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The Big Picture
The Top 10 Underseen Movies of 2024. Plus: James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd on ‘The Terminator’ at 40!
02:44:26
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- [00:00]
Sean Fennessy
A restaurant's best dishes tell stories. Their flavors embed themselves in our memory, like song lyrics or lines from a movie.
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Danny Chow
So much so that a little slice.
- [00:11]
Sean Fennessy
Of a restaurant's story can become part of our own.
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Danny Chow
I'm Danny Chow and this is Shift.
- [00:17]
James Cameron
Meal, a new video podcast from the Ringer where we're sharing a bite and chopping it up with chefs and restaurant.
- [00:23]
Sean Fennessy
People during their off hours. All episodes of Shift Meal are out now on Ringer Food. This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Walmart. Thoughtfulness matters during the holiday season. Walmart has a huge selection of great gifts at great prices. So you can find the perfect thing for everyone on your list, like a Samsung Sound Bar for action movie fans, the Lego Sorting Hat for those who queue up a Harry Potter marathon every year, or the Fujifilm Instax camera for the aspiring cinematographers. Give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart. This episode is brought to you by the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Celebrate the unexpected at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the most unique luxury resort and casino in the heart of the Strip. Discover a one of a kind restaurant collection, a vibrant mix of bars and lounges, three distinct pool experiences from panoramic views on your private terrace, and countless ways to be entertained. Find a scene that suits your every mood and and experience elevated luxury. Nothing is off the table and temptation is around every corner. Reserve your stay now at cosmopolitan Las Vegas.com I'm Sean Fennessy and this is the Big Picture, A conversation show about so many movies. We're getting down to the end of the year and there's so many titles we haven't had a chance to talk about. We're going to get into a whole bunch of them today, a whole bunch of Oscar stuff. But first and foremost, probably the best movie we'll talk about today is a little film called the Terminator. And that's because later in this episode I'll have a conversation with James Cameron. That's right, Big Jim and Gale Anne Hurd. That's right, the director and producer team that shepherded some damn good movies into the world, including Aliens and the Abyss and of course, the Terminator, which is turning 40 years old this year in 2024. This is a movie that changed blockbusters, science fiction, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cameron and Hurt's career. So many other things. Had an absolutely awesome conversation with these two. I highly encourage you to stick around if you care about this film. In the meantime, though, we have some other stuff to talk about. Gonna talk about some underseen Movies with some ringer all stars, including our producer Bobby Wagner here on the call right now. But there's some news. The Oscar shortlist has hit. And so this is an annual tradition in which the Academy whittles down some categories. 10 categories down to 15 or 20 nominee potentials. This is most notable probably for the documentary and international feature submissions, but I'm just going to run through some takeaways that I had from this Oscar shortlist because some of the stuff is critical to what me and Joanna and Amanda, when she comes back, will be talking about over the course of the next two months. Top headline, Amelia Perez is Not Dead, Not Even Close to Dead is probably as powerful as it's ever been in this Academy Awards race. Even though the film has not been hugely critically acclaimed, even though the fact that most people who see it don't seem to love it, the Academy really likes it. In fact, this movie showed up on five lists six times overall, including international feature, best score, best sound, makeup and hair styling, and twice in the dreaded best song category. We will circle back to that category shortly. Wicked also made the list four times. Very notable. Another film that is incredibly strong right now at the Oscars, the Substance is Alive. We have not yet done a best picture power rankings for the month of December, but the substance, Making it or not Making it is a huge point of discussion that Joanna and I will have. This film currently made the shortlist for makeup and hairstyling, not for visual effects, but it did make it for makeup and hairstyling. That's notable. That means that people in the Academy are watching the movie, they're aware of it, at least in that branch, and they are getting ready to potentially recognize it when the nominees come out in January. Civil War, CR's favorite film of 2024, recognized in visual effects but not in sound, which I find genuinely unnerving. Because if there's certainly something to recognize that movie for, it's for its sound work. Speaking of interesting snubs, Blankings, Bobby Wagner's beloved Furiosa. Nothing here. Nothing here.
- [04:27]
Bobby Wagner
Do you have anything to say for yourself as the president of Furiosa? Haydur Nation, for what you've done to that film and the craftspeople who created.
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Sean Fennessy
It, I've done nothing to them. I've merely cited that. I think it's a 7 out of 10, which is. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think it's a masterpiece. I apologize to those who do, but it was not recognized, not in sound, not in visual Effects not in any of the major bloodline categories here at the shortlist. Not a good sign for furiosis chances in any other category here.
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Bobby Wagner
We take Mr. Miller for granted. We do. I mean, it's not Mad Max. And people I think particularly like when you have Sci fi, which the Oscars is not well known for rewarding over its many, many decades and they feel like they have already anointed a previous version of this film in this universe. I just don't feel like they felt the need to do that. And even if they do feel accused for not doing it, they'll just point to Dune 2, which is fair because I think Dune 2 is a better film. Well, I'm starting has more momentum.
- [05:28]
Sean Fennessy
I'm starting to have some concerns about the recognition for Dune Part two, if I'm being honest with you. I think Wicked's below the line. Chances are growing by the day. But you're right, Fury Road was, I think received 10 nominations and won six Academy Awards. And so, yeah, maybe there's a little bit of a too soon aspect to this where that film is only nine years old. But anyway, Furious is gone. I think this also means Saturday Night is gone because John Batiste score for that film was also not shortlisted. One that I think at the beginning of Oscar season, many people felt had a chance. I think I might have included Saturday Night in one of my. Maybe in my big bet. Is that possible? God, that was a long, long time ago when Amanda only had one child. Other notable takeaways here, the international race, which I'll run through all the potential nominees out of the 15 that were selected. But Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cloud, which was the Japanese submission, was not recognized here. Unfortunately, Kurosawa, someone you've heard Adam Naiman talk about on the show quite a bit in the last 12 months. I'm a huge fan of his work as well. I still haven't had a chance to see Cloud. Actually. I've seen only Chime, his short film from earlier this year, but Cloud did not get in.
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Bobby Wagner
I have some news for you about your big Oscar bet and Saturday night you included it in Best Picture.
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Sean Fennessy
Yeah, I thought I did. I thought I did. Amanda did not.
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Bobby Wagner
She did not.
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Sean Fennessy
Okay. She's. I know for a fact that she's since seen the film.
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Bobby Wagner
Oh, yeah. Are you willing to share her take?
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Sean Fennessy
No, because I want her to be able to come back and do her whole like, here's what I saw and here's what's great and here's what you're wrong about and all that. She had some strong takes about the Tracy Letts episode that are definitively wrong, but I'll let her explain some of those when she comes back.
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Bobby Wagner
Okay? You mean the most beloved podcast episode in the history of podcasting?
- [07:09]
Sean Fennessy
People. People enjoyed that. People. That was a very warm reception. Tracy was great, very nice, wonderful guest, arguably the greatest guest of all time. And that is a challenge to all of our recurring guests who we love on this show. Good news. My three favorite film scores of the year were all shortlisted. That includes Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's challenger score, Chris Bowers score for the Wild Robot, and Daniel Blumberg's score for the Brutalist, which is now available to stream on Spotify. You may not want to stream it before you see the film, but once you start streaming it, you'll know why I keep going banana on this podcast over and over again because it moves me to my core. Hans Zimmer's work in Dune Part 2. Speaking of Bob, deemed ineligible. Did you.
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Bobby Wagner
Why about that?
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Sean Fennessy
I think because there's too much previously used material.
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Bobby Wagner
Oh, from the original Part one.
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Sean Fennessy
Notably, though Wicked eligible despite the fact that it's from a Broadway show and should otherwise be ineligible. Hmm. A conspiracy perhaps?
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Danny Chow
Yeah.
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Bobby Wagner
Watch this. You should start doing Wicked Conspiracy Theories. From what I've learned on the Internet in the past few weeks, it does numbers.
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Sean Fennessy
It certainly does. I'm trying to not talk about Wicked too much, if I'm being honest with you. Good idea. Alien Romulus three times on the list here. Pretty incredible. Also on the list, Wild Robot three times and Gladiator 2. So shortlist is a weird thing. It does not indicate necessarily strong Oscar chances. You see Romulus? I did.
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Bobby Wagner
I liked it a lot. It was a very solid 3 1/2 star movie. It was legitimately scared and legitimately impressed. A Furiosa computer generated imaging in the film. It looked very good.
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Sean Fennessy
It did. One other thing to cite here that is also related to your interest, Bob, is that Diane Warren was recognized for her original song for the Six Triple Eight, which is a forthcoming Tyler Perry feature on Netflix. Diane Warren, of course, has been nominated many, many times, I believe 16 times for an Academy Award and has never won. I haven't heard this song. Doesn't seem like a song she'd win for. And yet the Oscars keeps dragging her to the dance and telling her that she has to go home empty handed. Very sad. I Saw the TV Glow, which had a number of original songs. I was not recognized in the shortlist how do you feel about that?
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Bobby Wagner
I'm pretty upset because not only did it have a number of original songs, but it had a number of original songs targeted directly at guys like me.
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Sean Fennessy
B.B.
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Bobby Wagner
Bridger'S on stage singing a song and I saw the TV glow. That's sick.
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Sean Fennessy
Yeah, not according to the Academy voters. You're a little out of the demo. Or they're out of your demo is maybe more like it.
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Bobby Wagner
And I'm okay with that. I am. Although I do like the Brutalist score. And I like it even more when you sing it here on this podcast. Does that count as. Do you think that counts as a Spotify stream when you sing it on a Spotify original podcast?
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Sean Fennessy
Daniel Blumberg, do not hit me up for royalties, bro. I'm just praising your work, which is exceptional. International Feature. Let's just go through the list of films. I haven't even seen all of these films. This is the time of year when I. It becomes clear to me kind of what I have to knock off of my list so that I can hopefully competently discuss some of this stuff. I've seen quite a bit. I know you've seen a couple of these as well, Bobby, but. So International Feature, you know, the way that this works is that a nation has to submit a title, and only one title from each country can be submitted for the International Feature Oscar. I don't think it's going to be this way for too much longer. I think everyone realizes this is not a good way of doing this. One of your favorite films of the year, all we imagine as Light is an Indian film, but India did not select this film. And so the likelihood of that movie being recognized at the Oscars is significantly lower. Even though I think if it were eligible here, it would be here and maybe could have a chance to challenge Emilia Perez, which is by far the front runner. But this is a pretty. Even though they've changed the name of this award from Foreign Language Feature to International Feature, I think there's still some evolution that's required. But nevertheless, I'll tell you the titles of the films. From Brazil, it's. I'm Still Here. From Canada, Universal Language, a film I really liked and was happy to see here from the Czech Republic, Waves, which I've not yet seen. From Denmark, I just saw the Girl with the Needle that's added here. From France, Amelia Perez, of course, from Germany, the Seat of the Sacred fig we've talked about a few times on the show. From Iceland, Touch, which I believe is the Balthasar Kormaker film that Focus put out earlier this year from Ireland, Kneecap Cr and I discussed it very briefly. I saw it back at Sundance. Incredibly fun movie from Italy, Vermiglio, which I'm about to watch tonight, so I'm looking forward to that. From Latvia, Flow, which you will hear about later on in this podcast. Exceptional movie from Norway, Armand, which stars Renata Renzvi. I've not yet had a chance to catch up with this one From Palestine, from Ground Zero. I've also not had a chance to see this. From Senegal, Daume Mari Diop's new movie, which I just saw on Friday and is streaming on MUBI right now. And I highly encourage people to check out from Thailand, how to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, which I've heard great things about but has not yet been put in front of me, so hopefully I'll see that one soon. And then last but not least, from the United Kingdom, Santosh, which I've also not seen but we'll probably see before the year is out. Anything jump out to you about this, Bob?
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Bobby Wagner
I actually think I've only seen one of these. I've only seen Seat of the Sacred Fate. Universal Language is high on my list of movies that I want to see and haven't seen, as well as Daomei. Um, but I have a lot of catching up to do here. I think what stands out to me is that it just feels as byzantine and silly as ever, the way that this category is structured. We didn't need like a second layer of political machinations to the Oscars. Like that's what the Oscars already is. We didn't need like a pre Oscars before the Oscars, where like people in rooms decide what even gets nominated. You know what I mean?
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Sean Fennessy
Yeah. It's an interesting thing because when there's a country that controls its sort of arts councils that make these decisions, then invariably any film that is critical of the governing body of those countries is not likely to submit a film with those criticisms. And then you have these workarounds like in the case of Seat of the Sacred Fig, which is from an Iranian filmmaker named Mohammed Russell. And the story of how he made the film to me is more remarkable than the movie and I think has been helpful in campaigning for the movie. But this is a. It's the German submission and there are some reasons why Germany is able to submit a film like this, even though the film is entirely about an Iranian family. So, yeah, there's some shenanigans, I think, in the way that this is all Strategized and worked against. It reminds me a little bit of when you would have, you know, God, who were the two brothers, one of whom played for England and one of whom played for, I think, Cameroon in the World cup, even though I think they were both English citizens. And you were like, well, how can one guy be on that team and another guy be on the other team? Or maybe. No, it was Ghana. It wasn't Cameroon. It was Ghana. God, I can't remember their names. Two really, really talented soccer players, I think, who both played in the Premier League. But it's this sort of thing where you're, like, shifting what the home countries can and should be in a system that already has a lot of flaws. So I really feel like this is ripe for an overhaul given the way that world cinema has profoundly and positively influenced the Oscars in the last five or 10 years. Like, this is a shift that just, I feel like has to be made. Yeah.
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Bobby Wagner
And those are the Boatang brothers, Germany and Ghana. And Kevin Prince played for Ghana and Jerome Boateng, who was like a very famous, very important player for the German national team. I just think that it kind of like if you reverse engineer it, it kind of encourages the wrong things because so many of these independent or international smaller budget movies like the Oscars boost for these movies, helps them to get made in the future. The idea that it might get an Oscar nomination get put on these shortlists. And so if the. The production companies, the financiers of these movies are already thinking in advance, no, we're not going to finance this because we know that it's too critical of the country or the governing body that it's being created in. It's just really, really, really narrowing the types of stories that get told and then get rewarded at the Oscars and then put on a much more international stage for more people to actually see, which I think ultimately maybe isn't the goal, but should be one of the goals at least to get more people to be able to see these movies from. From younger filmmakers, from more experimental filmmakers.
- [15:17]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, I think it's. I think that the Academy has done an amazing job of widening the expectation for the first time, really, in about 35, 40 years in the 1970s. If you look through the nominations, you can see all kinds of international nominees. I was just reading about Fellini and I'm thinking of doing a fellini rewatch in 2025. And Fellini was recognized in multiple categories in screenplay, in director, in international film all through the late 60s and all the way, maybe all the way up through the early 80s. And he was kind of a consistent presence, even though he didn't make any films in English. And then that kind of went away and went very quiet in the 80s and 90s and has had a bit of a comeback, especially as the academy has widened and deepened its bench of voters. So this is just a remnant of old administrations and old thinking that has got to be changed. Let's talk quickly about documentary feature. I've seen quite a few of these films, though not all of them as well. They are the BB Files, Black Box Diaries, Daome, which is also an International Daughters, Eno, Frida, Hollywood Gate, no Other Land, Porcelain War, Queendom, the Remarkable Life of Iblin, which I'll get into momentarily. Soundtrack to a coup d'etat, Sugar Cane Union and Will and Harper. A number of these movies debuted at Sundance. In fact, more than half of them did. I wanted to point out two, well, two movies that I haven't seen, one of which I think you have seen. I haven't seen Eno, which is a documentary about the famed British music producer Brian Eno, who has, you know, one of the most incredible discographies of any person alive, anybody in the history of pop music, and also someone who has a very distinct and fascinating working style. And that that style is reflected in the way that you watch the movie, which it has a kind of generative component where every time you watch it in a movie theater, it is a little bit different than the way it had been previously shown. It's a little hard for me to explain how that works because I have not yet seen it. But the film, you can't stream it at home. It only shows in movie theaters. And because of this generative component, which is correlated to Eno's philosophy as a producer and musician, it needs to be in a very closed and controlled environment to experience it. They're working on ways to share it with the public so that the same generative experience can go on. But I find something like this fascinating because this is very different from a movie like Frida, which is a fairly standard but creative biopic about a famous artist, or Will and Harper, which you can just stream on Netflix and is about Will Harper and Harper Steele, or, excuse me, Will Ferrell and Harper Steele and their longtime friendship, or even a movie like Union, which is a fascinating story about the unionization efforts in warehouses in Amazon, but does not have distribution at the moment, and no company has taken on the distribution. So the filmmakers are distributing the movies sort of independently and Trying to put it in as many theaters and single screens as they possibly can. One of the reasons why, I think, is because it's just a very complicated issue politically and rhetorically for those filmmakers. And Amazon, of course, is a big player in Hollywood these days. But I think you did see no Other Land, right, Bobby?
- [18:32]
Bobby Wagner
I did, yeah. I saw it at New York Film Festival. It's. It's incredible. It's. It's. It's remarkable. It's like stunningly of the moment. You know, it captures something that has been so at the forefront of political conversation in the entire world for the last two years, and yet at the same time, like, it is that timeless style of documentary filmmaking where it just puts you right there, right in front of everything. And the person, the subject of the documentaries is also like a social media documentarian himself. And so his contributions are kind of meta in a way too. And I thought it was phenomenal.
- [19:12]
Sean Fennessy
I'm really looking forward to seeing that. That film, just like Union, still doesn't have a distributor. I think the perception is just that this is, one, a very hard film to market and sell to audiences, and two, is a controversial subject matter that no one that is in the business of trying to make money wants to have to choose a perspective on. Obviously, part of the film, as I understand it, is that it's not that kind of proposition, that it is about trying to understand the war with a significant more amount of depth and complexity. Is that fair to say?
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Bobby Wagner
In what sense? What do you mean?
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Sean Fennessy
In that it's not a political film that is sort of like, you must choose a side in this conflict.
- [19:52]
Bobby Wagner
It's not like that. It's more about the. The ramifications of the actual events themselves in the sense that it. It displays the lives of people who are being displaced by the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
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Sean Fennessy
It.
