‘Before Sunrise’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Summary

The Rewatchables: ‘Before Sunrise’ with Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Released on January 28, 2025

---

Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The Rewatchables, host Bill Simmons, alongside Chris Ryan and Sean Fennessey, delve deep into Richard Linklater’s iconic romantic film, Before Sunrise. Skipping the initial advertisements, the trio immerses themselves in a comprehensive analysis of the movie, exploring its themes, characters, and enduring legacy.

---

General Discussion about 'Before Sunrise'

The conversation kicks off shortly after the advertisements, with Chris Ryan aptly describing the episode's focus:

Chris Ryan [03:19]: "Before Sunrise—three guys getting romantic about a romantic movie. Let's go."

Bill Simmons sets the tone by acknowledging the film's status:

Bill Simmons [04:13]: "It's Before Sunrise. It's an all-time Gen X movie. It's a great '90s movie. It's aged perfectly, and I almost don't even think we need to do the pod. I have no notes."

---

Themes and Impact

Sean Fennessey highlights the film's unique ability to act as a time capsule for those who watched it during its release:

Sean Fennessey [05:07]: "This movie not only shows the view of life when you saw it but also reflects who you were at that time."

The hosts discuss how the absence of modern technology like phones and the internet in the movie amplifies the value of human connection:

Chris Ryan [06:38]: "It was pre-Internet. People were lost, just trying to find connections by meeting strangers. It was the most important thing that ever could have happened to you."

Bill Simmons draws parallels with other independent films of the era, emphasizing the simplicity yet depth that made these films relatable and easy to produce:

Bill Simmons [06:00]: "Independent cinema was becoming a huge part of American movies. These were easy to make—just a couple of attractive people who seemed smart."

---

Character Analysis

The trio dissects the protagonists, Jesse and Celine, exploring their complexities and growth:

Sean Fennessey [12:32]: "Jesse's pretending that romantic love is a fallacy because of his parents, but he's the most romantic person in the world."

Bill Simmons praises the balance between their romantic aspirations and underlying cynicism:

Bill Simmons [14:33]: "They both have the desire to love and be loved, and they both know they have to protect themselves because people will hurt you."

---

Casting and What-ifs

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around casting choices and hypothetical scenarios:

Chris Ryan [83:51]: "Before Sunrise. What do you got? The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford."

Sean Fennessey [93:00]: "Before Sunrise. Think of it like Collin Farrell and Gong Lee in Boston—imagine the interactions."

Bill Simmons muses on alternative casting, suggesting actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman could have brought different dimensions to the characters:

Sean Fennessey [88:48]: "The poet. I think that's the answer."

---

Memorable Scenes and Moments

The hosts reminisce about specific scenes that stood out, analyzing their cinematic brilliance:

Bill Simmons [43:21]: "The listening booth scene has My Darling Clementine vibes. It's mesmerizing because it's just happening naturally."

Chris Ryan [50:47]: "The ending—when they walk through Vienna, marking the places they visited together, feels like a beautiful memory montage."

---

New Categories and Awards

Injecting humor and creativity, the hosts introduce inventive award categories inspired by the movie:

• Criteria Orgasm Award: For the most perfect cinematic shot.

  Chris Ryan [57:53]: "Sweet cakes and milkshakes."

• Jesse's Flex Award: For the best character bit.

• Sean Fantasy Award: For stealth homages in film.

These categories allow the trio to playfully critique and celebrate various elements of Before Sunrise.

---

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the enduring magic of Before Sunrise and its place in film history:

Sean Fennessey [101:29]: "The trilogy as a whole is so crowd-pleasing yet formally inventive and breathtaking in its scope."

Bill Simmons [101:48]: "Linklater needed to find Hawk for this movie. When they're together, there’s something alchemical at work."

The episode concludes with a nod to future discussions and a light-hearted banter about potential spin-offs and extended universes within Richard Linklater's body of work.

---

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Chris Ryan [06:38]: "It was pre-Internet. People were lost, just trying to find connections by meeting strangers."

• Sean Fennessey [12:32]: "Jesse's pretending that romantic love is a fallacy because of his parents, but he's the most romantic person in the world."

• Bill Simmons [43:21]: "The listening booth scene has My Darling Clementine vibes. It's mesmerizing."

• Chris Ryan [50:47]: "The ending—when they walk through Vienna, marking the places they visited together."

• Sean Fennessey [101:29]: "The trilogy as a whole is so crowd-pleasing yet formally inventive."

---

Final Thoughts

This episode of The Rewatchables offers a rich and engaging exploration of Before Sunrise, blending thoughtful analysis with playful creativity. Whether you're a long-time fan or new to the film, Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey provide insightful perspectives that underscore why this movie remains a beloved classic in the realm of romantic cinema.

---

For more in-depth discussions and to explore over 300 rewatchable movies, visit The Ringer Movies YouTube Channel or head to our special Rewatchables page on The Ringer.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, the Town on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name is Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the what I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show the Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who'll eat lunch in this town again, Follow the Town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chris Ryan]

This episode is brought to you by Flight Risk, Only in theaters January 24th. Imagine Mark Wahlberg as the psychotic villain. It's been almost three decades since he went full dark side. Directed by Academy Award winner Mel Gibson, Flight Risk is about to deliver a big screen action thrill ride that you cannot miss. The cast stacked, Topher Grace bringing the laughs. Michelle Dacre is showing some serious badass energy. So buckle up for an adrenaline pumping movie night. Flight Risk, Only in theaters January 24th. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. You might say all kinds of stuff when things go wrong, but these are the words you really need to remember. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. They've got options to fit your unique insurance needs, meaning you can talk to your agent to choose the coverage you need, have coverage options to protect the things you value most, file a claim right on the State Farm mobile app, and even reach a real person when you need to talk to someone. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. The rewatchables brought to you by the Ringer Podcast network where you can find the big picture with Sean Fennessy.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Breaking down the most boring Oscar season in years.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you mean?

[Chris Ryan]

Deadly boring.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wide open.

[Bill Simmons]

We don't know who's going to win. This is great.

[Sean Fennessey]

All the oppo researchers flying around.

[Chris Ryan]

I won't be talking about one of these movies ten years from now.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that may be true. That may be true.

[Chris Ryan]

I am excited for Chalamet.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm excited for Demi Moore.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm excited for the Aspen. Come on.

[Bill Simmons]

Come on. If Timmy wins, that'll be fun. Will he come on the pod before or after?

[Chris Ryan]

Can he win?

[Bill Simmons]

He can win. Yeah, he can win.

[Chris Ryan]

Who's the favorite now?

[Bill Simmons]

Adrien Brody for the Brutalist.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do you do it yet?

[Chris Ryan]

Do you fire it up after? I need after football season.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Let me get through football season, especially in the football game.

[Sean Fennessey]

And we also have this Celtics swoon. That's an alarm. It's an alarm, but it's not alarming. Right?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Are you playing team or. No.

[Sean Fennessey]

We're here to bond over love. Right. And the possibilities.

[Chris Ryan]

What are you up to?

[Sean Fennessey]

I do. I do the watch podcast. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a men's health pod.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

You're looking. You're looking fit today.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

You can find this podcast and all the movie stuff we do on The Ringer Movies YouTube channel. A great channel which we're going to be trying to spruce up during 2025. Subscribe to that. Coming up, before sunrise three guys getting romantic about a romantic movie. Let's go. I have no idea what your situation is, but I feel like we have some kind of connection.

[Wesley Morris]

Yeah, me too.

[Chris Ryan]

So listen, here's the deal.

[Sean Fennessey]

This is what we should.

[Chris Ryan]

You should get off the train with me here in Vienna and come check out the town.

[Wesley Morris]

Since we're never gonna see each other again. I don't think we should sleep together.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's see each other again. Castle Rock Entertainment presents Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy in a new romantic comedy from Richard Linklater. Before Sunrise. Rated R. At select theaters Friday. All right. This is an I remember where I saw in what theater I was in movie. It's a movie that describes your view of life both when you saw it and then all the years later. It's a true classic. It's Before Sunrise. It's a all time Gen X movie. It's a great 90s movie. It's aged perfectly and I almost don't even think we need to do the pod. I have no notes.

[Sean Fennessey]

See you later.

[Chris Ryan]

What stage is it worst? I was like nothing. Zero.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah yeah. I. It's a very. Have you ever started an episode like that thinking you didn't start the Godfather episode like that?

[Chris Ryan]

This movie we had a. We had a milk when we did the rewatchables mailbag there was that person who had that they wanted to add the category about Jesse from movie achieve perfection. It didn't have to be a perfect movie but for oh there's also trying to do too. Yeah yeah, there's some good cigarettes before what the movie was trying to do did it achieve it did it throw basically a no hitter and I think this movie achieved every single thing it wanted to do with the added bonus that endured 30 years later that it's still even Though, you know, they don't have phones. They don't have. They're not texting. But for the most part, this is a watchable movie now, even for people like my daughter.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. You know, this was in theaters while Pulp Fiction was still in theaters.

[Chris Ryan]

Wow.

[Sean Fennessey]

So probably incredibly formative moment for all of our lives, but this movie is pretty unique in that not only do you watch it and you're like, I remember seeing it, or I remember the impact it had on me. It's. It's overwhelming because you watch it and you're also like, I remember who I was. Do you know what I mean? Like, literally, there is a degree to which you kind of see a lot of the things that you were feeling at that time or would go on to feel very shortly afterwards, like, reflected on screen. It's different than Dazed and Confused that way. You know, it's not a period piece in my mind, even though Zoe might watch it and be like, oh, so tell me about what the 90s were like and stuff like that. We're watching it. We're like, this is a photograph.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Of the way people used to talk and the way people used to kind of act. It's so mind blowing to see these days.

[Bill Simmons]

It reminded me of a few movies that you guys have done over the years that felt like they were their own subgenre. So Singles was one of these movies. Kicking and Screaming was one of these movies. Reality Bites was one of these movies. They're not all the same. They have, like, different tones. Some of them are more comedic, Some of them are more sincere. But the emotional, philosophical hangout movie was very present because independent cinema was getting to be a huge part of American movies. And these were kind of easy movies to make. You know, they didn't cost a lot of money. You just needed a couple of attractive people who knew who seemed. Who. Who could seem smart.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And I'm wondering if this is the best possible version of that kind of a movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it is. Well, when I think about those movies and you mentioned some of them and also this Gen X era, and obviously I was the age. I was probably a year older than Jesse when I saw this movie. But it's all pre Internet to me. It's this time capsule of what life was like before email and text and everything else showed up, and people were really lost, just trying to find, like, connections. You would just go to a bar and hope you ran into somebody. You would meet some girl, or if you're a girl, some boy, and you'd be like, maybe this is the one. But you'd have no idea. And you wouldn't even know if they tried to call you again. And it's like, was my. Oh, my answer machine didn't work. There was just this sense of, if I meet somebody, is this gonna last? Is this gonna get screwed up? If I lose their number, will I ever see or hear from them again? All of these things that made, like, the value of a connection. I really think we valued it more back then. I hate to be like the old man on the lawn, but it feels like it's so much easier to connect with whoever you can go on the Internet. You can find your people wherever you really couldn't in the early 90s. So if you met somebody like this in one day, it was like the most important thing that ever could have happened to you. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's also people are at an age that 18 to 25 or whatever age period where, like, everything that happens to you feel like. Feels like it's the first time it's ever happened to anyone. And there's a moment in the opening, just few scenes of this film where Jesse is talking about how it's been a bad trip to Europe, but he's liked sitting on the train and having ideas.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

And I was like, I don't remember the last time I did that. Like, if I'm ever on a mode of transportation or have any downtime, I'm usually, like, looking at my phone, have my headphones in, texting with somebody I know. Like, I'm in constant contact with this external world.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

And I was like, holy shit. I completely forgot being bored out of my mind. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

You have a book. Both of them, when they meet each other, they're both reading a book. That's kind of what you did. If you're on a train, what else are you going to do? Yeah. Silently you'd be like, I'm going to go on Instagram. You know, you were kind of stuck with your thoughts. Some book or a magazine you had and. Or some conversation with somebody, like in a train like that. It's like, maybe I'll sit next to somebody. I remember flying places in the 90s, and you'd sit next to somebody, talk to them for three hours and be like, all right, I'll see you later. And that was it. I never thought about them again because it was like, oh, that killed three hours. Now you would just kill the three hours on your own. I don't know if it's better guy next to you.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is reading Inside Sports.

[Chris Ryan]

What is that?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I think.

[Sean Fennessey]

What do they think of the Suns?

[Chris Ryan]

Is that a Razor Reddick article?

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's. I think it's 95% what you're saying. That, you know, it was impossible to distract yourself in the ways that we can now. Right. And that there's like an inherent bad for our ability to socialize or be connected to other people. But then it's just. It's also 5% just being 21 or 23 where you don't.

[Chris Ryan]

And idealistic.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. And you have not been destroyed by the world yet. You don't have a lot of money, so you don't really have a lot of options. So you have to make good with what you have. And you don't have a lot of responsibilities that are otherwise weighing down that idealism. You know, these are people with no jobs, no kids, no boyfriends or girlfriends. You know, their parents are alive, everyone's healthy. Like they're at this point in your life where like you can and probably should just fuck around a little bit.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And both literally and figuratively. And the movie really captures this time of like, no responsibility. The fact that Celine can just get off the train in a foreign land.

