The Oscars Hangover Mailbag. Plus: Bong Joon-ho Returns!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Big Picture - "The Oscars Hangover Mailbag. Plus: Bong Joon-ho Returns!"

Release Date: March 6, 2025
Host: Sean Fennessy & Amanda Dobbins
Featuring: Joanna Robinson, Bobby Wagner, and Director Bong Joon-ho

---

1. Introduction

In this episode of The Big Picture, hosts Sean Fennessy and Amanda Dobbins dive into the aftermath of the recent Academy Awards, affectionately termed the "Oscars Hangover." The episode features insightful discussions, audience mailbag questions, and an exclusive interview with acclaimed director Bong Joon-ho.

2. The Oscars Hangover: Ratings & Reception

The discussion begins with a breakdown of the Oscars' viewership ratings. Initially, Sean shares that the event drew 18.07 million viewers (00:04:06), but later corrects this figure to 19.69 million after accounting for PC and mobile viewership (00:04:30). This slight increase marks a year-over-year growth, even amidst challenges like streaming platforms.

Sean Fennessy (00:04:30):
"The Academy Award ratings are actually up this year over the 19.5 million from last year's Barbenheimer Oscars, which is remarkable..."

Joanna Robinson and Amanda delve into the impact of hosting parties, noting that the presence of certain celebrities like Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez appealed to younger demographics, despite not winning major awards.

Amanda Dobbins (00:06:06):
"I've had a lot of conversations about Ariana Grande since Sunday night from people who I did not realize were in any way interested in the Oscars or in Ariana Grande."

They also critique the ceremony's star power, lamenting the absence of high-profile names like Zendaya and the superficial handling of nominees' prominence.

3. Studio Dynamics: A24 vs. Neon

A significant portion of the discussion centers on the evolving landscape of film studios, particularly A24 and Neon. Sean highlights how both studios are achieving success with independent films, with Neon making a strategic push to acquire Palme d’Or winners.

Sean Fennessy (00:50:25):
"Neon is just a little bit hotter right now because A24 is in the middle of this transition where they are trying to and succeeding at being a bigger company that generates more success."

Joanna discusses the effectiveness of their mailing strategies, praising Neon and A24 for their targeted and creative award campaign packages compared to the generic and overwhelming mailers from larger studios like Netflix.

Joanna Robinson (00:53:03):
"They know you love our movies. Here's a bunch of stuff tied to our movies."

Sean underscores the shift towards independent financing in major award categories, noting that all six major winners in Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary, and International Feature were independently financed—a departure from the Academy's origins.

Sean Fennessy (00:54:09):
"This is the first time all six major winners and Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary and International Feature were independently financed."

4. Mailbag: Audience Questions and Responses

The hosts address various listener questions, ranging from Oscar predictions to the logistics of acceptance speeches.

a. Oscar Predictions: Sean presents his extensive list of 26 potential Best Picture nominees, engaging Amanda and Joanna in a rapid-fire "Yes or No" prediction game. Notable mentions include:

• Mickey 17 – Directed by Bong Joon-ho
• Die My Love – Lynne Ramsay
• Father, Mother, Sister, Brother – Jim Jarmusch

Amanda Dobbins (00:33:43):
"I think Elephant Park is just a no."

b. Acceptance Speech Lengths: A recurring theme involves the disproportionate time given to major categories over technical awards, leading to frustrations about recognition for artisans.

Joanna Robinson (00:58:27):
"When we slot VFX artists in the commercials or play them off the stage... Adrien Brody has had this opportunity and gotten to give many speeches at many awards shows."

c. Best Picture Title Belt: In a playful analogy to NBA's "best player" discussions, the hosts debate which films are currently holding the "Best Picture Title Belt." Parasite is a popular contender among the hosts.

Amanda Dobbins (00:67:42):
"I think it's still Parasite."

5. Exclusive Interview: Bong Joon-ho on "Mickey 17"

The highlight of the episode is an in-depth conversation with Bong Joon-ho about his highly anticipated film, Mickey 17.

a. Post-Parasite Success: Bong reflects on the overwhelming success of Parasite and the ensuing pressures. Despite the accolades, he remained calm, focusing on his passion for storytelling.

Bong Joon-ho (00:93:02):
"I actually maintained pretty calm throughout it all."

b. Choosing Mickey 17: He discusses his decision to take on the project, emphasizing a focus on character and emotion over scale.

Bong Joon-ho (00:95:38):
"I really wanted to focus on the individual going through this technology and the emotions that his story was evoking."

c. Collaboration and Storyboarding: Bong highlights his collaborative process with cinematographer Darius Khondji and the meticulous storyboarding that ensures tonal consistency across the film.

Bong Joon-ho (00:98:50):
"I have an editor right next to me editing as we go. And you can see how the scenes and shots cut together."

d. Vision and Themes: He elaborates on recurring themes in his work, such as human interaction with technology and societal structures, drawing parallels with his previous films like Snowpiercer and Okja.

Bong Joon-ho (01:02:28):
"So I like to think of them as variations... Always a mix of old and new."

6. Conclusion

Sean and Amanda wrap up the episode by acknowledging the complexity of modern award ceremonies and the ongoing challenges faced by independent films in gaining widespread recognition. They express enthusiasm for Bong Joon-ho's upcoming project and encourage listeners to engage with their thoughtful discussions on cinema.

Sean Fennessy (01:09:07):
"So, yeah, let's actually do the Neon A24 question then, because of that."

---

Notable Quotes:

• "The Academy Award ratings are actually up this year over the 19.5 million from last year's Barbenheimer Oscars, which is remarkable..." – Sean Fennessy [00:04:30]

• "I've had a lot of conversations about Ariana Grande since Sunday night from people who I did not realize were in any way interested in the Oscars or in Ariana Grande." – Amanda Dobbins [00:06:06]

• "Neon is just a little bit hotter right now because A24 is in the middle of this transition where they are trying to and succeeding at being a bigger company that generates more success." – Sean Fennessy [00:50:25]

• "They know you love our movies. Here's a bunch of stuff tied to our movies." – Joanna Robinson [00:53:03]

• "This is the first time all six major winners and Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary and International Feature were independently financed." – Sean Fennessy [00:54:09]

• "I really enjoyed it because I felt like the pressure was lower than it usually is for watching the Oscars." – Joanna Robinson [00:03:22]

• "I think it's less meaningful or more meaningful than it used to be." – Joanna Robinson [00:88:58]

---

This episode of The Big Picture offers a comprehensive look into the current state of the Oscars, the shifting dynamics of film studios, and an exclusive peek into Bong Joon-ho's creative process for his new venture, Mickey 17. Whether you're a cinephile or a casual moviegoer, the hosts provide insightful commentary and engaging discussions that capture the essence of contemporary cinema.

Transcript

[Sean Fennessy]

Hello there, friends of the program. It's Tate Frazier and it's officially that special time of the year where we go on a march through Madness together for the 85th edition of the NCAA tournament. What makes March so special, you ask? Well, it's the unknown. It's the fact that this is basically Survivor on a basketball court on CBS without Jeff Probst. And no matter how much you prepare, you cannot predict this kind of chaos. And that is what we will be covering on this podcast. One shining podcast. All the madness. All the David Ver, Goliath personified. It's the best show in town. The ball is tipped and here you are with us. Come listen and join us wherever you get your podcast. This episode is presented by Audi. The all new fully electric Audi Q6E Tron is a huge leap forward featuring effortless power, serious acceleration, and the most advanced tech of any Audi ever. Experience technology that puts you center stage with a panoramic digital stage plus an optional screen for front seat passengers so they can kick back with a movie. The Q6E Tron is not just a new EV. It's a new way to experience driving. Learn [e-mail] always pay careful attention to the road and do not drive while distracted. This episode is brought to you by Marvel Television's Daredevil. Born Again. Charlie Cox returns as vigilante lawyer Matt Murdock and Vincent D'Onofrio as former mob boss Wilson Fisk. The darker side of Matt Murdock is revealed when he gains a new perspective on his role as the Daredevil and faces an internal struggle between justice and revenge. The Devil's work is never done. Born Again is now streaming only on Disney. I'm Sean Fennessy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm Amanda Dobbins and this is the.

[Sean Fennessy]

Big Picture, a conversation show about life after the Oscars. A very exciting later in this episode, Bong Joon Ho returns to the show to talk about life after the extraordinary success of his Oscar run.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's a little embarrassing. It's like, do we really need to be here? You guys will chat. I feel that almost never, but for Bong. For Bong.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, Bong is here. Bong's got a new film. Mickey 17 comes out this weekend. I had a nice long conversation with him, his first conversation on this show since 2019 when he was running shit with Parasite. We'll talk about what happens when a neon movie runs shit in Hollywood in this episode. Thankfully, Bong was as witty and smart as ever about his movie, which I hope people will See this weekend. Stick around for the conversation, but Joanna Robinson is here. Joanna has been a steady hand through this awards season.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So nice to see you.

[Joanna Robinson]

So nice to see you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I meant to ask you, can we have dinner next week? I didn't realize that you were, like, here.

[Sean Fennessy]

We are recording a podcast right now.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She's here for a while. It's so nice to see her in person.

[Sean Fennessy]

I extended a lunch invite last week, actually, but we didn't make any plans.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, we didn't.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm booking dinner.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's great to have you back, Joanna. The Academy Awards did happen and you did watch them.

[Joanna Robinson]

I did.

[Sean Fennessy]

You thought about maybe not watching them? What were you going to watch instead?

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I was definitely going to watch them. I was never not going to watch.

[Sean Fennessy]

It was either go to a party.

[Joanna Robinson]

It was either go to the Neon party and watch it or watch it at home. Yeah. And for content, I should have gone to the Neon Party, but instead I just watched it at home.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

So, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Did you have others with you? Was it a solo viewing? Like, set the scene?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Oh, super glamorous. No, it was just. It was just me, which is deeply unusual. I don't know. It was a really unusual Oscar viewing experience for me this year, and I actually really enjoyed it because I felt like the pressure was lower than it usually is for watching the Oscars. For me personally, because I wasn't sure I was coming on the big pick, and now that I know I'm here, I'm full of takes. But it was great because then I was just watching it for me and enjoy and, like, not having feeling, like, a need to form opinions in the moment. Ah, yeah, that makes sense.

[Sean Fennessy]

I. It's been about 10 years since I didn't know that pressure. Nevertheless, we'll probably get into whether or not we did a good job on Sunday night. That's very nice of you to say, but you're also paid by the ringer, so.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's another thing I did, though, is I did watch Sean and Amanda. You guys know this because I was texting you guys about it.

[Sean Fennessy]

So, yeah, we did have fun. I wonder if all of those people at the Neon party brought down the ratings just a little bit this year. They were down a little bit. Not too bad, actually.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Segway King.

[Sean Fennessy]

Only 18.07 million people watching the show. Down 7%.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Hi, everyone. It's me, Sean. You may be wondering why I'm interrupting myself in this lovely conversation we're having about Oscar ratings. Well, the answer is very Simple. When we recorded this episode, we did not have all of the data, and now we do have all of the data, thanks to the Nielsen Corporation. They have informed us that actually the ratings for the Academy Awards were even higher than we thought. So Instead of that 18.07 million number that I just shared, it's actually 19.69 million viewers who watched this after tabulating PC and mobile viewing. Thank you to all of you who are watching on your iPhones, you degenerates. And this is great news because this means that the Academy Award ratings are actually up this year over the 19.5 million from last year's Barbenheimer Oscars, which is remarkable in some ways, but also when you consider the fact that this is the first year that Hulu was streaming the Oscars, it's not that great. It's only 169,000 viewer bump, but it's still better than being down. So, as always, I am torn about how I feel about ratings that do not matter for your life. Nevertheless, I wanted to correct the record here for this episode. Let's go back to the otherwise lovely conversation we were just having on the show. Thank you.

[Joanna Robinson]

But isn't the caveat that the Academy wants you to know that more young people tuned in this show? Yeah, sure.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes, definitely people not in our demo.

[Sean Fennessy]

Definitely in Bobby's demo. Huge Timothee Chalamet fans because.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sandworm.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sandworm, yeah. Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Ariana Grande.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yep. Yep. Good call.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think that's what it was. I've had a lot of conversations about Ariana Grande since Sunday night from people who I did not realize were in any way interested in the Oscars or in Ariana Grande. And they were just like, well, she was snubbed. Just like at Whole Foods yesterday. I was like, oh, okay. Just like people I, you know, met on the streets. So I guess some young people cared and were rooting for her.

[Bobby Wagner]

Definitely Grande. And Selena Gomez as well. I mean, Selena Gomez is, like, one of the most followed people on Instagram.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Unfortunately, Selena Gomez nominated for an Oscar, so.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, but she was there. Yeah. Didn't she go on stage? No, she was there.

[Bobby Wagner]

Did she present something?

[Sean Fennessy]

There were some. I mean, Timothee Chalamet, Selena Gomez and Ariana Grande is about as good as the Oscars can ask for. For central young stars at their. At their ceremony. Right?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, they could have asked for Zendaya, but unfortunately, they just completely blanked that. I don't know.

[Joanna Robinson]

I.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The more I think about it, the more starless the ceremony and the telecast felt. And obviously those three people are very famous. They didn't win. And so Timothy was on screen a lot and I guess Ariana performed to open the show, but otherwise they didn't use the very small star power that they had. And that front row was all the nominees and there was no one else in the audience. I mean there were, there were lots of people and I, and I like all of them. And poor Denis, your beloved Denis had that middle seat, you know, disrespected.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think that's why Zendaya wasn't there. Honestly. No, she wasn't there because they forgot challengers existed. But NCR texted us this, this great tweet about the fact that Nolan's filming the Odyssey right now and that's where a lot of famous people are. But yeah, if you don't get, if you don't nominate Nicole Kidman, if you don't nominate Angelina Jolie, if you don't nominate these people, they're not going to come. We, we've talked before on this podcast about that idea of like the mayor of the Oscars who's sitting in the front row used to be Jack Nicholson. We've had Meryl Streep there, who's there sort of anchoring the star power. And you've got Timmy on the end that they definitely cut to more than anyone else. Colman Domingo in his red suit, front and center.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I wanted to talk about that just a little bit because Colman Domingo, within the industry and amongst cinephiles, beloved somebody everybody identifies as like great guy.