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Bobby Wagner
It tells the story of the IDF coming in and. And trying to move these Palestinian people out of their homes because they are trying to expand their military operations and turn this. This space, this land into more of a military base. And that's why they claim that they have the justification to be doing that. And it tells the stories, like, literally from the inside of the homes, like, as they're being torn down. So obviously, as you allude to politically explosive subject matter in an elevator pitch, I think the way that it plays out, I would challenge anybody to watch this film and not be able to find empathy with the people whose lives are being displayed. You know, but obviously corporations don't always think that way in terms of how they distribute these movies because it's hard to get people to watch movies that are hard to watch. And it is hard to watch. I mean, I'm not gonna say that it's not, but again, yeah, this is a movie that's in my top 10 of the year. I think it's an incredible act of documentary filmmaking.
- [21:08]
Sean Fennessy
Both categories will be interesting tests of the new academy and the kinds of films that they're interested in and the kinds of stories that they want to tell. I would hard to say, not having seen Eno, but essentially every other film that is on the documentary feature list could be perceived as a film with a strong political point of view, a strong ethical point of view even, perhaps. So, you know, that's not uncommon here. But one thing that has been noted is that the documentary branch in particular is very esoteric and very unpredictable. The fact that Will and Harper and even Daughters and even Frida and Sugar Cane all made it, even though they were kind of presumed to be like a little more mainstream, a little bit more front runnery as fascinating. Sugarcane is available to watch, I believe, on Disney plus right now. Daughters is available to watch on Netflix. I mentioned Dao Mei is on Mubi at the moment. Will and Harper on Netflix as well. The remarkable life of Iblin on Netflix. Netflix, always a big contender in this category. They tend to acquire a lot out of festivals. They've. Some of these are darn good films. I'll talk about one of them in a minute. That's more or less my thoughts on the short list. We'll see. We've got, I think, exactly one month until the nominations come out and we've still got a couple of more movies that are going to open wide over the next few weeks that are going to impact the conversations and the expectations. I don't know what the fuck's going to happen, if I'm being perfectly honest with you. This is in theory, very exciting. And when I talk to other people who spend time thinking about this and even creating content around it, they're like, isn't this great? But for me, ball knower man, for whom it is important to know things and get things correct. Yeah, not ideal. That's my, that's my frailty, that's my flaw. That's a sad truth about me, but it is a truth and it's important for me to express it here.
- [23:04]
Bobby Wagner
Are you going emo boy mode on me?
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Sean Fennessy
I just, it's important to, to know where the, the weaknesses are, you know, like I, I'm. I'VE been having some oblique issues physically, you know, I'm. I'm pursuing physical therapy. I have to. I have to solve these problems.
- [23:20]
Bobby Wagner
So maybe you gotta get in on the yoga game, bro. This is my new. I've come back to yoga. I was a big yoga person in college.
- [23:25]
Sean Fennessy
I know.
- [23:26]
Bobby Wagner
And then I got a job and I was like, what if I didn't do this? What if I didn't dedicate time to this? But you gotta get back in that.
- [23:31]
Sean Fennessy
Who are these people that just go out and do things at 1:30pm on a Wednesday that just for themselves, that are not part of the act of working? I don't know. I don't. Who are these men and women?
- [23:43]
Bobby Wagner
I'm gonna be really real with you. Like, it's me a lot of the time because I work west coast hours, you know, so it's like 5pm when we're doing our pods.
- [23:50]
Sean Fennessy
For me, sometimes you're on with me at 9pm your time. So it's. It's a different scenario. Can I.
- [23:55]
Bobby Wagner
Can I posit you a small theory about why the race feels so mysterious?
- [24:00]
Sean Fennessy
Please.
- [24:01]
Bobby Wagner
There's just no front runner. Like, so many movies that we thought might come out are either getting pushed back till next year or came out and didn't quite do what we expected them to do. And so the front runner. Frontrunners are weird. The fact that Anora has been a frontrunner for as long as it has been is just like, by conventional Oscar wisdom, like, kind of wrong. You know what I mean? It's unfamiliar to us, and it almost feels like in a way, you know, when Parasyte ended up winning, I think Parasite was kind of like more like an. An aura, a beloved film from a filmmaker that people have a big relationship to but maybe is not super mainstream. And then it wins. It's this upset. We're all so happy, you know, but we don't really have something for it to upset necessarily. And so by default, we've been saying, okay, maybe Nona is going to win best Picture. That's kind of weird, right? No, you didn't talk about that for nine months.
- [24:48]
Sean Fennessy
No, it's a. It's a great point and a great point of comparison because in that year, I very vividly remember the weekend after Thanksgiving going to see 1917 and 1917 having this huge surge over those six weeks towards the end of the year where 1. I still like that movie quite a bit. I was really impressed by the way that it was made. And when I saw it, I thought to Myself. Ooh. This could really displace all of the front runners, which at the time, I guess were sort of like once upon a time in Hollywood, Parasite, marriage, story, Ford, Ferrari, whatever, you know, on down the line of films that came out that year. The best movie year in a while and 1917 didn't quite get there, but it did the thing that you're talking about, which is it disrupted the momentum of a movie that could have been seen as a front runner or one that could have risen to the top. I'm keeping Anora in that place, as far as I can tell, because nothing has really come along that has really displaced it. The Brutalist, I think is too big and arthouse y. But there is a world in which it's slow rollout over the next six weeks works in its favor. I am not discounting that. Joanna and I will get into all this at the end of this week and we'll talk about the different permutations and what's rising and what's falling. But it's been interesting.
- [26:01]
Bobby Wagner
I just bought tickets to see brutalist again. 9am on a Sunday morning. Let's get it.
- [26:06]
Sean Fennessy
I think that's a great way to do it because then you can get out and get a giant sandwich afterwards.
- [26:10]
Bobby Wagner
That's precisely my plan.
- [26:12]
Sean Fennessy
Protein shake in the morning, huge turkey sandwich right afterwards, like after CR beds down his wife. His wife.
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Bobby Wagner
Hawk to a girl, you mean?
- [26:22]
Sean Fennessy
Yes, of course. Hawk to Orion. All right, let's talk about underseen and underappreciated. We're going to go down the list with some ringer staffers, including Bob. But I just for the. For the record, I want to state I've seen, as of today, 307 new releases from this year. I'm still doing this thing where I'm trying to see as many of the new releases as I possibly can, honestly. One, because I'm ill and everyone knows I'm ill. But two, because I'm trying to do a good job with the show. And like to me, like, the purpose of the show is to present the contemporary cinema in a sincere way, celebrate what needs to be celebrated, set aside what maybe doesn't need to be celebrated. Unless, of course, it's kind of unignorable. I've already seen actually 11, 20, 25 films as well. So I'm starting to make moves on next year. Bobby, I'm traveling. You are traveling. Oh, I'm time traveling.
- [27:08]
Bobby Wagner
No, you're time traveling.
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Sean Fennessy
Yeah. Well, the studios now, I think, have figured out that it's Good to show me earlier rather than later. So I don't know what to make of that.
- [27:17]
Bobby Wagner
Is that because your brain turns into mush by the time you've seen about 200 of these movies in the last hundred, you just can't remember.
- [27:24]
Sean Fennessy
You know, as a man who sat through MUFASA at 11am yesterday, the answer to that question is yes. I did want to spotlight a couple of movies that I didn't get a chance to talk about or maybe didn't get a chance to explore in depth before we let some other folks do the same. So I'll just go through my list really quickly. My number one pick is Christmas Eve and Miller's Point, which is a movie by Tyler Taormina. You may have seen his first film, Ham on Rye, which was a bit of an indie sensation. I think IFC distributed it in 2019. This movie is fascinating. It stars Matilda Fleming, Maria Dizzia, Ben Shenkman, Francesca Scorsese. That's right, Martin Scorsese's daughter, Elsie Fisher. She truly is Sawyer Spielberg, Greg Turkington of On Cinema at the Cinema, Michael Cera, a handful of other folks that you'll recognize. This movie, which is a kind of impressionistic, emotionally flashing series of micro events that take place all in one home on Long island on Christmas Eve night, is the most Long island thing that has ever happened in movies. I have never seen the experiences of my own life as a person with a huge extended family and a child of divorce with multiple extended new second families and step families. I've never seen that experience rendered so deeply, profoundly, humorously and oddly in the way that only Long island can be odd or though maybe New Jersey as well as this movie does. Miller's Place is a place on Long Island. Miller's Point is not, but it is very clearly a stand in. Tyler, the filmmaker, is from Long island and you can fucking tell because he's got the beats down. He's got a very interesting kind of roving camera filmmaking style. You can see definitely some Robert Altman influence in the way that he sets up sequences. You can see like a very sincere but also subtly sarcastic aspect to this. This movie is streaming right now on AMC plus if you are a subscriber to that service, which I think is incredibly underrated, because you get AMC and you get Shudder and you get IFC all in a bundle. Not bad. It's also on vod if you're not a subscriber to amc. It's just about one night at a family Christmas party on Christmas Eve and That's the whole thing. Then like the teenagers who are hanging out there, maybe some of the things they do. Very simple, very straightforward, but a very beautiful and fun movie that I encourage people to check out. My next pick is a movie that I have used as a punchline for Amanda a few times, but that I am sincerely recommending here. It's called Hundreds of Beavers.
- [30:00]
Bobby Wagner
It's a lot of beavers.
- [30:01]
Sean Fennessy
It's a lot. There are hundreds of them. You may have heard of this movie. It's finally available to stream on Tubi, the greatest streaming service, as we all know. It's directed by Mike Cheslick. It's written by Cheslick and Ryland Brixon Cole Twos. He is also the star of this movie. The logline of this movie I don't think does its service. The logline is a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America's greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers. So that makes it sound like it's a prequel to the Revenant. And that's not at all what this movie is. This movie is like, it's Buster Keaton meets jackass meets a roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Like, it is pure slapstick Marx Brothers silent film, Ralph Bakshi animation. All kinds of crazy, wild, persistent durational comedy gags. Like, every time you think that they have topped the best possible gag they could pull off with these beavers in giant suits, they go to the next level. Extremely funny, extremely fun. I never got a chance to see this movie in a movie theater. I've been told this is the absolute best way to see it. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do so, but even at home, I really, really loved it and give it a try. It's like, maybe this is the product of having seen 300 new movies, but something that is this different and this creative I think is worth recommending. You saw.
- [31:27]
Bobby Wagner
They did like a. I didn't see it yet, but I saw last week that they. I think they did like a physical release of it on Blu Ray via Vinegar Syndrome. And it like blew it up. It blew. It sold out like within minutes, I think, which was kind of a cool thing to see.
- [31:42]
Sean Fennessy
I didn't. I didn't know that it sold out. That's very cool. I did see the Vinegar Syndrome distributed it and I'm not surprised. There's a cult around this movie. It's a very strong cult. It. And a worthy cult in many ways. My third film is one I just saw last night that had been recommended to me by a number of people that I don't want to say too much about because I think people should watch it for themselves. But the movie is called Femme. It's directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Chun Ping, and it's an adaptation of their short film of the same name, which is about a drag performer who is attacked after a performance in a convenience store. And Jules, the performer, finds a way to make a connection with the man who attacked him. And the movie becomes a kind of sustained thriller from that point forward. Really, really interesting movie about sex, power abuse and a very modern movie. A very. A nice companion, I would say, to Red Rooms, the film that I think I talked with Chris about in October. But then Adam had it as his number one movie of the year. I know CR has since seen it and he's loved it too. And I think Red Rooms, we're gonna look back in 10 years and be like. Red Rooms is one of the most significant movies. This movie actually has a lot thematically and structurally in common. So check out Femme that's streaming on Hulu right now. I mentioned the Remarkable Life of Vibilin, which is on Netflix. It's one of the shortlisted documentaries. It's directed by Benjamin Rhee, who made a movie in 2020 called the Painter and the Thief. I love this movie out of Sundance. I've now my father in law, God bless him, he texted me two weeks ago. I think he's texted me twice this year. He's not a big texter, he's a little bit older. But he texted me out of nowhere and he just said very formally, Sean, have you seen this film, the Remarkable Life of Ibelin? If so, I would love to just hear what you thought of it. Which was just a very generous text to receive my father in law, who's a wonderful man, and I realized that I just hadn't spent any time talking about it since Sundance. But it's about a kid named Matt Steen who was born with muscular dystrophy and near the end of his life. And he died very young. And I'm not spoiling anything to say that because it's revealed very early in the film he started keeping a blog about his experiences in his life and his experiences with World of Warcraft, the video game, which became a portal to a new kind of existence for him. Not just to what you could describe in a cliche way, escaping whatever it was that he was enduring on a day to day basis, but more so to build a community for himself. And he made this incredible world of friends and connections, emotional, deep, emotional connections to people inside of World of Warcraft. And it's very common to make fun of gamers and to identify gaming as a toxic kind of lifestyle. We just saw in an aura that there's a gamer bro in that movie who does not have the best perspective on life or know how to treat women. But this is an amazing document about what art and the way in which you can kind of repel yourself deep into your own interests can sometimes help you find community and meaning in your life. And I think this is a really powerful and sincere and deep movie and also tremendously creative when you see the way that the filmmakers use World of Warcraft to tell Matz's story in the second half. So, you know, the. This movie won't be for everybody, but I think it deserves even more love than it's getting. And it's not the kind of movie that's gonna top the Netflix charts. You know, it's a smaller film, but it's really, really beautiful. So check out the Remarkable Life of Ibelin if you haven't had a chance to see it. And then my fifth one is a little bit of a grungy recommendation, but I saw that it hit Hulu and I liked it a little bit and so I wanna give it a quick shout out. It's called what yout Wish For. This is definitely the most genre focused movie I'm talking about here right now. It's written and directed by a guy named Nicholas Tomney. It stars Nick Stahl, who was a big star in the late 90s and 2000s. You may remember him from movies like in the Bedroom. He hasn't been in a lot of movies in the last 10 years. I know he's had some personal problems over that time, but he's always an actor who I was always drawn to. And this movie, which is really interesting, it's about a chef. He was really down on his luck and he goes to visit an old friend in an exotic locale who's working as a chef and some things happen. And this friend that Nick Stahl plays has to fill in for his friend in the role as a chef. And things kind of unravel from there in an intriguing way. This is just like a darn good episode of the Twilight zone stretched over 87 minutes. So I would check out what you wish for. If you like a kind of grim and grimy crime. What's it of some kind? Couple of honorable mentions for you. I did mention soundtrack to a coup d'etat, which is on the documentary shortlist, and I talked about it on our Top five Movies of the Year episode. I don't need to go into too much depth about this film anymore, but I want to underline it because in a just world it would be seen by millions of people. And it is a fascinating evolution of documentary filmmaking and blending of music and text and storytelling. And I don't want to say conspiracy theorizing because that undermines the narrative that it's trying to share, but I think exploring alternative histories is maybe a safer way to describe it. About the relationship between America and Africa in the 1960s. I got to give some more love to a Different man, which I never had the chance to actually have a discussion about on the podcast, even though I interviewed Sebastian Stan, who's one of the stars in the movie. This is a movie that's actually doing a little bit better in the awards race than I was expecting it to. It's a very dark comedy about an aspiring actor who is born with a condition that makes his face appear as though it is disfigured, and he undergoes a radical surgery to look different and more like he wants to look. And he achieves some success in his life after that happens, but realizes that nothing has really changed inside of him, and he then encounters a man who resembles the man he used to resemble, and it throws him into a wild discombobulation emotionally. Great, great, great movie, Stan. Renata Renzvi and Adam Pearson. This is definitely going to end up probably in my top 20 or so. We didn't talk about Janet Planet. I mentioned it coming out of Telluride in 2023. Very quickly, Annie Baker's new movie, or first film, I should say the playwright whose work I've loved over the years stars Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler as a mother and a daughter living in Vermont I think, in the late 90s. And someone who's watched a mother and a daughter have like a profoundly complicated and deep connection. This movie gets that very, very, very, very right. And if you've ever been interested in that kind of relationship, perhaps this movie will speak to you. It is very quiet and slow moving film, be be warned, I suppose. But it's on Max right now if you're interested. And then last but not least is the Devil's Bath, which is extremely grim. There's no other way to say it. I think Tracy Letts mentioned this on the show last week. It's directed by Veronica Franz and Severin Fiala. I finally got around to it. It is streaming on Shudder right now. It is based on a book called Suicide by Proxy in Early Crime, Sin and Salvation. It's about communities in Germany and Austria hundreds of years ago who could not be saved if they were to commit suicide. And so they found other ways to find salvation. This movie is not for the faint of heart. It is deeply, deeply upsetting. And it's not a horror movie per se, but it is a very piercing portrait of what happens when things come apart in your mind, especially from a female perspective. It's very much about women in these communities in Germany and Austria. It's reductive to say this movie's fucked up, but it is fucked up and I enjoyed it. So please check it out. It's called the Devil's Bath. Okay, let's go to slightly lighter fare by chatting up our buddy Chris Ryan.
- [40:28]
Danny Chow
This episode is brought to you by State Farm.
- [40:31]
Sean Fennessy
You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are.
- [40:34]
Danny Chow
The words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique.
- [40:41]
Sean Fennessy
Insurance needs, meaning you can talk to.
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Danny Chow
Your agent to choose the coverage you.
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Sean Fennessy
Need, have coverage options to protect the.
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Danny Chow
Things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app.
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Sean Fennessy
And even reach a real person when.
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Danny Chow
You need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
- [40:58]
Mallory Rubin
This episode is brought to you by Dutch Bros. Get stoked for all the holly jolly vibes this season at Dutch Bros. Stay cozy with returning winter faves. Hazelnut truffle mocha and candy cane mocha. Plus the new Winter Shimmer Rebel energy drink blends up sweet cream and blue razz flavor with soft top and shimmer sprinks to keep those spirits energized all winter long.
- [41:20]
Sean Fennessy
Download the Dutch Bros app to find.
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Mallory Rubin
Your nearest shop, order ahead and start earning rewards.
- [41:28]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, I'm here with Chris Ryan. We're talking about the first of the Ringer All Stars, underseen, underappreciated, misunderstood works of cinematic art this year, but we're talking about a more recent film. I don't. This may turn out to be one of the most watched movies of 2024 for all we know.
- [41:43]
James Cameron
Is this number one on Netflix already?
- [41:45]
Sean Fennessy
It is. It was number one within one day, which is pretty remarkable and tells you a lot about at least what the Netflix audience wants. What's your what's the movie you picked?
- [41:53]
James Cameron
We we're doing Carry On, Joan Colisera's new film Did I pronounce that right.
- [41:58]
Sean Fennessy
So I know someone who's worked with him and he calls him Jouma.
- [42:01]
James Cameron
Oh, okay. Jauma.
- [42:02]
Sean Fennessy
Which is news to me because I once interviewed the man and I called him Yaum through the entire interview and he did not correct me.
