucked. But I think we will be okay.

[B]

I noticed a very interesting name in the credits of this film. Joanne Seller is listed as a producer who is Paul Thomas Anderson's longtime producer, produced many of his films. And I think this is her first film that is not a PTA movie that she's produced in some time.

[E]

Like, Oi, have the mighty have fallen.

[B]

Yeah, well, so how did she get involved? What did you learn from her?

[E]

So Joanne Seller, who was the producer of the film with Lyla, Coop and Mike and Teddy from Black Bear, she. She is this sort of like epic producer who's produced like some of the greatest films ever. And, you know, she had this sort of professional. I don't know, this like, thing with PTA for 25 years almost feels like a professional marriage of sorts, her and her husband, Daniel Lupi, who's an amazing producer as well. And, you know, I never really litigated the details, but. But as it happens sometimes with people, you work with someone for a long time and you wake up one morning, you're like, maybe this isn't right anymore or something like this. And that's just life and that happens. But I came to Joanne. I was fortunate enough to meet Joanne via Rob Ramsey, who I co wrote the script with. And Rob and Joanne knew each other, their kids went to school together, and that's how I came to meet Joanne. And Joanne was sort of looking for projects to do and reading scripts and she read Tuner and she really saw something in the script and she and I really hit it off. And, you know, her experience is kind of like, you know, those movies come on, they're just like, you know, it's pretty intimidating when you look at the filmography. But I was so lucky because with Joanne and Lila, I had a first film that was kind of a Smooth endeavor.

[B]

Yeah.

[E]

And you know, a lot of first time filmmakers, it's like you're up Schitt's creek and you don't really have the support. But with Joanne and Lila, a problem never got to me before it was solved. And that's sort of the mastery of an amazing producer. It's like I'm focusing on the creative and if something happens, if someone falls out, if there's an issue, when it's brought to my attention, it's like, hey, this thing happened, kind of a bummer, but here's our working contingency, here's our plan, here's our over. And that was very meaningful for me and something that I really appreciated in working with the two of them.

[B]

I think the movie's really accomplished and I really liked it a lot. And I hope you make more movies like this. I am really interested in your perspective on putting a movie like this out into the world in which it's a little bit more challenging to release effectively an independent feature commercially. Especially because you in your 20s, had such an amazing experience releasing what is usually not considered very commercially viable in docs. But you got attention for them. And now what are your expectations with putting a movie like this out in the world? You had festival premiere and all that seemingly went well, but now you're going to be in the marketplace.

[E]

Sure. And market don't lie. Those numbers don't lie. And that just is what it is. And I accept that and understand it. But at the end of the day, I look at some of my film heroes and I just read that amazing Stanley Kubrick biography.

[B]

Oh, yeah, sure.

[E]

And Stanley Kubrick was like obsessed with every morsel of the process. Right. Like making the movie through to promoting the movie through to the key art, through to the trailer, through to. He was across all of it. And, you know, my perspective is I really know what I love to do and I love to make movies. The marketing and selling of a movie is kind of a different job. And so as I look to the type of career I want to cultivate and my sort of film heroes, I look to a Soderbergh or a Linklater. These guys who are just sort of like movie a year, love to work, love to stay busy. They'll go do a $2 million indie movie and then a $75 million studio movie and then a doc and just sort of flirt between the two. That to me is really exciting. The prize of the Oscar and the attention that comes with it is that I get to work. That's the prize. And I understand that about myself. So look, my expectations, what I hope is that everyone in the world sees the movie. That's my dream for it. Of course, that's why we do this. But I'm sort of clear eyed and I understand that it's a tough market and there are overcomes and everything like this. But at the end of the day, I also believe if something's good and cool and original, people will seek it out or find it. I do believe that too. And maybe it's not like the film doesn't gross $150 million globally, but maybe some people see in theaters and then it finds a home on streaming and people see it there. I just try and be optimistic about people wanting original stuff. Especially in a moment when everything is turning into computer goop. I think that to me really matters. But I really just try and be fully committed and fully detached. I want this to do well. I work my hardest to make the best possible move, but there are so many forces that are outside of my agency. So I'm kind of like, I hope it works. The guys who are in charge of marketing are doing a great job. And meanwhile I'm going to go off and make my next one because that's really what drives me, what I'm so passionate about.

[B]

Yeah, so you're about to go make the next one. It's hard to do it before the movie comes out. Very savvy strategy on your part because

[E]

if it bombs, I won't get a chance.

[B]

I'm not saying that.

[E]

Yeah, look, more than anything, again, I just love to do this. For 20 years I was just like, for 15 years I was like, what a dream it would be to make movies. And I have books of every film I saw and I'd save the ticket and I'd write a review and I'd give it a star system. I had a whole thing before letterboxd was a thing. My books were letterboxd for me. And so the fact that now I can have this career is extraordinary. And I feel very, very, very lucky to be able to do this. And it's what I love to do. I'm so driven by the work. And being a film director is this all encompassing job where you never have a second off. And I love that. And it's just like my work and my family. So the next film is. If you read the script for the next one after watching Tuner, you'd be like, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. That's a natural. Let's say, evolution. So it's this sort of, like, heist con man story that's almost like To Catch a Thief. But if you took Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and swapped them with Zoe saldana and Matthew McConaughey, that's the movie. And it's sort of this expat in Positano in the Amalfi coast who has this little restaurant who moonlights as this prolific thief. And he's really good at it, but on one particular job, he crosses paths with somebody else and gets them into all kinds of trouble. And that is sort of the premise of the movie. So sort of jazzy and propulsive, much like Tuner, but with a much bigger canvas, which takes me outside of my comfort zone. And so that's something that I'm really excited about. It's like the tone and the sort of genre work I know that I can do. Never done a car chase before, though. Never done all this big location work. Never worked with these big movie stars. And so all that's just exciting. And these are just motivated by being outside of my comfort zone, but knowing in my heart that I got this, and that's a very empowering place to be sort of operating from. So we're shooting the film this year, and it's been really, really exciting for me. Just in the preliminary stages of getting it set up, we just got it greenlit of scouting the film, working with McConaughey, working with Zoe, and just getting the thing off the ground has been a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.