[Amanda Dobbins]

An amazing performer, like very deserving, great at campaigning, looks amazing in clothes and has looked amazing at every event.

[Sean Fennessy]

However, he's not that famous.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's why I said Colman Domingo question mark with no disrespect because as you guys know, he was one of my favorite performances of the year. But that is, that's not a Meryl or a Jack figure. And that's sort of emblematic of the whole ceremony. Right. Is that we are honoring cinema, we're not honoring pop culture as much.

[Sean Fennessy]

And that has been the major shift that has been the thing I think most significantly as I think about the last five years, is that this is a much more high minded arts ceremony and much less of a celebrity factory, which is how we understood it. You know, it's also possible that our memories are deceiving us. That in 1994 not everyone was in the room. It just felt like they were. It felt like a much more concentrated experience. I don't know.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I would have to rewatch a television in the 90s. The nominees included Tom Hanks multiple times and Mel Gibson, which wasn't as problematic then as it is now, and Julia Roberts and Sue. And it's true that in many ways, like the oscars of the 90s made those celebrities, but it was a symbiotic relationship. And the studio movies featuring, quote unquote movie stars that still existed met with the Oscars. The Venn diagram was overlapping. Now we have, you know, our beloved, like, extremely talented art house favorites. And then we have all the IP movies with, like, people you've heard of. The divide is bigger than ever. But also, I think the ceremony, as we noted, there were only two trailers shown during the entire broadcast. The ceremony did not really promote any upcoming movies. Maybe because there aren't that many Snow White. But, like, I guess Rachel Zegler was sort of there. Though they like, took care not to say the word Snow White. As far as I can tell.

[Joanna Robinson]

They played some, you know, someday male prince will come when they came out.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, did they? I didn't pick up on that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Even in the of stood her next.

[Sean Fennessy]

To Gal Gadot and she was like, she looked like a little tiny baby Rachel Zegler. That was so meaningful.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They also identified Rachel Senate as Rachel Zegler on the red carpet for, like, a long time.

[Sean Fennessy]

So. But Snow White going super hard in my house right now. So we're fired up.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

All this to say, like, the promo piece of it. And even if you would get celebrities to the ceremony to promote the movie that they have coming out in April, May, June, you know, this summer, those movies don't exist. Or the, you know, the studios or whoever don't feel that their audiences are at the Oscars. So it's just. It's a real vacuum.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think that they're, you know, I was gonna make a joke about how why was the cast of Warfare not present on stage in their gear, but more pointedly, like, where was the cast of Fantastic Four? You know, like, why did they not present? That would have been.

[Joanna Robinson]

And that's obviously, that's a Disney property. I mean, I think that, like, I. When I texted, I'm sure one of many group chats you guys were in that night. But when I texted, like, I really like these presenters, and then I actually took it back when they brought the Snow White duo out. But I really liked the presenters because we weren't getting the upcoming stars of X. We were getting much more, I thought, interesting people out there. And so for me, overall, with apologies to Bobby, who Told me before we started that he thought the Oscars were quite boring this year. Am I allowed to say that, Bobby?

[Bobby Wagner]

You can say that, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I thought.

[Bobby Wagner]

Well, in particular, I thought the speeches were pretty boring and like, more rambly than usual.

[Joanna Robinson]

I thought the speeches weren't great, but I thought. I really liked the thought they put into the presenters to the bits. I did not think the supporting actor actress bit worked. That was the one that I did not think that works. But when they brought out.

[Sean Fennessy]

I didn't like that either.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. But when they brought out the Fab Five for, like, production design and costume, I thought that was really, really fun and thoughtful. I thought the comedy bits that they did with, like, Ben Stiller and Amy Poehler are really thoughtful. So I think Ben Stiller.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That was funny. I forgot to mention that someday.

[Sean Fennessy]

But that was also very funny.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. So I think that, like, you know, I thought they were being thought in terms of where they were sort of mixing things up a little bit. We're going to be goofy here. We're going to be expansive here. So the cadence of the whole show really worked for me personally.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, everything that you just said is true and positive. And then there were like, 45 minutes of dance and song performances.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have thoughts about that. Yeah, that's a. That's a different thing. Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Just to top off the ratings thing, I do think that there were a couple of significant factors. You mentioned the length of the show, three hours and 47 minutes that sometimes can depress viewing. Everything is kind of settling, I think. You know, the Globes were kind of settled year over year.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You've made peace.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I mean, award shows are obviously significantly smaller than they were when we were kids, but they're still much bigger than almost anything else that's on TV that isn't football. So the show. This is gonna keep coming up, though. Cause the show's gonna be renegotiating in like, 6 months, 12 months with ABC and or streaming service. And I bring that up because, of course, the show did stream. We didn't watch it on the streaming service. Did you?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I did.

[Joanna Robinson]

I did watch it on the streaming service.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you experience a blackout?

[Joanna Robinson]

I got the glitch, but I thought I had fucked up somehow. That's always my default assumption. So then I just went back to Hulu home base and started clicking around. I got it back up within, I would say, less than a minute.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think other people were less perhaps panicked than I was. I just started looking around on anything I could find and click around and finally I came back up.

[Sean Fennessy]

We did not even know that had happened. When we were watching the show, which we watched on abc, and I think it was immediately after we finished recording. I had many people in my mentions being like, you need to talk about how Hulu fucked me, dude. Which, you know, is kind of par for the course for my mentions. But I think it's interesting that the first time, and the first time's always tough for these services, but the first time on a big stage when streaming is obviously the future of how we're gonna watch this stuff. To have an error also coming off of. I thought SAG went pretty darn well on Netflix. You know, like, it's a pretty streamless, seamless experience.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's also like the first time that Netflix has gotten a live event. Totally correct.

[Sean Fennessy]

They had their Love is Blind after show fuck up. They had Mike Tyson fight problems.

[Joanna Robinson]

The Hulu glitch, as far as we can tell, is because it went over.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's because they didn't allot for the fact that at 11 o'clock Eastern they were going to have some resetting.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Doesn't that make you absolutely want to scream?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's idiotic.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like, think about things that you could predict. How many people worked on this and were involved in it. And it's just you're not thinking like a consumer of the product. You're just. You're programming and. No, it's just.

[Joanna Robinson]

One thing you can rely on for the Oscars that they will go over.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's just two departments not talking to each other, of course, the content people not speaking to the engineers, which, you know, that does happen from time to time. Joanna, I asked you to compile some observations so you've had a chance to not only watch the show, but ingest a lot of takes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know. So you've heard some stuff.

[Joanna Robinson]

I have heard some stuff.

[Sean Fennessy]

Did you bring some raw new material to the table?

[Joanna Robinson]

I thought it was new and then I heard some other people say it, but I wrote these before I heard other people say it. So they're newer. They were new to me.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. What's number one?

[Joanna Robinson]

I will say I think a decent spread of awards is far preferable to one movie dominating. Right. Would you agree?

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm glad you brought this up. This is the third year in a row where we had a heavy concentration on one movie that became the powerhouse of the race. Nora was not as heavily tabbed as everything Everywhere all at once. And Oppenheimer, I think I kind of hinted at this at the beginning of when we started talking on Sunday about how like, five awards for one movie and all being big awards is a lot. And that kind of flattens the show, I think, a little bit, where it feels like this steamroll effect.

[Joanna Robinson]

I kind of disagree in that almost every. Except for what a complete unknown Nickel boys, every single Best Picture nominee won something.

[Sean Fennessy]

One thing or two things. There were four movies that had multiple awards, and I think that's it. Now, maybe that's roughly the average, but for. For a movie like, in order to do it, it never happens.

[Joanna Robinson]

It might have just been the way that they spread out the categories throughout the night or something like that. It didn't feel like, oh, and Nora again. Oh, and Nora again. You know what I mean? It felt like we're. We're honoring the brutalists now. Now is the time when we talk about what Wicked did.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, also, because they only gave out like six awards in the first hour and a half or something.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I don't know.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think I'm serious. So there was a little like, one for you, one for you, one for you. And Joanna's right. The Honora steamroll only really came at the end, unless you're nerds like us or listeners of this podcast. And as soon as editing happened in a visual screenplay, you knew what was gonna come correct.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think that's what I was reflecting on where that happened, and I was like, okay, they just kind of popped the bubble a little bit, and there was nothing to do about. You couldn't wait until the end to give out Best Editing. That would have very strange. But it did feel slightly deflating while watching it.

[Joanna Robinson]

But that feeds into my second point, which is. That's true. I definitely knew Anora was going to win Best Picture early on. I still think Best Actress was up in the air until the last minute.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think once editing and screenplay happened, he did turn to me and he said, I'm really nervous. If I do me more.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm really nervous about agents and publicists. I wasn't shocked.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You guys got a vacation.

[Joanna Robinson]

But there, you know, there was. There was leading going into it before we. That Anora was gonna win. Midway through the telecast that what's gonna win Best Picture? What's gonna win Best Director? What's gonna win Best Actor? What's gonna win Best Actress. And I cannot remember an Oscar ceremony that I last went into not knowing for sure almost all of those categories.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was what was so exciting to me about the last week in the run up to the show, watching the show, I was like, ah, okay. So, you know, I. The thing I had said where I was like, they're either going four for four or five for five, or they're going one for five. And it. There's nothing you can really do about it. It's just. It did happen, more or less with Oppenheimer, and it did happen the year before that, too. So is this a trend? Is this just because people are falling in love with a movie? Or these just happen to be three very good campaigns that were executed, you could argue flawlessly. I mean, those are three campaigns that just kind of cruised very, very well through their season. No controversies, no big problems. Everyone kind of agrees. Like, I like this movie. If not, you know, if not, love it. And I do think the power of, like, over love is something that is dominating at the Academy Awards these days.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Especially in years like this, where I don't think that there were a lot of people being like, this is. This is my movie. This is it. I am. I am campaigning for it myself. I do wonder how much of the total tells us about just, like, how voters are watching things and what they're watching. Like, I have a pet theory based on no evidence that Anora is just kind of the one that a lot of people are like, oh, okay, like, I'll check that one out, I guess. But I'm not gonna sit down and watch the Brood list'cause it's four. I saw Con Play.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm not gonna watch the substance.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, I'm not gonna watch. You know, I'm not gonna do all of this work, but seems like people like Anora and maybe I'll watch it at home and like it too. And then they were like, okay, homework done. Check, check, check, check.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's funny because that feels like a slight rebranding of Anora after the awards because I feel like leading up to it, everyone said that that was what Conclave was, that Conclave was the movie that everyone liked, and everyone felt palatable, and everyone was definitely gonna watch it. And so that was probably gonna win on a. On a ranked ballad, because that's what that would. What, rise to the top. And then Nora, like, I was talking to someone who was sort of berating me for ever thinking that Demi Moore would win because he was like, the. The. The older Academy voters, we. We've talked about how they've diversified, but they were never going to go for the substance. And I was like, anora's not a Disney movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's true.

[Joanna Robinson]

Honor is an edgy movie, you know, and so it's just in the con, in the larger context of, like, the punishingly long runtime of the brutalist or the extremes of the substance, Honora starts to feel more normal.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think that's what it is. I think it's in the context of the race. It was what you're describing, which is like, this is maybe the second most approachable movie I've ever seen.

[Joanna Robinson]

What am I actually.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, My ballot's due in four days. I haven't been paying any attention.

[Joanna Robinson]

I haven't watched anything.

[Amanda Dobbins]

What am I actually gonna sit down and watch?

[Joanna Robinson]

I did watch Wicked, but it's not just the substance.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think that's true for Dune Part 2. It was pointed out that in all four of the anonymous ballots that Entertainment Weekly ran, that none of the people who were voting had watched Dune Part 2, which is one of the biggest movies of the year. But I think a common refrain that I heard for the last nine months and which you were the first person on the show to cite, which is like, is this a real best picture contender? I think it should be. And a lot of people agreed because they love that movie, but it doesn't really have a lot in common with Academy history and Academy love. And it didn't do that well. It got two tech awards.

[Joanna Robinson]

You were the one who pointed out on Twitter about the two Towers stat. Like, does it have a chance at the Return of the king 3p.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So the watch spoiled Dune Messiah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I already. I knew that thing already.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's weird. It's deeply weird.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know that it's weird. I read the Wikipedia page. Sean is claiming that he won't, but he keeps insisting that we're going to have a Return of the King situation.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, I am not.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I'm just like, I don't understand how many people are going to be worms. Like, it is literally just going to be the Conan bit, but without a harp.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, I really think that that's hilarious. I really think that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Thank you so much.

[Joanna Robinson]

You're welcome. I really think that this is the.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Kind of instant feedback we need.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think that Denis is going to make some dramatic changes. Okay. But still, he has to.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't think for sure that it's going to be rewarded. I do think that part of the pattern of this year was people thinking that that was what was going to happen, because they don't know what's in that book. Okay, that's your first observation about the spread. What's your second Well, I already kind.

[Joanna Robinson]

Of said my second, which was like, which. Which categories were question marks?

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, the nail biters.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, the nail biters.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I think that was good. Did we just trick ourselves, though? You kind of brought that up. You were like, we kind of knew it was a Nora, and we. For some reason, we backed off.

[Joanna Robinson]

But we knew my friend. A couple friends of mine were at the neon party, and during the screening, there was, like, the watch party, and then the after party, and during the watch party, a bunch of neon. You know, it's just neon folks rooting for their own film, of course, and. And they start chanting like, the SAGS don't matter.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

For the end of it. And so, yeah, I mean, the SAG Awards, I mean, to me. To me had a narrative building up. It was really Timmy's. Tim's win at the SAG Awards that really. Because we were like, oh, it's Brody. It's Brody. And walks. Brody's. Brody's Brody. And then we're like, oh, is it Tim? Is it just because we want to see him make another speech? Is it because we want to watch him wearing a suit?