- [42:07]
James Cameron
So we got three different pronunciations in 30 seconds. Can we call him JCS?
- [42:11]
Sean Fennessy
JCS is great.
- [42:12]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [42:13]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, who is JCS? For the listeners who don't know and haven't been following our work together for the last seven or eight years, we've.
- [42:18]
James Cameron
Done a lot of pods about garbage genres. JCS is the prince of all of them. Like, if you had given him garbage, sci fi, garbage, espionage, anything, he could do it. He makes the best B movies. He's the best B movie director in the world right now.
- [42:32]
Sean Fennessy
I think I fully agree with you. But he has been in a bit of a.
- [42:37]
James Cameron
He was in the wilderness.
- [42:38]
Sean Fennessy
A rock shaped the rock, shaped oblivion for a couple of years there where he, you know, his last couple of films are Black Adam, the DC Universe film that nearly broke me on this show and may have broken the superhero trend. And previous to that was Jungle Cruise, a Disney adaptation of a ride that appears in their parks.
- [42:57]
James Cameron
And that was the Rock and Emily Blunt.
- [42:58]
Sean Fennessy
The Rock and Emily Blunt. Right. Prior to that, though, he was on an incredible streak.
- [43:03]
James Cameron
Should we just go through some of the highlights?
- [43:05]
Sean Fennessy
Please.
- [43:05]
James Cameron
He goes pro in 05 with House of Wax, which is actually underrated and is a pretty good. Is that Cuthbert? Is that Elisha Cuthbert?
- [43:13]
Sean Fennessy
And Paris Hilton.
- [43:13]
James Cameron
Incredible performance, 2009. You see what many still consider his best film, which is Orphan, but I get really down when he gets into Liam Neeson. Unknown Non Stop Run All Night. Just some incredible man with a Gun thrillers. And the Shallows is a personal project of mine. It's just an incredible shark attack movie that's with Blake Lively. And the bird in that movie is named Steven Seagull.
- [43:42]
Sean Fennessy
Intriguing.
- [43:43]
James Cameron
I've talked about this before. I've talked about Steven Seagull. More Liam Neeson with the commuter than this. Wandering into the wilderness with the Rock, Jungle Cruise and Black Adam. And then he's back with Carry On.
- [43:53]
Sean Fennessy
So Carry on is a film set at an airport in Los Angeles, LAX at Christmas time. Yes, there are elements of the film Die Hard. Yes, there are elements of the film Die Hard. To Die Harder. There are elements of the film Phone Booth, a movie I enjoy. A Joel Schumacher, Colin Farrell movie. It is a little bit.
- [44:13]
James Cameron
There are elements of the podcast Smartless.
- [44:16]
Sean Fennessy
Yes.
- [44:16]
James Cameron
That's about walking around an Airport listening to Jason bateman in your AirPod.
- [44:20]
Sean Fennessy
That is absolutely true. There's a bunch of other movies that are. I thought of Nick of Time. Remember Nick of Time with Johnny Depp and Christopher Walken? He's sort of like the man with the all seeing eye can see you and he needs you to do things. Otherwise someone that you care about will become injured or killed.
- [44:35]
James Cameron
Yes.
- [44:36]
Sean Fennessy
And in this case, Taron Egerton plays a young TSA agent.
- [44:40]
James Cameron
Yeah, a little bit of like a slacker, kind of a fail.
- [44:43]
Sean Fennessy
Son, late 20s, early 30s. Yeah.
- [44:46]
James Cameron
He's followed his girlfriend Nora out to California. They've both gotten jobs at the. The airport. She's an operations man, manager for North Winds.
- [44:55]
Sean Fennessy
Absolutely.
- [44:55]
James Cameron
Thinking maybe that's like kind of like Alaska kind of.
- [44:58]
Sean Fennessy
Sure. What's the salary there? She pushing?
- [45:00]
James Cameron
I think she probably does like 85 with really good Betty's.
- [45:04]
Sean Fennessy
Do you think she picks up the check at dinner?
- [45:06]
James Cameron
Well, that's an issue for them.
- [45:08]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah.
- [45:08]
James Cameron
Because she's prego with his ego and he's got to get his shit together and really, like, apply himself. The problem is, is that what he really wants to be is a cop. But he failed the police Academy entrance exam or whatever. He got rejected by the Los Angeles Police Department. They rejected Taron Eggerton.
- [45:27]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, you make it sound like that is not a hallowed institution.
- [45:30]
James Cameron
I'm just. I was just noting.
- [45:32]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, he failed. Have you ever taken a cop test?
- [45:34]
James Cameron
No, I thought about it.
- [45:35]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah.
- [45:36]
James Cameron
Just to see. But I think I have mentioned before that I would like to be jumped straight to Homicide. Like, I would want to go straight to Major Crimes.
- [45:43]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, yeah, You've kind of a Kyle Secor Homicide vibe, actually. I think you'd fit. Right?
- [45:48]
James Cameron
Um, yeah. So the premise for this movie is essentially this is like a kind of go nowhere TSA agent who's trying to like, make a New Year's kind of push to like, get his shit together. Gets himself put on like a pretty prominent shift analyzing bags as they go through the. The security check at lax. And after one tray goes through, there's a leftover earpiece. He puts the earpiece in. And who's talking to him but Jason Bateman. Incredible Jason Bateman, who is like, if you don't do what I tell you to do, Nora, your girlfriend is going to die. And so most of the film is taken up of this kind of pantomime where Bateman is directing his actions. He's got a. You know, basically at one point, he's going to have to let a bag go through that he shouldn't. And, you know, as a viewer, I was watching and I was like, I'm sure this is going to be like a twist with the bag where it can't be that dark. Or maybe Jason Bateman will be like Alan Rickman where he's like, I'm not a terrorist. I just. I'm just a robber. But he's a terrorist. And it is turned out to be very dangerous Russian nerve gas that is being put on a plane with a congresswoman.
- [46:54]
Sean Fennessy
His end goals, though, are still entirely financial in nature.
- [46:59]
James Cameron
Well, yeah, he's a facilitator. You know, he's apolitical.
- [47:02]
Sean Fennessy
And what do you think about his work? Is it something that would appeal to you as a potential third career as.
- [47:07]
James Cameron
A JCS movie goes? There was a lot about Aleppo in this film that I did not expect.
- [47:12]
Sean Fennessy
There was, considering there was. You think of this as a work of political art.
- [47:17]
James Cameron
Not really.
- [47:18]
Sean Fennessy
Okay.
- [47:19]
James Cameron
I thought it was, like, very entertaining, but clearly almost shot in three discrete chunks. And there was, like, the days they had Bateman VO and also on set, there was all the Terran stuff in the fake lax. And then there is the investigation into what is happening being led by one of our great actors, Daniel Deadweiler.
- [47:41]
Sean Fennessy
This is my favorite part of the.
- [47:42]
James Cameron
Movie, at one point in this movie, has to get out of a car and say, what do you got, Detective? And I'm like, that's Daniel Deadweil.
- [47:50]
Sean Fennessy
It does feel like active winking self parody. The same way that the Shallows felt like it was inhaling, ingesting the entire history of shark movies. And they're just kind of like burping it out a little bit, you know, just like. I know, like, this is a little bit of a gentle nod, gastrointestinal nod to this thing. And, you know, these kinds of movies, frankly, powered Hollywood between 1987 and 1998. We don't really get very many movies like this anymore. I think it's very fun to have it. A little bit of a rickety script on this one, I would say. Sure. Yeah. The Colette Serra filmmaking style is still just incredibly kinetic and fun and engaging.
- [48:24]
James Cameron
So can we talk about one of the best car crashes I've seen in the movie? This is in, like, 10 years I've.
- [48:28]
Sean Fennessy
Seen in the movie, actually. I know somebody who worked on it. I emailed them, and the minute I finished watching it, and I was like, that fucking rocks.
- [48:34]
James Cameron
Was that Logan Marshall Green?
- [48:35]
Sean Fennessy
It was not. I wish I knew that man for his work in prometheus and now this.
- [48:39]
James Cameron
There is a car crash scene. Without giving anything really away about the movie that is breathtaking and is, like, so fake. It's beyond fake to real, back to fake. But is the kind of kinetic thing that he's capable of that he envisions. I wish there was like two more things like that in this movie.
- [48:56]
Sean Fennessy
I agree with you.
- [48:57]
James Cameron
The rest of it is kind of like, I'm running and now I'm gonna punch you and. But I got chased. But I can run. Yeah.
- [49:02]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah. It's largely a chase movie. Yeah. The car crash, though, is incredible. How did you think it stacked up to the car crash in Smile 2? Because they're very similar and they're shot very similarly, which is. It has this sort of like, oscillating camera style.
- [49:14]
James Cameron
I would have been. I would. The Smile 2 gets. It gets points taken off for not also having a gunfight during the car.
- [49:22]
Sean Fennessy
Where are you at with Logan Marshall Green at this point? Have you held your stock is still there. Okay.
- [49:26]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [49:26]
Sean Fennessy
What's he been up to? Has he gone into television? Like, first of all, he has a totally different head of hair in this film.
- [49:32]
James Cameron
Well, he shaved his beard.
- [49:33]
Sean Fennessy
Okay.
- [49:34]
James Cameron
That's like his calling card is kind of his invitation beard. And I think he has facial hair in Prometheus before he gets deformed.
- [49:40]
Sean Fennessy
I mean, so in 2018, he appears in. He's the star of Leigh Whannell's upgrade. Yeah. I was like, this guy is Lance Henriksen 2.0. He's Scott Glenn 2.0. He's gonna be awesome as, like, the lead of many good genre movies, but never become, like, the super duper star that we want to be.
- [49:58]
James Cameron
Let's just start comparing guys to, like, that's Jean Paul Belmondo today.
- [50:02]
Sean Fennessy
It's like, that's like, do we not do that? It's honest more often that we're like, that's Walt Clyde Fraser, but in a JCS movie. Since then, he's been in a film called Adopt a Highway, which he directed.
- [50:14]
James Cameron
And I saw it south by Southwest, and it was good.
- [50:16]
Sean Fennessy
He was in How It Ends, Intrusion, Redeeming Love, the Listener, Lou, and Reverse the Curse. Which of those is your favorite in the last seven years for Logan Marshall Green?
- [50:26]
James Cameron
Those are seven movies that look like they're the in development movies on someone's IMDb. Tough. I don't remember those coming out.
- [50:34]
Sean Fennessy
Are you up on the TV series Big Sky?
- [50:36]
Danny Chow
Yes.
- [50:36]
Sean Fennessy
There was one season of this show created by David E. Kelly. Yeah.
- [50:40]
James Cameron
It's basically network TV Yellowstone.
- [50:42]
Sean Fennessy
He is 14th on the list here of actors on this series. It's not ideal.
- [50:47]
James Cameron
It's not about the call sheet. It's about your contribution.
- [50:49]
Sean Fennessy
Okay. I want better things for him, but he's great. Nice to see his face pop up in this movie. Pretty solid.
- [50:55]
James Cameron
I enjoyed myself for Netflix also. That I gotta say, man. I was just talking about this with Greenwald on the 10 best episodes list of TV on the watch about like where TV is at as far as like a thing that you'll reliably at a social occasion. People will be like, we've all watched the exact same show at the exact same time. Everybody at Saturday night holiday parties this weekend was like, I have already watched Carry On.
- [51:17]
Sean Fennessy
Yes. Yeah. Well, this was a notably horrendous release weekend in theaters. Obviously.
- [51:24]
James Cameron
Kraven down bad.
- [51:25]
Sean Fennessy
Craven was horrible. The Lord of the Rings animated movie was a big nothing. And so there was. I think there was a hunger for something like this. And it's also, you know, people are shopping and they got parties and they're tired. They don't have time to make four hours for the movies. This is perfect. Perfect. Between this and Rebel Ridge, did Netflix release the two best thrillers of 2024? Yes. I mean, you know, it's not. This isn't Red Rooms. It's not like a psychological exploration.
- [51:50]
James Cameron
It's not Darlings where I'm like, wow, we've been introduced to a new auteur.
- [51:53]
Sean Fennessy
This kind of movie.
- [51:54]
James Cameron
Yeah.
- [51:55]
Sean Fennessy
Which we like. Which we talk about on the rewatchables all the time.
- [51:57]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah.
- [51:58]
Sean Fennessy
Good job by them.
- [51:59]
James Cameron
Dump you weary movie in December.
- [52:00]
Sean Fennessy
Chris, where can we hear you on the Watch? Okay.
- [52:03]
James Cameron
On the big picture, on the Timothee Chalamet episode of the Avon that just came out.
- [52:09]
Sean Fennessy
Interesting. What were you providing on that app?
- [52:11]
James Cameron
Political context.
- [52:13]
Sean Fennessy
Really appreciate that. That's crazy. Mallory Rubin is here, back on the show. You've been an avid participant in the big picture in the last four weeks. How are you feeling?
- [52:29]
Mallory Rubin
Spoiled and like I'm gonna go through withdrawal when Dobbins comes back and you don't need me anymore.
- [52:33]
Sean Fennessy
What do you mean? I always need you. You're an essential part of my life. Don't say that.
- [52:39]
Mallory Rubin
Thanks, buddy. That's really nice. It's been genuinely fun for me to have so many opportunities to talk to you about the movies and also the Mets.
- [52:47]
Sean Fennessy
The Mets are doing great. Yeah, the Mets are doing great. We have a very fun episode upcoming. About the film, a complete unknown. But as a tease, I wanted you to Come in and talk about cinema one more time. We're talking about underappreciated, underseen, under whatever movies of the year. And speaking of things that are essential to your life, you are a cat person. You are the cat person.
- [53:09]
Mallory Rubin
I love cats. I love my cat. I was hoping, given the subject matter of today's segment, that Halo, the most important person in my life, who is my cat, to be clear, would join me. He was in here four and a half minutes ago and then he went and sat on a really warm pile of laundry that Adam took out of the dryer. And then I had to shut the door for sound buffering. And so he is not here, but he's here with me in spirit, as always.
- [53:36]
Sean Fennessy
So the film that I don't know, we have chosen. You have chosen. You were interested in seeing this movie and you did the real work of going out to the cinema to see the film. What is the movie? What'd you pick?
- [53:48]
Mallory Rubin
Flow.
- [53:50]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, what is flow? Explain it.
- [53:51]
Mallory Rubin
This is an 85 minute animated film about a cat and his animal companions who go on the adventure of a lifetime after a flood decimates their home. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And I have still not recovered from seeing this movie, which I did last night in, because I know this is under seen, slash, underappreciated. And so I just want to, I want to, I want to note that I am, I am going to go on the under scene lane here because this is not an underappreciated movie. Everyone who has seen this movie, I think, agrees that it is a masterpiece piece.
- [54:31]
Sean Fennessy
Right?
- [54:31]
Mallory Rubin
An absolute classic. It's amassing awards, amassing hardware. The lemur in the movie would then collect the hardware and play with it if he got the opportunity. But I think we both really were excited to just encourage anybody who loves movies to see this film if they get the chance. It's on very few screens. When I looked for show times to see it was pretty limited in my options. And we live in Los Angeles, so I don't know how easy it will be for people elsewhere to go see the movie, but definitely it was like playing in a few spots every day. And I went to see this last night. The theater was sold out. Every single seat was full. Yeah. And it was amazing. And let me tell you something. Every single person there was an adult. Every person there was not one child. I'm sure children would love it. I will. I would probably not emotionally recover if I saw this as a child. I'm not sure I will emotionally recover from having seen it as an adult, but yeah, you know, the trailers were all for like, Sonic 3 and Dogman, Dog man, etc.
- [55:33]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, I just bought some Dogman gear for my nephew Jack actually, for Christmas. Hope he's not listening to this episode. He's great stuff, so he's definitely not listening, I hope.
- [55:40]
Mallory Rubin
I'm not familiar with the Dogman ip, but after seeing the trailer once, I did have some thoughts on if you were going to create a mashup of a dog and a man. Is that the half of each you'd use? I don't know, the head of the. Yeah, well, yeah, I think I'll just save my full commentary until I get to consume the entire experience.
- [55:58]
Sean Fennessy
Well, next time you come back on the show for the Dogman episode. Of course.
- [56:00]
Mallory Rubin
Yeah. Okay.
- [56:01]
Sean Fennessy
Top five.
- [56:02]
Mallory Rubin
Sean. Flo was the masterpiece. I loved it. I thought it was honestly, like, just awe inspiring. What did you think of Flo?
- [56:09]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, I saw it last week and as soon as I saw it I was like, this is the most mal movie that's ever existed. So I'm really happy to hear that you wanted to go see it and loved it so much. It comes from a filmmaker named Glintz Zibalotis, who is a Latvian filmmaker. As you said, this movie has been hugely critically acclaimed. It's won a bunch of Best Animated Features critics prizes in the last couple months. It was just added to the shortlist for the Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. I'll be shocked if it's not nominated for Best Animated Feature. I think it's probably the stiffest competition for the Wild Robot for Best Animated Feature this year. As you said, it's very brief, very beautiful. It uses a very interesting computer animation technology. The style of animation, there's an almost surreal quality where it feels like one part the flying toaster screensaver, you know, this sort of like false 3D and the sense that there is also like a human creating it. It doesn't feel like AI animation or anything like that. It's not. It has rough edges. It's not sanded down and smooth the way your classic Pixar computer generated animation might be. So it looks and feels different. And then the other thing is there's this incredible attention paid to. And you can speak to this as a cat lover and cat partner. This is how animals move.
- [57:31]
Mallory Rubin
Yeah.
- [57:31]
Yassi Salik
Oh, yeah.
- [57:31]
Sean Fennessy
And it is like zoologically accurate in a way that is very immersive in the story, despite the fact that there is no dialogue. In this movie, whatsoever and a word.
- [57:40]
Mallory Rubin
Yeah.
- [57:40]
Sean Fennessy
So that might be a challenge for some. I'm very curious to show this to my daughter and see if she will respond. A movie with no dialogue, this would be our. Our entry point into silent cinema, ultimately. But I really liked it. I think it's excellent and beautiful and usually when a movie like this comes out, it's a little, like, overrated. And I think this one is properly rated. It's damn good.
- [57:58]
Amanda Dobbins
Oh, yeah.