[Chris Ryan]

With some guy she met for 20.

[Bill Simmons]

Minutes with a stranger and wander. And she's getting off the train before a nine hour trip and she's like, you know what? I'm just going to. I'll go to bed.

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't have anything going on until Tuesday.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm booked through February.

[Sean Fennessey]

Think about like even Jesse just being like, I don't have enough money for a hotel. So I was just going to walk around Vienna all night until it's time to go to the airport and then sleep outside. That would be like a pretty. Something would have gone really wrong if that was like the circumstance I found myself in now. And that was like fucking romantic back then.

[Chris Ryan]

But this is why Ethan Hawke was the Gen X hero, because he played this character and he played Troy and Troy was BA Would try to say, all I need is a cup of coffee, a pack of cigarettes and five bucks. Laney, Laney. That's all I need. And that was what all that character needed. Right. This guy, he's like, yeah, I'm just gonna ride the train for an extra two weeks. I'm just gonna walk around Vienna tonight. Maybe I'll sleep on the thing. But that's kind of what a lot of people were like back then.

[Bill Simmons]

Were you like that?

[Chris Ryan]

No, it was. Sports was too important to me. I Was always a mixture. But if I was him, I would have been like, I gotta get back.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sports are too important. Like, you need to get back.

[Chris Ryan]

That's like, round one. NBA's coming up. I can't.

[Sean Fennessey]

Boyd is throwing.

[Chris Ryan]

I can't ride this train anymore. Clements is pitching.

[Sean Fennessey]

Mike Greenwell and Ellis Burks are really gonna fucking put it together.

[Chris Ryan]

Big picture, though, with this movie. And it's really this one other thing I love about this movie. And we. By the way, we're just going to talk about this movie because we want this movie to stand on its own. Obviously, there were some sequels, but. But one thing with this movie, as you age with it, but your feelings on love have aged too. And if you see this when you're in your teens, like, you don't even know what love is yet. If you see this in your 20s, that's when you're the most hardcore into. I kind of know who I am, and I'm ready to be in love. So if you see this at the perfect time, this movie would be like your movie. And then as you get older, you're like, oh, those two, they're not gonna last. Like, you start. You start becoming more cynical, right? So it's. And they. He. The only time I'll bring up the sequel. He mentions in the beginning about the difference between a romantic and a cynic. That's how you see this movie. Are you a romantic or a cynic? So when you saw this, were you a romantic or a cynic?

[Sean Fennessey]

Seer, I think that when I saw it, it. I didn't see Jesse as cynical. Like, I thought Jesse was just being cool, you know, like in this movie. And then as you grow older, you kind of see him.

[Chris Ryan]

He's working a little bit.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's like, this is like your. Your cynicism is in of itself. It's like the thing from Singles where it's like, I think your thing is not having a thing. It's like Jesse's thing is pretending like this is love is bullshit or that, like, because of his parents. It's like he thinks that romantic love is basically a fallacy. But he's the most romantic person in the world.

[Chris Ryan]

And he's got his five or six bits that he's clearly done with other people. Yeah, like, hey, souls, what's going on there?

[Bill Simmons]

Everybody please remember Tippy Bartender, Real Jerry Seinfeld? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, he. Both of them show both sides of those two ideas. They both, you know, Celine in theory. Oh, the Ethereal French girl should be the most romantic person in the world, but she's also protecting herself with a certain kind of pragmatism throughout the entire movie. And they both kind of bounce back and forth. I was having this conversation with my wife last night, and I feel like the movie is, like 51% Selene's ultimately and 49% Jesse's. And in the future movies, you could say, which direction does it go in? But this movie ultimately has that drop of romance that outweighs the cynicism that is always being debated, that they're always. He's. You know, Jesse is always circling back to the palm reader bullshit. Even the poem, there's the hint of, like, are we sure about this guy? You know, like, all the moments that in the wrong hands, would make for, like, the worst movie ever. Oh, my God. Like, if this was not a Richard Linklater movie, it could have been a disaster because of the sincere, borderline sentimental steps that the characters take. But ultimately, I think they both have the desire to love and be loved, and they both know that you have to protect yourself in the world because people will hurt you.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Because Jesse's just gotten his heart broken. So he's going around being like, there's no palm reading. There is no poetry. He's had that poem. Like, none of this stuff is. This is all bullshit.

[Chris Ryan]

You made a key point there, though, about sentimental working or not working in a movie. We've seen people. Cameron Crowe is a great example, almost famous. All the sentimentality works in that movie. And then he makes Elizabethtown, and it's a lot of the same beats, and none of it works. It's really hard to pull off, like somebody's falling in love with somebody else. You see it in a lot of movies, and it takes place over the course of weeks, months, however they do it. I don't remember another movie where it's like, this is about the immediate experience of falling for somebody over the course of a night, basically. And I don't remember another movie that nailed it like this.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, I mean, the best part about it is the fact that even though they obviously have, like, an instant connection, which is partially just due to, like, the circumstances of the train car in which they meet and the other couple fighting. Yeah, they have a pretty awkward first 30 minutes of the movie when they're first working around Vienna, and it's like, now what? You know, like, yeah, this movie is a series of now what's. Which is what's so great about it. It's like every time they achieve some sort of point that in another movie would have been like, it's all building up to a kiss, or it's all building up to sex, or it's all building up to this, they actually deal with like what happens next for the most part. And I think it makes it that much more effective because they do so at the end.

[Chris Ryan]

If you think they're seeing each other in six months, when the movie ends, not knowing what happens in the sequels, if you, if you leave that movie and you go, they're going to see each other in six months, I would say you're a romantic. And if you leave the movie going, nah, one of them's gonna fuck this up, I would say you're a cynic. And it's weird how that one decision at the end probably deter. Probably says more about the viewer than it does about the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Do you remember having a take on it when you left the theater?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I was like, I really hope. I was probably the most idealistic when I saw this movie. And I was like, I hope they're gonna make it.

[Bill Simmons]

But to this day, the movie drags you back to that feeling of romanticism. Like I was kind of just laughing to myself watching the movie again. You guys know me, I'm very grounded and very cynical about certain things.

[Chris Ryan]

You would not have liked the Fortune Teller.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I would have been. I identify with Jesse a lot. The poet.

[Chris Ryan]

You'd have been like, ah, he wrote that already.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I really identify with him a lot, in many ways. But the same way that Jesse can't help but feel lifted up, you know, taken away by this person who he's encountered who is just like filling him up with all of this hope and excitement. The movie does the same. Like it softens a hard heart.

[Chris Ryan]

So what was your. Do you remember the first time you saw this? What was your takeaway? Would they see each other in six months?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it's complicated for me because I can't remember the first time I saw it. And so I didn't see it in a movie theater. I definitely saw it on vhs and I don't know the circumstances under which I saw it. Did I see it with a girl? Maybe I don't remember. Like, did we watch it in my parents basement maybe? So I don't have the same. I just wasn't old enough, just being a little bit younger. Whereas the next film, I remember everything about that.

[Chris Ryan]

So we did kicking and screaming a while ago, a little bit similar. We don't know whether Grover's going to go to Prague. To Prague to. To chase. To chase his old girlfriend down. And they kind of leave it ambiguous. This was a very 90s thing. It's like you're going to. We're going to bring these characters in your life, you're going to fall for them and then you will never know what happens.

[Bill Simmons]

We'll see. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I don't. Do they still do the we'll see. They don't do it the same way anymore. I don't feel it. I don't feel like we'll see is a huge move.

[Bill Simmons]

This is a huge spoiler alert for a movie that not everybody has seen yet. So if you don't want a Nora spoiled for you, but like that ends in an intriguing way in that very specific respect where you don't know what happens to the characters next. But to your point, it's really rare.

[Sean Fennessey]

Were you, did you. Do you remember if you had a girlfriend, like a long term girlfriend when you saw this?

[Chris Ryan]

I had a girlfriend when I saw this. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It was one of those movies that also makes you re. Evaluate whoever you're dating at the time.

[Bill Simmons]

It.

[Sean Fennessey]

Maybe I was, yeah, I, it was my first real girlfriend I had. It was my senior year of high school and I was like, I'm. I'm pretty into this. Like, I was, I was, I. I.

[Bill Simmons]

Thought like, you weren't like, she's not the one for me.

[Sean Fennessey]

Because I mean, it wasn't that as much as it was just like being in love seems so cool and it just kind of like it made me feel happy to have a girlfriend. I think if I had been alone, I would have been like.

[Chris Ryan]

That'S how I felt for kicking and screaming. I remember leaving the theater. I was like, oh my God, I gotta get a job. One thing, that one quote from this movie, being with you has made me feel like I'm somebody else. Jesse says that I always thought that was a great quote and a good example of like when you meet somebody like this, you have no. They don't know any of your baggage. They don't know anything. They're just seeing you as this fresh thing and you, and you kind of learn from your past mistakes. Especially if you're that like 23 to 25 range. You've had some swings and some misses. You've. You've run some goal line offense plays that didn't work. Yeah, you've, you've tried to make some stuff work out of the shotgun on third and 14. You kind of know A place to run a little bit more.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Kellen Moore has it dialed by that.

[Chris Ryan]

Right. There's no. There's no basketball reference for. For your playoff record. And you could just meet this person and just start fresh with some of the. And Jesse's at that perfect point. And not to bring up the second movie again, but it's one of the interesting things about the second movie is how they're not doing some of the stuff they're doing in the first movie, where a lot of it is. They're not. I don't want to say bits, but it's a lot of, like, people kind of talking out of their ass in a really fun way. Yeah. And then in the second movie, it's not like that as well.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's definitely an extension of that, like, dorm room kind of, like, philosophy.

[Chris Ryan]

Hanging out the hallway at 3 in the morning.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, I have five. Like you said, I have, like, five or six things that I think are pretty uniquely cool that I've got going on in my head, even if I'm wrong.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

And I'm just going to keep trying them out on people until it clicks.

[Bill Simmons]

That's Linklater's stock and trade through his first five movies. You know, Slacker. That's all a slacker is, is people popping into cabs and walking into bars and being like, here's my theory of the world. You know, that's what Waking Life is. That's what Dazed is. You know, think about Rory Slater riffing on George Washington and, you know, growing weed. Like, all that stuff. It's all like. He came up with, like, a thousand theories. We have to read Dazed at some point, by the way. It's still one of the best movies ever. But he. He's like an accumulator of people's cool anecdotes.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, and he knows how to reprocess, which Tarantino is good at, too. Same. But then the other thing, too, that I think makes it so special. I'm sure we'll talk about it. Casting actors who could write with him to make these people real is like, the whole. It's the whole thing. It's the whole movie. It's the reason why it works. It's the reason why that sentimentality stuff works. Like, he's just. The whole movie just feels like it's happening in front of you for real. And there's so few movies that you can really say that about, so it just goes a long way.

[Chris Ryan]

It has a real angle on love. And I think if I Had to summarize the theme of this movie. It's obviously about connection. But she says that thing about how she worked for the old man. And once he told me that he spent his whole life thinking about his career and his work, and he was 52, and it suddenly struck him that he had never really given himself, giving anything of himself. His life was for no one and nothing. He was almost crying saying that, which I think is the point of the movie. It's like, if you don't connect with somebody, your fucking life's gonna suck.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And it doesn't matter how successful you are. Because Jesse, he gets that question later. Would you rather be. Would you rather be really good at something or would you rather find a connection? And I think that's. I think that's what whatever Linklater cared about, I think that was it, because he'd probably had a little bit of a success, but he also hadn't found anybody that, you know, he was with, and he was probably battling that somehow became the movie. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, the. The thing that Celine says to Jesse in the alley when they're talking about whether they would have families or what their futures might be like. And she's like, if there's any kind of God, it wouldn't be in any of us. Not you or me, but just in the space in between. So this idea that it's like the effort to become connected to somebody is where, like, this almost, like, holy magic exists.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, that's why she's the rock of the movie in a lot of ways.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. She's able to articulate these incredibly complicated.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, she's just better at explaining her point in life, but he's more interesting at it. Yeah, the combo is really good.

[Sean Fennessey]

Jesse's doing power rankings.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He's really good at the gimmicks, and she's really good at the meat of the conversation.

[Chris Ryan]

She's like, here's why Josh Allen should have thrown a shakir.

[Bill Simmons]

She's talking about, it's not about the orbit, it's about the orbit of love. Forget the orbit route.

[Sean Fennessey]

You don't know what it's like to.

[Chris Ryan]

Get placed by stacks. Oh, my God. Movie characters I always wanted to meet in real life, but they didn't exist in real life. Celine's way up there.

[Bill Simmons]

God, she's so beautiful.

[Chris Ryan]

She's so great. Conversely, I think I would have absolutely melted into a puddle if I had met Seline at, like, age 24.

[Sean Fennessey]

It would have been lights out. I don't even know if I Would have had the balls to do what Jesse did.

[Chris Ryan]

He had even talked to her in the train.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Once that accent came out and she was so interesting, I just would have.

[Sean Fennessey]

Been like, oh, my God, she speaks, like, perfect English.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the thing.

[Chris Ryan]

I would have screwed that one up.