[Sean Fennessy]

I was like, I should have changed Mikey. I should have went, Mikey the whole time. I don't know why I did that. That was stupid. You were very forceful and convincing throughout that process.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm still shocked. And I think I really just, like, I am concerned for every, like, lower level employee at caa, at Demi's management company, whatever. Like, the. The photo of her in the bathrobe with. With the. What's the dog's name? I never learned the dog's name. And two plates of fries as, like, the. I'm okay. That was. That was tough. That was. Things are. Things are really bad.

[Joanna Robinson]

And.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I. I wonder how people are behaving themselves.

[Sean Fennessy]

She's gonna be okay, but I mean, she's fine.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She's gonna be totally fine. I hope.

[Joanna Robinson]

I mean, I don't know how she was like, if she was. I mean, I think about. I think about this every time this happens when it happens to Glenn Close, when it happens to whoever that everyone told you you were gonna win or you might win. And I just hope that they have people around them saying, but also, you might not. But also, let's look at what Mikey has also done. But also, let's be realistic about this. And I don't know if Demi has a. Is the kind of star who has a team around her that is realistic with her or a kind of team around her that's just sort of like, you got this, babe. It's you, it's your year.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think one of the reasons why Mikey won is that the more that people saw her during the campaign, the more they realized just how different she is from Annie. That she actually did have a kind of transformation performance wise, that, you know, she's much more. Clearly a much more retiring, soft spoken person. And so the, you know, jealousy is a disease, honey. And all that shit. Like, that's not. That's acting. So. And she's really great at it. And they wanted to award that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Guys, can you clip that for Social?

[Sean Fennessy]

I would be happy to be part of that meme. If you could make me closer inside of that meme, I would be very happy.

[Bobby Wagner]

Can we get a take with like 30% more Brighton beach in it, you think? For Social to make it really go.

[Sean Fennessy]

Viral, as you know, I have stuff all of that, you know, intonation down as I get further and further from Long Island. The other thing too is, you know, our friend Michael Asker has been saying to me for the last couple months, he's like, you called this man. You've been saying a Nora for seven months. You called this. And I'm like, I can't claim calling anything because I looked at when can happened. The only reason I was like, this is a big deal and it's gonna be a big deal movie is because the field was so weak this year. It's not that a Palme d'or winner means it's gonna be a Best Picture winner. It's just that it was a weird.

[Joanna Robinson]

Weak year when we were. When you were out and we were ranking. I feel like the conversations we were having was, we'll put an OR at the top because we're waiting to figure out what actually is gonna go at the top.

[Sean Fennessy]

Exactly, exactly.

[Joanna Robinson]

That was like it was a placeholder.

[Amanda Dobbins]

For the whole time.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's why I'm not like, you know, saying, I told you, I told you. I don't know. If conclave did rise, I'd have been like, okay, I guess that happened. White smoke. We didn't get white smoke, black smoke.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think you're being too hard on yourself, you know, like, you have a job to do and your job is to talk about this for six months a year. You know, so it's like, you gotta make content just like everybody else.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, you do.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes. And I have felt in the. In the last 24 hours that I've heard from a lot of people who don't do this. Six Months, A year or even three months in my case. Thank you so much again. And feel suddenly that they, like, get to share their opinions and.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oh, yeah, a lot of that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I respectfully know a lot of people watching you start your own podcast.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. Oh, you're surprised. Ariana Grande lost. Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Thank you. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

I heard from a lot of people who are basically like, cramming the Oscar movies in the last, like, week. And I was like, you're bless them.

[Amanda Dobbins]

For even watching them. A lot of people are just like, what's this? I don't like it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, I hate that, as you know.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. So whatever.

[Joanna Robinson]

Last observation, this one actually really bothered me. So I thought Conan. I actually thought Conan was a great host. Like, I thought he really walked a great line between not saying, isn't it ridiculous for here, but also getting off some rather sharp edged zingers. I thought that was really great. He starts the war, the ceremony in his monologue, which I thought overall was really good, saying, okay, fires are bad, politics are bad, everything is tough. But it's okay that we're here to celebrate this moment because we're celebrating the working class artists of film, not just the famous people, but we're here to celebrate the artisans, blah, blah, blah, and then to watch artisan after artisan get played off the stage while they're trying to make their speech. I was like, that is not. I mean, this has always been a frustrating thing about the Oscars. I really think. I mean, I know we're moving as. As I think you and I are both really excited about. And hopefully Amanda is with us, like, towards this, like, niche or. We love cinema. Do you, do you want that or do you want it to go back? I do.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I just don't want to hear from everyone else afterwards of being like, well, I don't care about this. You know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I think that's actually where we're headed is no, stop caring.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, do that. Like, either do the work or, you know, take, you know, take my betting advice and move on. That's actually Katie and Becky were very respectful and they enjoyed. I don't know if I won them any money, which I feel bad about, but they enjoyed Paul Tazewell's acceptance speech.

[Joanna Robinson]

So.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes, you know, and that was a good one. I mean, there were a few. There were a few artisans who broke through.

[Joanna Robinson]

Absolutely. But I just think overall.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And there were some who just rested way too much time. I'm not naming any names, but it happened in the shorts category and that was a. That's a tough scene.

[Joanna Robinson]

I just think that, like, when the Oscars historically have. And by the Oscars, I mean the, you know, the telecasts have tried to put these categories during the commercial break or whatever. You know, whatever the case they. They can do to get further and further away from actually honoring or like, collapse the sound categories. Like, year after year, they're just sort of getting further and further away from this. So it's one thing to do that, and it's another thing to make this speech about how. Why we're here to honor those people and then to not give them time to talk.

[Sean Fennessy]

I just think that that's something. What Conan said from the stage is something that insanely rich and famous people tell themselves to feel better about. Having the most public awards ceremony in America, if not the world. You know what I mean? Like, the Nobel is a much more important prize, but 20 million people don't watch the Nobel Prize ceremony. Like, this is the biggest thing like this that we do.

[Joanna Robinson]

Someone was telling me, they're like, oh, you know what they're gonna do? They're going to get Bob Dylan to come out and do the meet with Timmy Chalamet. I was like, bob Dylan did not leave his house.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's not doing that shit.

[Joanna Robinson]

He's not coming.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's why he's Bob Dylan.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, great observations. One other thing that I neglected to mention, though many people did point it out to me is no real David Lynch. Meaningful acknowledgment, I will say that he got.

[Joanna Robinson]

If it had not been for Gene Hackman, he would have had the final, biggest in Memoriam moment. They, like, ended with him, and it was a lengthy moment for him. So it would have wrapped with David lynch, this huge filmmaker that we lost.

[Sean Fennessy]

So you're blaming Hackman and Morgan Freeman. To be honest with you, Morgan Freeman is an example of an older star who was there. We didn't point out the fact that, you know, he does represent that Nicholson class. And, you know, I said it to you during the show, I was like, He's 87. This is not.

[Joanna Robinson]

And they were pairing, like, bringing Goldie Hawn out with Andrew Garfield. Like, they paired a lot of, like, older stars with younger stars. I thought the Andrew. An Andrew Garfield bit almost always works for me.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And this one did.

[Joanna Robinson]

This one did not.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, I think it was a little.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like, I'd like to fuck you, Goldie Hawn.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Which is, you know, and. And Goldie Hawn wasn't quite on the. On the same page.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You know, so. But that's also. Goldie Hawn was like, I don't have my reading glasses. So I just, I, he, she, she looked great. It was, it was okay. I appreciate what he does generally to bring the energy. He also is like, to me, was the only non nominated celebrity there, like doing the work, putting on a show. We need more of that.

[Sean Fennessy]

He was trying. He was trying. You pointed out during the show that Isabella Rossellini was wearing the blue velvet dress, which was very nice, a great tribute. She did not win, so most people just did not see that or even think about it. The lynch thing is just like he was nominated for best director twice. He's not just some guy, he's a significant part of the Academy.

[Joanna Robinson]

You wanted Margaret Qualley to dance to Blue Velvet.

[Sean Fennessy]

What song? How do we get her in the roadhouse in Twin the Return? Dancing to his song.

[Joanna Robinson]

Bring out Julie Cruz.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, Julie. Oh, that would have been. Well, she passed as well, right?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, Never mind.

[Sean Fennessy]

Don't bring out Julie Cruz. Okay, very quickly, before we get into the mailbag, questions, we have a lot of questions. 20, 26 Oscar predictions. I'm not asking you to do the whole slate, though I will admit to you guys here that I did do the whole slate last night while I was bored.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay. Did you, did you leave that experience joyful, nervous, tired? Like, where, where were you?

[Sean Fennessy]

You know what it is? I'm committed to the game. Like I am about this life and I've always been about it. So if I decide with 48 minutes on a Monday night at 10:12pm to dig into my 20, 26 opportunities, it's.

[Amanda Dobbins]

11 with your heart out.

[Sean Fennessy]

I just kind of lose all brain function at that time, so I had to kind of squeeze it in there.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

But I felt good about it. But I asked you guys to just do one best picture prediction, one best actor prediction, and one best actress prediction for the films that are coming out this year. How did you feel about this exercise?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Seems a little thin on the ground right now.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, so that was my concern and that's why I asked you how you were feeling. Not, you know, some meta commentary about your job as a full time Oscar prognosticator.

[Sean Fennessy]

I listed 26 potential best picture nominees.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Cool. Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Why don't you read them and we'll tell you what we think about.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm sure I forgot, so.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And we'll just say yes or no.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

After the hunt, the forthcoming Luca Guadagnino, Julia Robertson.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I don't think it'll happen.

[Sean Fennessy]

Anne Lee. Mona fastfold's new movie premiering later this year, Fire and Ash.

[Joanna Robinson]

No. Nominated, but.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Nominated.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not saying winner, I'm saying nominee. I'm saying Best Picture nominees.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. The Bride, Maggie Gyllenhaal's Bride of Frankenstein adaptation.

[Joanna Robinson]

I really want this to be a yes. This is going to get, like, screwed up.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, not that again. It's not deserving. I just. I think that it'll get crowded out because isn't Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein also coming out?

[Sean Fennessy]

It is also coming out, and that's not real. These are in alphabetical order, for the record.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You know Shape of Water was about.

[Joanna Robinson]

A fish in lyre.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know, but he was a fascist. I don't know if you caught that.

[Sean Fennessy]

He was not a fascist. He existed in a fascist period in history. Begonia, the new Yorgos Lanthimos film starring Emma Stone.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Uh, no.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Lynne Ramsay's Die My Love, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

But can't wait.

[Sean Fennessy]

Christopher Borgli's the Drama, starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya. This is the director of Dream Scenario.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. Joanna says yes. Amanda says no. Eddington, Ari Aster's contemporary set Western.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Father, Mother, Sister, Brother. Jim Jarmusch's new drama starring Cate Blanchett, which may premiere at Cannes.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But that's nice that you thought that.

[Sean Fennessy]

I love Jim.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, of course.

[Joanna Robinson]

We love Cat Lanchett.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm just giving you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I'm excited about it. Listing potentialities, everything that you just said. Keep going.

[Sean Fennessy]

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Nominated.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. Chloe Zhao's Hamnet, which is a literary adaptation.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Highest to lowest. Spike Lee's remake of Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, starring Denzel Washington.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Washington. I'd like to say yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Let's say yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

The History of Sound. Oliver Hermanis new film starring Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal, about two men in the 1910s.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm so excited for this one.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm so excited for this one. I'm gonna manifest it. Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You could really see it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. J. Kelly, Noah Baumbach's new film starring George Clooney and Adam Sandler.

[Joanna Robinson]

So I have heard that. I've heard rave, rave, rave things about.

[Sean Fennessy]

This movie, the Sandler campaign. I've been told, buckle up for the.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Part of the reason that Sandler was there last night.

[Sean Fennessy]

Was that okay, then?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes, let's do it.

[Joanna Robinson]

And I have heard. I heard it, like, a while ago. Is it gonna be Cannes It's Netflix.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it'll be in the fall and it's Netflix.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So. Venice. We have to go to Venice. Do you want to come to Venice?

[Joanna Robinson]

Sure. Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Seriously, I'll write you a. You know, I'll fill out your application for you. I need people on the ground with me, paperwork.

[Joanna Robinson]

So.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, it's honestly pretty easy.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, great.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And mostly in Italian.

[Sean Fennessy]

Venice.

[Joanna Robinson]

You don't want to go to Venice?

[Sean Fennessy]

Not really.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We would have so much fun. Really? Will you come to Venice? Okay, great.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, great. That's nice for you guys. Marty Supreme. This is Josh Safdie's Timothee Chalamet period piece about a ping pong player.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, in Best Picture. We're doing Best Picture right now.

[Sean Fennessy]

Best Picture.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Kelly Reichardt's the Mastermind, which is an art heist thriller set against the Vietnam War.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, but I can't wait.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, sounds very exciting.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sounds so good.

[Sean Fennessy]

Materialists, which is a new movie from Celine's Song, which just got a release date.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Were they sending out cakes? A24, if you're listening.

[Joanna Robinson]

So there was a cake list?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, I'm not always, but I don't. Did they send a cake for this? I don't know because the cake was in the picture of announcing the date.

[Sean Fennessy]

I am not casting Aspergens on this movie, but I don't think it's going to be an Oscar movie movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Have you seen it?

[Sean Fennessy]

No. It's got a June release date and it's got.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Joanna, would you like to use this opportunity to apologize to Chris? Evan, I would. Yeah, go ahead. Formally you apologize for the things that you said and you believe that this movie with Seline Song.

[Sean Fennessy]

Show it to me first and then we can talk about whether or not I need to be issuing apologies to anybody.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I believe in Seline Song. Sure. I think Chris Evans has made some poor choices and can make some good ones. Dakota Johnson forever. And I'd like some cake.

[Joanna Robinson]

I feel so strongly. Dakota Johnson forever.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Thank you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Congrats, guys.

[Joanna Robinson]

Hey, when did positive come out?

[Amanda Dobbins]

What was. What was better?