- [57:59]
Mallory Rubin
So on the animation style front, I thought this was. I mean, even just watching the trailer, you get a pretty good feel for that blend of styles that you're highlighting. But I thought this was just absolutely sublime, like, really, really, really exquisite. And that contrast between the way that the creatures, the critters, are heroes or characters are rendered and the environments around them when the northern lights kick in, I mean, it's astonishing. But like the water, this isn't. Again, the flood is the impetus for the story, right? And they. The water is quite literally carrying Cat and his fellows through this. This journey of not only self preservation, but discovery. Like learning to rely on each other, learning to trust each other, learning to take new chances, try new things, gain comfort with things that previously felt threatening or unfamiliar. There are a lot of lessons to take from flow. Water is so famously, infamously hard to convey in animated films and video games, right? Anything. And it was so beautiful. It was just so beautiful. The way the light played on the water, the way that the water serves as both a literal and a metaphorical source of reflection and consideration. The way that Cat routinely finds himself in the water, whether that is a moment of dire peril or a moment of newfound confidence to fall fish. Like, if it doesn't look as good as it does, then it's just not going to be as immersive of a setting, primary setting for the film, but it is. The other primary setting, of course, is this boat, right. That our. Our creatures are traveling along. And you said, no, you said, like, silent. But I would say this is not a silent movie. It's just a movie without words, right? It is full of language. It's the language of how animals communicate with each other. And this is going to make me sound insane, but I think you invited me here to talk about the movie, knowing that things like this would happen. That was one of the things I genuinely found, like, breathtaking about it. I have found myself more than once on Ringer Pods when talking about Star wars and the most successful droids saying something like, well, it's not just a Beep and a boop, right? It reminds me of the way that I feel like I can carry on complete, fully realized conversations with my cat Halo that are, frankly, often more satisfying than conversations I can have with other people. Super normal thing to say out loud on a podcast. There are no human words uttered, but there don't need to be. Like, the way that we are able to understand what cat is contemplating and confronting, the way that we are able to watch the bonds develop between the characters, navigate through threats and uncertainty was incredible. And, like, they have chasms between them that they need to learn to bridge. And so, like, we, as the audience, come to learn how to communicate with them, as they learn to communicate with each other in a way that really, I thought was, like, exceptionally presented to us, really very compelling to watch. And then the other thing. And, like, so the filmmakers, like, used. I was just reading about this actual animal sounds, right? Like, these aren't, again, computers. They have microphone recordings of cats meowing and, like, you can really tell. But the sound beyond that was, I thought so riveting. And how it pulled you deep into the world. The rustling of the leaves that makes the hair stand up on the back of the animals and makes our hearts start to race. We know something terrible is about to happen. The pounding of the hooves, right? Oh, God. The threat is mounting. What is? And, like, even though you know, because you've seen the trailer and you know what the movie is about, your terror just spikes. The surge of the waves. Like the sound the whale makes when he crests the edge of the water. My single favorite sound treatment in the entire film, without question, is the sound of cat's claws. Every time he's, like, scrabbling along the deck of the ship or climbing up the side. It's just like those little details that make it feel so fully, fully brought to life.
- [62:20]
Sean Fennessy
It was.
- [62:20]
Mallory Rubin
It was beautiful.
- [62:22]
Sean Fennessy
I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I'm not surprised that you did. To your point about the water, I've just seen Mufasa, the Lion King, the new film by Barry Jenkins, and these two movies, which are both about cats.
- [62:36]
Mallory Rubin
Yeah.
- [62:37]
Sean Fennessy
Would be an interesting double feature because Mufasa, I felt, was less successful than Flow, even though it is rendered computer animation that is attempting to put us in the psychological and emotional mindset of a cat in peril. And there are a couple of significant sequences in which a flood threatens the characters in Mufasa, which is the same inciting incident in Flow. And the movies are so oddly similar. And there's a big conclusive meaningful moment in the water, which is so hard to render, as you say in Mufasa, just like in Flow. And one is one of the biggest and most important movies at the most legendary movie studio that we have. The other is just from this guy in Latvia. And Flow is frankly, a bigger and better movie. And that's just fascinating. It's like an incredible example of the way that scope is not everything, that subtle strategy and emotional insight and craft can elevate despite budget, despite where the film is being made or anything else. So I think it's a pretty special little movie.
- [63:54]
Mallory Rubin
I have not seen Mufasa, so I can't comment on the particulars, but something that strikes me listening to you make that comparison is Mufasa is born out of a moment in time, culturally, where everything is ip, everything is. Could this be a spinoff or an origin story? Could we do a prequel? Could we make more? How can we mine this thing that people have loved for some time? When I was a kid, Lion King was one of my favorite movies. It was very important to me. I went to bed with like a Simba, like, stuffed animal that I held every night. Right? That is born out of. And again, I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on the quality. But that is born out of this need, of course, a desire to make money and make content, of course. But also this compulsion in the streaming era and the IP content machine era to explain everything, right? What is the origin story of Scar and Mufasa? How did they come to be at odds, et cetera? Flow is the. That the idea of explanation is anathema to the entire pursuit of flow. We never really get answers to any questions. We don't totally even know what the questions are. I won't go into too many details because I don't think we want to spoil it in these. In an episode like this.
- [65:07]
James Cameron
But.
- [65:07]
Mallory Rubin
But just broadly in terms of almost more the premise than the eventual, like, elements of the plot that unfold. There are no people in the movie. We don't know why did they just evacuate? Because they knew that this flood was coming? Or has there been a prior extinction level event?
- [65:27]
Sean Fennessy
Is it a post apocalyptic movie? I know, I thought that too.
- [65:30]
Mallory Rubin
We don't know, right? We go through. Not we. We open in our. Our setting with a home and cat is on a bed and the window's broken. And then we see these statues and you see the piece of paper and you're like, well, that seems pretty recent. How long would a piece of paper, a Drawing sit there. But then when cat is scaling the statues, they're, like, covered in moss, so you have the ability to let your mind run free, wondering, and you don't know. I will not explain specifically what this sequence is, but there is a moment about three quarters of the way through the film, maybe even a little further, where something that I can only describe as, like, supernatural and almost like religious happens. Like a mystical event. Right. But is it. There could be a different reading of that entirely and a different explanation of that entirely. And the movie is really not interested in trying to ensure that you leave it with one reading. It's there for you to take in and consider and think about the nature of, like, life and experience and connection. And that's pretty rare these days, actually, in the stories that we get. So I found that to be. So my compulsion is to, like, leave and think about lore and references and the coaching tree of pop culture connections that lead to a thing. And I was like, oh, well, what would I Google? X, Y and Z? And I'm like, I don't know. I just kind of want to, like, luxuriate in the feeling of thinking about how amazing that was. And so that was one of the things that I really loved most about it. It was also so stressful, though. Like, I thought it was beautiful and very. Actually uplifting and affirming and gave me a lot to think about. But I. My heart was racing the entire time and I was anxious, anxious and concerned to see these characters who I had fallen in love with so quickly. Kat, most of all, in constant peril. Like, I was sitting next to a person I did not know, and I almost turned to him and said, can I hold your hand now? I managed not to, and I was proud that I was able to exercise that level of restraint. But, like, boy, when I got home after, I was still feeling the anxiety of what I had just witnessed. And so I think that's really, like. It's a testament to the film's impact as well, that it made me feel so keenly in such a short span of time. Just genuinely impressive.
- [67:47]
Sean Fennessy
It's a great recommendation and a very eloquent emotional clarification on how it impacted you. I'm really not surprised, but I'm very happy that you dug it, and I'm glad it pulls you out of the mire of fandom for a brief moment before you had to return to the trenches.
- [68:03]
Mallory Rubin
I love fandom as well. I just did a putt on Kraven, Kraven and Flo. Back to back, you know, two of the great installments, the 2024 cinematic landscape.
- [68:11]
Sean Fennessy
Two great cats, right?
- [68:13]
Mallory Rubin
There you go.
- [68:14]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah. Mallory Rubin, thank you so much.
- [68:17]
Mallory Rubin
Thank you.
- [68:24]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, we're here with Charles Holmes.
- [68:25]
Danny Chow
Yo, what's going on?
- [68:26]
Sean Fennessy
Midnight Boy par excellence. What else are you? How else do you define yourself these days? You're a cinephile, a cineist.
- [68:31]
Danny Chow
Whoa, whoa, whoa. The la. The LA film bros have fucking gotten to me.
- [68:36]
Sean Fennessy
They wrap their arms around you. You're a brutal boy, bro.
- [68:39]
Danny Chow
I got my tickets. 70.
- [68:42]
Sean Fennessy
When are you going?
- [68:43]
Danny Chow
21St. I cannot wait.
- [68:45]
Sean Fennessy
I'm very happy for you. Where are you going? What theater? City Walk. Where is it playing?
- [68:50]
Danny Chow
No, I forget. It was America Ameritech.
- [68:53]
Sean Fennessy
What? Cinematic. Oh, American Cinematech.
- [68:55]
Danny Chow
America Cinematech. I think I'm going. I think I'm going there. That's going to be my first time going there.
- [68:58]
Sean Fennessy
Oh, good for you.
- [68:59]
Danny Chow
I'm very, very excited. I am. I'm getting into the rep screenings. You know what I'm saying? Chris Ryan is not going to be happy to hear this, but my TV watching has plummeted this year.
- [69:11]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, it's garbage.
- [69:12]
Danny Chow
I just throw like a movie on in the morning, at night, and I feel so. Just the high I get from finishing just a movie and bathing in it is so rewarding. And then the feeling that I have after I watch, like, I spent eight hours on a TV show, I'm just like, I'm gonna die one day. And I just finished the Penguin.
- [69:35]
Sean Fennessy
You're buttering me up like a toasted bagel right now. This is just incredible stuff.
- [69:40]
Bobby Wagner
We got em.
- [69:43]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah. I feel like Donald Rumsfeld right now, you know, but also I will.
- [69:47]
Danny Chow
I'm 32 now, and I do think that this is the age where I'm just like, I had a summer being a slut out here, and I'm just like. I feel way better just parking my ass in a fucking movie theater getting a popcorn subpoena. M&MS. A beer.
- [70:02]
Sean Fennessy
Can I tell you something? I'm having a huge comeback with popcorn. I was out on popcorn for like a decade, and I've now had popcorn. Three consecutive moviegoing experiences. First of all, I'm really. I'm pretty much focusing on sweet popcorn now, so caramel popcorn, obviously you can find that in your local amc. But I got put onto churro popcorn at the Alamo, which is fire for all of you out there. You know, Alamo, it's up and down. It's not always a great experience. Sometimes it's good, Sometimes it's not churro popcorn is money. I'm just going to say that somewhere.
- [70:35]
Danny Chow
But here's the thing. Churro popcorn sounds amazing, but I think it robs of the experience where I like, I like the salty and then I like the sweet. If I'm getting all the sweet just in one package, I feel like I'm kind of robbing myself.
- [70:47]
Sean Fennessy
So you like to have a popcorn and a candy?
- [70:49]
Danny Chow
Yeah. And I don't like to dump. Everybody does the dump. I'm just like, I'm gonna have some popcorn. I'm gonna have. And I heard you talking. Here's the thing. Now that I'm going to these rep screenings, I'm a lot more conscientious. I'm like, motherfucker, I'm finishing this popcorn before the shit starts.
- [71:02]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, yeah.
- [71:03]
Danny Chow
I don't want the chewing. We're all here.
- [71:05]
Sean Fennessy
It's like having a meal before the movie.
- [71:07]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yes.
- [71:07]
Sean Fennessy
You know, you know, it's like you went out to dinner, but it's just a bag of popcorn. Like, that's the movie. We don't want to disrupt everyone's movie watching experience.
- [71:14]
Danny Chow
I will say HR does not need to hear about this. My first vidiot's experience was with my manager, my beloved Justin Sales. Can you guess what we saw with him and his partner?
- [71:24]
Sean Fennessy
I don't even want to guess. What was it?
- [71:29]
Danny Chow
Yes. Amazing experience. But I was just like, I'm like, I'm sitting next to Justin.
- [71:33]
Sean Fennessy
Two men and one woman watched Ytu Ma Atambien together. Interesting.
- [71:37]
Danny Chow
Yes, it was very cool. And then my high was blown because we got vegan food next door.
- [71:45]
Sean Fennessy
And we're like, oh, what are they.
- [71:46]
Danny Chow
Playing on the tv? And it was the fucking Tyson Paul fight. And I was just like, wow. I went from seeing one of the greatest masterpieces ever to the end of something artistic.
- [71:57]
Sean Fennessy
That is brutal. Well, okay, so I've asked you here to tell me about a movie. Now, this is not a movie that you picked that came out in a movie theater. This is a streaming film for us in the United States. What movie did you pick?
- [72:07]
Danny Chow
Shadow Strays.
- [72:09]
Sean Fennessy
Speak on it.
- [72:09]
Danny Chow
All right. Directed by Timo Jejanto Jesanto. Sorry, I didn't want to butcher his name.
- [72:15]
Sean Fennessy
Indonesian filmmaker.
- [72:16]
Danny Chow
Indonesian filmmaker. And I think something that I grew up on, weirdly, was martial arts films. My uncle is very, very into martial arts, Tai chi. You know, there was a summer where it was like, when I say, like, into it, like his hands, like, he could kill you with his hands.
- [72:35]
Sean Fennessy
He's like, yeah.
- [72:36]
Danny Chow
One Time I did this training where we would go out into the woods.
- [72:39]
Sean Fennessy
I'm like, oh, why don't you go.
- [72:39]
Danny Chow
Out into the woods? He's like, we scratched tree bark. And I'm like, what do you mean, you scratched tree bark? And he's just like, yeah, it's a training thing where you, like, you just take the tree barks and, like, you look at his hands. So he was trying to teach me martial arts.
- [72:49]
Sean Fennessy
Your uncle was Wolverine, basically.
- [72:52]
Danny Chow
And what he would do, like, one of the treats we would have after, he would, like, make us bike for, like, five miles and, like, sweep the boardwalk. Like fucking Mr. Miyagi is. We would go back to his house and it would be like Shaw Brothers movies, or it'd be like martial arts movies. Like, all right, now watch this. And the Shadow Strays itched that for me, like, every couple, like, weeks or months, I'd just go to a martial arts movie, just, like, feel, like, that warmth again. And this is not a perfect movie. I think this filmmaker sometime tends to be a little bit bloated, but the action in this is fucking incredible.
- [73:31]
Sean Fennessy
So this movie came out somewhat quietly in the fall.
- [73:35]
Danny Chow
Yes.
- [73:35]
Sean Fennessy
I think if you're a martial arts head, a hardcore action head, you're aware of it. Timo has made several films in Indonesia and in Asia. He probably is best known in the US for his installments in the VHS series. There's one in particular in VHS2 that is absolutely amazing and that I loved so much that I wrote about it as, like, a standalone piece for Grantlin, I want to say, in 2014. It's really, really great. The name of it is escaping me right now. But it's in vhs, too. It's by far the best segment in that film. But he's this. He, like, really bridges the gap between horror and martial arts filmmaker. And he has, like, a very visceral filmmaking style and is very comfortably situated, I think, in, like, the John Wick era of action moviemaking. Would you agree with that?
- [74:20]
Danny Chow
Well, I also think he is like that next generation of cause, like, a lot of the same actors, like, for something American audiences know, the Raid, like, he is the kind of the next generation of that.
- [74:32]
Sean Fennessy
He's worked with Iko UAS from those movies and his other films. Yeah.
- [74:35]
Danny Chow
And he said something kind of interesting in a lot of his interviews with the Shadow Strays, and this is why I like him so much as a director, is I think that so much of American action has kind of been neutered just by the superhero of it. All where Teemo is like, I want you to feel the violence in my movie when someone gets stabbed in his. Like, he's not doing that thing where the camera's panning away. It's like when someone is shot, if someone gets their arm cut off, it lingers. And it's like he has the type of movies where I'm like. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm glad this movie's almost over. And then I check, and we still have an hour left. Just because I'm just like, the whole time.
- [75:12]
Sean Fennessy
Yes.
- [75:12]
Danny Chow
What's gonna. Cause the action is just so heavy.
- [75:15]
Sean Fennessy
It's like. It is the theater of escalation throughout the whole movie. But, like, in the first five minutes of this movie, there is, like a raid on. I guess it's almost like a Japanese community. And a guy gets his head cut off. He gets decapitated, and the head, like, hangs from the back of the neck. And he stays standing for, like, 30 seconds. And the camera lingers on the head wound and the open neck. And that's what I say when I say, like, it's action and it's horror. Because there's, like, a real interest in the bodily destruction that goes into action filmmaking. This is a really cool movie. It's way too long.
- [75:55]
Danny Chow
Way too long.
- [75:56]
Sean Fennessy
It's two and a half hours. And it feels it when you're watching it, but the sequences are each crazier than the next and done really, really, like, if you like this kind of thing, it is excellent.
- [76:07]
Danny Chow
Yeah. So this is a perfect 3.5 movie for me. And that's not Shade. Like, this is, like, actually my favorite martial arts movies tend to kind of, like, get into that zone where I'm like, this is a movie about the sequences. There is one. I think it's the best of the entire film, where Our main character, 13, she's an assassin, and they're on the second floor of a club, and she basically is, like, beating up this jobber. And the camera follows them as they fall out of the window. And it hit. And I'm just like. It was that meme where I was like, wait, what? And I like Lazaro. I was like, what happened? And I think even though this movie is. There's a lot of fat, it's way too long. There's so many of those little moments as, like, a martial arts head, as an action fan, where I just want to see more from this filmmaker. I think this is his second Netflix film after. I think the other one was the Night Comes.
- [77:08]
Sean Fennessy
I Think it comes at night. Is that what it's called?
- [77:10]
Danny Chow
Yeah. One of those movies that is an amazing movie as well. And that was made before this. And you can even tell just how much he's grown just from that in terms of just like staging everything. That's another fantastic movie.
- [77:22]
Sean Fennessy
It was. The night comes for us.
- [77:23]
Danny Chow
The night comes for us. And I just. I want to. He's directing Nobody too with Odenkirk Next. I want more American directors to have this feeling in their action movies where it does not always have to be this intense. It doesn't have to be that bloody. But you don't need a bunch of fucking CGI bullshit. Sometimes it is just two or three people hand to hand and just being like, what can I show them? That is just gonna.
- [77:48]
Sean Fennessy
I think he has a really good handle on blending the digital and CGI filmmaking styles for the right set pieces.
- [77:55]
Danny Chow
Yeah.
- [77:55]
Sean Fennessy
Without an over reliance on it and doing a lot of practical stuff. But the other thing that I think about when I watch his movies is this is a guy who was raised on first person shooters. Like video games are an intrinsic part of his moviemaking experience. I don't remember. Are you gamer? Do you play video games?