[Bill Simmons]

I think the reason that Jesse comes to life in the movie is because you can tell fairly early on, in part because she agrees to get off the train with him, but even before that, that great feeling when you're like, this person's into me.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, not just romantically, but just any connection you make with a person where you're like, this person's actually interested in what I'm saying, that's gives you, like, a jolt.

[Sean Fennessey]

And they communicated so well. Because I think she's like, they're both reading and she doesn't, like, immediately go back to her book. She, like, turns towards him to, like, be like, all right, let's keep talking.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's like, I can't believe this is happening. Yeah. This is crazy.

[Chris Ryan]

Ultimate Gen X Movies. Slacker Singles. Reality Bites. Kicking, Screaming. Clerks Before Sunrise. Mall Rats, Swingers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. You could throw a few.

[Chris Ryan]

Throw in a couple. But I sleep. The list could be 20. It could be 12. It could be, but I feel like those eight have to be at least eight of the. Eight of the. Whatever. The final number.

[Bill Simmons]

All movies about people in their early 20s talking about pop culture and love and existence, basically kind of wandering around.

[Chris Ryan]

Life hoping to connect with whoever. Yeah, right. That's the theme, ultimately. Linklater, you mentioned Slacker, Dazed Before Sunrise. That's the first three for him. Solid.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, he's.

[Chris Ryan]

Good job, Rick.

[Bill Simmons]

He's 34 when this movie is being made. This has got to be one of the most wise movies ever made by a person that young. Because it's not that what the characters are saying is wise, because it is very idealistic and very lovey dovey at times and very like, you know, just rip ripped a bong hit and started talking about souls. But knowing that that is how you are when you're 24 and being able to reflect on it 10 years later and, like, metastasize, it is amazing to me. I mean, he's like, yeah. In the 1% of capturing how young people really are in the world.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's also really cool to go and look at this movie and think about, like, 99 out of 100 other directors would have done so many things differently. There would have been more montages.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Would have been more cuts. There would have been.

[Bill Simmons]

And needle drops.

[Sean Fennessey]

There would have been some sort of, like. I don't know, like there would be a crescendo to the film that was. This movie has like five crescendos. This movie peaks like five times, six times. Sometimes it's intellectually, sometimes it's sexually, sometimes it's. But like every other filmmaker. And then when you're watching it, though, you're not overtly aware of him doing anything. It's not like you're like, oh, wow, the camera hasn't cut in a while. You're just like completely locked in with their conversation. It's almost invisible. Filmmaking.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, it's weird to be an indie director, especially from this era, not. And also be a romantic and not have, like, weird in the movie. Because that was another thing that the 90s, you know, couldn't resist throwing in some sort of weird monkey wrench. There are no monkey wrenches in this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Where was the gimp in this movie? You know?

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think the poet.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Hawk. Dead Poets, which we've done. We talked about the position he was in when he did Alive. We did Reality Bites too. Dead poets, Mr. Date Way Fang. Then he has a live reality Bite. Stuff's happening with them. But this cemented it, I think, after this movie, even though it didn't make a shitload of money. But I think the combo this and Reality Bites and Alive, it felt like he was a young star. That led to Gattaca and then it kept.

[Sean Fennessey]

But I don't think he ever really, like, shakes this off until Training Day. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think I agree. I think Training Day was like, in some ways, like, he needed it brought him into adulthood.

[Bill Simmons]

It did. But I still think this is like his most perfect creation as a character. Like it. It so beautifully on the Ethan Hawke thing, which is that he looks like the coolest guy of all time, but once he starts talking, you're like, wow, this guy's like, kind of insecure.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And a little bit all over the place emotionally and really well read, but maybe insecure about that too. Like, he. It's like. It's just like when you talk to Ethan Hawke in real life and you're like, wow, he's really cool. But he's more like me than he is a movie star. Which is a unique quality that he brings to movies.

[Sean Fennessey]

The other thing that's just worth noting is. Is that I think you could put Hawk and Linklater up there with any of the great director, actor duos totally what they do.

[Chris Ryan]

Ten movies together.

[Bill Simmons]

Nine. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

But also, like, they're telling one big story. Like, Jesse's backstory is the story of boyhood. You know what I mean? Jesse's parents divorcing and that impacting how he looks at the world and everything his dad and his mom told him about love. That's just the movie boyhood, like, a couple of, you know, a decade or so later. So they're just basically working on, like, one American male project.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's take a break and then a couple more things we'll get to get the categories.

[Bill Simmons]

If you need three new reasons to.

[Sean Fennessey]

Love Jack wraps at Jack in the.

[Chris Ryan]

Box even more, here they are. Chicken fajita, chicken Caesar, and delicious.

[Bill Simmons]

Starting at $3. Coincidentally, those are the same three reasons you should come to Jack in the Box right now. At Jack, every bite's a big deal.

[Chris Ryan]

All right, so we talked about Hawk and Link later. So it took them nine months to settle on Hawk and Delpia. We'll get to some of the casting what ifs with that. But. But he was. This movie was, like, impeccably rehearsed. He spent a ton of time with them. They had a script, they had a screenplay. Some stuff was added after Julie Delpizi was talking about would. Is anyone actually going to like this? This isn't going to be boring to just watch us. And Hawk said. Linklater said, we're not making the movie for them. We don't have to tell any jokes. We have to be interesting. You guys don't even have to act. He wanted to make a power. Make a film about the power of connection. That was all he cared about. And I don't even. My guess is he never probably thought this was even going to be a big movie. I think he wanted it to be a great movie, but I don't think he was thinking, oh, my God, we're going to crush opening weekend. We could take it.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't. I mean, he's not a careerist filmmaker, even though he does make mainstream movies.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, every once in a while, there's a bad News Bears make in there. Why do you do that?

[Bill Simmons]

He dips in there to be in the mainstream sometimes, but I don't ever think of him as, like, trying to get butts in seats or whatever. But this one is particularly unusual because Dazed wasn't a big hit, but it was an instant cult classic, and it was made for a big studio. And this is something smaller. I really liked that quote. I don't know if you saw this. That Martin Shaffer, who was the co founder of Castle Rock. Again, there's. How many Castle Rock movies have we done on this podcast? It's like the best production company. But he was like, this movie was almost the rejection of or opposite of what romantic comedies were at the time. Like, it didn't fall into any of those traps. And so when I read the script, I was just like, I want to do this. Because it isn't like, you know, the Julia Roberts era, Meg Ryan while you were sleeping. Like, all those movies that were so popular at that time, it was not doing those jokes.

[Sean Fennessey]

All those movies, like, so high concept.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes. All the tropey stuff that was in them. And like, I'm just a man standing before a woman and all that. Like, it didn't. It's not about that. It's about something much more down to earth. And also.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, it's also just a while to watch this compared to, like, say Anything, where, like, say Anything has, like, the whole nursing home plot and all these other things going on. And it has like a big.

[Chris Ryan]

Joe kept lying.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, Joe. Joe, why did you. And like, there's like, there's a huge gesture with the boombox. Like, this is devoid of all of that stuff. It's just the talking. It's just this. These two people growing closer.

[Chris Ryan]

I remember being super excited to see it in the theater because it had some Sundance momentum. And I knew about that because that was there when you were reading all the movie stuff. But I also really liked Ethan Hawke. I liked him in Dead Poets. I liked him in Reality Bites, and I liked him in Alive. And I'm like, I'm ready. I'm ready for the next journey with them. And that was kind of all I knew. And the movie, you know, surpassed.

[Sean Fennessey]

Had you seen Killing Zoe or Killing Zoe?

[Chris Ryan]

The.

[Sean Fennessey]

Because Julie Delphi is in that.

[Chris Ryan]

I think I had, but I don't remember having a huge opinion on her.

[Bill Simmons]

She'd been in a lot of really big art house films in Europe. She was in White. She's in a number of movies. But I love that story that Ethan Hawke tells about this movie, which is that when he was in Dead Poets, that Peter Weir encouraged him to write for his character. He was like, write backstory. Write lines for your character. I want to hear what you think this character would say. And he was blown away by that experience. And he was like, wow, I guess this is how every movie is. And then he went on and did White Fang and they were like, sir, please keep your lines to yourself. We don't need this. And so the reason he did this movie, even though he could have been doing much bigger movies, is this. After meeting Linklater, they became fast friends. And he was like, I want you to write this with me. And he was like, that's all I want. I want to be in the creative process of the movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, Linklater, he wrote it with Kim Krazan. They wrote it in 11 days, but they didn't know the ending until the final day of filming, and then they kept tweaking it.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you know who she is, by the way? Kim Krazan.

[Chris Ryan]

Who is it?

[Bill Simmons]

She's the teacher in Dazed and Confused, who, at the end of the day.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, she's awesome.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, she's great. She's in the CR zone of Throw my life away, really.

[Chris Ryan]

The Falco Copland. This movie premiered at Sundance 1995. I'm gonna read the list of movies that premiered that year and see if Sean passes out before sunrise. The Usual suspects. The brothers McMullen, kids from Larry Clark, Safe from Todd Haynes, The Doom Generation, the Addiction, Party Girl, Little Odessa Murals, Wedding and Crumb.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

These were at Sundance?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, same year.

[Bill Simmons]

That's insane. I mean, if you're.

[Chris Ryan]

If you come back from that festival, it's like, what happened to Sean? He died at Sundance.

[Sean Fennessey]

You would have come back and been like, the culture is changing, you know, like, or something.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, this is specifically. I'm sure I've said versions of this on the show before, but, like, this is specifically why I became obsessed with movies, is that this thing was happening in 93, 94, 95, and I was reading all the magazines and being like, how do I get close to. To that? How do I. Because if you see, like, Little Odessa or the Addiction, you're like, I don't know. There. There are movies like this, you know, you never. You could have never imagined. This movie is one of those movies too.

[Chris Ryan]

Party Girl. Our Girl.

[Sean Fennessey]

I saw this, and I was like, I just have to. I obviously have to get a ural pass.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, you got to become an Austrian man.

[Chris Ryan]

$2.5 million budget made 22.5 million. Everyone in this film jokes that it was the lowest grossing film ever to get a sequel. I don't know if that's factually true.

[Bill Simmons]

Sure, there was some junkie trauma movies.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, I think that's the Penitentiary 2 with Leon Eisen. Kennedy happened. So I'm just saying I'm sure there were some sequels. Roger Ebert. Disappointing start to the year for Raj. Three stars Thought for sure it'd be the three and a half.

[Bill Simmons]

A little more muted in his praise.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, he wrote, this sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, which I would call a love affair for Generation X. You're a right, Raj. Except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation, especially outside its boring insistence on being bored.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yo, Raj, are you thinking about maybe.

[Chris Ryan]

Asking shots fired at Gen X?

[Sean Fennessey]

Ask Deep seek if Raj has changed his mind in heaven.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, he did write that Delpie is ravishingly beautiful and more important, warm, as a matter of fact. And he says this is Linklater's third film. He's on to something. He likes the way ordinary time unfolds for people as they cross paths, start talking, share their thoughts and uncertain philosophies. Boom, Raj.

[Bill Simmons]

Roger Ebert was 53 when this movie came out. I think that's notable. Yeah, you know, we've always talked about like, why are 50 something movie critics reviewing Billy Madison? You know, like that's just not. That doesn't make sense. That doesn't like that. That movie's not for them. And you can make the case that this is a movie not for, not for 55 year old men.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, they couldn't get a grasp.

[Sean Fennessey]

On Gen X nicely enough. It is now.

[Bill Simmons]

It is now. It has aged nicely.

[Chris Ryan]

Categories, New category. We have some new ones because we had that mailbag. Thanks to everybody who sent sent ideas. What's the exact perfect age to see this movie?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it would you have freshman. I would actually say summer after freshman year of college. You want to be aware that people do study abroad semesters, slash, go over to Europe to go backpacking or traveling around. But I don't think you want to have done it yet because then you may have like too many takes on like what Jesse did or didn't do. Right. But like, if you just are like going into college or in college, I think that's the perfect time.

[Bill Simmons]

I wrote down 24 because the two characters are 24. I will say I saw it probably when I was 14 or 15. The thing that it does if you're 14 or 15 is it's almost like a playbook. You know, it's like if you encounter a lady on a train, like these are some moves you can make. And when you're 14 or 15, you don't have any moves, you don't know what to do. And so you internalize some of this stuff. So I don't think it's the best time. But I would say it was very helpful to watch in general Ethan Hawke as Troy, as this guy and be like, okay, is this an archetype that can work like full of shit? Tall brown haired guy. Can I do this? So that was nice, but I think being roughly where you were seemed right.

[Chris Ryan]

I wrote down 23.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

I was 25 when I saw it. I think I would have probably enjoyed it slightly more at 23 because you're like even a little bit more idealistic at 23. But you are also. You have some of your fullest moves down at that point too. But it's somewhere in that. I would say early 20s. But I gotta say it was super enjoyable to watch. At my age now, I was like, wow, still, this movie. Still got it. Most rewatchable scene. So this movie starts with a mid-40s couple fighting in a foreign language and it somehow works.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, it's about. I think they're fighting about money.

[Chris Ryan]

No, no, there's actually an answer to this.

[Bill Simmons]

What is it about? Drinking.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh yeah. Who's. Who's got the drinking problem? The husband or the wife?