[Sean Fennessy]

2023.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, but what. What month? Wasn't it like a weird.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Maybe like May.

[Joanna Robinson]

June. Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. Yes, that's. Yeah, I know. They're trying to redo it.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a rom com. It's. It's not a.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's not a romance like that.

[Joanna Robinson]

My presence Anora is being called a rom com.

[Sean Fennessy]

Look, if I'm wrong about this, I'm wrong. I'm just giving you a gut.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Take one more. Dakota Johnson Thing. Which was better? Captain America, Red Hulk or Madame Web?

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, unfortunately, it was Captain America.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, no.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Sean Fennessy]

We got a lot of movies to go here.

[Joanna Robinson]

Of the two low bars. Okay, go ahead.

[Sean Fennessy]

Michael. The Michael Jackson biopic.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, God. Is this still. Because they got to redo the whole third act.

[Sean Fennessy]

Reportedly I before Matt Bellamy's report about this movie needing to reshoot the third act, I would have said this is a locked and loaded best picture contender. That's not.

[Joanna Robinson]

And that's not how this is gonna land. I have no idea how this is gonna land.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mother Mary. David Lowery's pop star portrayal starring Anne Hathaway.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Anne Hathaway.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Park Chan Wook's. No other choice.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

I feel a Park Chan Wook moment coming. Something that occurred to me. One battle after another. Paul Thomas Anderson's new film.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes. Theo. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Phoenician Scheme. Wes Anderson's new movie coming out, but it's very soon.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Outrage.

[Sean Fennessy]

Two months.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I can.

[Sean Fennessy]

Very exciting Cannes Screenplay. Screenplay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, well, but yeah, but not. We're just doing best pictures right now. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Chinese Master Bi Gon's Resurrection. Okay, you guys don't have an answer on that one. Derek C. In France returns to feature filmmaking with a new film called Roofman. It's about a roofman.

[Joanna Robinson]

Who's in Roofman?

[Sean Fennessy]

I forget who. The Roof Man. Who's the titular roof Man? Who's the roofer and Roofman? Oh, it's Channing.

[Bobby Wagner]

It's taking place in the Chris Pine Pool Guy universe.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, no. There's a Pool Guy. There's Spider Man. There's Batman, There's Pool man, and there's Roofman. Yeah. All my favorite superheroes.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm sorry, you said it's Channing Tatum. Channing Tatum instead of Gambit and.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, And Lakeith Stanfield and Ben Mendelsohn and Kirsten Dunst.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Do love her now.

[Sean Fennessy]

Derrick. Sean. France for the boys. You know, we do love Derek Sea.

[Joanna Robinson]

In France for the boys.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, Very much. Yeah. A place beyond the pines is Blue.

[Joanna Robinson]

Valentine's Day true boy. Texas. Sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think it's a no. But.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, okay. It's a no. I lost my place on my list. Where is it?

[Joanna Robinson]

You can't claim Derek C. In France.

[Sean Fennessy]

I just did the Smashing Machine. This is a true life story of a boxer starring the Rock.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Directed by Benny Safdie.

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. No. Sorry, baby. Which was a smash out of Sundance. That a 24 acquired.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Joanna Robinson]

They always get one that's their one.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, they always get one Sundance. You know the Sundance. Well, I guess a real Pain didn't get it.

[Sean Fennessy]

This would be the real pain of the year. Not to conflate the meaning of those two movies. Train Dreams, another Sundance movie. Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, that's the Logger.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's the one. That's the one.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's the lager. Clint Bentley and Greg Kuidar's movie. And Wicked for Good.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. I don't. Bobby. We're keeping track of how many yeses they gave.

[Joanna Robinson]

More than 10.

[Bobby Wagner]

I'll note that in post.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, thank you. Did I miss anything? Did you think of. Did you have one that I didn't mention?

[Joanna Robinson]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. I feel like Wicked for Good is the easiest prediction here. And we may be in for a Wicked year. He may be in for one.

[Joanna Robinson]

As mentioned about Dune Messiah, Wicked for Good is going to be a darker tale.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, does anybody fuck a sandworm in Wicked for Good? Can you confirm or deny that?

[Joanna Robinson]

I won't speak for Elphaba and her choices.

[Sean Fennessy]

Best actor predictions.

[Joanna Robinson]

Chalamet back for Marty Supreme Leo in.

[Sean Fennessy]

For one battle after another. Wow. That's also like the substance right there. Yeah, it is. Those were my first two on my list. A wild card I'll throw out there is this is just for a nominee. Matthew McConaughey for a movie called the Lost Bus, which is Paul Greengrass's new movie for Apple, which is about the paradise fires and a bus driver who got children out of the fire.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's like a real Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic. Sort of.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's not quite that whimsical.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, no, no. Not whimsy, but just sort of like that level of. I could see it happening.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's the actress Emma Stoneback for the Yorgos movie Begonia.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Annie Hathaway had her on the list as well. My number one pick is Rose Byrne for if I Had Legs, I'd Kick youk, which was at Sundance. I didn't see it, but went into tea leaves reading mode, everyone. And there's a big halo around her performance.

[Joanna Robinson]

On the one hand, yes. But on the other hand, it feels like a thing that you make a big deal of at Sundance. That does not.

[Sean Fennessy]

Could be. This happened to Kieran Culkin, though, and we saw what happened on Sunday. Okay, thanks for playing that exercise with me. Let's do the mailbag. Right. Any closing thoughts? Oh, very quickly. Jesse Armstrong has a movie coming, apparently on HBO in, like, two months, six weeks. The creator of Succession one of the best TV writers of the last 10 years.

[Joanna Robinson]

In the wake of Shawn Baker's, we need to go to the theaters. How do you feel about a Jesse Armstrong movie on hbo?

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, it's not what I want.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's also where I've consumed most of his work for the last three to however many years.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Movies are back, but on tv, that's just how it's been.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't love that.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's not great, but I'm so excited to have a new movie. It's kind of a. Kind of a meh. Spring.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, it's tough.

[Sean Fennessy]

So for this show's purposes, it's like, all right, Mickey, 17, sinners. Some other stuff.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Sinners.

[Sean Fennessy]

We gotta get to May here. We really gotta get to May. So if this movie drops in April, it's very exciting for the big picture.

[Joanna Robinson]

We accept Michael B. Jordan, best actor, Sinners.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's not impossible.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, it's not probable, but seems not.

[Sean Fennessy]

Likely given that it's a vampire movie.

[Joanna Robinson]

Golden Globe.

[Sean Fennessy]

Big Golden Globes. Vibes. All right, Robert hit us with some mailbag questions. How did the inbox look?

[Bobby Wagner]

It looked good. I read over 300 emails for this mailbag.

[Joanna Robinson]

Hell yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Sheesh.

[Bobby Wagner]

And I tried to drop in or respond to as many as possible. So I apologize if yours is not. And also, we have a 40 minute conversation with one of the masters of international cinema coming at the end of this. So we can't just answer 200 questions. I apologize. First question jumping back to Sunday evening. What snacks and beverages did Amanda and Sean enjoy and Joanna, or not enjoy during the telecast this year?

[Joanna Robinson]

I will say this. I heard the food at the Neon party was a no bueno. Was a bus.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

No Wolfgang Puck on offer there. Okay, that's too bad. We had sushi.

[Joanna Robinson]

We did.

[Sean Fennessy]

We had Yunomi hand roll, which is a downtown fixture that I'm a huge fan of. We now frequently order Yunomi hand roll for award show viewing purposes here on the big screen on Spotify, which is fun. I don't know why you didn't join us. That would have been nice.

[Joanna Robinson]

Actually.

[Sean Fennessy]

I didn't even think about that. Then again, Amanda and I watching these shows with one or two folks from our video team has become a tradition. And it's very weird, but it's sweet.

[Joanna Robinson]

I saw the video of Amanda, like, prone at one point.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I do. There are two very, very oversized armchair loveseat situations. But at some point, you just gotta lay back and relax.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. And just let it happen to you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Was it, wait, it was Mick Jagger you found particularly offensive?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, it was that I. One of my out on a limb predictions was that we were gonna finally take care of this Diane Warren thing.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, and it was just then.

[Amanda Dobbins]

We wouldn't have to talk about it anymore. It would've been so campaign. Let's get this over with.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes. You guys should hang out next year.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, we didn't snack too much. I've shifted my mentality on this. I used to over order on Oscar day. Lot of snacks, big meal, double cheeseburger. Nowadays I want to be relatively light stomached.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I agreed. I also agree with that. What did you have when you got home?

[Sean Fennessy]

I inhaled a box of Annie's snack mix, which is technically my daughter's. But not anymore. Not anymore. And I feel good about that choice. I also had three tall glasses of water.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, good.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. And then I had to wake up 4:00 in the morning to pee because I'm 42 years old.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, it's really tough.

[Sean Fennessy]

You can't drink water after 7pm After 40. Just something for all the listeners and all you fine young cannibals, young millennials and Gen Z. Enjoy that water while you can guys, because it's, it's not going to work out as you get older.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. I had half a, I had half a gummy and then I thought that would help me sleep. Like a weed gummy. Obviously. And then, and then I woke up.

[Joanna Robinson]

At like 4:00 and was like, hello.

[Sean Fennessy]

We were talking about whether or not.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know, I tried it. It did, you know, because after an Oscars day or something you can be a little high energy, you know, a little like jittery.

[Joanna Robinson]

I only know based on the texts I saw that came from you that were in all caps with so many exclamation marks.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You know, you're trying to keep the energy up, keep it going, but then you gotta like come down. So I thought that the gummy might help and I guess it did. I properly dosed, I followed the instructions on the label, but then it didn't really help my sleep. So that's out.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's hard out here. Did you enjoy anything nice on theme.

[Joanna Robinson]

Of low key Oscars? I just did not usually I do like theme food. This is just like a, just a CAS year.

[Sean Fennessy]

All right, well, next year we'll try to figure it out. Assuming you're here covering the White Lotus Season 4 in Los Angeles. Okay, what's our next question?

[Bobby Wagner]

Next question comes from, wants to know what is the Next film from Sean Baker. How much bigger does he go? Many people asked us a similar question to Sean Baker. Cash and a blank check. Now, does he continue to make films in the same register? What will happen next for his career?

[Joanna Robinson]

He has said specifically that he wants to go smaller, that he is committed to independent cinema, and he does not want to do what your illustrious guest on this podcast has done, which is go bigger.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, well, to me, Bong Joon Ho going bigger after Parasite didn't feel like some kind of rejection. I mean, he'd already made Okja. He'd already made the host spectacle is a part of his proposition.

[Joanna Robinson]

Going bigger for something like Mickey 17, which is not like, I want to go make a Marvel movie. It's very, very different.

[Sean Fennessy]

If Sean Baker signed on for Fantastic Four too, that would be disappointing, grim.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It would be the rejection of everything we understand.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes. But without, you know, I'm really, really excited for Mickey 17. This has nothing to do with that, but, like, the fact that Sean Baker's like, I can do it. I could do more with less. He was also talking about how he was, like, going immediately to Florida to interview the kids from the Florida Project, who are now teenagers, like, for special features for the Florida Project dvd. And I was just like, that's the movie I really wish Willem Dafoe had won Best Supporting Actor for. But I just love that he's like, I can. I can. I can go down from here.

[Sean Fennessy]

There's one other exciting consequence, I think, which is just that people are going to go back and look at his older movies. Prince of Broadway is coming out in the Criterion Collection the same week that Anora is coming in the Criterion Collection. So they're coming out together. Criterion, very smart to pair those things together because people will buy them together. And that's a very little seen movie. That's a really interesting movie that has a lot of little strands that when you look through his work, you can see the resonance. So I think it's. The thing is it doesn't really matter how big or not big his movie is. He does a very specific kind of story, and if he moved significantly beyond that, it would be shocking. He's been talking about this. The other thing is, everybody thought Shawn Baker was 38 years old. He's 56 years old. He's been making movies for 30 years.

[Amanda Dobbins]

He does look great.

[Sean Fennessy]

He looks great.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, the thing is, could he cash in? The one reason, I guess to do it would be a mountain of money. And he seems very cool. And to not care about that at all, which is just another. Otherwise, why would you really do it? He writes, directs, edits, proof, like, he's just running his own show. He makes, like, amazing movies, has, like, built, you know, like, a career and a Uber, like, overtime, and can do it all himself without other people bugging him.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think also all of his movies are pointedly transgressive in their themes and in what they portray on screen, and he wants control over that. He doesn't want to be told he can't do it. So, of course he's not signing up to make a movie at Warner Brothers. You know, that would make sense.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right. But there, you know, there's ideas of, can I leverage this to sign a deal with Warner's where I get complete creative control over this? And I like this idea that, like, you know, we'll see what he does, where he does it, et cetera. But listening to Tom Quinn's interview on the Town, like, and talking about what, like, Neon wants to do and all of that, I just think that that that's a really good interview and a really good support of a filmmaker that they, you know, had a lot of great success with this year, but also really courted for a long time.

[Sean Fennessy]

So, yeah, let's actually do the neon A24 question then, because of that. Because I think that's a really good segue. Bob.

[Bobby Wagner]

Yeah, we got this question from Nick. Has Neon officially taken the Independent Film Company Championship belt away from a 24?

[Sean Fennessy]

So there's a lot of ways to read this, and I think it's an interesting question. The championship belt is fake. That doesn't mean anything. That's a.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And also, even if it's real, it's like, no. They trade it back and forth at the Oscars and in the box office and in life.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I fully agree. I think, at least among producers that I know, Neon is hotter. Like, Neon is just a little bit hotter right now because a 24 is in the middle of this transition where they are trying to and succeeding at being a bigger company that generates more success. Now they are going to run into the same thing that every movie studio runs into, which is to try to make bigger movies. Your movies have to get riskier, more expensive, and maybe dumber.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And so that broadly appealing, certainly.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And so that sheen of cool that they have worked so hard to accumulate over the years is slightly under threat. But if you look, though, at, say, let's just say for the box office last year, what do you think this is a Game. How much money worldwide do you think Anora made at the box office?