- [78:10]
Danny Chow
I do play video games, but I'm not button mash level.
- [78:13]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Because I feel like if you really, if you are. If you were raised on first person shooters, not that every shot in his movies is first person pov, but that sensation that you get that sort of like rattle and shake and move when you get impact on a sequence, it really fits there. It's a great recommendation. I feel like this movie was completely unremarked upon on this show all year. So it's a great pick. You had a couple of others that were on your list.
- [78:35]
Danny Chow
Yeah, I just wanted to do some like honorable mentions. I've honestly talked about. I've written about it. Just a blurb. I've talked about it on Ringiverse, weirdly. But one of them was Rap world came out of nowhere. Most famous person in it, Conor O'Malley. How would you even describe this? This movie?
- [78:53]
Sean Fennessy
It's like a found footage horror movie for white kids who are into rap in 2008. Yes. Like, you know, I E Me. It's like about a bunch like a bunch of suburban guys who are in Toby Hana in Pennsylvania.
- [79:08]
Danny Chow
It's an hour long, it's free.
- [79:10]
Sean Fennessy
You can go watch it on YouTube.
- [79:11]
Danny Chow
On YouTube. And for the first five minutes I'm like, what the fuck is this? I'm about to Turn the shit. And it weirdly does a thing. Both of us are recovering music journalists. I think most movies about music are honestly terrible. And I think this one weirdly felt so accurate to what it felt like to be in high school at this moment. This type of like, I knew the white boys who are way too into rap, who think that they are going to be the next sensation. The jokes are incredible and it's like they. The bit at first is annoying. You're like, they can't sustain this bit for an hour. And then I don't know what happened. Like 10 minutes, 15 minutes into the movie, I'm like, okay, this bit is incredible.
- [79:56]
Sean Fennessy
It's the same thing with every Connor Malley piece, every YouTube short, every bit, every talk show appearance. There's an unbelievable talk show appearance on Seth Meyers that he made earlier this year. This is so great because he used to work with Seth. This is true of Stand Up Solutions, the standup hour that he put out earlier this year that's also on YouTube. This movie that he co directed with Danny Schirrar is In the first 10 minutes, you're like, God, this is like hilarious, but also deeply insufferable. And then when you get into the second 10 minutes, when it doubles down fully on the bit, you're like, this is the most fearless thing I've ever seen. These guys are so over committed to this insanely dumb idea and they never break stride. They never, ever wink at the camera. They never turn you and be like, isn't this so funny that we're doing this? They lock in on that very stupid idea and see it all the way through. It is like, there is a part of rap world that is eerily documentary like. It's like you're watching a fucking Maisel's movie about losers in high school trying to be rappers. It feels so close. And yet it is also made by a bunch of guys who are in their 30s. But I'm with you. I loved this. I shouted this out, I think at the halfway mark of the year or something. I loved and even did a screening of the movie at the American Cinematheque in Los Feliz with Connor and Danny and Harris and a bunch of the other guys who worked on the movie. Great pick. Okay, what's your third one?
- [81:14]
Danny Chow
And my third and last one. I don't think you've seen this one yet, but it is Miyazaki and the Heron, basically, pretty much for. Most of Miyazaki's films come with a documentary about how it was made. And I Picked this one because I think I love process films. If you look at my Letterbox four, they're all process films. And this one, to me, was so special because you really never get to see this, where you have a legendary director towards the end of his life, and the entire documentary is essentially. You get to see the moments when animation luminaries are just dying left and right. And we understand Miyazaki, the character, as a very, like, curmudgeon, and just very, like, he makes these sweet movies. And you're just like. You're always in a bad mood. And there are moments in this movie where you just kind of see him broken. You see the thing Bobby was talking about, like, Scorsese's gotten to this point where you're a legend, but you're seeing the. You're outliving everyone. And it just touched me so profoundly. It made me enjoy his last movie, the Boy and the Herring, even more. Because you realize you're just like, oh, it's not that Miyazaki is a curmudgeon, or he is, or it's not that he's super nice. It's like he feels too much. Like, there's. The funniest part of the film is he bought. There's some land. This is how rich Miyazaki is. He looks outside and there's some land development free. He's like, I'm going to buy it to set up a soccer. Like a soccer place where the local kids can play, okay? And the whole thing going throughout the movie is, he buys it, he builds it. None of the kids want to play on it. And he's just. I'm just like, you're making a whole fucking movie. Why do you care about it? And he keeps looking out the window, like, when are the kids going to. And you're just like, why do you care about this Miyazaki? You're a legend. And then there's a moment in the film where the first few kids start playing on it, and you've just seen all these people die throughout the course of making this movie.
- [83:11]
Sean Fennessy
Oh, my God.
- [83:12]
Danny Chow
And just, like, the look on his face being like, it was worth it. And I was just like, oh, I wish I got this type of documentary for all of my favorite directors.
- [83:21]
Sean Fennessy
That's amazing. And also, I don't think this is spoiling anything by saying that. But that makes it an amazing companion with the brutalist. When you see the brutalist, you'll know exactly what I mean. I'm not giving anything away, but that very idea of wanting to build something for people, but maybe it's also for yourself. Yeah, ties neatly in there. Three great recommendations. Charles, thank you so much.
- [83:40]
Danny Chow
Yo, thank you for having me. And next year, hopefully I can be welcomed by your people.
- [83:47]
Sean Fennessy
You are already welcomed, but you will be even deeper in the club the more rep screenings you go to. Thanks, Charles.
- [83:52]
Danny Chow
Thank you.
- [83:58]
Sean Fennessy
Yassi Salik is here making her triumphant return after a debut that will live in fummi infamy. How will it live?
- [84:07]
Yassi Salik
I mean, it's not up to me to decide how I was perceived, Sean. I mean, I. I heard some rumblings that were positive.
- [84:17]
Sean Fennessy
Rumblings? Where?
- [84:18]
Yassi Salik
On the Internet. The Interweb.
- [84:20]
Sean Fennessy
Checking it out, huh? Checking out. Checking out.
- [84:22]
Yassi Salik
I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what. I saw one person say that I was the Aubrey Plaza of the ringer and all other comments died away into the background. And I don't care what anyone else says ever again because that really put some wind in my sails.
- [84:36]
Sean Fennessy
Well, as you know, I had a nice time. I love Aubrey Plaza and I'm so happy to have you back. And if you, you are the Aubrey of this pod, that's very, very exciting to me. Um, today I gave you really more of an assignment. Most people that came to this episode said, God, here's a movie I love that I feel like a lot of people didn't see and I wanted to rep for it. You know, it's on a streaming service or it got very minor distribution, but you know, I know you pretty well and we're about the exact same age and our tastes converge in intriguing ways. And I saw this movie, Y2K, which is co written and directed by Kyle Mooney. And the only person I could think of was you. So can you explain what Y2K is and maybe why you think I wanted you to see it?
- [85:24]
Yassi Salik
The film or like what happened in the turn of the new year of the year 2000?
- [85:30]
Sean Fennessy
Well, maybe you should explain the latter to explain the former.
- [85:33]
Yassi Salik
Okay, sure. Before the clock struck midnight on January 31, 1999, there was a great panic that somehow, I mean, I might be misremembering this because again, we're around the same age, so I was like 17 or something, that all of the machines would go haywire and mass chaos would ensue in society. It didn't happen.
- [85:57]
Sean Fennessy
That's more or less what was suggested.
- [85:59]
Yassi Salik
Yeah. And then the film, honestly, clever premise that it is, it's like a high school, you know, can't hardly wait slash American Pie esque sort of High school. It's a New Year's Eve. We're gonna make the best of it. Let's go out here to kind of dorky best friends, you know, of course, in pursuit of a girl and they go to the cool New Year's Eve party on the eve of Y2K and then it turns into a horror film because the machines do go haywire.
- [86:34]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, It's. What if Y2K actually happened? And not only happened, but happened in the most dramatic and violent fashion imaginable. But the movie comes from Kyle Mooney, who most people will recognize for his work on Saturday Night Live. In my opinion, one of the best cast members of Saturday Night Live of the last 15 years. Somebody who brought the kind of oddball sensibility in the 10 to 1 style sketches that I always really appreciated. He got his start on YouTube doing a lot of great sketch comedy.
- [87:05]
Yassi Salik
Yeah, he's so funny. He's giving Jim Brewer almost like in that part of the cast where this guy's so weird, but in the coolest way.
- [87:15]
Sean Fennessy
And actually his character Garrett, a video store clerk in this movie is kind of giving a little bit of Jim Brewer in Half Baked.
- [87:23]
Yassi Salik
Yeah, totally. Maybe that's why I thought of it. In my opinion, he was the best part of the movie, his character.
- [87:28]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah. So the movie is like a little rickety, right? Like there's some funny parts, there's some very violent horror parts. It feels like a very loving homage at times to more like 80s sci fi, like Explorers Goonies style team up movies. Plus, you know, you mentioned it's like can't hardly wait. And the cinematography is by Bill Pope who shot the Matrix and Clueless and all the Edgar Wright movies. Like a legend in cinematography.
- [87:55]
Yassi Salik
That's crazy.
- [87:55]
Sean Fennessy
So he's there for some of the cool like action set pieces. But you know, the movie is a little like this is a first time director and you, you can tell it's not bad, it's not great. It's very, very flawed.
- [88:07]
Yassi Salik
I feel, I feel like I really enjoyed the first 25% whatever. Like the greatest where they really pound in the greatest hits of. To remind you what this era was like. And they at first I was like, is this too much? And I was like, no, this is great. Do it all like ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping. Like every song, cue every slang, pointing out the raver, everything. And again we're the same age, so all of it was very familiar to me. I was like, that's on point. And I guess Kyle Mooney must be around our Age, too.
- [88:39]
Sean Fennessy
I believe he's 41. And so this is specifically what I wanted to speak to you about, because when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie came out last year called Mutant Mayhem, do you remember this? Are you familiar with this?
- [88:51]
Yassi Salik
That didn't happen in my universe.
- [88:53]
Sean Fennessy
In my universe, it did happen. I believe you did. It happened profoundly. It hit like a bomb. It was written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.
- [89:00]
Yassi Salik
Oh, man, I can't believe I missed this.
- [89:02]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, it's an animated movie, and it very much is a movie for kids, but it's a movie for kids written by a couple of guys who grew up with TMNT, who were in their early 40s.
- [89:12]
Yassi Salik
As did I. As did you?
- [89:14]
Sean Fennessy
We both did. And all of the references in that movie, all of the needle drops, all of the jokes feel like they're made for people who are in their 40s. When that movie came out, I was like, this is so crazy to be living in the time where the people who are my age now have the power or quote, unquote power to get their own dumb dreams made in Hollywood. And those dreams are just full of references to what it was like to be 9, or in the case of Y2K, 17, in these very particular times. So watching Y2K, I mean, it is. There's a, you know, a long list of songs that are used in the movie, all of which I'm sure resonate with.
- [89:52]
Yassi Salik
What hit you the hardest? What hit you the hardest?
- [89:55]
Sean Fennessy
A really good question. I'll say that Praise youe by Fatboy Slim comes in very early in the film.
- [90:03]
Yassi Salik
Yes.
- [90:03]
Sean Fennessy
And I have to assume that Fat Boy Slim is a, like, a really had to be there thing. Like, I don't know if you're. If you're 16, I don't know what you make of Y2K, because some of the jokes are so specific.
- [90:15]
Yassi Salik
So specific.
- [90:16]
Sean Fennessy
But you've come a long way, baby. The Fatboy Slim album was a legit phenomenon when it came out.
- [90:22]
Yassi Salik
The music videos alone, the delamo Mall, Spike Jones Flash Mob, Major Christopher Walken. Right, that one.
- [90:32]
Sean Fennessy
That was. Yeah, that was, I think, the next album. Right, the next album.
- [90:35]
Amanda Dobbins
Album.
- [90:35]
Sean Fennessy
Okay. I don't know what. What. What hit you hard?
- [90:38]
Yassi Salik
Randomly. Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. Even though that. It. That's a 1997 song, but it would have been. Still been playing pretty regularly in 1999. That one, I. I thought I was like, let's go. Also, the. I did make some notes during the film, which was totally fine, because when you go see a 12:45pm showing of Y2K on a Monday at the Americana. You know, Glenn Dale, not a lot of people there. The Chumbawamba through line. Maybe I'm overthinking, maybe I'm intellectualizing something that doesn't need to be intellectualized. But I was like, okay. Like I kind of. I don't know if it was intentional, but I was like, you know, Chumba Wumba. Famously anarcho. Well, maybe not famously, actually sort of. Not many people maybe know that, but are an anarcho punk band that like donated all the money from the sales of that massive song that everyone thought was just sort of like a one hit wonderful. And then I was like, okay. Internet was kind of at first like an anarchic type tool, right? Like a we'll become ungovernable which then became very co opted by capitalism and became evil. And I was like, I wonder if this is like on purpose. But again perhaps I'm over intellectualizing the music. Choice of.
- [91:52]
Sean Fennessy
Do you have a similar pointy headed theory about the usage of Mandy Moore's candy in this film?
- [91:57]
Yassi Salik
No, I'm so sorry, I can't make that work here.
- [92:01]
Sean Fennessy
I don't think one thing that the movie does really well is that it ident the, at least in the 90s, inherently cliquish nature of high school friendships.
- [92:09]
Yassi Salik
I was totally.
- [92:10]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah. You know, movies like Can't Hardly Wait do a good job of this. The Breakfast Club is entirely oriented around plucking one individual from those groups out and putting them together.
- [92:19]
Yassi Salik
Clueless has the best montage of that. The stoners sit on that grassy knoll. Like there's the Persians, they drive the BMWs.
- [92:27]
Sean Fennessy
This movie does a cool thing where it like picks people out almost based on their music taste. You know, there's like the burnouts who are really into corn and the family values toys. There's the underground hip hop kid. I will just say I felt so.
- [92:40]
Yassi Salik
Triggering for me that person.
- [92:42]
Sean Fennessy
I felt deeply, deeply attached by that character.
- [92:45]
Yassi Salik
Same. I was like, I knew that guy and he was so annoying. The profits of intuition or whatever was. That was actually so perfect that I was like, oh, Kyle Mooney, one of us. Kyle Mooney. Backpack rap. Kyle Mooney for sure has like Freestyle Fellowship on vinyl, like Soul Assassins. Like he was there.
- [93:02]
Sean Fennessy
I think he's from San Diego too, so it makes sense that he would be into that baby area stuff. And you know the, the swing kids I thought was a very funny joke with the Brian Setzer Orchestra Needle drop. That was so Funny.
- [93:13]
Yassi Salik
That one I love, especially because I did. Little reveal I can share. It's been long enough. The statute of limitations up. I did have a little dalliance with a swing dancing in high school. Can you believe. I know. That's right. Swingers was a really big movie. I think, you know that here on the Big Picture. And it. It. It changed a lot of people briefly, I thought after like, you know, two months, I was like, no, this is not for me. Thank you.
- [93:34]
Sean Fennessy
What would you do? Would you go to the Brown Derby? What would you do?
- [93:37]
Yassi Salik
I was in Singapore, so you were.
- [93:40]
Sean Fennessy
Swing dancing in Singapore.
- [93:42]
Yassi Salik
It's a global phenomenon.
- [93:43]
Sean Fennessy
You are a one of one. I must say.
- [93:46]
Yassi Salik
I've lived a lot of lives on one of the most. I was the girl where they were like, she has holes in her brains now. That was more me. That was like, I didn't dress like that, but that was absolutely me. I was like, oh, yeah, what's up, girl? That's me.
- [93:58]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, this is an important thing to discuss then, because a significant figure in this movie, not just metaphorically or spiritually, but literally, is Fred Durst. Fred Durst appears in the film, I thought, pretty humorously. And this is.
- [94:13]
Yassi Salik
I thought he did a great job.
- [94:14]
Sean Fennessy
This is not the first A24 movie he's in this year. You know, he was also in. I saw the TV glow. Did you see that movie?
- [94:19]
Yassi Salik
I didn't see it, but I remember, like, a big deal when he was announced that he was gonna be in it.
- [94:25]
Sean Fennessy
He's got a very small part in that movie. He's got a weirdly critical role in this movie. Do you think Limp Bizkit should be reclaimed?
- [94:34]
Yassi Salik
By whom?
- [94:36]
Sean Fennessy
The masses, the youths? Anyone?
- [94:40]
Yassi Salik
Um, no.
- [94:44]
Sean Fennessy
What did you think of Limp Bizkit when you were 16?
- [94:46]
Yassi Salik
It wasn't my thing. I was a Corn girl. I was a system of a down in corn Deftones. But Limp Bizkit didn't totally speak to me. Limp Bizkit, I feel, in a way, catered to, like, a slightly different market because famously, Limp Bizkit is Midwestern, right? Aren't they Detroit?
- [95:04]
Sean Fennessy
I thought Florida.
- [95:06]
Yassi Salik
Oh, Florida. That checks out too. Whatever it was, it was not California. And I feel like I couldn't really connect with it. Speaking of, where is this film set? It's the east coast, right?
- [95:15]
Sean Fennessy
That's an excellent question.
- [95:17]
Yassi Salik
It definitely is, because there's Utz chips in the liquor store scene, and we don't have Utz chips on the west coast or I don't think in the Midwest. I'M a chip connoisseur.
- [95:27]
Sean Fennessy
Well, it was filmed in New Jersey.
- [95:29]
Yassi Salik
Didn't it feel kind of. Did it feel more like your hometown of growing up area?
- [95:33]
Sean Fennessy
I mean, part of the reason why I wanted to talk to somebody about this movie is even with its flaws, I'm like, God damn, they just got so much right. It's just so accurate to the experience, you know? Not that there was like any one character who I related to or any one group or even anyone.
- [95:49]
Yassi Salik
The Prophets of Intuition was the one that you.
- [95:51]
Sean Fennessy
Which one?
- [95:52]
Yassi Salik
The prophet of Intuition was the guy that you resonated with.
- [95:55]
Sean Fennessy
I mean, there is a part of me that was like. Like that guy, you know?
- [95:58]
Yassi Salik
What about the part where the popular beautiful girl was like, nobody said anything about this. This, to me was the most horror part of the whole movie was when she was like, I don't really like music.
- [96:10]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah.
- [96:11]
Yassi Salik
Nobody said anything. Nobody was like, okay, sociopath. I don't really like music.
- [96:17]
Sean Fennessy
That was. That was strange. That girl is played by Rachel Zegler.