[B]

Good luck.

[E]

Thanks, man.

[B]

We end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? What have you seen? You must be. You gotta be doing some Oscar cramming. Right? Right.

[E]

I'm not an Academy member.

[B]

Get out of here.

[E]

Yeah, I swear. I swear.

[B]

No kidding.

[E]

Yeah. I'm not. I'm.

[B]

You've won and you've not been. What's going on there?

[E]

The DOC branch is a little.

[B]

Oh, they're a little persnickety. I see. Well, maybe now that you're a feature

[E]

filmmaker as well, you'll maybe. Well, I'm. I'm. God, the last.

[B]

That's fascinating.

[E]

Isn't that funny?

[B]

That's so funny.

[E]

I, like, literally daily I'll get an email from someone and be like, hey, can you watch our short film? It's like, we're to going. And I'm like, I'm not an Academy member. And they're like, okay, thanks. Goodbye. Like, they don't.

[B]

You know, you should just automatically be Inducted if you win enough.

[E]

I thought that's how it worked. But at the end of the day, it's like, trust me, I'll take the award over the membership to their club. Maybe one day I'll get in, but in the meantime, God, what's the last great thing I watched? I've been watching the classics of Italian cinema and prepare trip. Yeah. So really like just learning the fundamentals before I go make a film in Italy. And I rewatched Cinema Paradiso.

[B]

Yeah, sure.

[E]

And it probably has the best ending of any movie ever in the history of movies. And if I was ever became an actor and I had to do a crying scene, it's like, okay, cry. I would think of the ending of that movie and just it would get me like that. And then, you know, more contemporary. What's out now. I like, everybody watched Marty supreme and I felt it was such a complicated movie for me. I recognized myself in Marty, but that's challenging because he's kind of a sociopath. And then a bunch of people were

[B]

like, yeah, but you're on the other side. You got a kid now, so hopefully you're being a good guy now.

[E]

I'm after the hero's journey.

[B]

That's right.

[E]

I was never a bad guy like Marty, but there's this sort of fast talking Jewish trope that striver enough people were like, oh, he reminded us of you. And I was like, I don't know how I feel about this, but I love the propulsiveness, I love the cadence. I love how Josh Safdie just pulls you into that movie and doesn't let you go. And that's something that I'm very inspired by. Those are always my favorite kind of films. So I think those are two safe bets. And then I just saw Sarah Dossa's new film, Time and Water.

[B]

I just saw it as well. Yeah, very good.

[E]

And that is a film that I had to see in a theater that was meditative and patient and thoughtful and just. Just like. Just like all Sarah's films tell people

[B]

what it's about because it just premiered at Sundance World.

[E]

Yeah. So Sarah Dose's new film, Time and Water, is it Water and Time or Time and Water? Time and Water is about this three generations of this Icelandic family who their sort of like, identity as a family is almost moored around their love and appreciation for the natural beauty of Iceland, where they're from, and in this case, the glacial fields that Iceland's famous for. And it's about how the family shifts over time and the sort of pain and challenge of these glaciers, which do not shift over time, that's the whole conceit. They last thousands and thousands, thousands, thousands of years. And they're sort of living, breathing things, these giant ice sheets. But except in this changing climate of ours, the glaciers are dying. And so it's about this family coming to terms with this thing that doesn't change, but it's changing now. Now. And how do you mourn? How do you mourn the. Almost like the death in a family of when your family's a glacier, like that's your family member who's dying. It's like, how do you mourn that? How do you go. So it was beautiful and thoughtful and I just did a documentary that premiered at Sundance and I was struck by how similar it was to Sarah's movie insofar as that's like big thing in the world, big issue that's moored around like a personal story. And in my case, it's about AI and entering fatherhood, which is how we approach our AI documentary. And so Andreas, I think, is the name of the protagonist in Sarah's movie. And he and I kind of had a hug after both of our films premiere and I was like, how are you feeling? He's like, pretty good. How are you feeling? I was like, dude, we did it. We did it. Yeah. So those are some. That was a long answer, but those are some films that I saw that have stuck with me.

[B]

Great recommendations. Daniel, thanks for coming back.

[E]

Thank you so much. So cool to be here.

[B]

Okay. Thanks to Daniel. Thanks to Van. Thanks to Jack Sanders for his production work on this episode. Thanks to Lucas Kavanaugh for getting all that info about Paul Schrader in the document. Appreciate that I mentioned we saw backrooms and that's coming later this week. Yeah, pre sales are through the roof. I've seen that Gen Z is extremely fired up.

[A]

You know, I go where Gen Z goes.

[B]

So do you think there might have to be some sort of like Gen Z horror mommy thing that we develop as well here?

[D]

Here for.

[A]

For me or just in general?

[B]

Yeah, I just watching both you and Sierra get a little startled in a movie, just a lot of fun.

[A]

It was really mostly Chris. He jumped a lot. He had a couple of jumps and I was like, well, I won't spoil it. But I knew it was okay.

[B]

We will get into back very soon and until then, see.

[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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