[Joanna Robinson]

I feel like I should know this. Isn't it something like 50 million? No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Any guesses?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I was going to say like 24.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's $41.25 million. Now how about this? How much did the Brutalist make at the box office?

[Joanna Robinson]

That one I don't know, but less.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right guess.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, I'll guess 24. Again, just to have a fun fact.

[Sean Fennessy]

41.46. They are neck and neck at the box office. And I would say for both of those movies, that's a great success. If you remove the context of these are the leading contenders for best picture. So both of these companies are doing very well. If you go through 2024 though, A24 had many of its highest grossing movies ever in 2024. Civil War, Heretic, Baby Girl, We Live In Time and Maxine all cleared $20 million worldwide. I think just one movie for Neon did that and it was Long Legs, which was a crazy success story, but was more anomalous than it was the trend. So just in that context, they're doing different things. I think they both have two best picture winners now, right? With moonlight and Everything Everywhere all at Once and Parasite. And now this film. Neon has made this bid to basically buy every single Palme d'or winner. I'm sure they'll try to do that again this year. They both have great taste. One is like a lifestyle brand, the other is just like we just do movies. That's our whole thing. A lot of the marketing for the Monkey was literally poking fun at the candle selling for Heretic. I don't know if you guys saw that poster. They're in a little quiet cold war here. That is fun.

[Joanna Robinson]

Can I sort to go back to that interview that Tom Quinn did on the town, which again I really recommend. Like, he was talking about the campaign effort and he was talking. He, he and Matt were specifically talking about the mailers. And as someone who receives as, as do you guys like all of the, all of the awards season mailers? Every year I look forward to two things, which is the Neon box set because they send it out every year in a physical media beautiful box set, not just like a random DVD that they've shoved in a random envelope that you get a million of and it's deeply annoying. And the 8 to 4 box, the A24 box which is full of yes, like heritage candles and like weird swag.

[Sean Fennessy]

I have never received the a24 box in my life. I Have no idea why. Okay, well, seeing that on the record.

[Joanna Robinson]

Those are just the two. And to your point, we do movies. We do swag. That's right. But the swag, unlike any of the other studios, that sends out something completely random, disconnected from the movie, or just something really weird and useless, they're like, these are really fun, clever, funny things that are tied to, you know, one year it comes in, like, a minari food crate box. And like, you know, whatever it is, it's just like. It's like, we know you love our movies. Here's a bunch of stuff tied to our movies. But those are. Yeah, but those are two, like, really smart, concentrated efforts. Who. Who blitzes everyone with award suites and stuff? It's Netflix. They send you. You were getting a Netflix package every day. It becomes deeply annoying. There are these huge heavy art books. It's all this sort of stuff. And it's so emblematic of how concentrated and targeted and clever the neon and the A24 approaches are.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, that particular aspect of things, they still are just doing very well, and they seem to be reaching people in a way that maybe all those Netflix mailers are not reaching people. And some of the Netflix films, I don't know. I think the other thing to consider is that I pointed this out on social media. This is the first time all six major winners and Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary and International Feature were independently financed. None of those movies were financed by a major studio in Hollywood. That is antithetical to the origins of the Academy Awards. They were started by the studios. And so we're seeing a massive shift. And so now what you're seeing is not just a 24 and neon, but I think particularly Janice, Sideshow, and Mubi are like real awards contenders every year, in addition to Sony Pictures Classics and Focus and all the old hands who have always been really good at this. Janice just got Flo a Best Animated Feature Oscar. That's a crazy thing that happened. I know we don't talk about that sort of stuff that much on the show, but. But there's no precedent for that sort of thing happening in that category.

[Joanna Robinson]

I don't know what that campaign looked like at all, though. That, to me, all felt like word of mouth, which I guess is like.

[Sean Fennessy]

A. I think Gintz worked so hard. He did so many interviews. He was so president.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But then some of that was also just it. That was a very online phenomenon also, you know, like, it was. And the Cat and the Capybara. And I think also, like, the lack of dialogue means that you don't have to do subtitles. You know, it's inspirational kind of style.

[Sean Fennessy]

Exactly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And accessible. And they made it very available. You could see it on, I believe Max before the Oscars.

[Sean Fennessy]

They did.

[Amanda Dobbins]

People were into it.

[Sean Fennessy]

So. Yeah. And I think Mubi, obviously, Mubi picked up the substance from Universal. And if you just look at what Mubi is gonna do this year, we mentioned the History of Sound already. Bring Them down is coming out next week, or maybe it came out last week and it's coming to streaming soon. It's Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan in a mo movie. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother. The Jarmusch movie, Magic Farm, Amalia Ullman's next movie. And then the Mastermind is also movie. So these companies, like, they don't have as much money and they don't have as much clout as Warner Brothers or Universal. But in some cases they have a higher likelihood of winning Oscars in the future. So things are just very different. And in that respect, it's fun. A24 Indiana are going to be fine. They're doing great. What's next?

[Bobby Wagner]

Okay, we got many, many questions about Adrian Brody's speech. So this one represents that cohort of people. Tim asks now that it's confirmed that Adrien Brody gave the longest acceptance speech in history, which we did not know on Sunday evening when we recorded Do Sean and Amanda have any second thoughts on it? Most of the online community thought it. It was scatterbrained and incohesive.

[Sean Fennessy]

Tim says, do you have any second thoughts?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, Tim, I don't. This is one where.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was not scatterbrained or incohesive.

[Joanna Robinson]

So funny. And she cohesive a word coherent incoherent.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Which for the record, we did. I on the. We were like, this was really long and it. He was like.

[Sean Fennessy]

I believe the words I used were elongated and self. Regarding.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So you know, and I observed a very long time. I. You know, everyone was watching. I think I. How you respond to it is like how you respond to it and that's fine. I. I've been thinking a lot about the broadcast decision to cut to Georgina Chapman as many times as they did, which is maybe like that we could Monday morning quarterback on a little bit. But no, the main thing that I've been thinking about is I'm just like, oh, so people really didn't see the Brutalist because it's like you are expecting some energy like if, if you.

[Joanna Robinson]

If you what if the Brutalists were an acceptance speech.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like if you had been in the Brutalist mindset. If you've been following what Brady Corbet is up to, which is another thing. I'm just like, you guys better be glad the director went the way it did. But I was like, oh, okay. So you all are just learning about all of this, and that's. That's fine. You know, I actually. I definitely think that it works better in the film the Brutalist than it did on stage. But, you know, whatever. It's. It's the Oscars.

[Joanna Robinson]

Do you think one should physically toss one's gum before watching the Brutalist as well?

[Amanda Dobbins]

That was tough. But.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I do also.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I like. I like that he was like, I shouldn't have gum in my mouth.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sure. You know, do you. Do you guys talk about this on. Do people know that the kids he talked about in his exception?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes, that's what I was thinking. That's why I was like, yeah, popsy. I mean, listen, the kids are like. And the kids are blameless.

[Joanna Robinson]

No. Yeah. It's just a Hollywood tale.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You can cut to the supportive partner once or twice, but the fourth time that someone is coaching him through an Oscar speech, you begin to remember when she's been at the Oscars before, I would just think twice.

[Sean Fennessy]

Here's what I will say about the speech. I'll repeat some of what I said, but one, I interviewed Adrien Brody during the campaign for the Brutalist. That's what it's like talking to Adrien Brody. If you listen to our interview, he's incredibly deliberate. He's deeply serious. If you want to say he's too self serious and a windbag. If you want to use those words, feel free. Like, that is how he is and how he always is in my experience. What I was trying to point out, what I was praising in the speech, was that he did something that I think good speeches do, which is that they show you what's most important to the person who won. What was most important to him was his journey, his arc as an actor, as a famous person, as a person who fell, whatever that means in the last 20 years, and as a person who, in his mind came back. All the stuff about, like, love, not hate, that's the same jeremiads we hear at every Academy Awards. To me, that was like. It was long, but it was the.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Same shit that he gave me actors all the time. Very long time.

[Sean Fennessy]

Totally. And people said, I've been here before, you know, like. And I get all that. I thought that was kind of amusing.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I liked it the same way I.

[Sean Fennessy]

Thought the Chalamet, like, I want to be one of the great things was amusing. I was like, you don't see this too. It's nice to see something different. But specifically, him talking about, like, him pumping himself up in this comeback story, which is in his mind. I mean, Adrien Brody is, like, presumably very wealthy and successful and having a good life.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. But he's like Wes Anderson, bit player. No more succession, guest star. No more. I'm leading man Adrien Brody again. And I think what is true about the these kinds of Oscars, these kinds of, like, where you been Oscars? Is that it doesn't necessarily. Ask Renee Zellweger, ask Brendan Fraser. Does this necessarily translate to your back, baby?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, it definitely does not.

[Joanna Robinson]

So that all seemed a little like. I'm not sure the point you're making is a true point.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Kind of used it as like a. I am committing to myself in front of all of you.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's ultimately not up to him, unfortunately. I mean, that's the thing is like, the penis and the brutalist are once in a lifetime roles, and he just happened to get two. And a lot of people.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Have you said something?

[Joanna Robinson]

I also heard that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I was like, okay, well, I was like, I saw a different cut.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I didn't actually. I saw the. I was like, I thinking about.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, you did.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm gonna move right on past that one.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Why is everyone being such a prude this Oscar season?

[Sean Fennessy]

What do you mean? A Nora just won best Picture.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I know. And everyone's just been like, can you believe that? Something is, like, scandalous and, like, so many, like, naked ladies. I was like, it's a strip club. Like, sure, they have sex. Like, they had a lot of sex and poor things. Why, you know, why everyone just being so uptight? It's fine. They're just bodies.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. Thank you very much to Dr. Dobbins for sharing as a impromptu science corner for health class.

[Joanna Robinson]

To go back to my earlier, like, let's not play the poor artisans off the stage when there are, like, people who didn't even get to make their speech. And Adrien Brody takes that amount of time. That's when I have real issue, you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Know, in the whole. I agree with you, but this was at the end of the show, and it was best actor. Like, I does. Should best actor not talk for a longer period of time than the best visual effects team? This is the academy of the.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Read the next question, Bob. Read the next question.

[Bobby Wagner]

This is the exact next question. Comes from Keely on The last pod, you both mentioned varying opinions about the allotted time of acceptance speeches. Is everyone deserving of the same time slot or should more time be given to the big categories?

[Joanna Robinson]

Here's my issue. When we slot VFX artists in the commercials or play them off the stage is like, this is the one time they get to be inside of out, like in front of an audience this big in their lives. Adrien Brody has had this opportunity and gotten to give many speeches at many awards show at this point. And this is the one time that those people get to do it.

[Sean Fennessy]

And like, I mean, are we fighting for the democracy of entertainment? Like, this is not. It's a show business. Famous people get more, they get more money, they get more time. Like, this is just how it is. What are we fighting against here? This is like, I don't know. This feels like a very like politically brained thing that finds its way into discourse about meaningless.

[Joanna Robinson]

It has nothing to do with politics. Is it everything to do with, like, I. I just get excited for those people who have like never been on a stage that big and that many people.

[Amanda Dobbins]

There was a moment on Sunday night. I don't remember which category it was, but there were three or four winners. Maybe it was sound, I'm not sure. And so. So the third winner just didn't get to speak. And that.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's what I'm talking about.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That just sucks. And honestly, that is just. That can be fixed in production. And that is like a telegast ish, not like in post.

[Sean Fennessy]

But there's three people on stage. Wait for the third person to talk.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You make the decision like that. That should just be the rule there. There are people there live covering it. Like, that was a fuck up.

[Sean Fennessy]

I.

[Amanda Dobbins]

My thing is less about like, should we allot a specific amount of time and should, because then first of all, that doesn't allow for spontaneity in the moment. And it does get into like weird culture wars that we just don't need to get into. Everyone needs to be prepared. This is on the winners is my thing. Like, if you're nominated, do your homework, get ready, be entertaining. This is a TV show.

[Joanna Robinson]

I agree.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like, it's your moment. We're gonna give you the moment, Use the moment. And I think if everyone used the moment, then they might not be played off.

[Sean Fennessy]

I would say that that is nice in theory, but you have clearly never won an Academy Award because what everyone says is when it happens, you're like, fuck, I can't believe this happened. Sean's freaking out.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Let me tell you right now, I would be awesome.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay, great. I would be prepared. But I would also bring my natural warmth and charisma.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, absolutely. Many people are saying, try warmth emanates off of you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And I would say rude things to you live from stage, and it would be incredible.

[Joanna Robinson]

You'd kill. I just think. I just think that if. If our whole idea of which direction the Oscars is moving in, which is towards celebrating edgy, interesting cinema, then your whole, like, celebrities get more man attitude.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not advocating for. I'm saying be realistic. Like, be realistic. You think they're gonna make more time for that?

[Joanna Robinson]

Make me be realistic.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean, you could say you wish it was this way, but it's never gonna be this way. It's the Oscars.

[Joanna Robinson]

But we can fight against it. Like when they put those categories.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Fight who?

[Joanna Robinson]

When we put the categories. When they tried to put the categories in the commercials, which they did, they were roundly shamed into undoing that. So you can shame them into.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm not advocating that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Behaving correctly, I.

[Sean Fennessy]

That. I think that's debatable. I think whether or not not like.

[Joanna Robinson]

Artisans will get definitely debatable. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Artisans getting equal time to powerful people is not going to happen. It's just not going to happen.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I have a quick fix for this. With the exception of the very nice Dutch couple and I, who won, I believe it was live action.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Short.

[Sean Fennessy]

I am not a robot.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, yeah. And congratulations to the New Yorker. And then you guys finally want something. But I thought they.

[Sean Fennessy]

After steamrolling us at the national magazine awards for 20 consecutive years, now they have an Oscar. Those fucking bastards.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And they. And that was like a nice moment. And she was like, I know that we're Dutch and we don't say this.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I love you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Good job.