[Bill Simmons]

Do you want to do the translation?

[Chris Ryan]

I had this. On what stage? The best. The man is reading in his newspaper how 70000 women are addicted to alcohol. And he says, you're one of them. And she volleys back and says, he's the alcoholic. And he says, I have a reason to do it. I'm married to you.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Chris Ryan]

That's what they said. The other language.

[Bill Simmons]

It's perfect. It's perfect in so many ways for this film series.

[Chris Ryan]

But then it leads to. Yeah, for the series. It's a really interesting way to start it, but it leads to. Do you ever hear that when couples get older they lose the ability to hear each other? Which is one of those, like, might be true, might not be true.

[Wesley Morris]

Have you ever heard that as couples get older they lose their ability to hear each other?

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Wesley Morris]

Well, supposedly men lose their ability to higher pitch sounds and women eventually lose hearing in the low end. I guess they sort of nullify each other or something.

[Chris Ryan]

I guess nature's way of allowing couples to grow old together without killing each other. But a good conversation.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you think it's true?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think hearing gets really.

[Chris Ryan]

I just think your hearing gets worse when you get older. I don't know if it has anything to do with who you're with.

[Sean Fennessey]

I now can't hear anything. Like when the water, like water is on.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, Me too. I have the same problem. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

It just so happens that my wife talks while that happens.

[Chris Ryan]

Next scene, Jesse gets Seline to leave the train.

[Sean Fennessey]

All right, all right.

[Chris Ryan]

Think of it like this. Jump ahead 10, 20 years, okay? And you're married. And only your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have. You know, you start to blame your husband. You start. Start to think about all those guys you've met in your life and what might have happened if you picked up with one of them, Right? Well, I'm one of those guys. That's me, you know? So think of this as time travel from then to now to find out what you're missing out on. See, what this really could be is a gigantic favor to both you and your future husband to find out that you're not missing out on anything. I'm just as big as a loser as he is. Totally unmotivated, totally boring. And you made the right choice and you're really happy.

[Wesley Morris]

Let me get my bag.

[Chris Ryan]

Jump ahead 10, 20 years, okay? You're married. Well, your marriage doesn't have that same energy that it used to have. Sound like Closerman. Great, great, great way to get her to come off the train. And then in the. In some of the pieces about the pieces about it, he said they really improv, spitballed all kinds of scenarios for this and couldn't get Delpy in the right spot with. Now I'd actually get off the train for that. And then they came up with this time machine thing. She said he would have to show me that he was really smart. He has to be smart and funny. That's the only way I would get off the train. The time traveler thing. And she's like, okay. That I would get off the train for. And then they were off.

[Sean Fennessey]

Can you imagine if Julie Delpy was like, I don't believe it. Sorry, not buying it.

[Chris Ryan]

You should have thrown to Shakir.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm sensing a new category coming up. The Shakir what if.

[Chris Ryan]

Should you throw to Shakira? Next category. The long one shot bus ride as Jesse does Advanced Metrics on souls.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I gotta admit, Jesse kind of blew my mind with that one.

[Chris Ryan]

It was great.

[Bill Simmons]

We paused the movie last night to discuss this for five minutes.

[Chris Ryan]

What's the experience I've ever heard in a movie? It's like, yeah, he's right. How many souls did we start out with?

[Bill Simmons]

Can we break it down very briefly?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The pivot is all living things have a soul. Every leaf has a soul. And that's how you Explain it. Is that fair?

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, so I used to be a tree in Florida.

[Bill Simmons]

So I kicked that to my wife last night and she was like, yeah, but when the earth started, it was all just bacteria. And I was like, I don't have a response. Like, you just shut me down. Like, you just nailed it scientifically.

[Sean Fennessey]

Check out the big brain.

[Chris Ryan]

They should just turn first take instead of talking about sports. It should just be like. Like Stephen and Mad Dog.

[Bill Simmons]

I would listen to that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Richard Linklater's first take would be amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

The long one shot bus ride and just long one shots like that in general from a rewatchable standpoint. Add so much fun in the movie because I watched it twice leading up to the pod and it's just so much fun to just watch the background and be like, did they cheat this? No, they didn't cheat it. It's all one shot and they basically did it like a play.

[Sean Fennessey]

I love the movie starts where the Graduate ends. It was like them at the back of the bus. I don't think it's the accident.

[Chris Ryan]

The listening booth scene.

[Bill Simmons]

That's my next one as well, which.

[Chris Ryan]

Is my winner for most rewatches.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, interesting. This is. I would not have guessed that if I had.

[Chris Ryan]

That seems great.

[Bill Simmons]

No dialogue.

[Chris Ryan]

No dialogue. And really smart and really well played. Linklater said it was the only time he withheld anything from the two of.

[Sean Fennessey]

Them about what the song was going to sound like.

[Chris Ryan]

They had never heard the song and he says you can really see them listening because they'd never heard that yearning, creaky thing. The singer is Kath Bloom. Hawk said, it's probably my single favorite take of anything I've ever been involved with. And then Dopey said, that was really special. It was like magic. Every time I felt Ethan looking away, I would look at him and vice versa. I almost fell in love with him right there. But then Rick said, cut. That's a whole separate podcast. Hawk Delpie, real life relationship, also talked.

[Bill Simmons]

About this a long time with my wife last night.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, there had to have been one night where they got drunk and things happened.

[Bill Simmons]

I believe my question was over under. How many times have they hooked up? Five and.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, I'd say at least. At least three.

[Chris Ryan]

Did they date? Did they date for like a week?

[Sean Fennessey]

They're very, very circumspect about this whole UMA thing too.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, she doesn't come into the picture, I think, until 96.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, well, I don't wanna.

[Chris Ryan]

There is no way that they didn't get drunk and had it at least a one nighter. That's no way.

[Bill Simmons]

That is the power of this movie is. Is that you absolutely believe. In my heart of hearts, I'm like, they're actually soulmates. Like, no matter what. I've only found those actors.

[Chris Ryan]

There's one other movie. Jackie Brown, Bridget Fonda and De Niro. When he was her standing up from behind, I was like, those two are soulmates.

[Sean Fennessey]

What's your character's name?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God.

[Chris Ryan]

That's Darrow's funniest moment ever in a movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

She's incredible in that.

[Chris Ryan]

She's great. I can't wait to do that movie. It's on the list. I can't wait listing Booth is great. And the fact that it was one take and that was all the first one. I just. I love that. Magical amusement parks. This is more good. Jesse. Theories. Rich parents give their kids too much. Poor parents don't give their kids enough. There's nothing in the middle. He's just whipping it all out at this point.

[Bill Simmons]

All his material.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you know any happy couples? I like being at amusement parks, just in general. In a movie or a TV show, always a win. You get to see good scenery. A lot of people walk around. The homeless poet, my guy.

[Bill Simmons]

So you.

[Chris Ryan]

This poem is great.

[Bill Simmons]

Written by a real poet.

[Chris Ryan]

I went and I actually read it. And it's just sweet cakes and milkshakes. I'm a delusion angel I'm a fantasy parade.

[Sean Fennessey]

Real beat stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

It is really good. Like, little short sentences. Yeah, I love delusion.

[Bill Simmons]

Coffee shop bill.

[Sean Fennessey]

English major bill.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Drop a tear in my wine glass look at those big eyes See what you mean to me it's great stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

Shades of woman.

[Chris Ryan]

Whoa, man.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I love it.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a homeless poet.

[Sean Fennessey]

Thumbs up like, he's like, if this poet doesn't hit, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to afford smoke.

[Bill Simmons]

Give me whatever you think is appropriate, too. You know, not putting a price tag on it.

[Chris Ryan]

Love that era. Next one.

[Bill Simmons]

Wait, you. So you skipped over the palm reading?

[Sean Fennessey]

No, he skipped over the kiss.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, you said amusement park, which could include the Ferris wheel. Yes, but are you including the Ferris wheel?

[Chris Ryan]

Okay, so you'd put fortune teller in there.

[Bill Simmons]

I love that scene.

[Sean Fennessey]

Stardust.

[Chris Ryan]

I like the actress.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, the fortune teller. I've got her on a list here.

[Chris Ryan]

I should have put that in here. Great question that is asked. Would you rather find love or excel at one thing? That whole scene, you know, I believe.

[Wesley Morris]

If there's any kind of God, it Wouldn't be in any of us. Not you or me, but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know it's almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt.

[Bill Simmons]

Right? And your answer to that question was you. It's one great thing. And it's crushing tape. That's what you do. That's right. You chose that over love.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's breaking down Spags's defense.

[Chris Ryan]

Three blitzers overloaded on one side. He's got to see that. The fake phone calls.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah, I like that.

[Sean Fennessey]

Imagine telling Celine, I want a best day with you. I want to do this. But in about 20 years they're going to invent something called All 22. And it's going to take over my life. So I'm actually sparing you from later.

[Bill Simmons]

The reverse time traveler. I've seen the future and it's all 22.

[Chris Ryan]

They went empty. Backfield, five wide.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm sorry, Celine, but I'm a ball knower. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Spags is blitzing. He's five wide out. Something's got a break.

[Bill Simmons]

This is incoherent to like 30% of the audience.

[Chris Ryan]

The fake phone call should not have worked. But I really enjoyed the scene.

[Bill Simmons]

It's really cute.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's.

[Chris Ryan]

It's really funny. It's a. It's a really good gimmick. It's one of those things like if you're an aspiring screenwriter director.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's a Delta thing, though.

[Bill Simmons]

She sells it. She is so charming.

[Sean Fennessey]

She's like, she brought it. She was like, I used to do this with my friends.

[Chris Ryan]

I like her American accent too, where.

[Bill Simmons]

She'S like, dude, she's so good.

[Chris Ryan]

Jesse gets the bartender. Give him a bottle of wine. Is great.

[Sean Fennessey]

Got a lot of questions about that.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. More wisdom from Celine in another scene when she talks about love.

[Wesley Morris]

When you talked earlier about after a few years how a couple would begin to hate each other by anticipating their reactions or getting tired of their mannerisms. I think it would be the opposite for me. I think I can really fall in love when I know everything about someone. The way he's going to port his hair, which shirt he's going to wear that day, knowing the exact story tell in a given situation. I'm sure that's when I know I'm really in love.

[Chris Ryan]

Idealistic. Great. I mailed that to my wife and I said, this is how I feel when I know you're about to lose your keys. And she didn't think it was funny.

[Sean Fennessey]

Does your wife like this movie?

[Chris Ryan]

Loves it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Like an all timer. It might have been one of the first ones that we owned on dvd, but she bought anyway on streaming. It was one of those. It was like a double. One of the first double purchases.

[Bill Simmons]

We got to get her that Criterion Collection box set.

[Chris Ryan]

We have it.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

We have that now, too. Great, great. Criterion.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, look at him getting really one of the media.

[Bill Simmons]

This is where I was going. This is. I mean, this is one of the.

[Sean Fennessey]

Best things happen when he. When he's. He's like, now I must destroy Sean and get.

[Bill Simmons]

I welcome it three times.

[Chris Ryan]

No, because I'm only buying stuff. Like I go on Amazon and when they have the. I have a certain price limit because I'm trying to not go crazy like Sean. But like, it's like total recalls. 57 off today. I'm like, fine, $11.

[Bill Simmons]

This is how it starts.

[Chris Ryan]

4K.

[Bill Simmons]

I told you this is how it starts.

[Chris Ryan]

Fine.

[Bill Simmons]

It's. You start looking at deals and then all of a sudden you're like, ah, 39.99. 49.99.

[Chris Ryan]

I was looking.

[Bill Simmons]

40 bucks for the. For the bond. For the bonds. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

All five.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Whoa.

[Bill Simmons]

That's how it starts, man. I love it. I support you 100%.

[Chris Ryan]

Thank you. I knew I'd have your support. Last scene is the ending, which I think is just brilliant and would be my other thing for most.

[Sean Fennessey]

What do you consider part of the ending? Do you go sex scene, statue, train?

[Chris Ryan]

No, I'm saying.

[Sean Fennessey]

Or just the train, though.

[Chris Ryan]

The goodbye first when he's. She's lying on his lap.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

They drop the stuff off. But I think that the most genius part of this movie is when he shows all the places they were.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Love that. Which is obviously stolen from John Carpenter and Halloween. And I know that was a big influence on the movie. Yeah. But I thought it worked really well. You know, Myers. Myers was there. And then you're standing next to that hedge link later is like, this could work for romance, too.

[Sean Fennessey]

You just saw Celine get on the tree.

[Chris Ryan]

And then Michael Myers, he's just right next to him. Bring it all back. Yeah, But I love that because I guess the point is, like, you know, they. They gave all these places life. They're not there anymore, but it's still fucking cool. And hey, here's this memory that was in this spot. In this spot.

[Bill Simmons]

For the record, I think it's Michelangelo Antonioni's Le Cliche where they do that trick before Halloween, Before Carpenter.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Just for the record. Damn it.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you got?

[Sean Fennessey]

Movies before Halloween.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I thought that was the first movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is the reverse of that. It's the, it's the first train sequence. It's them on the train getting to know each other. Because I just find it mesmerizing and so naturalistic.