- [96:20]
Yassi Salik
She's very famous now, right? She's Snow White. I saw her on the poster on my way out and I was like, wow, you had an interesting year.
- [96:26]
Sean Fennessy
She is going to be Snow White. She was one of the stars of Steven Spielberg's west side Story. She's remarkable in that movie. She's a damn good actress. She's good, right?
- [96:34]
Yassi Salik
She's great. She's very cute.
- [96:35]
Sean Fennessy
She was like, the only one who I was like, this person's a star and these other people are not. Did you get that feeling?
- [96:40]
Yassi Salik
Yeah, well, I thought that shockingly, because you know how I feel about New Zealand. But the Dany character was. Also had a lot of star power, I thought. I was shocked at the decision to kill him off so early because he was such a fun thing to watch and provided so many jokes. And I was like, oh, you kept the profit of intuition and like the angry Fred Durst girl, and you got rid of that guy. That's so weird.
- [97:11]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, that's the actor Julian Dennison, who people will probably recognize from Hunt for the Wilder people or Deadpool 2, where he had a big role.
- [97:19]
Yassi Salik
He was phenomenal.
- [97:20]
Sean Fennessy
I thought, personally, the Prophets of Intuition guy. CJ was played by Daniel Zolgardi, who's Zolgadri actually, who's really, really good in. Did you see Funny Pages movie that came out a couple years ago, directed by Owen Klein, who's Kevin Kline's son, actually, also an A24 movie. That's the thing, is that this is like a collection of recurring A24 folks, but I don't know what else. Any other. Any Other thoughts on Y2K?
- [97:46]
Yassi Salik
I just thought it was. Again, I might be intellectualizing too much, but I. I did. I almost wanted it to be not. Better is not the right word. And maybe there's no way to make this movie in a. Not sort of. You know, I'm not a horror movie person in general. And this is. This is like, what's. What would you call this genre of horror where it's like very funny and someone dies and everyone's over it like a minute and a half, even though it's their like lifetime best friend.
- [98:10]
Sean Fennessy
Horror comedy.
- [98:11]
Yassi Salik
Horror comedy. But like the timing is actually so interesting, right? Because AI is a. Almost bigger concern now than it was at Y2K. And I think that's the parts of the movies. Anytime it tried to get sort of like serious about a messaging, I was like.
- [98:34]
Sean Fennessy
You know, Yossi, it's funny that you say that because on this very episode I have an interview with James Cameron about the Terminator and the prescient.
- [98:41]
Yassi Salik
Me and James Cameron on one episode. It's gonna blow out of the water.
- [98:44]
Sean Fennessy
Hard to believe that the servers here at Spotify can even contain the levels of charisma that are flowing through this episode. Thanks to you and the other guy.
- [98:53]
Yassi Salik
That's what I'm saying. Jimmy Cams.
- [98:56]
Sean Fennessy
Jimmy Cams.
- [98:58]
Yassi Salik
That's right.
- [98:58]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, try it out. What's the 2024 movie you haven't seen yet that you're most fired up about?
- [99:05]
Yassi Salik
Probably Baby girl. I'm really excited about.
- [99:10]
Sean Fennessy
What do you think happens if I put you on an episode with Amanda? You think it's gonna work?
- [99:13]
Yassi Salik
Yeah. Well, you are gonna leave while me and Amanda do the new Bridget Jones.
- [99:18]
Sean Fennessy
Oh, right. Actually, honestly, I would love that. Could we do that? I mean, I really need some episodes off, like badly 100%.
- [99:25]
Yassi Salik
And you have to do it or you're a misogynist.
- [99:27]
Sean Fennessy
So no one can ever accuse me of that. That's honestly ridiculous. And how dare you.
- [99:32]
Yassi Salik
I said if you don't.
- [99:33]
Sean Fennessy
Oh, okay, I would then.
- [99:34]
Yassi Salik
No, I'm very excited about Baby Girl. I really do want to see Nosferatu because that's. That's while I don't. Is that a. Would you call that a horror movie?
- [99:42]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, it's a gothic horror. Yeah.
- [99:43]
Yassi Salik
Okay. You know me, famously a goth.
- [99:45]
Gale Anne Hurd
I will.
- [99:46]
Yassi Salik
I'll see any. I'll see any vampire movie, but they're very othered by horror movies. Do you not Notice they've gotten extremely popular in the last couple of years. It's like every other movie is a horror movie.
- [99:58]
Sean Fennessy
I have noticed that they're one of the most. They had been historically, until this year, one of the most reliable things at the box office. I think that's why that's happened. Also, those people see me. They see me and they understand me.
- [100:09]
Yassi Salik
Okay. Can I tell you one note I made on my phone that I was kind of proud of?
- [100:15]
Danny Chow
Sure.
- [100:16]
Yassi Salik
About Y2K. And the last. Well, two one is no one says poser anymore. I mean, to bring that back. That's the click thing, though. They don't have clicks anymore. Again, to your point, if teens see this, I think they're going to be a little confused.
- [100:29]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, I agree. There's a lot of confusing words and ideas in this movie.
- [100:35]
Yassi Salik
And then Chekhov's condom.
- [100:37]
Sean Fennessy
That was funny.
- [100:38]
Yassi Salik
Thank you.
- [100:39]
Sean Fennessy
It was a Durex, as I recall.
- [100:42]
Yassi Salik
I didn't take in the. I didn't clock the brand name.
- [100:45]
Sean Fennessy
No free ads for Durex, by the way. I just noticed it from the film.
- [100:49]
Yassi Salik
Yeah.
- [100:50]
Sean Fennessy
Well, thanks for coming on the show. Really good insights there.
- [100:53]
Yassi Salik
Thanks for sending me to CY2K on Monday at 12:45pm can't wait to see what you come up for me next.
- [101:01]
Sean Fennessy
I hope you enjoy the Nosferatu Baby girl double feature on Christmas Day. You're gonna have a great time.
- [101:06]
Yassi Salik
I can't wait. That's gonna be a great day for me. Thanks, Sean, for having me. It's always really fun. And I do feel honored to share an episode with Jimmy Cams, my intellectual and creative peer.
- [101:19]
Sean Fennessy
It's wonderful having you and I can't wait to clear out for you and Amanda to make something magical in 2025. Thanks, Yassi. Okay, we're talking about our favorite underseen and underappreciated movies of 2024. I'm here with two of the most hallowed prestige TV podcasters here to talk about films. You're also film podcasters. House of R Trial by Content co host Joanna Robinson, Group chat, A lot of film talk, various and sundry film podcasting. Rob Mahoney, has this been a year for underrated and underappreciated movies?
- [102:02]
Mallory Rubin
It's been a weird movie year, definitely.
- [102:04]
Sean Fennessy
A very, very patchwork movie year.
- [102:06]
Mallory Rubin
And I, going through with this prompt, what's underseen, Underappreciated? I couldn't find a lot because I think it was so thin across the board that, like, there weren't a lot of hidden gems because we were just digging for gems all year long.
- [102:20]
Sean Fennessy
Would you.
- [102:20]
Mallory Rubin
Wouldn't you say, Sean, as the host.
- [102:22]
Sean Fennessy
Of the Big Pig, as someone who talks about movies twice a week, every week, all year, I made a list of my own for this conversation. And it wasn't hard to find a bunch of stuff I didn't get a chance to talk about. But some of the reasons I didn't get a chance to talk about them were strange release dates or international concern or how do I even get someone to go see a movie that's only playing in four screens in Los Angeles? And Discovery is one of my favorite parts of the show. But I think you're right that the thin gruel nature of the calendar left us with a lot of like, hey, maybe I can make an entire episode out of Venom 3. Let's give it a shot. You know, and we did do that. We did and you did. We did do that. Which wasn't a mistake, perhaps, but we did do it. And I had a very fun time with Charles and Mallory. Rob, why don't I start with you? Is there a movie that you're really excited to recommend here? I mean, there are many movies I.
- [103:10]
Bobby Wagner
Would be excited to recommend.
- [103:12]
Sean Fennessy
One that I have tried to get people to see that I found myself being an advocate for is Dee. The 125th highest grossing movie domestically this year. Nobody showed up but me to see Dee Dee. And I think we're a worse nation for it. I don't know if we'd be in our current predicament if everyone had seen Dee Dee by this point. An amazing coming of age movie. And I will say there may be a bit of a generational divide. Cause this hits me straight in the strike zone. There is a point at which the main character Chris's phone goes off and it's playing hello goodbyes, touchdown, turnaround as his ringtone. And I'm like, this is locating me in such a precise, emotional place that I was just locked in for the entire movie. I think it's such a beautiful portrayal of a lot of different things. I mean, if you're at all interested in skate culture, especially in the early 2000s, this is a great movie for you. If you're at all interested in mother son relationships. A very common subject on screen, to say the least, but one that I think is articulated really, really beautifully. The Asian American experience, California living more generally like. I think it just hits a lot of really, really good sweet spots in that very, like, filmmaker makes a sort of autobiographical story way. And you just Can't. You can't replicate and you can't fake that kind of authenticity. I like this movie a lot. I had Sean Wong on to talk about it and he was, I think, the second time since I've started doing the show where I've thought to myself, wow, I'm really old. And it's not that I couldn't relate to the framework. It's like roughly 2008, I want to say, is when the movie takes place. And so I was a little bit older at the advent of a lot of this, like the birth of YouTube and high tension, MySpace, social culture in high school and in middle school as the character is in the film. But I think Emma Seligman was the other person that I talked to first for Shiva Baby. And I was like, whoa, I can't believe how much old. It's like when you are watching an NBA game, Rob, you'll relate to this clearly. And you're like, everyone on the court is half my age. And how chilling that feels. And now we're in an era where filmmakers can be 25, 26, 27, and making profound, thoughtful, good films, winning Sundance prizes, working with major movie stars. But I really like Dee Dee. It's a great recommendation. Can I ask a follow up question to you, Rob?
- [105:27]
Mallory Rubin
You mentioned if one is interested in skate culture. Are you, Rob Mahoney, interested in skate culture?
- [105:32]
Sean Fennessy
See, I am the perfect audience for this movie because I wanna be interested in skate culture. You know, much like Dee Dee himself, I could never skate. And look, a lot of this movie is just about faking it until not really you make it, but you get found out. And what could possibly be more relatable than that as a guy chat? Back in my day, we used to call you posers. You were a poser. Some people call us filmers, apparently. Some people call us filmmakers of a different kind. Joanna, what's your pick?
- [106:01]
Mallory Rubin
I am going with between the Temples. And this is as indie as they come. Indie film starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane in a love story. And it's about a cantor who has.
- [106:19]
Sean Fennessy
Sort of lost his.
- [106:21]
Mallory Rubin
His faith, his joie de vivre, his everything. And a woman who is interested in converting and the life that is expected for him and the excitement that she offers. And this beautiful performance by Carol Kane as this, you know, manic pixie dream older woman in his life. And it's a perfect role for her.
- [106:49]
Sean Fennessy
I love Schwarzman.
- [106:50]
Mallory Rubin
This is actually a really, really good Schwarzman performance as well. There are some sequences in this film where I Was like, is this good?
- [106:57]
Sean Fennessy
I'm not sure.
- [106:58]
Mallory Rubin
There's some, like, extended drug sequences that I have some questions about. But at the heart of it, it's. It's just an incredible connection between and chemistry between two, you know, unlikely folks. And also an incredible Dolly de Leon.
- [107:18]
Sean Fennessy
Performance as one of two mothers as his Schwartzman's character stepmother. Yeah.
- [107:22]
Mallory Rubin
And she is just, like, out on this relationship. She is not having it. And if you love her being mean, as a lot of us do, you will enjoy this.
- [107:33]
Sean Fennessy
What kind of Schwarzman are we getting here?
- [107:35]
Mallory Rubin
Okay, give me your. Give me your Schwartzman spectrum.
- [107:37]
Sean Fennessy
I mean, it's a pretty wide berth. Yeah. You know, he's got a lot of moats.
- [107:41]
Mallory Rubin
We're not doing an Andersonian sort of quirky role. We're doing, like, sad, sad boy Schwartzmann.
- [107:46]
Sean Fennessy
A little closer to the Alex Ross Perry. Listen up, Philip, but less caustic, more sad. A deeply downtrodden man looking for meaning, Looking to restore some sense of meaning in his life. There's a sequence at the end of this movie across the dinner table that's incredible. If you like the movie, please listen to Nathan Silver and Schwartzman. When I interviewed them over the summer about it, Schwartzman, I'll never forget. He walked into the studio and he was like, look at these cameras. And he was, like, marveling at the cameras that we have in our studios. And he was like, is that 4K?
- [108:19]
Danny Chow
Wow.
- [108:20]
Sean Fennessy
And I was like, sir, you are Jason Schwartzman. You are a member of the Coppola clan and you are of Homies with Wes Anderson. I'm sure you've seen a camera before. Certainly. But honestly, he was incredibly kind guy and is on an extended streak right now of great performances. He's amazing in Asteroid City. He's so fun in the Spider Verse movie. Speaking of great vocal performances, I really like both of your picks, guys. Those are great. Would you say that.
- [108:46]
Mallory Rubin
Do both of those movies feel overlooked.
- [108:48]
Sean Fennessy
Underseen in the context of box office? Without question, because you are arbiters of great taste. Of course. I have been all over these movies and I've even spoken to the people who made them pod. But they're damn good movies and I'm glad you wanted to bring them. Actually, they Both were Sundance 2024. Yeah. Alumni. So maybe they had a little bit more visibility than your average indie movie, but not that much.
- [109:11]
Mallory Rubin
I mean, I definitely didn't mean have you heard of these movies?
- [109:14]
Sean Fennessy
Because I knew you did. But I. I think they are underappreciated for sure.
- [109:18]
Mallory Rubin
And I think I accidentally called this film Between Two Temples when it's. Is between the Temples, obviously.
- [109:22]
Sean Fennessy
Okay.
- [109:22]
Mallory Rubin
Just wanted to.
- [109:23]
Sean Fennessy
We'll fix that in post with Jason Schwarzman's camera.
- [109:25]
Mallory Rubin
Okay, great. Thanks so much.
- [109:26]
Sean Fennessy
Thank you guys. Rob, Joanna, I appreciate it.
- [109:29]
Gale Anne Hurd
Thanks, Sean.
- [109:34]
Sean Fennessy
Okay, Wags is back. Bobby, the floor is yours. What's your underseen, underappreciated pick?
- [109:40]
Bobby Wagner
This is a film that I literally have not had one single conversation out loud with anyone about. It's called Good One. It's from writer, director India Donaldson. This is her feature debut, I believe. It premiered at Sundance this year and to some acclaim. I think it won some awards at Sundance. It's the story of a 17 year old girl in the summer before she goes away for college, who's going on a hiking trip with her father. Her parents are divorced. Her father's friend and his son also traditionally come on this hiking trip with them. The son doesn't want to because his parents have recently gotten divorced and he's upset about that. So she ends up on this hiking trip, this weekend hiking trip to the Catskills, just with. With her father and her father's friend. And like, not really that much else happens, if I'm being honest. It's one of those movies where it. The beauty of it really is in the subtlety and the. The girl is portrayed by this actor who I believe this is her debut as well. Lily Kallias, the father is portrayed by. I think we could call him that guy.
- [110:51]
Sean Fennessy
James LeGross, TV film icon James Legro.
- [110:53]
Bobby Wagner
Yeah, Yeah. A wonderful character actor, I think for me, most well known from certain women. Another film where kind of not that much happens, but it's all in the beauty of the detail. And they kind of reminded me of each other tonally. But yeah, they go on this hiking trip over the weekend and I think honestly what really made it so appealing to me is I think it was such a great year at the movies for generational tension. And when you're 17, you really think you're the shit. You really think you have it figured out and you're about to go and start this great life. And in some ways you're right. You know what I mean? You really are kind of molding into yourself. And you can see Lily Colias, her character's name is Sam, is like very expertly portraying that feeling of having way more to say about this, but not thinking that it's worth it. And her and her dad kind of have this somewhat strained relationship because he is a little bit emotionally Stunted. And there's a turn about two thirds of the way through the film that kind of changes the emotional dynamics of it. I don't want to give that away. But it's such an interesting. Like, it's just a character piece and it's refreshing to see those get made still and a new talent, like, announce itself both as a writer and director, but also as an actor and Lily Kallias and. I don't know, I just really. I really liked this movie a lot. What did you think of it?
- [112:18]
Sean Fennessy
I liked it a lot, too. I think I did mention it coming out of Sundance as a film that I really enjoyed at the time. When I saw it, I did not realize it was that. India Donaldson is the director Roger Donaldson's daughter. Roger Donaldson, you may know as the director behind such films as no Way Out Species and Cocktail.
- [112:38]
Bobby Wagner
Goddamn, no Way Out.
- [112:40]
Sean Fennessy
Let's go. She comes from a fascinating Hollywood family. There was a great piece about her that I read in the LA Times. I can't recall who the journalist was profiling her. And they talked to Roger and a couple of other people. And this film has nothing to do with the cinema. Roger Donaldson whatsoever is also a very quiet, contemplative movie, as you said, Bob, but very, very good. Great performance. I also want to shout out Danny McCarthy, who gives a performance as the friend who is a critical figure in the story. And yeah, it's just a damn good debut. It's the kind of debut where I'm, as Bill would say, season tickets for India's next work.
- [113:16]
Bobby Wagner
I completely agree. And I love a movie where a lot is going on underneath the surface and it's putting you in the pressure cooker of what you know is going on under the surface. For the first hour, it's about a 90 minute film, and then at some point, you know, there has to be some kind of release valve. And even if it doesn't completely explode and devolve like Chernobyl or anything, it's like. Because that's kind of what life is, you know, you leave stuff under the surface. And at the risk of kind of like, oversharing, like, the character in this movie felt so. The daughter character in this movie felt so well rendered because it's like when you're 17 and you're like, kind of smart and clever and stuff, like adults just don't even think about you as a kid anymore, and they put shit on you that they shouldn't put on you. And it's cool to see, like, an indie debut feature portray that I found it really great.
- [114:04]
Sean Fennessy
I liked it a lot. I think in particular, having lived through this, parents who have gotten divorced, who think that they have grown their kids up by having that emotional experience, then start sharing things with their kids that they never would have within the sanctity of the nuclear family that think, you know, the feelings become a little bit more stray and you're more comfortable communicating things that maybe your kids just should never hear. I'm thinking about that exact kind of thing all the time now in a way that I never did before. So yeah, I agree with you. It's a very good recommendation and a very serious and good movie. Good job, Bob.