[Joanna Robinson]

That was cute.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The other short speeches were, I think, borderline disastrous and often are and also always go on so long. So we just. We gotta move that to another awards show, and then we can take the time that we've saved and give it to the craftspeople and let everyone who's nominated speak.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you think Academy members are listening right now? Not Academy members. Academy governors leadership is listening right now and thinking these guys know what they're doing, and in 2026, we're coming through.

[Joanna Robinson]

I would personally cut the entirety of the James Bond tribute. And that solves everything.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, we're aligned on that one. We could have had a lot more for a lot of other things if we had done that. Okay, Bob, what's next?

[Bobby Wagner]

Okay, important question. Up next, Sam wants to know who has the best picture title belt right now. This is of course alluding to, I think a famous Bill Simmons concept of who's carrying the belt at any moment of who is the best current NBA player. And it overlaps year to year. So what movie do you think right now is. Is holding the belt of the best best picture?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think it's still Parasite.

[Joanna Robinson]

That's a really good one.

[Sean Fennessy]

The thing is, is Parasite better than like Silence of the Lambs? That's because in the belt concept, it's.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Just like there's a certain posture that you take on when you're about to correct me on the posture of a great man of some made up Bill thing.

[Sean Fennessy]

And I just working for bill for like 13 years.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I love Bill. Bill can. Bill has made a whole world up that I love living in every day.

[Sean Fennessy]

Wait, was it the last 10 years or was of the Academy Awards?

[Bobby Wagner]

Well, the concept is a historical concept. So at some point, you know, say Silence of the Lambs probably lost it to something else. Right. You know, to no country for Old Men or something like that. You know, this email I would not.

[Sean Fennessy]

Give their country for Old Men over Silence of the Lambs personally. So as an interesting example would be close. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't put Parasite over it either. Much as I love. I mean, that's the thing is you.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Could go all the way back Casablanca.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, you could go all the way back, you know, all the cavalcade heads out there, you know, the Cimarron heads, you know, the Greatest show on Earth heads.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think if you talk to any filmmaker, like anytime I've interviewed a filmmaker almost, they almost always have a Lords of Arabia poster up in their house somewhere.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's a good question. I mean, do you think they'll show.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It again at the 70 millimeter fest this year? And can we go?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think they will. And I would love to go.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I really wanted to, but I was like nine and a half months pregnant.

[Joanna Robinson]

You were very pregnant.

[Amanda Dobbins]

When I was like, I was like, I can't commit to being anywhere for four hours at a time at this point.

[Sean Fennessy]

My goal is to attend six screenings during that festival.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like, because you know what the lineup is and you've identified the six films.

[Sean Fennessy]

Or you're just setting six that I really wanted in on. Well, they just program it really, really well. American cinema tech does a great job year round, but that festival in particular is really great. You want to just do 10 years. Would you say parasite is the number one?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Of the last 10 years. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, I agree. What's next? You want to do like. Let's do three more?

[Bobby Wagner]

Sure. Okay, we got a question here from Kyle. Interesting question, thought provoking. My question is if we want to see, if we want people to see movies in theaters, doesn't the Academy need to require that these movies be available outside of LA and New York? Should the Academy raise the minimum threshold to a thousand theaters so that Oscar nominated movies get real theatrical distribution, not just token distribution for the Hollywood in New York elite?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. Yeah. Fuck the coastal elites.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, this was.

[Joanna Robinson]

No, I agree.

[Bobby Wagner]

This was a get wrecked Brooklyn podcaster.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

You were probably in the Little Gold Men time when I feel like this was a very noisy proposition. Right. Like the 1920.

[Joanna Robinson]

We couldn't. No one could get that one. And I was in, you know, I'm in San Francisco, so I couldn't. I'm a coastal elite, but I couldn't get to call me by your name.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I think that there was, you know, Spielberg's frustration with Netflix was a period in time, Netflix, I think particularly with the push from Roma and that kind of being a real question, that was a film where it was like, this movie's gonna win and what does it winning actually mean for movies? Started to freak people out a little bit. And so this conversation really kicked up. Now I feel like what's happening is like a major rejection of the streamers, you know, the Netflix, the media Perez implosion, Amazon being the butt of several jokes during the telecast. The fact that there's new leadership at the film team at Netflix, I'm not saying like culturally Netflix is down. They're winning more than they've ever won. It's just I think the question of like how many theaters a movie can play in. Sony Pictures Classics can't get. I'm still here into a thousand theaters. They literally can't do that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

So that's not going to happen. That would be. There would be financially ruinous for them to try to exhibit the movie at that, at that level. But should it have more cities that it should play in? Should it have a longer period of time where it plays? I think these things are maybe a.

[Joanna Robinson]

Little bit more fungible and isn't part of this issue. I mean this is a larger issue, not just the academy requirement, but the fact that because of Netflix etc, so many small art house theaters have shuttered in and there are places where you can't find a theater that Would show Sing Sing or something else.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, if you could make a change like this, what would you make?

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's really, it's, it's tough because I absolutely agree with Sean Baker and everyone else who loves going to movie theaters that that business really needs to be saved. But if you enacted this 1000 theater thing, as you said, like literally none of the movies that we like could afford to do it because of the way the business model works. And a lot of that has to do with the theater model, which is related to, I mean like intertwined with Hollywood stuff. But like still a separate business with its own things.

[Joanna Robinson]

Correct.

[Sean Fennessy]

They're splitting revenues.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So I just, and then I think the result of. Okay, so if an Oscar movie has to be distributed, if you have to spend this much movie, spend this much money to make a movie an Oscar contender, then I think there are movies that don't get made anymore. You know, that's like. Which is like the opposite of.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's a good way of thinking about it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

So maybe it's more cities, like maybe that's a good geographic way of doing it.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know, not a thousand, but like, like at least Chicago and etc.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Etc.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is that what you mean? Or.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right, exactly. And identifying markets.

[Joanna Robinson]

What about. And I don't know how financially ruinous this would be. What about an academy sponsored like once the nominees are announced, all of those nominees go into the theater.

[Sean Fennessy]

That would be interesting. But then who is the academy paying for that?

[Joanna Robinson]

That's what I think they should do.

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean it's a nonprofit organization. So in order to boost. That would be a clear declaration of boosting the theatrical experience, which in theory they want. But I'm not sure if they can.

[Joanna Robinson]

Really take us to a museum. I know, you know, which is amazing. But like ultimately long term, wouldn't we be better served putting that money into getting people to re engage in the movie going experience?

[Sean Fennessy]

That would be an interesting thing to discuss with. That would be a reason to have the academy leadership on the show is to talk about a concept like that. Because that's really, it's a good idea. I heard from a lot of people.

[Joanna Robinson]

The way that they put the shorts, they put shorts into the theater so that people.

[Sean Fennessy]

But that's a separate corporation that does that, that I think benefits from that and splits the proceeds with the filmmakers. Anyway, one thing that Brian Curtis said on the press box actually on Monday was that he was responding to Sean Baker's comments in the best director speech. And he just told the story that I Heard I saw a bunch of people on social media shared with me too, which is like, it's expensive to go to the movies I went to go see, he said, I went to go see Dogman with my family and it cost $50 and plus parking and some. We've tried to be since, like practical about that when talking about it on the show that it is not cheap to go see movies. One of the reasons why it's not cheap is because, for example, second run movie theaters don't really exist anymore. You being able to go see a movie that had been out for four months and pay five bucks to see it with your kids, that's kind of gone streaming has replaced that. That's not coming back. I don't see any world in which that framework where you could get like the matinee ticket or just making things significantly more affordable, especially in a metropolis, is coming back. Plus, with movie theaters closing, you gotta drive 50 miles to go to your nearest movie theater if you live in certain towns. That isn't what Sean Baker's talking about, though. He's not talking to you, Joe Moviegoer, about how you're not seeing movies. He's talking to movie studios about guaranteeing theatrical exhibition for the movies that they greenlight. So it's a shot across the bow with the streamer.

[Joanna Robinson]

Sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

But also at like Universal's 17 day window and how movies just go to VOD after two and a half weeks if they don't cross a certain box office threshold. Seeing Warner Brothers now doing this, maybe not with an official policy, but like Companion was available to stream after two and a half weeks and that movie did okay. It's a pretty decent business for a genre movie in January and you can watch it at home now. So like that thing that he said, I think he more so than us yelling on a podcast can encourage people to make change, but honestly not that much. I honestly don't think what he said, and I know I'm a cynic about these things, but I really don't think what he said is going to like really change David Zaslav and Donna Langley's point of view on the theatrical model.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It is David Zaslav, unfortunately, but at some point it's shareholders of a corporation that has X, Y, Z, which is how all businesses and corporations in this cursed country work. But. Or the world at large. But it's. I loved this speech and I, I thought it was important. I. But I agree with you that I think it's more effective people to people at home. But you can't. The. The. The problem is you need to be able to change the emotions of faceless corporations, and that's not really possible.

[Joanna Robinson]

But also change the mindset of so many people because of the prohibitive cost or because of the frictionless comfort of watching something at home. Change people's minds about what. What constitutes a trip to the cinema. Movie. And for so many people, it's spectacle.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes. Eventization.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. And, like. And I would hope that that wouldn't be the case. It wasn't always the case, obviously, for. For us growing up. And so. But this is, I guess, the moment when we once again say to me, get real. Get real. It's not. It's not going to happen.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was doing math in my head about how I think if you tallied up the domestic box office for the movies that we identified as, like, the top five contenders this year, it was still probably less than just what Rain man made in America.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right, right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Which is the kind of movie that we're talking about.

[Joanna Robinson]

And it's not just that, like, Rain man made that much money, but then, like, everyone had seen Rain man and everyone could talk, and you felt like you had to see Rain man so that you could get the jokes and stuff like that. And we are scattered and we're not all watching the same movies anymore. And I sound probably older than Sean did when he talked about how you can't drink water anymore, but, you know.

[Sean Fennessy]

I gotta get all my water in my 4pm.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It's a good thing that you can't be pregnant because it's just.

[Sean Fennessy]

For more reasons than one.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. But you cannot imagine the peeing at night situation and how you're trying to ration your water.

[Sean Fennessy]

I used to just be able to go right back to bed, though.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, me too. That's gone.

[Joanna Robinson]

Write a parenting book called you'd Can't Imagine the Peeing at Night.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You were like, you really are more.

[Sean Fennessy]

Of a kid's book.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, I would buy it. Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay. Couple more, Bob. Make them count.

[Bobby Wagner]

I just want to say before I read the next one, I'm not working on this show if Sean is pregnant. Pregnant? Sean, running this spreadsheet. I'm out. I'm out.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm trading it off. I challenge all the listeners of the show to remake the poster for Junior where Arnold Schwarzenegger is pregnant and Danny DeVito is his. Danny DeVito.

[Joanna Robinson]

Emma Thompson is.

[Sean Fennessy]

Emma Thompson is his doctor. Who's his doctor?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, Emma Thompson's the doctor in Bridget Jones.

[Joanna Robinson]

Emma. I believe Emma Thompson is the doctor. And Junior is she.

[Sean Fennessy]

And who. Who is.

[Joanna Robinson]

You're thinking about twins.

[Sean Fennessy]

But is. Is Danny DeVito not in junior?

[Joanna Robinson]

I. I'm pretty sure it's Emma Thompson.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, she. Hold on. Let's see.

[Sean Fennessy]

Danny DeVito. Okay, so Emma Thompson is the mother. Is the mother. The non pregnant mother. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the pregnant man, just like I will be one day. And Danny DeVito is his doctor wearing a stethoscope on the poster.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, so CR is Danny DeVito.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, you are Emma Thom Thompson. Amanda is Danny DeVito. I am Arnold Schwarzenegger.

[Joanna Robinson]

CR is Danny DeVito.

[Amanda Dobbins]

And you as reading the plot of Junior, which I guess I haven't seen in 30 years.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is an Ivan Reitman film. They made $100 million at the bottom.

[Joanna Robinson]

Emma Thompson was the doctor. That's my political brain. Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

She is a doctor.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay, thank God.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Well, it says Emma Thompson, Dr. Diana. Read it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Okay.

[Bobby Wagner]

Pregnant with content. Pregnant with mailbag answers. Okay, next question.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is also a doctor. Wow.

[Bobby Wagner]

I'm trying so hard to read the next question. I just want to read it so bad.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm ready.

[Bobby Wagner]

Next question comes from Brian. Do you think the tabulations from Oscar's past actually exist anywhere? Like in a vault or something? Would you support their release at some point in time? Like declassified government documents? And what time period should that be?

[Sean Fennessy]

This is such a good question.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Let's do a heist. Let's make a movie heist to release all like, honestly, let's start pitching this around.

[Joanna Robinson]

Prize Waterhouse.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Amanda Dobbins]

To get all of that.

[Joanna Robinson]

Actually, I know some people who work for press. Not, well, hook us up, but I do know them.

[Sean Fennessy]

Hook us up with that data or at least those codes to break into their facility.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, they have to be somewhere, right? At some point it becomes sort of like. But it kind of their data security methods. Like, is it. Is the hard drive in a.

[Joanna Robinson]

Is it like the knock list?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah.

[Joanna Robinson]

Do we have to?

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, again, put me in Mission Impossible. Leaning over on the keyboard, breaking into Bryce WaterhouseCooper's data set.

[Joanna Robinson]

One single drop. Okay. Would. Should it be like 10 years later?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I release it now.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Release it now.

[Sean Fennessy]

Still waiting on jfk. Right? Like, we're still waiting on that.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I don't know.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's been 62 years, so.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Right, but didn't he say that it was going to.

[Bobby Wagner]

We're not waiting on it. Bill already cracked the case.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Like, we know this.

[Sean Fennessy]

Bill did it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

What's his latest? Besides, the doctors have never wavered. There Is. Is he it. Is it two bullets? Bullets. What's his thing?

[Sean Fennessy]

This is neither the time nor.

[Joanna Robinson]

I like the idea of every 10 years.

[Sean Fennessy]

That would be great. I want it on. On the show.

[Amanda Dobbins]

They gotta do it on the show. Let's go.