[Chris Ryan]

CR was a big cafe card guy too.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Oh, like I Ivy brought back to me that I just functioned off of like coffee and cigarettes for C. I.

[Chris Ryan]

Was in the smoking car hoping for Julie Delpy.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, who wasn't.

[Chris Ryan]

What's your must rewatch?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, there was one small one that you skipped over that is sort of the end. But I really love the cut away to not showing whether they have sex or not. And then they wander and they see a guy playing a harpsichord.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And they see him in the window. And then they do the Let me take a picture of you. Which I think is like a mesmerizing moment.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. That. You're right.

[Bill Simmons]

That's. I love that scene a lot. My pick would be, would probably be the listening booth too. I love that one a lot.

[Chris Ryan]

What stage? The best movie set on trains. I love a good train scene in a movie. Obviously I was riding a train back and forth as a parent, as a child of divorce. I have a bunch of them. Sierra give me a couple. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Just Jesse as a takesman. Just Jesse having like lots of, like, I have like a bunch of bits.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Here's, here's like I have five of them.

[Bill Simmons]

This is, this is how I'm Jesse going Club Shay.

[Chris Ryan]

And that was like me on my pod last night doing my Emmett Smith. I was like, I'm gonna do my Emmett Smith bit.

[Sean Fennessey]

I, I, I stepped on this. But it was Jesse's story being the story that boyhood becomes.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

And the way that like his character kind of gets woven throughout Linklater's filmography are two, two of my favorite things. I've aged best.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, the Euro. Have you been on the Euro? It's, it's incredible. It's just an amazing experience. I recommend everyone try to do it, even if you don't do it when you're 22 and idealistic. It's just such a fun way to travel. I think specifically that letting your actors casting actors who can write and letting them write with you is such a cool idea. And it's, you know, Mike Lee does this in his movies too. This is like a hack for sophisticated filmmakers. Apatow does it a lot of really good directors do this. And it's all about making the movie as good as it can be because the actors need to be fully on board with what you're. The story you're trying to tell.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's a little bit different when you're doing a good drama versus doing an Apatow movie, because Apatow, it seems like they're. They're really working, like, bits and they have like, let's riff on this or riff on that. And this is like, they have, like, character arcs that they really have to track in this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, totally. Yeah. It seems like they worked really hard on it. And, like, the overlapping dialogue, it was kind of rehearsed to a T, like you said. Also just the really realistic, like, Vienna in the summer I had that would.

[Chris Ryan]

Stage the best Vienna.

[Bill Simmons]

Just amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

Seems great.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Vienna just gets wins left and right. Never been.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I went there on an Easter weekend once. It was shut down, so it was a lot like this, but it was very cold.

[Bill Simmons]

Interesting. Also, French girls, I think that's aged well. You know, just a beautiful blonde French girl on the train. That's like. That's like an archetype.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

That 200 happen in real life.

[Chris Ryan]

I had movies that eventually have sequels where the characters age with the sequels. It just. I don't feel like that recipe is lost yet. It's really hard to pull off.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, we got Dr. Loomis. That's one. Who else.

[Chris Ryan]

Who else is on that town too, when that happens?

[Bill Simmons]

Doug McCray, Jim Shine. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I. For what takes the best. The anonymous cemetery. I thought was cool because I just didn't know that story. I always thought that was a neat idea for a cemetery. So the film starts June 16, 1994, and ends June 17, 1994, which was also. We did a 30, 30 about that day. That was the O.J. car chase. The first day of the first U.S. world Cup. Knicks, Rockets, Game 5, Rangers, Stanley Cup Parade, Arnold Palmer's last U.S. open round, and Jesse said goodbye to Celine. All happened on June 1794.

[Sean Fennessey]

Jesse J. Instead of going to the bar with Celine, Jesse's like, I really think maybe if I get to the airport, they're showing Nick's Rock.

[Chris Ryan]

Or. Or it's like the car chases.

[Sean Fennessey]

At any point during the course of this day, someone had come up to them and been like, you guys are not going to believe what's happening with OJ Right now. Do you think that would have liked.

[Bill Simmons]

Is Jesse from Texas?

[Sean Fennessey]

I.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, oh, that's. I had that for probably Unanswerable. Where's Jesse from?

[Bill Simmons]

I. I can't remember if they answered it.

[Sean Fennessey]

I was guessing, like, Ohio, but.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, no, he said. Does he say Ohio?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think he. Or maybe he goes to college.

[Chris Ryan]

He feels like he's like a Sacramento, like a Northern California somewhere.

[Bill Simmons]

I can't remember. I thought maybe. I thought he's.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think he ever.

[Bill Simmons]

He's from like Shaker Heights or something. Okay. Well, the other thing is that it's June 16th, I. I believe. Because that's the day that James Joyce. James Joyce's Ulysses said.

[Chris Ryan]

But just a couple quotes. For what stage the best if none of your friends or family know you're dead? It's not like really being dead. People can invent the best or worse for you. That made me think that was deep. You know what the worst thing about somebody breaking up with you? It's when you remember how little you thought about the people you broke up with and you realize that's how little they're thinking of you. That's one of the best quotes of any movie. Like this.

[Bill Simmons]

That's what I'm talking about. With the wisdom of Link later. Like, that line is insane. It's. Every person who hears that line can understand exactly where it's coming from.

[Chris Ryan]

If there's any magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone.

[Bill Simmons]

So I keep potting with you guys.

[Chris Ryan]

Great shot, Gorder. Award for most cinematic shot. What do you got, Sierra?

[Sean Fennessey]

I have Celine with her head in Jesse's lap in front of the Archduke Albrecht statue.

[Chris Ryan]

I had the wide shot of Jesse sitting on the railing talking to her with that, like, beautiful building behind them I thought was really cool. I think the ending's really good too.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. And the going down the cobblestone streets when there's a big dip and they've all been wedded, Michael man style. Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Kid Kitty. Pursuit of Happiness Award for best needle Drop. Clearly the Kath Bloom song box.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sonata number one coming in at the end. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

There's a couple of classical pieces.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like, I said that like. I just know all the sonatas.

[Bill Simmons]

I believe it.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm a ball knower when it comes to sonatas.

[Chris Ryan]

We have a new award. You guys don't know about. This one. The Sean Fantasy Award. Oh, you finally got an award named after I'm touched. The Sean Fantasy Award for stealth homage. That gives every movie nerd a criteria. Orgasm. I came up with that word.

[Bill Simmons]

There are several in this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I. I thought for you it would be the Ferris wheel that they ride in Vienna is the same one used.

[Bill Simmons]

In the Third man, my favorite movie of all time. There are several homages to the Third Man.

[Chris Ryan]

The listening Booth you mentioned earlier has My Darling Clementine.

[Sean Fennessey]

Isn't that also. It kind of echoes into the future with Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise goes into the Listening.

[Bill Simmons]

Same thing. Yeah. Except he's not looking at anyone.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, it's Fallout.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

It's the one before that, I think. Yeah. Or maybe even the one before that.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's the first one with Sean Harris.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. That's not. It's the one before Fallout, whatever that's called.

[Sean Fennessey]

Anyway, sorry.

[Chris Ryan]

The fantasy word.

[Bill Simmons]

I, I, I'm.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you like Criteria Orgasm or Criterion Gasm?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think I like Criteria Orgasm.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Criteria Orgasm.

[Chris Ryan]

Criteria Orgasm. Stealth homage.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm touched.

[Chris Ryan]

Movie nerds.

[Bill Simmons]

If what I want people to think when I'm talking about movies is that this is sexual climax. So I really feel honored.

[Chris Ryan]

New category from the mailbag. The Chess, Rockwell and Brock Landers Award for best character name.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's got to be Celine, right?

[Bill Simmons]

Gotta be Celine.

[Chris Ryan]

Easy. All right, we're gonna take a break and come back with yet another new category. All right, coming back. So we added this category after the mailbag because we took out some categories, but we also didn't want to remove them completely. So what we're adding is a Flex category for the. For the other hosts that aren't me. Cr you can flex any category that didn't make the blueprint cut and roll with them.

[Sean Fennessey]

Is this the place where I could talk about smoking?

[Chris Ryan]

It sure is. Which one do you want to give out?

[Sean Fennessey]

I think we need to give out the Jesse and Before Sunrise Award for the character that absolutely should have smoked but didn't.

[Chris Ryan]

This also could be the Chris Ryan Award for. Would this movie be better if the main character smoked?

[Bill Simmons]

I. In my memory, I thought he was a smoker.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, because in reality, he chain smokes. Why? Okay, so I'm so glad you're talking about this kid in 1995 in Europe, where people smoke everywhere all of the time with a French girl who is probably still smoking as of, like, December of last year. And there's not a cigarette between the two of them. And they're watching this poet who's just like, all I do is smoke. Everybody, like, but these Two people in 1995 don't smoke cigarettes.

[Chris Ryan]

This is not only a nitpick, not only a probably an answerable question, but it's also the Chris Ryan Award. I don't understand the choice Other than maybe Ethan Hawke felt like he smoked so much in Reality Bites, he's like, I don't want to be typecast as the guy who's just sucking, but he.

[Sean Fennessey]

Probably smoked back then.

[Bill Simmons]

That's a good thing.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's not like he's like, I don't want to have to, like, take like all these fake cigarettes.

[Chris Ryan]

It's. It's. The only thing that bothers me about this movie is I have no idea why they're not having sex.

[Bill Simmons]

It's. It's inexplicable.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like, why aren't you guys smoking? Especially in this era. 94, 95. Like, they're definitely one of the two is smoking, but probably both.

[Bill Simmons]

Could you make the case, though, that it's a reverse. What's aged the best? The fact that they chose not to smoke and there is no smoking in movies. And now it feels more like a modern movie because no one is smoking.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Also, Ethan Hawke, great smoker. You're just like, wasting a talent.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm just guessing Delphi wasn't a bad smoker either.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. French girl. Yeah, Good one. The Butch's Girlfriend award for weak link of the film. What do you have? Do you have a weak link of the film? It's okay not to have one.

[Bill Simmons]

Not like there's no actor in the movie. I have. I mean, I. For the Flex Choice 2, you could make the case as the weak link, but it's a. It's a bigger discussion.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you have one?

[Sean Fennessey]

I don't have a weak link for this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I have one. And you guys aren't going to be happy. And I might not, not even be right. But I didn't want to just toss away the category. I was thinking about the closing credit song and I went back and I looked through all the 1995 songs that I have on every playlist, trying to figure out if there was a better song that would have made it feel more 1995 ish.

[Sean Fennessey]

Jeremy.

[Chris Ryan]

I have two runner up choices and then the choice that I actually think would have. Have. Could have worked okay, but just would have been more 1995ish. Blue by the Jayhawks. I don't think it totally works.

[Bill Simmons]

Incredible.

[Chris Ryan]

Really good song.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's 1995. Good riddance by Green Day. Probably too corny.

[Sean Fennessey]

Probably.

[Bill Simmons]

Is that a 95 song?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, it sure is.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow. I wouldn't have guessed that early, but.

[Chris Ryan]

Brad is Yellow by the innocent Ms. Innocence mission. That's the one I landed on.

[Bill Simmons]

I like.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think that would have worked, but I think that the choice of music in this movie is to make it timeless. You know, this cast, it's fine.

[Chris Ryan]

That's why I forced it. I'm not sure I'm right. What stage? The worst? I don't have anything other than there was some screenwriting credit. Stuff that emerged in the mid 2010s with Delpie where she basically said, we got hosed on our screenwriting credit and link later and Krizan were on the defense and it became a story that a lot of people wrote about. Then there was some pay stuff.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, there was a page to make.

[Chris Ryan]

As much, but Ethan Hawke was a famous actor at that point and she wasn't. And that's just how she. I don't know. None of that stuff bothered me that much, but I just wanted to flag it. Other than that, I don't have any. What is your worst?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it's an interesting movie to put in front of younger people. I was talking to Jack Sanders before, earlier today about this movie, and he said it's one of his favorites of all time and it's a big movie personally for him, and that's interesting.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think he's a romantic because he's a Mets fan?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know if that has hardened my soul. So I can't imagine. Although he is a way more optimistic Mets fan than I am. But I think it's interesting because it is a movie that forget about, like, whether or not you would have ever met Selene, even just the way that they go about their day would be radically different today. Yeah, you'd have. You'd have Google Maps up and Yelp up and you'd have food guides and tourism guides. And even if you were. Even if you still had the spirit of wandering, the absence of technology in the movie and even just asking strangers for help is something that I feel like people don't really do anymore, like when they run into the two theater guys. So I don't know if it. It's not that it aged the worst per se, that there are no cell phones or anything, but it has aged the movie in a unique way because it's right on the precipice of cell phones.

[Sean Fennessey]

You almost watch it now and it's more fantastical than it was in 1995 to see it because now you're watching it and. Almost like a fairy tale.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Sean Fennessey]

And there's so many things that they do where you're just like. Where he's just like, let's just get off this train. And I would be like so neurotic about like, where are we? Like, is this the right place to get. Are we going to be in the wrong place?

[Bill Simmons]

Right. It's closer to 1500 than 2000.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, right?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I watched it with my daughter and her boyfriend Tommy last week because I was in Boston and Tommy's a romantic, so of course he liked it. Tommy, my daughter was on tick tock half the time and thought there was too much talking. Tough beat.