- [114:40]
Bobby Wagner
Available on vod, by the way. You can go check it out.
- [114:42]
Sean Fennessy
It's that simple. Was it Metrograph? I think Metrograph distributed, right?
- [114:45]
Bobby Wagner
It sure was. That's where I saw it.
- [114:47]
Sean Fennessy
Nice.
- [114:47]
Bobby Wagner
I saw it at like 10am and then I went home and I didn't talk about it again until right now.
- [114:52]
Sean Fennessy
Well, lovely to be chatting with you as always, Bobby. Okay, who's next?
- [114:55]
Bobby Wagner
I believe now we have the one and only Amanda Dobbins via voice note.
- [115:00]
Sean Fennessy
Wow, Amanda Dobbins. She's back again. Sort of. I still have not listened to this voice note, so.
- [115:05]
Bobby Wagner
Neither have I.
- [115:07]
Sean Fennessy
Let's see what she's into.
- [115:14]
I
Hello everyone, it is Amanda. And I am back briefly to talk about one of my favorite movies of the year that I forgot to include on the last voice note. And also I think one of the most underseen movies of the year despite it being available on Netflix. It is Martha, the documentary about Martha Stewart directed by RJ Cutler, who you might know from the Billie Eilish documentary or from the September issue, which is a great documentary about Vogue and Anna Wintour. And R.J. cutler seems to be developing a niche as the documentarian of difficult women of a certain age. So the Martha documentary. I have always been more of an Ina Garten fan than a Martha Stewart or not even a fan, but it's just like I, I can't be doing the level of detail that Martha Stewart brings to her. Entertaining. I tried to make this like tangerine tower thing for the holidays this weekend and I like had to go to Michael's three times and then my friend Izzy listen, we made it work mostly thanks to my friend Izzy. But Martha's not. Martha's too perfectionist even for me. But this documentary is a great examination of a perfectionist of a demanding individual. It spends a lot of time talking about Martha Stewart as the first self made female Billionaire in America. I think that is the. The distinction that they give her. It also charts how that money all goes away as her media empire falls apart kind of post trial and also just because of the Internet and the way things change. I would say to you that the last third of the documentary is not the most exciting part. The middle third is all about her trial for insider training, which I remember sort of, but also didn't remember at all. As Sean pointed out when he saw it. Telluride James Comey figures prominently in this trial, which I just didn't know at all, you know. And I do also wonder whether this movie came out on October 31st. So I wonder whether the timing and election related attention spans are part of the reason that people haven't seen it. Anyway, I thought it was an interesting examination of her trial in the media circus and the New York Post. Also, if you haven't read the New York Post response to this documentary, please look that up. All time tabloid stuff. But for me the reason to see it is, is Martha herself. She sits for at times very testy interview that is amazing. And it also has some archival footage including the scene of Martha Stewart I. She's not yelling. I just rewatched it. She raises, she doesn't raise her voice, but she dresses down a caterer, someone working for her over the woman's choice of knife that to slice oranges. The knife that the woman chooses is not big enough for Martha Stewart's liking. And the way that the Martha gives the feedback and how frustrated she is and how clear she is that there is a right way to do things and that it's unacceptable when someone doesn't do it her way. Haunted me gonna be quite honest. Just have thought about it every day since. So you know, maybe you, maybe you need to see that as an insight into someone in your life and. And maybe you just want to watch Martha talk about puff pastry or whatever. It's a great documentary and it also, the way you know it's really good is because Martha's not thrilled about it. I'd like to read some choice quotes that Martha Stewart gave to Brooks Barnes at the New York Times in response to this documentary. She didn't like the music. I said to rj, an essential part of the film is that you play rap music. Dr. Dre will probably score it or Snoop or Frederick. I said I want that music. And then he gets some lousy classical score in there. Perfect. She doesn't like the camera angles. She wanted her grandchildren featured, which seems valid. They're basically not in there at all. The voice of her daughter is there, but, you know, even her relationship with her daughter is sort of interestingly portrayed in the documentary. Here's my favorite quote. My magazine, my Martha Stewart magazine, which you might say is traditional, was the most modern home magazine ever created. We had avant garde photography. Nobody ever showed Puff Pastry the way I showed it, or the glossaries of the apples and the chrysanthemums. And we prided ourselves so much on all of that modernism. And he didn't get any of that. So I wish you great joy and entertainment watching Martha and avant garde photography and, and. And understanding Puff Pastry the way that it's meant to be shown by Martha Stewart. I will see you guys very soon. Happy holidays. You know, congrats on Juan Soto, everyone.
- [120:26]
Sean Fennessy
Bye. Okay, let's go to my conversation now with James Cameron and Gail Anne Hurd.
- [120:43]
Danny Chow
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- [120:45]
Sean Fennessy
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Danny Chow
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Sean Fennessy
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Sean Fennessy
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Danny Chow
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- [121:13]
Sean Fennessy
Absolutely honored to be joined by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd to talk about the 40th anniversary of the Terminator, which is just simply extraordinary that it's been four decades. I thought we could start, guys, by hearing about where you both were in your careers as filmmakers before you embarked on making this movie. Jim, you wanna start?
- [121:32]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah. I can't speak for Gale, but I was pretty much nowhere. I had tried directing a movie I won't mention the name of. Cause everybody else is happy to talk about it all day long. I got fired after six days of shooting. I was broke and no prospects. I didn't think I'd ever get hired again. It turned out that actually having even a crappy directing credit did help a little bit. So, you know, I mean, I was nowhere. So I knew that nobody was going to offer me anything. So I had to write something. I had to attach myself to it firmly. It had to be good enough to get made, and that seemed the only avenue. So writing the script was kind of a means to an end, if you will. I mean, I had my sights set on directing. Gail and I talked about it. We said, all right, this is a good project because it can be shot locally. It can be shot relatively low budget. It's got a few isolated effects sequences in it. And I had an effects kind of my only credential was in visual effects. So I figured, all right, that gives me a slight edge over another director. Gail, you want to haul off for where you were at that point in your life?
- [122:47]
Amanda Dobbins
Well, at that point in my life, if this hadn't worked out, I don't think I would be in the film business now, essentially. I mean, I'd been working for Roger Corman for a number of years. At a certain point, he basically said, there's nothing more I can teach you. I went, you mean you're firing me? And he said, not really firing you. I'm just sort of kicking you out. And I begged to be able to return as his assistant at New World Pictures. That wasn't in the cards. So I think both of us laid it all on the line for the Terminator.
- [123:21]
Sean Fennessy
Did you come to know each other through Corman? How did you come. What was your first meeting?
- [123:28]
Gale Anne Hurd
I remember exactly when it was. I was working in the model shop and Gail came in and I kind of, as I recall, Gail, I kind of gave you a tour around the model shop. But, you know, I was working on Nell, which was the heroes spaceship in my own kind of private space. And, Gail, if I remember correctly, you were down the hall doing some pickup reshoots on Humanoids from the Deep.
- [123:58]
Amanda Dobbins
Yes. Yeah, Humanoids from the Deep. And Jim was working on Battle beyond the Stars, a script by John Sayles.
- [124:07]
Gale Anne Hurd
We kind of hit it off anyway. I mean, the short version is we hit it off and we became friends and we talked about doing projects together. I mean, I think each of us recognized in the other the kind of the eye of the tiger, the ambition, the intelligence, creativity, whatever it is to potentially succeed. And I give the same advice to people now that I guess I was instinctively following then, which is, don't try to make pals with somebody above you in the food chain. Make good, strong, networked relationships with people at your level, and then form a team or an alliance or whatever, and then push forward from a position of some strength. And I think a lot of people sort of miss that point these days.
- [124:57]
Amanda Dobbins
Or they don't want to start at the bottom. And both of us really started at the bottom.
- [125:03]
Sean Fennessy
Gail, what did you make of Jim when you met him?
- [125:05]
Amanda Dobbins
Well, I was really impressed. I was looking for a reason to get out of the reshoots, because they were essentially. This reshoot was for nudity reasons. So it was a Girl getting out of a pup tent and running down, I think, the beach or something like that. And it was a sequence that the original director of Human Rights in the Deep, Barbara Peters, a woman, did not want to direct. So I believe they hired the first assistant director to film that. And that was not something I was really comfortable with. So I went into the model shop. Roger also said, you know, stop by and see how the models are coming along. Jim, which you can see in everything that he's done ever since, had a reason, had a character reason behind the spaceship models. And there was such insight there. It wasn't just, oh, this is really cool shit. And that really surprised me because you didn't find a lot of that back then. And then he went from building spaceship models. And this can only happen with Roger Cornbread. And he was very soon the art director for the entire film.
- [126:26]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, the following week, I think.
- [126:31]
Sean Fennessy
I mean, you guys getting shotgunned into that kind of work, I assume helped tremendously with the Terminator. Jim, you mentioned that it was sort of like a necessity to write this project, but that I wanted to ask you both. It seems like you wrote with budget in mind and that you were very selective about what kind of effects work you were going to need. Maybe you both can talk about that, about knowing, like, how much money you could get and what that meant creatively, with the restrictions.
- [126:54]
Gale Anne Hurd
Well, look, Gail was already producing. I think you had already done another film, A Car chase.
- [127:01]
Amanda Dobbins
Moki Bites the Dust. Another one not worth seeing.
- [127:07]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, but, you know, it's all experience. So anyway, I looked to Gail as a more experienced producer. And, you know, we talked about the type of project we would do. We had another one called Labyrinth that we were developing, but it seemed out of reach. It seemed too outlandish. A lot of sets and a lot of visual effects. And, you know, we were in this little clique of people who were all jostling for some kind of a project and, you know, said, all right, so what are the ground rules? You know, we gotta be able to shoot it, you know, on the streets, available light, you know, present day locations, would do it under the radar. Guerrilla filmmaking, non union, blah, blah, blah. All the stuff that we were used to from corpsman. And then. Okay, well, what fits that? Well, you know, I got this thing, you know, I'm calling the Terminator here. Why don't you read the treatment? And Gail's like, this is exactly what we should be doing. Let's do it. I mean, it was pretty much that simple, but it was definitely Constrained by budget going in. Right. You know, I mean, we knew we couldn't raise 20 million bucks at that stage. That was like an amount beyond our imagination. But we thought maybe 3, 4 million, something like that. I mean, we're thinking like a little bit above John Carpenter, Debra Hill, break in level with Halloween, but not much beyond that. And it's like, okay, who's gonna give first time director and a producer who's working at the corpsman level that kind of a budget? Well, it better be a damn compelling story. That was our thinking. And it better be makeable, it better appear to be makeable. And you know, Gail had chop, she had credentials. My credential was I'd done visual effects on a couple of films. So I thought, all right, well, an effects film kind of makes sense because if it was just a rom com or a straight horror film or whatever, I don't bring any added value. So we were very strategic about our thought process going into pitching this piece.
- [129:10]
Sean Fennessy
Gail, can you talk about hustling around and raising some of the money and looking for distributors at that time too? Because people forget this is an independent movie. Even though it's one of the most significant franchises of the last 40 years.
- [129:21]
Amanda Dobbins
It is 100% an independent film. So the first place I went was Roger Corman, because of course, go to the people you know. And Roger basically said, you know, my top end budget is $2 million. You can't make this for $2 million. And if you try, it will be, you know, it won't be the movie that you and Jim want to make. So God bless the late Roger Corman for that. But that was still painful. But luckily, the woman who had been, I would think you would call her chief operating officer of New World Pictures, had moved on to Orion. Barbara Boyle, as had the story editor, Francis Dole. And I sent the script to them. They read it and liked it. And Mike Medavoy I had known because he had been a co financier with Roger on a number of films, a slate of films. But interestingly enough, the domestic side of Orion didn't come in right away. It was the foreign side. The money that we got, and it wasn't all of the money was an ifcom. We had to raise the rest of it and. And Orion Domestic would have first right of refusal on the US rights. The problem is that everyone wants guaranteed US distribution, not just an IFCOM deal, but we were able to get half a million dollars advance from hbo. So they were the first to come in with an actual Commitment. And that was for cable. And then literally, I mean, as Jim probably remembers, I mean, the number of doors slammed in our faces, the meetings we had were basically people would say, yeah, I'm interested in this, but sign this option agreement where I'll control it forever, that is somebody else. And with no obligation to ever pay you a dime, ever get both of you on board to produce and direct. Those were the kinds of deals we were being offered. I mean, literally, when you hear about the horrors of Hollywood, we went through many, many stages of Dante's hell. But the strangest thing is the way we ended up with financing at Hemdale was that. Remember Chuck Simon? So a friend of mine basically said, I believe there's a company called Hemdale and they have a three picture deal with Orion. They're looking for their third picture. The first two had been total financial disasters. So I started calling. They wouldn't call me back. So then I found out from him that Barry Plumlee, the head of, of production development, was trying to sell a desk.
- [132:36]
Gale Anne Hurd
This is a great story, so, you.
- [132:40]
Amanda Dobbins
Know, you have to be willing to do just about anything to get your foot in the door. So I said I was interested in the desk. He called me back.
- [132:54]
Gale Anne Hurd
This is a classic Gail story. I mean, I give Gail total credit for piecing this whole thing together from disparate sources. And you know, I think between the two of us we were cheeky enough or confident enough that we were able to turn down some things. And I have to credit Gail with backing me. There were people that wanted the script. I think the highest offer was a million dollars from Paramount. A million dollars I couldn't even imagine. I couldn't even visualize what that looked like in a pile. Couldn't even fathom it. And. And we turned it down because they didn't want me to direct it. They wanted an established director and other people might have wanted an established producer. So Gail and I kind of went in as a joined at the hip kind of team and dared them to try to break a support, which of course almost everybody involved tried to at one point or another. And we emerged still as a team, still holding the rights and with a budget that was borderline makeable. I mean, it was pretty. It got pretty skinny at times. A big chunk of the money went to Arnold, obviously. And you know, that cut into our Below the Line somewhat and we did have some ambitious effects. Fortunately, we met Stam Winston, who neither one of us had known. And Stan just really loved the piece and he jumped in with both feet and he hung on because we wound up with a big production delay of about six or eight months, something like that. And. And so Stan hung on. He worked on the film kind of quietly worked on the. The effects and so on during that hiatus period. And then when we went. We hit the ground running with. I mean, it was just. We just got dropped into a combat zone. When we finally got access to Arnold, he had to go off and do another film. And so when we. In fact, I think Gail, didn't we shoot for, like, eight or ten days without Arnold? Like, almost a quarter of the schedule?
- [134:56]
Amanda Dobbins
I think so. And not only that, but not that long before shooting, Linda Hamilton sprained her ankle or tore all the ligaments, and we had to completely reschedule the film because initially we were doing her sequences, and it was a lot of the running, and she couldn't do that. So that was another thing that impacted not only the schedule, but the budget, because there were locations that we had paid for that we couldn't use. And, I mean, every time you. You shift something, there's a financial cost.
- [135:26]
Sean Fennessy
So what does that mean? You're just doing a lot of days with Rick Rossovich and Paul Winfield instead, when your two stars are not available to you?
- [135:31]
Amanda Dobbins
No, she was available. She just couldn't run.
- [135:34]
Sean Fennessy
She couldn't run. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't walk.
- [135:38]
Gale Anne Hurd
She could barely walk. I mean, we got, like, a football doctor to come in and give her a sports wrap every day so that she could hobble around. And the funny thing is, we already knew we weren't gonna have Arnold for the first part of the shoot. Shoot. It was like, hey, no problem. We'll shoot all of. Shoot all of Linda's scenes first. Well, then that didn't work out. So it's like, okay, what do we do? I mean, I think if Gail and I hadn't been through the Corman experience, which is just so scrappy and so chaotic, and you never know from one day to the next what you're going to do. And you got to shift gears in a split second, and you know that it's a steamroller. You've got to shoot, or you simply don't have the shots later in the cutting room. And we'd been through that, you know, enough times. We just knew that you gotta solve it. Nobody's gonna solve it for you.
- [136:27]
Sean Fennessy
I was hoping you guys could talk a little bit about. Cause when you're shopping for the budget, I assume that Arnold and Michael and Linda are not attached at that point. Right? You haven't cast the film, I think.
- [136:38]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, we had Linda before the hiatus. So when we cast Arnold, we wound up with this kind of six or seven month wait. And I think we had already cast Linda and Michael at that point and everybody was just waiting. That's my memory of it. And so I went off and wrote.
- [136:55]
Amanda Dobbins
Aliens and Rambo, First Blood Part 2 and Rambo.
- [137:01]
Gale Anne Hurd
So, you know, we were just kind of spinning our wheels. And so in a funny way, it's the best prepped movie I've ever done, at least in terms of storyboarding and pre visualization and design work and all that, because I wound up with six months that I didn't expect to have. Now we weren't getting paid, you know, my mom was sending me. She'd cut these clippings out of the newspaper where you could get two Big Macs for the price of one, you know, and I was kind of living on clippings and I'd do a couple of. I'd paint, you know, I was a painter and I would paint some low budget movie posters for like the cheapest releasing house that was even below Roger Corman, believe it or not, in LA. But they, you know, they pay me 1500 bucks for one painting. I could do it in a day and I could live on it for a month. So that's how I had the free time. I mean, I live pretty cheaply as you can, as you hear and, you know, so I use the time to write. Gail, I think you were kind of working in the background on the Terminator budget and various other things.
- [138:04]
Amanda Dobbins
And I, you know, and I was taking odd jobs on other films like Alligator.
- [138:11]
Gale Anne Hurd
Oh, right. Yeah. Another was that, but that wasn't Cornwall.
- [138:14]
Amanda Dobbins
I think it was Charlie Banned, but no, it was.
- [138:16]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're talking still. We hadn't broken through from that low tier of scrappy guerrilla filmmaking, super independent production companies.
- [138:27]
Amanda Dobbins
And we didn't know that it was impossible that what we were, you know, the ambitions we had to make this film were essentially impossible. You know, it doesn't seem like $6.4 million is a lot of. But back then it actually was for two essentially neophyte filmmakers.
- [138:46]
Sean Fennessy
I wanted to ask you both if you felt like at the time you were attempting to do something that the movie now clearly looks like, which is. It looks like a hinge point from the Corman era of exploitation movies and independent genre pictures towards this more technologically focused, star driven franchise entertainment. And it might be the most significant example that comes in the aftermath of the new Hollywood. Did you guys have aspirations to that kind of thing? I know it's a little high minded, but it felt like a very purposeful decision to try both at the same time.