[Sean Fennessy]

I want it after 20 years. I'll take it whenever. You know, as a. As a faux historian, I'm interested in all the information I can accumulate.

[Joanna Robinson]

So interesting to know, like, missed it by that much sort of stuff.

[Sean Fennessy]

What do you think is the closest race of all time?

[Joanna Robinson]

God, moonlight and Lalin.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's the one that springs to mind.

[Joanna Robinson]

Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

But maybe it's not.

[Joanna Robinson]

It would be fascinating if it wasn't.

[Sean Fennessy]

If it wasn't trying to think.

[Bobby Wagner]

I think Avatar and Hurt Locker, probably.

[Sean Fennessy]

That was definitely a close one.

[Bobby Wagner]

Lit contingencies of who would vote for each.

[Joanna Robinson]

Great call.

[Sean Fennessy]

Definitely a close one. I'm sure there are many races in the 70s that were tight, but what.

[Amanda Dobbins]

If it's something random? Like if it was just best supporting what was running. No, no, no, no. Like what was running against Boyhood or. Or Birdman? You know, one of those years where it's not like it's. It's not living in our mind as one of like the great squeakers it.

[Sean Fennessy]

But Boyhood and Birdman running against each other.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, were they.

[Sean Fennessy]

It was Birdman running against Boyhood.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Were they in the same. They were the same year. And then Boyhood beat Birdman.

[Sean Fennessy]

I believe so. Right, Right.

[Bobby Wagner]

No, Birdman won it.

[Joanna Robinson]

Birdman won.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah. I thought Birdman won.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, Birdman won. But it was a case.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, Patricia.

[Sean Fennessy]

They were in the same year.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Won. That's right. Okay, well, that one or what won the year before.

[Sean Fennessy]

The year before that was 12 Years a Slave.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That probably wasn't.

[Sean Fennessy]

Which I think probably wanted a walk.

[Joanna Robinson]

What about the Spotlight year? Yeah, that feels like one.

[Sean Fennessy]

What was the leading contender beyond Spotlight that year?

[Joanna Robinson]

Year people thought the Big Short might go. I remember that.

[Sean Fennessy]

It won PGA that year. Yeah, I remember that very well.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

That feels like the only one that was even close. I guess maybe the Revenant had a lot of support.

[Joanna Robinson]

And then there was the whole Mad Max Fury Road won at every single award below the line, but was never going to go. I just had to represent for House of r. Doom Part 2. You should have been a bigger contender.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's very Sad.

[Joanna Robinson]

Doom Part 2 got the, like, Barbie treatment, right? Where, like, we. We made the Sandworm joke.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes, the.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'm just.

[Sean Fennessy]

Ken, we are using you to get people to care about this program. While not actually acknowledging it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, Wicked also correct.

[Sean Fennessy]

Same, same. I thought they actually. Very smartly. The producers did a good job with that. Like, they reminded us, like, these movies are actually nominated here tonight.

[Joanna Robinson]

I thought Ariana Grande dressed as the ruby slipper was one of my favorite moments of all time.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You know, it was fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

You're out on Ariana.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, as. As, you know, I thought that she should have won supporting actress.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's right. You did.

[Bong Joon Ho]

Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

The best performance.

[Sean Fennessy]

What'd you guys think about Deadpool?

[Joanna Robinson]

It's a. It's a no for me.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oh, yeah, he started. He did a somersault or something. What did he do?

[Sean Fennessy]

Was Ryan Reynolds not at the Oscars?

[Amanda Dobbins]

No, I think they put him back away.

[Joanna Robinson]

He and Blake did SNL 50 and then went back into hibernation.

[Sean Fennessy]

Interesting.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, last question, Bobby, last question.

[Bobby Wagner]

Let's send these 10 movies in the 2025 Oscars off nicely. Of this year's crop of Oscar nominees, which do you expect to revisit over the years? Which of the past few years of nominees and winners have you revisited a.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Lot from this year?

[Bobby Wagner]

And any notable ones from the last couple years that you found yourself coming back to?

[Amanda Dobbins]

I do think Anora, I think, weirdly.

[Sean Fennessy]

At winning, hurts it. I know that that's not. I mean, you know, 12 years of slave is a movie that springs to mind.

[Joanna Robinson]

You.

[Amanda Dobbins]

That's okay. There are some material differences.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, but they're both complicated, traumatic stories, obviously, in different ways and different modes of history. But I think when movies win, they sometimes get mothballed. And I know obviously my experience is different than a lot of other people's.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I don't think that's true. I think that can be true for something like Coda, would you say? But I also think.

[Sean Fennessy]

For a variety of reasons, but I.

[Joanna Robinson]

Also think, you know, and Tom Quinn said this in his interview. I'll just keep promoting the Town, a great podcast, that. That it becomes a Pantheon movie. And I agree with that. You say it becomes mothball, but I think Forever Anora will be a best picture winning film, and in a way that it could just sort of diminish to nothing if it hadn't won, you know?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I mean, there's no objective way to communicate, like, what is thriving and what is not, and the cinematic mind of history, not this close to it.

[Joanna Robinson]

But I would say things like Banshees of Anisherin is a movie that I rewatch way more than everything, everywhere, all at once. For example, even though I liked that Best Picture Win. Do you want to look at this? Yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You just had it up. And I was like, okay, I'm going to move this.

[Sean Fennessy]

Here's an interesting exercise this century. What movies have appeared on the rewatchables that have won Best Picture? A few. Gladiator Crash, most recently with Joanna Robinsons. Very good.

[Joanna Robinson]

My apologies.

[Amanda Dobbins]

When that text comes in. It's really special, isn't it?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Departed. No. Country for Old Men, Argo Spotlight. And that's it. So six movies in 25 years.

[Joanna Robinson]

2017, the 2017 Oscar. Like shape of Water, winning. Whatever. But call me by your name. Dunkirk, Get Out, Lady Bird, and Phantom Thread are all movies that I will watch any day of the week.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's when we started this show and we didn't really like. We didn't have, like, the tools to be like, what is going on here?

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

But it was very special.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Amanda Dobbins]

2019. Also a lot of. A lot of heaters that we were 19 isn't.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is a great. That's the last truly great year, in my opinion.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah.

[Bobby Wagner]

I think I'm watching Ford versus Ferrari on a second screen right now, while you guys are.

[Joanna Robinson]

I know it to be true. And you got the Irishman queued up, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Quality films. Quality films.

[Bobby Wagner]

Sean's heading to go watch Jojo Rabbit again after this pod, so we got.

[Sean Fennessy]

To wrap it up. It's incredibly.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I mean, the brutalist Nickel Boys, Dune Part two. I think you're right, though, if only to be like, where did these worms come from?

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it depends on three. If three is good, it becomes Empire. Like it pretty. I think. I think generationally, obviously not as big as Empire Strikes Back, but it has all of those qualities. When you're watching that movie. Movie. I would. Conclave.

[Joanna Robinson]

I'd put conclave on.

[Sean Fennessy]

I would say the top three outside of Anora are the ones that you just mentioned, the brutalist Dune Part 2 and Nickel Boys. Because Nickel Boys has a chance, I think, to be kind of like a cinephile.

[Joanna Robinson]

I agree.

[Sean Fennessy]

Historical entrant.

[Joanna Robinson]

If you have children. Wicked.

[Amanda Dobbins]

No. If you have my child, a complete.

[Sean Fennessy]

Unknown, I'll just say that's also contingent on Wicked for Good. I think if Wicked for Good is a smash and beloved and wins Best Picture, it changes it and makes it much more significant because, you know, the history of Oz adjacent. Movies that are not the wizard of Oz, a little up and down. You know, I have some affection for them.

[Joanna Robinson]

How dare you besmirch returned Oz?

[Sean Fennessy]

I didn't besmirch It. I like it, but it's quite scary.

[Joanna Robinson]

It gave me such nightmares when I was a kid.

[Sean Fennessy]

Oz, the great and powerful. That's your fave?

[Joanna Robinson]

Obviously.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Wiz. You know, people love the Wiz. Were performing songs from the Wiz on the show.

[Joanna Robinson]

Two Wiz performances.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, that was a lot.

[Joanna Robinson]

That was a poor choice, I think, for just for the Quincy. That's not what I would pick for Quincy Jones. That's all I'm saying.

[Sean Fennessy]

We forgot that we were watching the show and they played the Austin Powers bossa nova thing. I didn't put together. Of course, that's Quincy Jones.

[Joanna Robinson]

You know what I won't be rewatching, and I think a lot of people won't be rewatching is Emilia Perez. And we get to put that to bed, do we not?

[Sean Fennessy]

That will actually be mothballed into the Animals.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Even though it's the easiest stories, you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Know, it will become a difficult trivia question years from now. What did Zoe Saldana win her Oscar for?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a good answer to what has the second most Academy Award nominations in a single year. Trivia question, you know, but what.

[Joanna Robinson]

I mean, what does it mean to get nominated for an Oscar? That's a question I would like to ask.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's less meaningful or more meaningful than it used to be.

[Joanna Robinson]

I think it's less. I think it's less now that Netflix has shown that you can sort of buy a volume of nominations.

[Amanda Dobbins]

You can't buy a win.

[Joanna Robinson]

You can't buy a win, but you can buy a nomination. And. Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

So what will you be winning your.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Oscar for our heist film.

[Joanna Robinson]

Oh, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

When we. When we steal the. The tallies I see of the very.

[Sean Fennessy]

Rare that genre gets best Actress.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, well, you know me. It will have artistic flair.

[Joanna Robinson]

You're gonna be. The actors are gonna be like, screenwriter, I think.

[Amanda Dobbins]

I think screenwriter. Director.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah. You know, and editor.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yeah, sure.

[Joanna Robinson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Amanda Dobbins]

It'll be after. After I nominated the shorts category for the Odyssey R. So. But I won't win that one.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you think your crew will agree that your natural warmth and charisma will pervade the set of your heist film?

[Joanna Robinson]

Or will you say you can't sit down? No smartphones, no water. If you're over 40 questions after seven.

[Sean Fennessy]

No water after seven. It's a gremlin situation. Okay. Well, this was nice, you guys. Thanks for opening for Bong Joon Ho. I appreciate it.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Great. Yeah, anytime.

[Sean Fennessy]

Thanks to all the listeners of the show. For all the great questions. I feel that the email address is working very well. Bobby, thank you for helping out with that. I appreciate it. Now let's go to my conversation with Bong Joon Ho. This episode is brought to you by Viori.

[Bobby Wagner]

Look, I'm not a big let's hype.

[Sean Fennessy]

Up workout clothes guy, but Vuori, I.

[Bobby Wagner]

Gotta say, total game changer.

[Sean Fennessy]

Been wearing a lot. If you see me power walking around Los Angeles, probably gonna see me wearing some Vuori Sunday performance joggers that they have. It's made with four way performance stretch fabric, one of the most comfortable things you own. You will wear them everywhere, I promise. All you have to do is go.

[Bobby Wagner]

To viori.com Simmons and you get 20%.

[Sean Fennessy]

Off your first purchase with Vuori. V-U-O-R-I.com Simmons enjoy free shipping on all US orders over $75 plus free returns. Exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.

[Bong Joon Ho]

My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roasman. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day.

[Sean Fennessy]

Not everyone gets B2B but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do. Get a hundred dollar credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn the place to be to be. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff.

[Joanna Robinson]

When things go wrong, but these what.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are the words you really need to remember? Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs. Meaning you can talk to your agent.

[Amanda Dobbins]

To choose the coverage you need.

[Sean Fennessy]

Have coverage options to protect the things you value most, File a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you.

[Joanna Robinson]

Need to talk to someone.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Delighted to be rejoined on the show by Director Bong Joon Ho and his translator Sharon. Thank you so much guys for doing this. Director Bong I thought we could start with the immediate aftermath of Parasite and the incredible success. A best picture, win international acclaim, box office success. Did you feel any trepidation about following up that incredible success with a new film?

[Bong Joon Ho]

When you list all the accomplishments like that, it sounds like something crazy happened. Of course it was great, but I actually maintained pretty calm throughout it all. So after the Oscars campaign was over in 2020 we had the pandemic and the world was forced to go quiet because of it. And in 2020, June, I received the manuscript for Mickey 7. And that's when I started reading and slowly started getting back into the work.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm curious about this particular choice. You know, mounting a large Hollywood production of original material is increasingly risky for studios. Did you think about Mickey17 as what we sometimes call a blank check, where you get to take on a high leverage, big scale opportunity because of the success of your previous project?

[Bong Joon Ho]

So I started working with an American agency in 2006 after the host. And since then I've been getting offers for monster film, sci fi and crime thrillers. But I've always passed on those projects. And this was the first time that I've taken a material from someone else. And the reason I took it is.

[Sean Fennessy]

People.

[Bong Joon Ho]

And I was really just drawn to the character of Mickey. Of course, there's that core concept of human printing. But I really wanted to focus on the individual going through this technology and the emotions that his story was evoking. And the project was offered by Plan B, who I was familiar with from working on Okja. And so it wasn't really about the scale. I kind of wasn't thinking about that. I was only really thinking about the idea idea and the uniqueness of this story and all the emotions that it would evoke.

[Sean Fennessy]

With a great novel, people often say you can see it in your head while you're reading it. And you're renowned for storyboards and your storyboarding before making films. You know, I know that you usually do your storyboards after you have a script or even a location where you're going to set. But when you're reading a novel, do you find yourself starting to draw what the film could look like? Charibot.

[Bong Joon Ho]

To get the actual storyboard that we're shooting off of. I only start that process after all the spaces are designed, whether that is location shooting or sets that we are building. The space has to be designed to know where the camera will be, how long the dolly track will be. So the specific, practical storyboarding process process starts after the the space is designed. But I do start thinking about the image and the sound elements from when I'm writing the script and thinking about the story without considering the camera. For example, the way the creepers move and how they all roll about on the field. That was an image I started thinking of even before the entire storyboarding process.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was curious about that because the creepers in some ways feel like if Okja and the host monster had a baby and just felt like it was completely born of your imagination.