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow. Tough beat for Tommy.

[Chris Ryan]

Tough feet for me. I was like. She was like, I told you I wasn't really in the mood for a movie. She said it was one of those, I'll watch it again when I'm more in the mood. I'm like, you're.

[Bill Simmons]

I got. Tommy is on an unbreak broken streak right now.

[Chris Ryan]

Tommy's doing great.

[Bill Simmons]

Amazing stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

Then that same night we made of a five leg parlay. And the Nuggets Knicks games.

[Sean Fennessey]

You and Tommy that we hit.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Because he's 21 now. We can both bet on fandom. Shout out to fanduel. And we hit it. Plus 125.

[Sean Fennessey]

Indoctrinated him young.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Let's go.

[Bill Simmons]

All I can see is you. You are Jimmy Conway and he's coming up the stairs. It's like you popped your cherry.

[Chris Ryan]

The Ruffalo hand of Rubenik Partridge. Overacting word again. Nothing. I don't have anything for this. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, you. You could maybe say that the street poets put a little extra Austrian mustard maybe.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Ernie Mangold, the palm readers putting a little extra on his way.

[Chris Ryan]

You kind of need those, like these distinct characters. All right, time for Sean's flex category. What do you have?

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, so we already sort of mentioned with the criteria orgasm, that the recent rod at the Pradder amusement park.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Is the den of thieves Benihana award. I think it's got to be seen stealing location. But the George Ellerby two weeks with pay award, which I absolutely love. This is the character who definitely should have been fired. The fucking bartender who gives away a bottle of wine at a bar because one guy tells basically a lie.

[Chris Ryan]

I'll send you money and says, give me the address.

[Bill Simmons]

And then never even gives him the address.

[Sean Fennessey]

We have to go straight to the bartender in this table. This.

[Bill Simmons]

This. This is a shocking act.

[Chris Ryan]

I had that in picking nits. He never gets the address.

[Bill Simmons]

Never gets the address.

[Chris Ryan]

The bartender's info, nothing. The guy's just like. Yeah. And then he's like happily watching them.

[Bill Simmons]

Million questions what kind of red was this that he gave him?

[Chris Ryan]

Probably, like, he probably gave him the cheapest house.

[Bill Simmons]

How do you get that bottle open?

[Sean Fennessey]

That's a good question.

[Chris Ryan]

Had to have been a twist off. Otherwise it didn't work.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, got to be less than $10 bottle.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, that's true.

[Bill Simmons]

She's putting glasses in her back. I love this scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Also, honestly, like, still, we're in the AIDS era. Like, I'm not psyched about grabbing glasses off the table. You didn't know any better in 1994? No. You weren't like, oh, cool, let me drink this random person's glass.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Europe, you know, it's all different.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, that's true.

[Chris Ryan]

The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest takeaway. I actually have one.

[Sean Fennessey]

Did Jesse invent live streaming on the back of that train or the back of that bus in Vienna when he's just like, I think we should have a public access show that's just 24. 7 people all over the world. Like, isn't this basically YouTube?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I had this in probably unanswerable questions. Did Jesse's 365, 24 hour day create Instagram reels and TikTok? So we're aligned. It did feel like he was on something there.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. I mean, that's it. There's elements of this in Slacker where I think, yeah, Linklater's idea is like, you're just going around Austin and these different people are having these different experiences or whatever. But, you know, he's like, if you. You know, why. Why is this thing beautiful, but this thing isn't.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a great take.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't even. This isn't even really a hot take. Maybe it is, but I don't feel like we have enough random movie crossovers. I guess this is a hot take. And I was thinking, if they're walking around Vienna and they just run into Grover from kicking and screaming for five seconds because it didn't work out because he went to Prague, then he went to Vienna, and. And it was just never acknowledged or explained, but he was dressed like Grover, that would have been like, one of the great movie moments of my life. Why don't we have more movie crossovers with. With just.

[Bill Simmons]

I love an extended universe. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I just like when things get weird.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

We have to share in these. In these dumb comic book movies, but not in, like, just indie movies. The indie movie multiverse would have been really.

[Sean Fennessey]

I like that. The Gin. The Gen X.

[Chris Ryan]

The Gen X multiverse.

[Sean Fennessey]

Talk, like, talkative like Multiverse.

[Chris Ryan]

Because they could have run into the redhead from Singles who was just on a trip, whatever her name was. Sheila. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's gonna be on a trip with some old dentist and just like Grant. And she's just in the movie for 90. Campbell Scott.

[Sean Fennessey]

They're studying your Campbell Scott infrastructure.

[Bill Simmons]

There's a. There is, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

He's working on the Euro rail.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I was also thinking of the guys from Barcelona, the Whit Stillman movie, maybe finding their way into this movie because he's going to Madrid. You could have seen those two guys. You could have seen Chris Eigeman coming over. There is a really prominent example of this that I can think of, where a character pops up from another movie in a completely different movie. God damn it. So I'm sure somebody listening to this.

[Chris Ryan]

Knows the best one ever was. I think I've talked about it, when Coolidge from the White Shadow ended up on St. Elsewhere as the janitor.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes, yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And then Salami from the White Shadow was playing a character on the show. Show. And he saw him and he's like, salami. And the guy's like. I don't know who you're talking about, man.

[Bill Simmons]

Were they on the same network, the two shows?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

I think. No, actually, different networks, but same production company.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

You don't have a hottest take. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

I just that I think that this movie is more romantic than Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Titanic. Like, this is. This is. To me, this is the most. Because it doesn't need all of the accoutrement of the setting and the stakes. It doesn't need life and death to make this feel so emotionally impactful.

[Chris Ryan]

Casting what ifs. Apparently Aniston and Paltrow both. Both tried out for the Delta against.

[Sean Fennessey]

Was going to be against Hawk the whole time.

[Chris Ryan]

So this is true. It came down to two women and two men in the end. The two that got the role. Michael Vartan was the other option for Ethan Hawke's part. And Sadie Frost Never really 100%, but.

[Sean Fennessey]

I was like that Bram Stoker's Dracula, right?

[Bill Simmons]

She was, yeah. She's in a few things. Was she married to Jude Law? Dated Jude Law?

[Sean Fennessey]

Was she part of the Sienna Miller thing?

[Chris Ryan]

Michael Vartan's a weird one, though.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I mean, eventually on Alias and Never Be Kissed and a couple of other things, but he's just a little bit more like bland, for lack of a better word, than Ethan Hawke. Ethan Hawke has so much personality.

[Chris Ryan]

Best that guy. Word. Nothing. Because this is movie set in Vienna with weird people. You've never seen Dan Waiters award, though. We have the two guys who invite them to their play. Bring me the holes of Wilmington's cow with the fortune teller. We have the poet and we have the benevolent bartender.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm going poet.

[Chris Ryan]

I have the poet.

[Sean Fennessey]

Great, great poem. And also take it up a notch for the two of them.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm 100 going, Ernie mangle, the palm reader, who is a beloved actress in Austria. She's 98 years old, still alive, and she has more than 100 credits in her career. I don't think any of them are in American productions other than this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Recasting couch director City.

[Sean Fennessey]

I got something here we got to talk about.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you got? The singer in the bar.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, no, I'm recasting the city. And I want to talk about what would happen if this was set in Boston. What happens if Jesse goes up to a Boston bartender at 1:30 in the morning and asks for a free bottle of wine?

[Chris Ryan]

He gets hit over the head with it.

[Sean Fennessey]

You think you're better than me asking for a bottle?

[Chris Ryan]

Crazy.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So that.

[Sean Fennessey]

So the OJ Is on the tv, the white Bronco.

[Chris Ryan]

So it would be. They'd be waiting to get on a train going from Boston to New York, but the Amtrak was shut down.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And it was out for six hours, so they had to walk around Boston Hill.

[Bill Simmons]

French girl and a guy from America.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, it's a really. It's like a really obnoxious girl from.

[Bill Simmons]

Rhode island.

[Chris Ryan]

Who'S sensitive. Better accent.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. So they. They end up in North End for dinner.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, that. That would. That would be a pretty good movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

They could go to like, the, you know, Newberry comics. They could go to the Middle east, you know.

[Chris Ryan]

But then she ends up getting in an argument with somebody at one of the bars they go to, and he punched out. Yeah. Some former college football player. Murph's just wailing on him outside a bar. My choice for the Flex category is one from the Mailbag. A new award. The okay award for the exact moment. Okay. When. The exact moment when the movie goes up a notch. The listening booth. Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Yep.

[Chris Ryan]

Good. Test drive in the new category. You're good. You know what? He's looking at us.

[Bill Simmons]

What's. What's the forheat status? Like where. How far away are we?

[Chris Ryan]

We're circling.

[Bill Simmons]

What kind of scouting has been happening?

[Chris Ryan]

I've just been. It's just on every streaming platform now, and I watch it all the time.

[Sean Fennessey]

I watch it constantly. Started when he introduced okay, Mother, I watched that scene, and then I watched, like, five other scenes, and I was just like, I'm back. I'm in.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you.

[Chris Ryan]

I've hit the point with Heat where now I'm analyzing the most meaningless scenes in the movie. Like when they go for the fake Van Zant drop off, and I'm like, how did they not realize you're watching.

[Sean Fennessey]

Heat on all 22? I am.

[Bill Simmons]

How did he not see his design.

[Chris Ryan]

Right there coming right down there with three shooters?

[Bill Simmons]

I. How responsible do I like to interview you guys about your obsession with Michael Mann? How responsible do you feel for the fleet of young men who are showing up at these repertory screenings of Michael Mann movies? Like, is that happening? Wearing Heat T shirts and, like, black hats? It's like. It's the new version of the seven thing that you were talking about, you know, where it's like, this guy might murder you, but it's the opposite. It's like, this guy might be your best friend who you rob a bank with.

[Chris Ryan]

These people sound great. Where are they?

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, Jack Sanders will tell you. They're. They're. They're all over Los Angeles in the movie theaters. They're showing how. Yeah, they're like, Black Hat is screening tonight. I'll be there. I'll pay $80 for a ticket.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, if we could say we played a small part.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Then that's. That's all you.

[Sean Fennessey]

If there's any God in this world, it's between a bunch of men sharing with each other.

[Chris Ryan]

One thing I was thinking was I think I could do an entire Heat nitpick podcast and not do any of the other categories.

[Sean Fennessey]

I could do that because I've seen.

[Chris Ryan]

It too many times now. I can nitpick literally every scene in the movie. Like the director's commentary. I could just nitpick. And by the way, this is, like, one of my five favorite movies, but there's. I've just seen it too many times. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Can I pitch an idea?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Nitpick, you guys, for The Ringer movies. YouTube channel remake before Sunrise. But it's just you walking around doing a Heat pod.

[Chris Ryan]

I thought. I thought you were going to say, do our version of Michael Mann's Before Sunrise because of how awkward his meeting.

[Bill Simmons]

Dialogue book about medals.

[Sean Fennessey]

Should we walk?

[Chris Ryan]

Interested in me getting off this train?

[Sean Fennessey]

Lady with hockey masks and suits with open shirt collars.

[Chris Ryan]

Michael, man, trying to write the would you like to go to the cafe car with me? Part would have been amazing.

[Sean Fennessey]

I mean, his version of this is like collateral, basically.

[Bill Simmons]

And yet, Jesse reading Klaus Kinski's memoir is some real Macaulay shit.

[Chris Ryan]

Half asset research, some good stuff, so. Oh, yeah, you mentioned those books she's reading. I'm gonna mangle the names. Is it Batil B?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't. I'm not. I'm not an expert.

[Chris Ryan]

Ethan Hawk is reading All I Need is Love by Clouse Kinsky.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. In a hostile somewhere.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Because he looks at. He's like, I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

So this is sad. And I never knew this until I did the research, even though this is a movie I've seen many times. The movie was inspired by a lady named Amy Lerhopt. Linklater met her in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989. And they walked around the city together, conversing deep into the night. And then she died of a motorcycle accident for the release Before Sunrise. But apparently one of the reasons he made the movie was he was hoping she would see it and hunt him down. Because this was the 90s, and if once you lost connection with somebody, that was it. You couldn't find them. But he didn't know she died for a while after that.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it was 2010 when he found out.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And a friend of a friend reached out. Yeah. There's an episode of Fresh Air that features the three of them, Delpy and Hawk and Linklater, and he tells the story. And I remember the day that that episode aired because my wife listened to it and was just a mess and was like, you have to listen to this immediately because it's so heartbreaking.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. So the cemetery they visit, it's called the cemetery of the Nameless and simmering. The people buried have found anonymity and death.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Apparently a famous place first. That's where Before Sunrise. Do you know where it was set? This kind of blew my mind because this is one of the most boring places I've been.

[Bill Simmons]

I believe it was San Antonio.

[Chris Ryan]

San Antonio?

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. Riverwalk, baby.

[Chris Ryan]

It took place in San Antonio. And the guy was a rabid film fanatic who talked all the time about film.

[Sean Fennessey]

Better or worse movie 95. Spurs. When the spurs were.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, that's when Rodman. Kind of submarine. Okay. The spurs in 95. And he took his shoes off during the game.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's right.

[Chris Ryan]

He's torturing David Robinson.