- [139:18]
Gale Anne Hurd
Well, you know, I mean, we had examples like, you know, obviously Carpenter and Deborah Hill breaking in and slowly incrementally driving their budgets up. And we had other examples like, like George Lucas, who hadn't done that much when he did Star wars and made that film very, very cheaply. So he made that film for, I think, 9.8 million, which is almost unfathomable now. And we had just done Battle beyond the Stars together. And that was Roger's most expensive film by a factor of two or three, I think. I don't think he'd ever made a film above a million dollars and that was made for close to $2 million. But we saw how we could emulate a Star wars level movie fairly credibly at a fifth of the budget. So we thought, all right, I think we were thinking we could make the Terminator for a couple million bucks. And then the realities hit in of all the prosthetic makeup and all of the laser opticals and miniatures that we had to do and so many nights of street car chase stuff out in the city. And it looked like it was going to be more like three and a half, and then it was four and four and a half. But we managed to, you know, on Gail, tribute to Gail, managed to piece that money together. Look, there was no game plan about how that was going to sit in a Hollywood ecosystem. Looking back from 10 or 40 years later, I mean, we couldn't think at that level. We were just focused on the task. Here's the story we have to tell. We got to cast it credibly in order to get some money. Hey, you know, Arnold's name came up. We kind of rejected it at first because he didn't fit the character. The character was written to be an undercover agent. That's the whole point. He's a cyborg so that he's a credible human that can pass as human. Right. Without a rubbery skin and glassy eyes. Right. And, you know, he's got to be able to fit in. That's the whole concept of an undercover kind of assassin. And Arnold doesn't fit in. I mean, he, you know, I mean, when we cast him, we knew that we were shifting the character, that it was a big change from the concept or the premise we had been working under for, I don't know, a year of development. Right. And then all of a sudden, boom, it just changed. And all of a sudden, he's this iconic figure. He's going to be a Panzer tank. He's going to just push through a crowd, push anybody out of the way. Not very low key. And it's like, okay, fine, let's lean into that. You know, people have asked me, you know, kind of what I'm proudest of, which is a very hard question to answer. And I think what I'm proudest of is that we had the nimbleness or the agility of thought to be able to pivot the whole idea on a dime, literally in minutes. Sitting there, you know, with Arnold and then back with John Daly of Hemdale and talking about how he might be a part of this and saying, because he was not proposed to play the Terminator, he was proposed to play the hero. Because you cast the hero and then you get the budget. That's how it works, right? And so he was put up as the hero, you know, Rhys the good guy. And I said, that doesn't work. That's not gonna work. But he would make a hell of a Terminator. And Daley went and made the deal, you know, and then we were on, and the rest is history. But I think what I'm proudest of is that we were so used to that chaotic do anything, make it work, make it happen kind of mentality from low budget, that it was like, okay, yeah, sure, we can change our entire concept. Spin on a dime, no problem. What's this, Gale?
- [143:02]
Sean Fennessy
I was curious how you felt about Arnold, too, because on the one hand, he's a commodity in some ways at the box office. He's a rising star, but he is playing the heavy, which is really unusual. How did you perceive the decision to go with Arnold?
- [143:15]
Amanda Dobbins
It got the movie made, and he. And he really understood the Terminator. I mean, I have to say, I was blown away. He came in and he said, the Terminator is like a shark. He's not going to blink. He's going to move his head and look for his target like a shark does. Nothing else matters. And it was a brilliant conception of the role. So he really did bring a lot to it. It wasn't just, okay, he's gonna walk through. He's going to be doing sort of the same part that he played in Conan the Barbarian. It was a completely different approach, and it showed he was an active.
- [144:06]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, I don't think we realized how smart a move it was for us until we saw the dailies from Arnold's first Day because he was already in the makeup and hairstyle sort of post having gone through the fire. His eyebrows are gone, his hair is singed back. He looks very kind of both synthetic and kind of punked out, right? And they had lightly glycerined his face and he had this pale and he was in this kind of greenish blue lights from the dashboard of the car, from the environment. And he was just driving the cop car and looking around and scanning. And it was this long lens hood mount close up. And man, he was terrifying. He did not. You didn't think of Conan for a split second. He was a brand new guy, something you'd never seen before. Something I'd never seen before. You know, my great aspiration was to do better than, you know, Yul Brynner in Westworld, you know, and we like, we overshot that mark by miles with, with Arnold, you know, it was a smart move for him. It got him out of the kind of loincloth, oiled up barbarian mode, which frankly, he would have been stuck in that and his career would have just ultimately tapered off. But he just completely transformed himself into something nobody had ever seen before, didn't see coming and applauded. And it was a, a smart move for us because, you know, he was who he was that now, you know, I think it's important to point out that Arnold was not a star. It's easy to look back and say, okay, stepladder, you know, step one, he did Conan. He'd already done some stuff before that, but it was pretty rinky dink. And then, you know, so his first step up was Conan. He would have gotten stuck at that level forever if he hadn't done the Terminator. Next step was, I shouldn't say that. Arnold is a guy who bulldozes all obstacles and if he wanted to be a movie star, he would have ultimately become one. But I think the Terminator definitely turbocharged or accelerated that process for him.
- [146:08]
Sean Fennessy
One thing that really jumps out to me about this film and then becomes a trend in all your films for both of you guys is that strong female characters are like a signature of Jim a lot of your films, and Gale a lot of the work that you've done over the years too. And you told that story about working on Humanoids from the Deep Gale and having a female filmmaker and then that person getting removed from the project and shooting the naked. And then you've got Sarah Connor, where as critical as Arnold is to the story, Sarah is really the through line of everything in the whole franchise. In Many ways. And I was hoping you could talk a bit about that because that also is unorthodox in a genre movie at this time. You know, she's really the hero. Rhys is sort of the hero, but she's really our hero by the time we get to the credits of the film.
- [146:53]
Gale Anne Hurd
Well, I don't know, Gale. I think that's one of the things you responded to. I mean, I wrote this story that was female centric. And, you know, in my mind, I was kind of doing another, you know, last girl horror film with a tech component to it. I don't think I had made some leap that it was some big, you know, feminist statement.
- [147:15]
Amanda Dobbins
The thing is that Sarah Connor's every woman. Sarah Connor is someone who doesn't believe that she is going to be the savior of the future. And by the way. And she doesn't want the responsibility. And truthfully, who would? And yet she finds the power within herself to succeed and then obviously come back in Terminator 2 completely transformed. But yeah, and there's nothing gratuitous about it. There is literally nothing gratuitous. She doesn't have the usual tropes that you expect. Being a victim, being the girlfriend ornament.
- [147:58]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, there was no shower scene, you know. No, there's never a shower scene when a guy's the hero.
- [148:06]
Amanda Dobbins
And the lovemaking scene is, you know, is not gratuitous. And since we had an R rated movie, I mean, it could have been more so. And the other thing is, you know, going back to an earlier question, which is that the name of the nightclub is Tech Noire and that. And that was purposeful in the sense of, you know, this is a film about the dark side of technology.
- [148:35]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, we like noir films. We like the stylized lighting and so on. The kind of the German Expressionist kind of lighting that came into film noir. I mean, I don't think we ever thought of shooting it in black and white, but we did go with a kind of a monochrome blue palette, which, you know, kind of worked for me. I think there are things that you do instinctively that are innate and then you intellectualize it after the fact. For me, it was instinctively obvious that a strong female character would be interesting at the time. And I can say that that all came later when we got applauded for it. But that's not true, because the one film I really wanted to make was Aliens, and it wasn't even called Aliens at that point, but I had already signed on to do that before I even started on the Terminator And I wrote that script before I started on Terminator. And I was attracted to Ripley. I mean, you know, I mean, just the iconic Ripley who just, you know, that's a last girl story. It's a very elevated version of a last girl horror story, but done very, very well and with an amazing actor. You know, Sigourney and I are friends. We've been friends for, you know, what, 38 years, I guess. And, you know, so I think there are things you do instinctively and, you know, like I can do the whole Freudian thing and go back. You know, my mom was a great example of a strong but thwarted, you know, female psyche. You know, somebody who wasn't applauded for the kind of independent things that they did because that was what the world was like at that point. And Gail, I don't know about your dynamics with your mom, but she was certainly a pretty strong willed character.
- [150:23]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, I wondered about that too. I mean, your first, not your first feature, but in many ways your first feature, in your mind, your producing partner is a woman too. I mean, this is notable to me.
- [150:34]
Gale Anne Hurd
That didn't even occur to me as a thing. I mean, Gail and I just recognized each other. It really didn't have much to do with gender, notwithstanding the fact that we ultimately got married. But no, I mean, I think we just recognized each other as the kind of science fiction nerd kind of mentality. We knew the films that we love, we knew the films we wanted to make. We both had that aggressive can do spirit. And I think we felt that each other had the chops to make things happen, you know, and that we could trust each other.
- [151:10]
Amanda Dobbins
I mean, this is a business where you can't always trust other people. And when we worked together on Battle beyond the Stars, I was the assistant production manager. Jim did everything. I mean, and you know, it was the art department. I mean, you know, and you remember, I'd be. I'd stay up all night, even though it wasn't my job, painting the sets.
- [151:30]
Gale Anne Hurd
Malmori Green, you got to see me at the worst. I mean, you got to see me after 75 hours straight with no sleep. And that was without drugs, just a lot of caffeine. I think there might have been some caffeine diet pills in there somewhere, but there was certainly nothing harder than that.
- [151:47]
Amanda Dobbins
So we knew we could work together, we knew we could trust each other. And I had his back and he had mine. And honestly, that's what you need in any kind of partnership, because in this business, a lot of people will smile and tell you one thing and essentially do whatever it is they want once they believe that you're on board. And I've certainly experienced that because I assume that everyone would be as truthful and loyal as Jim.
- [152:22]
Sean Fennessy
I wanted to ask you. This doesn't happen. I wanted to ask you both about shooting in la, rewatching the film last night. You just don't. There's no productions in LA anymore. You don't see this kind of thing. And seeing it especially at this time and especially the night shoots and the motorcycle and car chase is just remarkable. Could you just take me back to that period of when you were shooting the film in the city at that time and what it was like?
- [152:45]
Amanda Dobbins
Well, the interesting thing is we weren't supposed to shoot in la. The original conception of the film was we were going to shoot in Toronto and they were going to close down some of the lanes and the major freeway there. What is it, the 401 anyway? I'm not sure.
- [153:00]
Gale Anne Hurd
401, the QEW.
- [153:02]
Amanda Dobbins
Yeah. And then we were preempted because Arnold had to go do Conan the Destroyer for Dino De Laurentiis, which meant we had to start filming in March. You can't film streets in Toronto when there's still ice and snow on the ground. And that is actually why we ended up shooting in la. And it was the year, I think, of the Olympics, so it was actually a lot more deserted than usual.
- [153:28]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, I always wanted to do a car chase on ice. A whole takes place at about eight miles an hour. Everybody's wheels are spinning and you could see the other guys right there, but you can't get to them. You know, look, it would have been a whole different film, very comedic, but.
- [153:45]
Amanda Dobbins
There are iconic images, as, you know, since you just rewatched the film. I mean, Griffith Park Observatory and the Second Street Tunnel and, you know, and all of that. And downtown LA is a character in this, but it created a lot more issues. Shooting in downtown LA at the time, I mean, we were what they call skid row on the nickel was pretty dangerous.
- [154:11]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, it was dangerous. You know, the funny thing is, Adam Greenberg, who shot it, he and I would drive around at night and he'd have his incident light meter out and he'd go, stop, stop, boy, Stop, stop. He always called everybody boy, Stop, boy. He was Polish. And, you know, the driver would stop and he'd get out and he'd go, that is light. I can do exposure, you know, and there are times. There are times for Adam. There are times when I Said this is the perfect place we're going to shoot here. And he'd go, how I get exposure? How I get exposure? Nothing. Because we couldn't afford big lights, we couldn't afford moose. Go. I don't even think they had the Musco back then, but they had condors. You could go up with a 10k or something and light up the block. We didn't have any of that stuff. So we literally drove around until we found brightly lit places like next to car lots were great because the car lots had a lot of light. Underneath Grand Avenue in downtown LA was a place called Lower Grand. I think it's called Lower grand now, called Thad Kosciusko Way. Where the whole thing was, was lined with fluorescent lights. It was only about a quarter of a mile long, but man, we use that street for sure because once again, no light. You know, Adam was a genius at doing just a little bit of supplemental light on the actors faces. Maybe sometime we'd have a. We'd have one light over on the curb and kind of pan it, you know, as the car went through, you know, really cheesy stuff. But it gives it a very kind of edgy quality, you know.
- [155:44]
Sean Fennessy
Yeah, hearing you talk about noir, that was the thing I noticed watching it is just these very soft shafts of light across the actors faces in these dark environments. And yeah, the on location shooting is just amazing. It is like a time and place so perfectly capturing that world. But you know, you mentioned this is a movie about the present and the future and like it's just incredible how prescient it is. I know you've talked about it in the past. I'm sure you talked about it at the 30th anniversary, the 20th anniversary, the 10th anniversary. But man, we are really in an AI era right now.
- [156:12]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, well look, it's more timely than it's ever been. But you know, we didn't invent those ideas. I mean, we're responding to stuff that came before us. Colossus, the Forbin project, you know, HAL 9000 for 2001. Space Odyssey, Westworld. You know, there's pretty long history of robotics, humanoid robotics. I don't think it had ever been done right. You know, I mean, we gave ourselves the ethos that if we're going to see a robot, it's not a man in a suit. We're going to figure out how it can be a chrome skeleton. Because that's the image that I had in my mind. But the idea of a kind of super intelligence, a machine, superintelligence it had been around in the literature of science fiction since the 30s, long before Turing and all those guys said, this is going to really happen someday. The science fiction community was writing about it. And these were not new ideas. I think the idea that you've got a computer that's plugged in, that's paid for by defense dollars, that's plugged into weapons systems, that's the place where we are now. And people are going to give kill authority to a machine and they're going to take humans out of the loop. Because the pace, the cadence of events in a battle theater in the years to come is going to be so fast. You're fighting drone swarms, you're fighting multiple missile attacks, and the other, your opponent is using AI to control their weapon systems. You're going to have no choice. The second you connect an AI to a weapon system, you're in Terminator world and that's imminent. For real.
- [157:52]
Amanda Dobbins
A couple of years ago I visited the Pentagon, Jim, I don't know if you've been there. And the remarkable thing, the number of people who have Terminator posters in their offices.
- [158:02]
Gale Anne Hurd
Yeah, yeah, right. But like, you know, they like the Terminator, they like the bad version of the Terminator.
- [158:07]
Amanda Dobbins
Well, you know, I also think hopefully it is a reminder of the great responsibility they have.
- [158:13]
Gale Anne Hurd
Well, look, I mean, that's art's job, right? That's cinema's job. Any of the arts is to, is to remind us who we are as human beings are. The right way and the wrong way to be good versus evil. You know, the thing about AI is the thing about, you know, not gen AI, I know everybody in Hollywood's up in arms over gen AI, that's a whole separate subject. But AGI, artificial general intelligence, you know, so called, you know, super intelligence, that's a whole separate problem. And the people working on that are bound and determined to create what they call personhood, an actual ego, an actual entity that's an intelligent entity. And I always ask them, you know, how are you going to put guardrails in that? They say, oh, well, we'll do this thing called alignment, right? And that's aligning with human purpose and with the greater human good. Well, whose version of that? You know, a Christian or a Muslim version of that? A Hindu version of that? A left wing version of that? A right wing version? I mean, we can't agree, we can't agree on what good and evil is, you know, so what makes us think we can, you know, spoon, you know, feed that to A little nascent super intelligence. Like. Like feeding a baby bird. With our morality and our sense of what's good and evil and best for human beings, we can't. It's impossible. It's almost definitionally impossible. And yet they're still bound and determined to create this thing. So when it wakes up, in whatever place, when it wakes up, it's going to look around and go, well, you fools don't know what you're doing, and you're about to annihilate yourselves and this perfectly beautiful planet. Let me just take over for a little while, see if I can fix things up, you know? And that's, like, the best we could hope for. It might just be like, what do I need you guys for?
- [160:00]
Sean Fennessy
Did either of you think of the film as a warning while you were making it? I'm asking about intention through the storytelling. Was this meant to be a warning?
- [160:07]
Amanda Dobbins
I think that at a subconscious level, yeah. I mean, but you know what we. Yeah, and. But you don't. You don't set out to make necessarily a message movie. The first and foremost thing is we wanted it to be entertaining. And our bar was essentially good enough that we could do it again.
- [160:28]
Gale Anne Hurd
That's what I was just going to say. Our entire goal set consisted of getting a foot in the door, making a film that allowed us to continue to be filmmakers. And at some point in the distant future, beyond that which we couldn't even imagine, we would do something good.
- [160:43]
Sean Fennessy
You did something better than good. It's an absolutely amazing movie. I really appreciate the time. I do end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers, what's the last great thing that they have seen? Have you guys seen anything good? Jim, I know you're always working on something. Gayle, you too. Have you guys seen anything?
- [160:58]
Amanda Dobbins
I've seen so many good things. Tell me, Jim, have you seen the animated movie from Latvia called Flo?
- [161:05]
Gale Anne Hurd
No, but I heard it's fantastic. That's definitely on my short list. What I saw that blew me away was Emilia Perez. I've seen it three times now.
- [161:13]
Sean Fennessy
Yes, me too.
- [161:13]
Amanda Dobbins
I loved it.
- [161:14]
Sean Fennessy
What did you both like about that film?
- [161:16]
Gale Anne Hurd
It's just not like any other film that's ever been made, you know, I mean, I think it's bold, it's daring, it's a vision, it's beautifully executed. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking. Zoe's, you know, fantastic in it. So this is her season, maybe to be recognized as, you know, at the stature that she should be recognized, you know, so there's a lot of things. Things in it that I just find, you know, fascinating.
- [161:43]
Sean Fennessy
Great recommendations. Thank you both so much for this, and congrats on everything. I appreciate it.
- [161:47]
Gale Anne Hurd
All right, well, thanks for having us on.
- [161:49]
Amanda Dobbins
Thank you.
- [161:57]
Sean Fennessy
Thank you to James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd. Holy shit, that happened. Thank you to the Big Picture All Stars on this podcast. Thanks to Jack Sanders. Thanks, of course, to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on today's episode. Later this week, we are doing our best picture power rankings, as promised. And I think we might be talking about Mufasa and Kraven the Hunter, who is the real king of the jungle? Tune in to find out. See you then.