[Bong Joon Ho]

That's a great idea. Maybe like Alien versus Predators. That could be.

[Sean Fennessy]

Baby Junior, mama cripple, baby cripple, junior cripple.

[Bong Joon Ho]

We have three different types of creepers in the film. The baby, the junior and mama. And the babies just have to be adorable. And with the juniors, they're in charge of the action of the script. And so we referenced armadillos because armadillos kind of roll up into a ball. And they also have to show this spectacular mass choreography where they're kind of playing cup and balls with Mama creeper trying to hide her. That was an image that I started thinking about when I was writing the script. I was watching a lot of animal documentaries to come up with ideas.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mickey17 has some familiar elements from your other films, especially Snowpiercer and Okja. The terrain, the creature elements. Do you ever worry about repeating yourself with some of these things, or do you see them more as similarities that are thematic recurrences that are purposeful in your body of work?

[Bong Joon Ho]

So I like to think of them as variations. You know, you have variations in music where you have the A bar and then the A dash. So it's always a mix of old and new. I think my films have always tried to do that. And so this wasn't that different. Different from my usual approach. I had actors like Rob, Mark and Tony that I never worked with before. And also familiar faces that I was very happy to work with again, like Stephen and Daniel Henshaw. So it's always a mix of what's familiar and what is new. You know, we get the snowy fields from Snowpiercer, but this time it's a spaceship and not a train. So I actually enjoy the mix and conflicts that arise from mixing familiar and you elements.

[Sean Fennessy]

I found Toni Collette's character's obsession with sauces hilarious. And revisiting your work, I'm struck by how often people gathering to eat food together. You know, in Memories of Murder, in Parasite, in Snowpiercer, the actual cannibalism. These like, setups, people eating together, lead to explosive circumstances. There's a Great one in Mickey 17. Why do you keep setting these huge set piece sequences around people sharing food?

[Bong Joon Ho]

I mean, you're gonna have lunch soon too. Have lunch soon. There's nothing else that we do three times a day every. So we eat to live and we live to eat. And I think in that you can project so many things. Your philosophy, your taste. Taste the, the atmosphere of that society, you can express so much just by the simple act of eating. And, you know, if you remember the, the one of the earliest sequences and the spaceship where they're all in the cafeteria getting served food and getting served really crappy food, and you see Mickey with his plastic tray getting squeezed out this great globe of porridge, and Mickey. And the audience realizes that Mickey is totally, you know, thought that this would be a fancy expedition, you know, this great colony expedition, but then the minute you see him getting served that crappy food, we know how his fate will go. So while everyone is eating that crappy food, we have Toni Collette's character, Ilpha, just obsessing over sauce. And though the working class characters in the film feel so insulted to witness her obsession, you know, she spends all that time and energy trying to create sauces and declares it as the litmus test of civilization. And it's so pointless to everyone else who's just struggling to survive. To have the dictator's wife obsess over something so unnecessary is probably what gives her the license to be a dictator's wife.

[Sean Fennessy]

The movie is very frank and funny about sex. And it's an interesting counterpoint to Parasite, where you have this sex scene as this kind of inciting incident for Kim. And in this case it felt more like maybe Mickey is seen as like a. Like a usable disposable object in this world. Do I have that right? Is that how you were thinking about the inclusion of that element of the story?

[Bong Joon Ho]

Rabo, if you remember Mark Ruffalo's speech in the cafeteria sequence, he declares to everyone that he's going to control sex using legal means and the committee is going to create regulations around sex. You know, and when he does that speech, he almost talks about human beings as insects, talking about how we must propagate the species and infest the land. And while he's doing that speech, we cross cut to Mickey and Nasha having sex. But to them, sex is more actually just like making love. It's not just breeding or propagating sexy. And so for Mickey, you know, it's not. Not that that sequence shows that he's just human. He's not just someone with a job, you know, he's a human, living, breathing human having sex with his partner. And so this whole community can try to control that through law. And they talk about, you know, putting out this sex enhancement campaign once they arrive. And, and we see Mickey and Nasha sort of exempt from that and having their own moment of love. And so Marshall is trying to control Eros, you know, sex and love and also Thanatos, the way people die and live, you know, you. They're treating bodies and death as if quite mechanically, as if it's just so it can be someone's job to go through that process. And so we have this community and system trying to control the eros and tantos of human existence. Existence. And only Mickey and Nasha, who are, you know, who truly love each other, are exempt from that and can't. Can manage to, you know, remove themselves from that. And so we see sort of that disparity.

[Joanna Robinson]

And in. In the climatic sequence, you know, the.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mickey shout C3, and then bring the baby.

[Bong Joon Ho]

So C3 was part of, you know, one of the positions that they invented and assigned to each planet. And so in the end, they're fighting against evil and rebelling through sex.

[Sean Fennessy]

You have talked in the past about your admiration for the way Martin Scorsese works with actors and lets them figure out character. Because of this story. There's gonna. There's big performances because these are really big characters. The thing I'm curious about is how do you make sure that the performances all agree with each other, that they share the same tone when you have a story like this?

[Bong Joon Ho]

Yes, it's all about, you know, creating that ensemble. But with films, it's like you have so many characters and they're all spread out in different scenes. It's not like you can bring them all together for a theater workshop. But I think what helps is in Korea, we have onset editing. And so I have an editor right next to me editing as we go. And you can sort of see how the scenes and shots cut together. And you can see the flow of the tone, performance and narrative. And when you arrive on set, you can sort of watch everything that you shot the day before. And so it's. It's quite helpful in trying to keep or connect the tones together. And I always wonder why they don't do this in the US because it can be so helpful.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is it because most filmmakers can't not shoot coverage and you don't shoot coverage. Coverage and commentary.

[Bong Joon Ho]

Yeah, just don't shoot coverage. You know, I get a certain. Certain moments at a time, and then we immediately flip around to do the next part. I think that's why I storyboard. And so the actors never really have to repeat the same dialogue or the same situation multiple times. I remember when I was shooting Snowpiercer, John Hurt was now passed. He, you know, mentioned that my method is quite Hitchcockian. And I was quite happy and pleased to hear that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Can you talk about reuniting with Darius Khonji? I was really happy to see this. Why was he the DP on the film?

[Bong Joon Ho]

I just had such a great time working with Darius on Okja. The whole world knows how great of an artist he is. But just on a personal level, I always have so much fun with Darius. We're all kind of just like, rumbling amongst ourselves, and I just have such fun when we're together. We go to eat great food together. And I always miss him and.

[Joanna Robinson]

James Gray.

[Bong Joon Ho]

So this is just by pure coincidence, but the both films that we've done together feature VFX creatures. Okja was kind of even the main character. And actually, Darius isn't really the type to enjoy vfx. He's actually more like, you know, Armageddon Time and Lost City of Z by James Gray. These very classic films with beautiful lighting and. But for some reason, and he just had to work with me and face all these VFX creatures. And he's not really familiar with it, but I think with this film, he actually got the hang of it and started enjoying the process.

[Sean Fennessy]

That.

[Bong Joon Ho]

Our VFX supervisor is Dan Glass. And I think Darius and Dan had a great collaborative relationship as two artists. They had a lot of respect for each other. And so Darius was quite involved in the VFX process, just, you know, really appreciating how beautiful the VFX work was, and also was involved in determining the light and color of all the shots. And so I think he had a really great time working with Dan on the VFX of this film. I do remember when we were working on Okja, he was a bit, like, new to all of it and was questioning why things had to be done a certain way.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you like that work at this point? I've read in the past that you avoid green screen work as much as possible, but this is a very big production that I assume required some of it. How do you like working with this level of VFX in a film? Background support.

[Bong Joon Ho]

I think I was quite lucky in all of it. And that with the Host, we were actually shooting against Actual Soul and the Han river, that Flo that split Seoul. And we just have this monster with the city backdrop. So, you know, there was a lot of creature animation, but we weren't more creating working with blue or green screens. Same with Okja. We have this super pig, but it wasn't like we had actors with sensors on their faces just acting off of nothing. And Mickey was the same. You know, we actually didn't really shoot with a lot of green screens. Of course, we had some with, you know, when we see out. Out of the spaceship window. But with this spaceship, we actually don't have a lot of windows. And so we never had moments where, you know, it was just an actor surrounded by green screen, just acting, like, by himself and trying to imagine everything in front of his eyes. So we were quite lucky in the sense that we always had a clear sense of what was the environment of the film. The most challenging VFX element was definitely the two Mickeys. We see the two Mickeys together in one shot frequently, and they fight. They have their arms around each other. There's a lot of interaction, and we couldn't allow, like, not even a single, like, a split second of awkwardness. Otherwise the story would just completely fall apart. So we were very sort of careful and meticulous with that whole process.

[Sean Fennessy]

Speaking of Mickey, Robert Pattinson is an inspired choice. He's very good at being both goofy and desperate, which Mickey needs to be. What did you see him in that made you think of him for this part?

[Joanna Robinson]

Settlement.

[Bong Joon Ho]

So I'm good friends with the Safdie brothers. I first met them in New York when I was making Okja. And then I met them at Telluride when we were doing Parasite. And I watched their film Good Time and realized that Robert Pattinson, we were only seeing very little of him. And there's much more to see from him as an actor. And I know that he was doing a lot of experimental work with auteurs, and I could sense that he was quite an ambitious act actor.

[Sean Fennessy]

And I watched the Lighthouse in Cannes Film Festival Directors for Tonight.

[Bong Joon Ho]

So with this project, I sort of looked back on the Lighthouse and just thought, oh, my God, that's 18 right there. He's totally crazy, the character that he plays in the Lighthouse. And he was my first choice. And thankfully, Rob also really wanted to work on this project. And, you know, I know we mostly know him from, like, Batman and Twilight, but just to my eyes, the way he looks, I just kind of felt sorry for him. And, you know, you mentioned that he has this goofiness to him, but also just always, like, too nice for his own good and always getting the short end of the stick. He probably hangs out with grifters and let them take advantage of him multiple times and yet still hang out with them. I kind of just got that sense from Rob.

[Sean Fennessy]

He's really, really well cast. You've mentioned that John Carpenter's the thing is a big inspiration for this movie. When you say something like that, are you actually going back to look at the film before you start on this film, or is it just an idea that you have in place planted.

[Bong Joon Ho]

With John Carpenter's films? And in particular, the thing. It wasn't just a specific reference for this film in particular. It's just an overall general influence in my life. You know, it always shows up in like the top 10 my favorite films list. And you know, it's a sci fi masterpiece that really does deserve that. So actually, the films that are specific references for this project and the ones that I revisit specifically for Mickey 17 are actually unexpected, like, quite surprising.

[Sean Fennessy]

For example, Kevin Costner Dances with Wolves.

[Bong Joon Ho]

Yeah. For the creepers climactic sequence when they're all moving in a herd. I wanted to see how that film handled the bisons and how like that groundbreaking breaking sound of the bisons moving as a herd. There's a recurring theme in John Carpenter's films like Assault on Uncertain street or Prince of Darkness. You always see this group of characters isolated in a particular location. Location and that. And then being surrounded by evil beings outside and monsters. And they have this battle inside this very claustrophobic location. And the thing you know, it's monsters inside their body even. But that's like a setup that I really like.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you see Mickey17 as a hopeful movie? I think about this after all of your movies. Is this optimistic and hopeful or not.

[Bong Joon Ho]

I would say that this is relatively one of my more hopeful movies. Because I really didn't want to see Mickey get destroyed until now. I've been quite ruthless in being cruel to my main characters. But for some reason, I just didn't want to do that to Rob. Ever since I started writing the script, I just didn't want to see that. It's probably because my son is now around Mickey's age. But probably for my next film, I'm gonna go back to being just ruthless and cruel.

[Joanna Robinson]

Rob was very lucky.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm wondering how Sung Kang Ho feels about this.

[Bong Joon Ho]

He actually watched the film at the Seoul premiere. He brought his family to watch the film. He just texted me. Just hold on just a second.

[Joanna Robinson]

Very simple.

[Sean Fennessy]

He does.

[Bong Joon Ho]

It's disturbingly beautiful.

[Sean Fennessy]

Director Bong. We end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers what is the last great thing that they have seen? I know you are still a cinephile. Have you seen anything great lately?

[Bong Joon Ho]

It can be like an old film, right? Just recently.

[Sean Fennessy]

Do you keep a list?

[Bong Joon Ho]

I do have like a little note.

[Sean Fennessy]

Quite recently, I watched.

[Bong Joon Ho]

Evil Does Not Exist. That was so beautiful. And I heard about the new Wallace and Gromit on Netflix, so I went back to the old, old shorts, long trouser. Yeah, True masterpiece.

[Sean Fennessy]

I love the Wrong trousers. That's a great one, Director. Bon congrats on Mickey 17. Sharon, thank you so much. It's so nice to chat with you again. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

[Bong Joon Ho]

Thank.

[Sean Fennessy]

Thanks to Bong Joon Ho. Thanks to our producer Bobby Wagner. Thanks to Gahao for filling in for Jack Sanders today. Thanks to Joanna Robinson. Listen to you on the Prestige TV podcast covering the White Lotus and Severance and sometimes the Pit. And what else?

[Joanna Robinson]

House of R is the show that I do.

[Sean Fennessy]

House of. Well, I was just going through prestige shows. You're on House of R. Yeah. You're on the Rewatchable series Sometimes.

[Joanna Robinson]

Correct.

[Sean Fennessy]

What else?

[Joanna Robinson]

The Big Pic.

[Sean Fennessy]

The Big Picture. Yes, definitely. Ringer. NFL show. Ringer. Gambling show. Against All Odds. You're on Sports Card. Nonsense.

[Joanna Robinson]

It's true.

[Sean Fennessy]

Amanda, you are starting a new politics podcast, which we're really excited about here at the Ringer. Can't wait to hear that. Anything else? You're on Jam Session.

[Amanda Dobbins]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessy]

What else are you on these days?

[Amanda Dobbins]

Just trying to keep up with you. Sean Fennessy.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, well, thanks for all your service. We'll see you next time.