[Bill Simmons]

Tough one.

[Chris Ryan]

That could have been a scene. Rodman. What's up with him? The. Apparently, the last shot of the movie, they had to time it with the train, and they, like, rehearsed it, and it had to be perfect. And if they it up, then they would have had to come back the next day and do it. And they rehearsed it and it worked. And then Kath Bloom got like a little resurgence from the movie. Ended up releasing more albums.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, that's cool.

[Chris Ryan]

Got a little bump. You mentioned James Joyce's Ulysses. Where'd you stand on this book cr during your English major?

[Sean Fennessey]

We're just talking about this. I had. When I went overseas myself for my semester abroad, I took Ulysses at Irish University. So it was probably the ideal circumstances. It's an incredible novel.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a lot of parallels. Both stories are on June 16. Both involve a journey taking place around a single city. Jesse says his real name is James Joyce's first name. Jesse spends a lot of time wandering around the cities of Europe instead of going back home.

[Sean Fennessey]

Kath Bloom, Molly Bloom, they Visit a graveyard.

[Chris Ryan]

June 16th was the day James Joyce met his life partner, Nora Barnacle. Great name. Yeah. Link later.

[Sean Fennessey]

Joyce.

[Bill Simmons]

He's getting weird. He's an artist. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Apex Mountain. Ethan Hawk.

[Sean Fennessey]

I. I think he. You can talk me into Apex and a re Apex. And I think Apex is Reality Bites. And then re Apex is Training Day.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's Training Day, but I. I could be talked into this movie. But the only thing is this movie didn't do that well. And it kind of.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's been in movies since he was.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, it's a slow burn. This had a big cable run, and I think a lot of people loved it, but it took a couple years to really.

[Sean Fennessey]

What are you. What are you thinking?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know. I mean, I think he had a third wave in Boyhood. Well, the. Well, that's. I mean, it's connected, right? Like the. The boyhood, sinister, boyhood period of his career. The other thing that happened is he got really good at doing press. Really good.

[Chris Ryan]

He's one of the best podcast guests.

[Bill Simmons]

He's ever unbelievable storyteller. He's just a great talker. And I think he, like, kind of cemented his place in movie history in some ways with that. That third wave of success. And so, I don't know, it's like this movie wasn't a huge hit. Training Day is a huge hit, but it's a huge hit because of Denzel. And he did a lot in that, you know, that the Blumhouse plus I keep doing Linklater movie stretch. That I think confirmed him in a way. I don't know, maybe that might have been his Apex. I mean, Sinister and the Purge Made a lot of money.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, that's probably the answer. Joey Delpy, I would say before sunset. Euro trains. Sure. Austrian palm readers.

[Sean Fennessey]

Absolutely.

[Bill Simmons]

Definitely. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Littering. Great littering. In this movie they just leave the wine glasses in the bottle just in the parking lot.

[Bill Simmons]

That's true. That's a good point.

[Chris Ryan]

Vienna, probably the Billy Joel song.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. There's also. There's a couple other cultural touchstones there.

[Chris Ryan]

But nothing like Billy Joel.

[Bill Simmons]

I think the Third man, which is also set in Vienna, would be a good one.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, Billy Joel. That song's multi generational.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it's kind of. Kind of the Kath Blooms come here of the late stage Billy Joel.

[Chris Ryan]

People love that.

[Sean Fennessey]

What about. Is this Apex Mountain for first dates? It's the greatest first date in history of this.

[Chris Ryan]

Or Neil and Edie in the finals.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's right. Neil and Edie starting out at a.

[Chris Ryan]

Diner talking about a book about medals and then they end up in some awesome place of the view.

[Sean Fennessey]

And then he takes off in the morning.

[Chris Ryan]

Then he takes off in the morning.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think I'm well suited to be the. The adjudicator. Best first stage this would have been.

[Chris Ryan]

I wish we had thought about this more. We should have research.

[Sean Fennessey]

First stage. Colin Farrell and Gong Lee and Miami Vice. Go to get some mojitos.

[Chris Ryan]

That is the answer.

[Sean Fennessey]

Top that you like.

[Bill Simmons]

I can't.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it's good.

[Bill Simmons]

On.

[Sean Fennessey]

On another hand here is this Apex Mountain for date movies.

[Bill Simmons]

If you're. If your relationship is going well, it's a great movie. If it's not going well, it's a confrontation.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a great point if you see this. But if you saw this movie in 95 and you weren't really getting along with whoever you're dating, you would leave the movie side eyeing them and be like, I don't feel this way.

[Bill Simmons]

You would say, why am I wasting my time when there could be a Jesse or a Celine out there? For me, me.

[Chris Ryan]

That'S like my got to see about a girl story.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. From Goodwill.

[Chris Ryan]

Apex Mountain for Gen X. I. I think it's a year earlier. I think 94 was the peak. 95. We're in the last remnants.

[Sean Fennessey]

Well, this is n. This is.95 is kicking and screaming in this, right?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. But I think 94 is pul. Fresher, cooler.

[Sean Fennessey]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

We got reality bites that year. I think it's 93 or 94. The music was better in 93. 94.

[Bill Simmons]

Are we sure it's not the election of Barack Obama for Gen X?

[Sean Fennessey]

Wow.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, that's interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

Still the only Gen X president we've had. Probably will be the only one listing booths.

[Chris Ryan]

Apex Mountain.

[Bill Simmons]

No, it's clearly Philip Seymour Hoffman and the talented Mr. Ripley vibing out to the jazz music.

[Chris Ryan]

I would go for this. Kath Bloom. Definitely anonymous cemeteries. No question. Okay, cruiser Hanks, let's go.

[Sean Fennessey]

I got Hanks. Oh, really?

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, I think Cruises clearly gotta be.

[Sean Fennessey]

Cruz, you don't think Hanks Cruise doing.

[Chris Ryan]

His motor Mountain cruise would be amazing? Cruz who's trying to do this movie would be necessary.

[Sean Fennessey]

It seems like he's wearing a skin suit. If he's like, think of it like a time machine.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know, like.

[Chris Ryan]

Like sign me up.

[Bill Simmons]

A lot of his parts are like this. A lot of his movies are like this.

[Chris Ryan]

Honestly, he's multiple scenes in Cocktail like this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes. A lot of his ad.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm very surprised that I'm on an island here.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm going this far. This is the movie Cruise should have made. He's missing this from his IMDb young man. IMDb 10 year stretch. I wish he made a movie like this.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, I mean, I guess the closest he gets is Jerry Maguire, right? Great.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Another fast talking, but that's like emotional, romantic, huge movie.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like let's spend 24 hours with Cruz trying to win a girl over. He never did it. He tried to do it once with that Meryl Streep movie and it was a disaster. Some Frank.

[Bill Simmons]

Is that the one now?

[Chris Ryan]

That was Pacino.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

What was the one? It was called Falling in Love, I think.

[Bill Simmons]

Stanley and Iris. Is that what you're thinking of?

[Chris Ryan]

No. De Niro did a movie called Falling.

[Sean Fennessey]

In Love about two people getting sick or something or.

[Chris Ryan]

No, that was a different one.

[Sean Fennessey]

Falling in Love.

[Bill Simmons]

I haven't seen that.

[Chris Ryan]

It was De Niro and Meryl Streep and it was positioned as these two huge actors are finally together and it just was like they had no chemistry. And that's why you didn't remember it.

[Bill Simmons]

Stanley and Iris is De Niro and Jane Fonda.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I. So we trumped CR Cruise wins 2 to 1.

[Sean Fennessey]

You guys dunked on me.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's. I got you on the Cruise side for once. That's great.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, you guys are usually on the opposite, aren't you?

[Chris Ryan]

Young Hanks.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we're in it. We're in a dust war till we die about who's superior.

[Chris Ryan]

I love Cruz the most. Talking about I could have defended Cocktail multiple times in my life.

[Sean Fennessey]

Someone just had a criteria. Orgasm.

[Chris Ryan]

Talking about I love Cruz.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay. Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

But I think if. If you're gonna say 1984 range, Tom Hanks in this movie, I think he would have been really good. I just. Personally, I think Cruz would have been hilarious. And Vienna, just like, they would have had to work in some scene where he did something athletic like he played hacky sack with somebody.

[Bill Simmons]

I think that Jesse's neuroses are a critical part of this. And I don't think of Tom Hanks as a particularly neurotic actor.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a good point.

[Bill Simmons]

Whereas Tom Cruise, despite matinee idol good looks and the fame and success, there's something kind of nervy and weird about him.

[Chris Ryan]

Cocktail. Cocktail.

[Sean Fennessey]

Tom Cruise, I think he'd be trying to do the magnetic smile thing the whole time. Like, you imagine Cruz being like.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, he'd be like, that is true.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know why he would have needed a ditch for Cruz. No.

[Chris Ryan]

He would have needed a bad hairdo to try to make it seem less realistic.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I think he could pull someone off.

[Bill Simmons]

I think one of the reasons why it shouldn't be Hanks is because this movie is kind of a rejection of Tom Hanks. Movies like this.

[Sean Fennessey]

Like Sleepless.

[Bill Simmons]

Like Sleepless in Seattle. Like, you know.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Soon to be. When you've got mail.

[Chris Ryan]

New category. New. Scorsese or Spielberg?

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm gonna go Scorsese.

[Bill Simmons]

Test drive Scorsese.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Because he showed that he can do one long night with after hours.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He. Is he a romantic? Is Scorsese a romantic? Is an interesting question.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think he's spiritual. There's some spiritualism in this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

That's true. And there is the history of the soul. I would say Spielberg. There's the sentimentality.

[Chris Ryan]

So is the question who made more sense or which version? Maybe this category is which movie would you rather have wanted to see, Scorsese or Spielberg? Because I think I'd rather see Scorsese's Before Sunrise over Spielberg's. I know what I'm gonna get with Spielberg.

[Sean Fennessey]

I know that they'd be smoking in that version.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. But then the poet would have gotten shot and fallen into the river.

[Chris Ryan]

That sounds amazing. There would have been a robbery.

[Bill Simmons]

I. This is the tough category for genuinely great films made by serious artists because you're like, well, this is one of the quintessential Linklater movies. Maybe the quintessential Linklater movie. So it's a little hard to be like. It's a lot easier when it's like.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, maybe this category doesn't work.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know, directed by Steven Spielberg.

[Chris Ryan]

This category works. Another new one. What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played?

[Sean Fennessey]

The poet.

[Chris Ryan]

I had the poet.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, I like that.

[Chris Ryan]

But I. I will say I did test drive in my head, him as Jesse in the mid-90s. Whether that could have worked.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think Everybody in their mid-90s was like, I'm Jesse. But we probably all looked like Philip Seymour Hoffman.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

You know what I mean?

[Chris Ryan]

Like, but the poet, he would have been. I think that's the answer.

[Sean Fennessey]

Ye.

[Bill Simmons]

That's good.

[Sean Fennessey]

Or the actor. The cow actor.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that would have been good, too.

[Chris Ryan]

The Ed Norton reverse dunk award for. Did this movie need a random sports scene?

[Bill Simmons]

We've already come up with, like, five. I think racing to the TV to see Houston Knicks would have been a great one.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And then stumbling upon the Bronco.

[Chris Ryan]

Can we talk about a possible hacky sack scene where they're in a park.

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Height of hacky sack.

[Sean Fennessey]

Where Jesse gets distracted by the chat.

[Chris Ryan]

Jesse's like, I used to be really good at this. And then he does some hacky sack.

[Bill Simmons]

You play hacky sack.

[Chris Ryan]

I never liked it. I never liked anyone who did it.

[Sean Fennessey]

I wonder if there's an extended cut or a deleted scene where, like, Jesse sees a bunch of Austrian guys playing soccer in. In the park, and he's just like, this is why football will never catch on in America. You know, here's my thing that would work.

[Chris Ryan]

This next category is blind called Rosillo. He might not answer.

[Bill Simmons]

He's not going to pick up, right?

[Chris Ryan]

We'll see. It depends if he's doing stuff. So this new category, we're just going to call Rossello and see if he's seen the movie and put him on speaker. Can you hear that?

[Sean Fennessey]

Welcome to Verizon.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, for one man.

[Bill Simmons]

Are you sure he doesn't have you? Straight to voicemail.

[Chris Ryan]

No. I talked to him yesterday.

[Sean Fennessey]

He's probably like on hour two with Bruce Feldman.

[Chris Ryan]

He's right in now he's in Vienna.

[Bill Simmons]

He's on a train reading class memoir.

[Chris Ryan]

Picking it. Jesse wearing a leather jacket in Vienna in mid June. Yeah, I was got to be, like, 90.

[Sean Fennessey]

Say an unanswerable question is, what are we doing with body odor? There's no shower right after the training.

[Chris Ryan]

It's Ethan Hawke.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. They've been drinking coffee. Not smoking, I guess, but walking around.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, this. This raises an interesting question. In the 90s, you were significantly there. You were less there, but still there. Were we just a little bit more comfortable with the Human musk. Were we less moisturized? I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

I thought it was a big deodorant frenzy in there.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, man. That was like. You get all sorts of different flavors, right?

[Bill Simmons]

Because, like, think about what a man in, like, 1957 smelled like the other day.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah, but everybody smelled that way.

[Bill Simmons]

That's. That's my point. That's my point is that. Would it have been okay if he was just, you know, riding the year? I mean, she was French hostile sleeping, and she.

[Chris Ryan]

French are used to that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. There's a. There's a. There's an odor thing. That might have been a non issue.

[Chris Ryan]

He never gets the bartender's address, which we covered. I have one more big nitpick, but do you guys have any?

[Sean Fennessey]

Just that these guys suck at pinball.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God. Ethan Hawke is so bad.

[Sean Fennessey]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

They're just like, he's never played that earlier.

[Sean Fennessey]

Really funny. If he was just like, can you shut the up? I'm trying to play.

[Bill Simmons]

He's. When he's explaining what love is, he is atrocious.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, we had a. Didn't we have, like a Tom Cruise sports award?

[Sean Fennessey]

I get the point.

[Chris Ryan]

Ethan Hawk not being able to play pinball.

[Sean Fennessey]

They're distracted by each other and they're just kind of like, what can we do here?

[Bill Simmons]

But. Well, Hollywood stole Ethan's youth, so he never really got to play with childish things.

[Chris Ryan]

So the Playboy Playmate of The month in July 78 wasn't crystal.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It was Karen Morton who has the distinction of being the Playmate with the smallest breasts ever out of the Playmate. She was the 32B. I did a deep dive on her.

[Bill Simmons]

I'll bet you.

[Chris Ryan]

She played the bestal virgin in the comedy feature History of The World Part 1. She played Jenny in the music video for 86-753-09 Jenny by Tommy Two Tone. Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Chris Ryan]

That's who.

[Bill Simmons]

The actual legacy is profound.

[Chris Ryan]

This is.

[Bill Simmons]

This is.

[Chris Ryan]

This is why this is the best podcast out there. Because I just gave you a July 1978 Playmate deep dive, but you didn't.

[Sean Fennessey]

Find out, like, why. Why they screwed it up. Yeah. Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

I think they screwed it up because they didn't know the Internet was coming. Or podcasts.

[Sean Fennessey]

Sure.

[Chris Ryan]

And that we would be, like, deciphering who actually was the playmate.

[Bill Simmons]

Right now. You've got many men at home furiously googling this person's name.

[Chris Ryan]

Karen Morton, sequel prequel, Prestige to be All Black Cast or Untouchable Two sequels. So we know how that turned out. All right, tweet category. Buckle up. Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson, Nell Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harley Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs, or Wilford Brimley in the Firm?

[Sean Fennessey]

Because we've tweaked the category, I do have a request that you do Long Legs. Reading the Reading the fortunes. Reading the Palm Reader.

[Chris Ryan]

Jesse, you seem to be moving around.

[Sean Fennessey]

A lot, but if they're an adventurer. If Wilford Brimley from the Firm was talking about Jesse's trip to Spain, here's our Jesse, who has saved up all his money from working as a barista in a college town. And he goes all the way to Spain to reunite with his long distance girlfriend. What does he find instead? He finds heartache in the form of a fabulous matador named Gonzalo.

[Chris Ryan]

I asked him. There's a Tony Romo case, too. Yeah, for the Ferris wheel. She's begging to be clean. Just wants one kiss. Jim, he's just got to do it right now. Jim.

[Sean Fennessey]

Jesse's got to do it. Jim.

[Bill Simmons]

I, I, I don't know if I could actually do this, but Daniel Plainview as the poet reading the poem.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, no.

[Bill Simmons]

It's really hard.

[Sean Fennessey]

Give him the poem. He's got to see the poem.

[Chris Ryan]

Look up the poem.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm looking at it. I mean, you know, it's.

[Sean Fennessey]

Come on.

[Chris Ryan]

Skipping. We're all friends here.

[Bill Simmons]

It's daydream delusion, Limousine eyelash. Oh, baby, with your pretty face Drop a tear in my wine glass look at those big eyes See what you mean to me Sweet cakes, milkshakes, Milk, milkshakes I am a delicious.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. Sweet cakes and milkshakes.

[Bill Simmons]

I drink your milkshake. Okay, that's all I got. Good job. Thanks.

[Chris Ryan]

Should we add Tom Brady to this?

[Sean Fennessey]

What is Tom Brady's signature? Aside from saying KB Tom Brady would.

[Chris Ryan]

Be like, that date went great.

[Sean Fennessey]

Jesse was so poised.

[Bill Simmons]

Seems to be a real connection here.

[Chris Ryan]

KB I feel like they're gonna, then they're gonna maybe connect down the road.

[Bill Simmons]

KB that's why it's really important to have a strong offensive line.

[Chris Ryan]

KB Right there. He was able to get her off the train. KB and that was huge. That was huge. For what's gonna happen for love in this world.

[Sean Fennessey]

KB and he man, found it.

[Chris Ryan]

Just one Oscar. Who gets it? Probably link later. Right?

[Sean Fennessey]

For script or for direction?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, if it's script, then they share it.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And along with Kim Cruzon, which I.

[Sean Fennessey]

Think would be Pretty cool.

[Bill Simmons]

These. The. The next two movies were both nominated for best screenplay.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Probably an answerable question. See, I already covered the Jesse's 24 hour idea. And then for this movie only, the question was, did they have sex? We find out the answer in a later movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

I got another unanswerable, though.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

How many people threw emotional Hail Marys on first dates because of this movie? Like, how many guys out there do you think, like, did insane bits or were like, we're in a time machine or we're stardust, or tried to come up with something, like, really overly romantic and some girl was like, it's okay. Like, besides this fucking guy, we're not in Vienna. We're in Syracuse. We're fucking.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

Bennegans.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you ever try.

[Chris Ryan]

Sophomore is a Denison.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You never tried to pull any of this material out for your own purposes?

[Sean Fennessey]

Oh, I did.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know. You did? Oh, yeah.

[Sean Fennessey]

I feel like I made, like, grand gestures when I was younger.

[Bill Simmons]

Like this, like, like, like, I'll meet you back here in six months.

[Sean Fennessey]

No, but like, that kind of like just kind of going for brokeness of it was just like a little bit more common, I think.

[Chris Ryan]

So this isn't a nitpick, and it might be an unanswerable, but it's something. It's the one thing I felt like wasn't authentic about his character. But it's based on what happens in the next movie where he writes a book, which tells me that if he wrote a whole book nine years later, then he would have been writing at this age. Right. You're writing short stories, you're writing all this stuff. And it feels like because he's just throwing. He's running all the plays he can run.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He does have a writer's mind in the movie, though. You can tell that he.

[Chris Ryan]

But I'm saying at some point, I think he shows her something he wrote. I think he. You play that move at some point during the night. Can I show you? Do you want to read this one thing I wrote? So he's trying to.

[Sean Fennessey]

That's why he's mad at the poet. He's like, there's no way he could have come up with that.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, he's always protecting himself. Like, even when he reads the Auden poem, which he obviously loves, he needs to do it. Is it in the Dylan Thomas voice that he does it in? You know, because he, like, can't totally turn himself over and become vulnerable to her.

[Chris Ryan]

I just think he has writing and I. And I think, I don't know. I just think he would have, would have tried it.

[Bill Simmons]

Can I ask you, Can I ask you a question?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I was, I thought about this a lot watching this movie. So you really don't like the English class guy? You know, the guy who's like, I'm looking for the metaphorical meaning and all these things.

[Chris Ryan]

I did like them, but I didn't like them them. I thought they were fun to argue with and comment.

[Bill Simmons]

This is what I want to talk about because, you know, you employ some at the ringer and you're very drawn to movies that feature these characters.

[Chris Ryan]

So maybe I just didn't want to admit what was lurking deep inside me.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, that I, I'm just, I'm just asking.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's never too late to crack open Ulysses, Bill.

[Bill Simmons]

It is for me because my brain is leaking.

[Chris Ryan]

Do they have that on iPad in big print?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Seriously. Do they have a version of it that is read by Robert DeGiro as Neil McCauley?

[Chris Ryan]

The Coach Finack Award for best Life Lesson. Connecting with someone for 24 hours is better than never connecting with anyone.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think human connection being the, the real religion.

[Chris Ryan]

Something about connection, you know? What piece of memorability would you want or not want from this movie?

[Sean Fennessey]

I would want the poem.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, oh, the poem that the guy wrote. That's a good one.

[Bill Simmons]

That's, that's, that's nice.

[Chris Ryan]

I had the actual Kath Bloom album that he had, but I think that's good too.

[Bill Simmons]

I would not want that turtleneck. That's, I could not pull that off. That red, that maroon turtleneck he's wearing at the beginning of the movie.

[Sean Fennessey]

He gets rid of it.

[Bill Simmons]

He takes it off at some point. He's wearing like a T shirt when they're at the amusement park. But boy, that would be a tough look for me with the wine bottle.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting one. The poem, I think, is the right answer. Best double feature choice before sunset. And then probably the toughest of all these. Who won the movie?

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's Link Later.

[Sean Fennessey]

I, I, I thought it was Hawk.

[Chris Ryan]

I had Hawk, but I don't know if I'm right because I think he needs this for his kind of big picture thing. And Link later was doing great anyway. But I also think it might be. It probably is Link.

[Sean Fennessey]

It's probably Link later because if Hawk doesn't make this movie, he still reality.

[Chris Ryan]

But Link later really needs this because then it leads to the trilogy.

[Bill Simmons]

And I also think, you know, you mentioned their collaboration and whether that's Great. Like, there's a couple of other interesting examples of this. De Niro and Scorsese, George Roy Hill and Paul Newman. Like, there are some people who you're like, when these two guys get together, something special is going to happen. But Linklater needed to find Hawk for this movie. And when they're together, even if the movie isn't a success, there's something alchemical that is really working. And I don't know. And also it just seems like. I don't know. What is his signature movie now? Linklater? What is the one? Is it Still Dazed and Confused? Is it Boyhood? Is it School of Rock? Is it Sunrise? Sunset?

[Chris Ryan]

I would argue it's Sunset.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think it's the trilogy.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Or the trilogy as a whole, because.

[Sean Fennessey]

It'S both so crowd pleasing but also so formally inventive and so breathtaking in its scope.

[Bill Simmons]

You know he has two movies coming out this year.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

One of which stars Ethan Hawke. Blue Moon, which I think he plays Rogers from Rodgers and Hammerstein.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

We didn't get to the big Kahuna Burger award. We cut that one out. But it would have been the wine.

[Sean Fennessey]

I also just have drinking coffee at night.

[Chris Ryan]

The Dan Campbell scale for Holy. Are they really going for this right now? I don't know if they. I don't know if this movie had this one. We also. I was. I can't wait to do the Lena Dunham running the Spawn Ranch award for most jarring casting decision. It's gonna be great. We didn't have the Brisillo blind thing. The Devil Wears Prada award for. Is this movie actually perfect for what it tried to do? I think we could have given that one out.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

When would I have died? Didn't get to do that one this time around.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. When we. Probably. The 40 year old version of myself is when we would. We didn't have lunch. Like they just don't eat in this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a great point.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Anything.

[Sean Fennessey]

I think that it's implied that they eat at the cafe where everybody's like smoking and playing chess or go to the bat.

[Chris Ryan]

Nobody goes to the bathroom in this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Yeah. There's some.

[Sean Fennessey]

I'm glad.

[Chris Ryan]

Drop the kids off at the pool.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I'll be right back.

[Bill Simmons]

Eating in front of someone is also a little bit of a challenge when you're trying to seduce them.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

A little hard to be elegant in that way.

[Sean Fennessey]

One other thing just to note is that he runs out of money with the poet. I think so. She's Basically paying for the rest of the night.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's reaching out for coins there at the end with the poet.

[Chris Ryan]

We don't get producer Craig's take this episode because he went to SNL this weekend and was somehow on camera in the monologue. So if you want to watch Timothy Chalamet's monologue when he goes into the stands, there's producer Craig. He's like the New Zealand. Just Zelig Zelic.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's kind of. Kind of, kind of Chalamet. Kind of giving some Ethan Hawk vibes in the Bob Dylan performance.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, it's an interesting one because this would have been the perfect Chalamet movie if you're. Now it's like we're recasting this now.

[Bill Simmons]

Chalamet is clearly Shironin in Europe. That's the movie. I mean, they would be amazing, but it's.

[Sean Fennessey]

They're too big.

[Chris Ryan]

But in Baki is too big shirt in Boston.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes. But in 20 accelerators broke down. She's a nice Irish girl. In Boston. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Before sunrise.

[Sean Fennessey]

Yeah. After last call.

[Chris Ryan]

That's it for the pod. We are back on the regular schedule. Please keep sending us emails on the rewatchables33gmail.com thanks to Jack and Kyle for producing. You can watch this on the Ringer Movies YouTube channel where you can see all stuff from the big picture as well. And we'll be doing some bonus stuff too. Do great. Tell me when you want me to do my. My own personal Oscar awards for you.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, Wesley's gonna come on and do the big picks, which is all of the alternative Oscars. Do you want to come on and.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I haven't seen all the movies long on this.

[Bill Simmons]

No, but you would come on and say what you want to pick. Like, forget about what's nominated, you know, like, what's what. What Oscar should long legs get, in your opinion?

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, those movies.

[Bill Simmons]

Just any movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Anything other than it was a really good. Thanks, guys.