‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

Summary

The Rewatchables: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Episode Overview

Title: ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’
Host: Bill Simmons
Participants: Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fantasy
Release Date: May 20, 2025
Podcast: The Rewatchables by The Ringer

In this episode of The Rewatchables, Bill Simmons, alongside Chris Ryan and Sean Fantasy, delves deep into Steven Spielberg’s seminal 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The trio explores the film’s enduring legacy, its thematic depth, and the intricate details that make it a perennial favorite among movie enthusiasts.

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Introduction to Close Encounters

[02:39] Bill Simmons:
“We're doing Close Encounters this week. A movie that maybe needed more time in the oven, but we're pulling it out anyway. Like a beautiful thing of banana bread.”

[03:03] Sean Fantasy:
“I believe in it. I believe it's the right course of action.”

The discussion kicks off with a lighthearted comparison of the film to banana bread, hinting at its timeless appeal despite being a product of its time.

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Personal Experiences with the Film

[02:58] Bill Simmons:
“I saw this movie in 1977. I gotta be honest. I was six years old. It kind of freaked me out.”

[04:33] Bill Simmons:
“This childlike wonder.”

Bill reflects on his childhood viewing experience, highlighting how the film influenced him from a young age. Sean and Chris share their own memories, underscoring the film’s capacity to evoke strong emotions across generations.

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Spielberg’s Directorial Mastery

[03:19] Chris Ryan:
“This might be like one of the best directed movies I've ever seen. Is there a bad shot in this movie? It’s like you could freeze frame any single thing from this film. And it's a painting.”

The panel praises Spielberg’s direction, emphasizing the film’s visual prowess and meticulous shot composition. Sean adds:

[04:11] Sean Fantasy:
“It’s breathtaking. It’s one of only three movies that he has a screenplay credit on. And you can tell that it comes from a deep, deep part of his soul.”

They delve into Spielberg’s artistic evolution post-Jaws, noting how Close Encounters showcases his matured storytelling tools while retaining youthful energy.

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Themes and Emotional Depth

[04:35] Chris Ryan:
“The movie is way more optimistic and romantic about the otherworldly, the extraterrestrial than it is about the human. I think it's actually a pretty cynical movie about humanity in a lot of ways.”

[06:05] Sean Fantasy:
“It’s just not pessimistic. And all of those other movies that you talked about ultimately end on these moments of like, ugh, I guess we're just kind of screwed as a society. And this movie doesn't feel that way at all.”

The conversation pivots to the film’s core themes of obsession, reality, and the human condition. While maintaining an optimistic view of extraterrestrial contact, the film critiques societal norms and individual obsessions.

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Cinematic Techniques and Special Effects

[03:36] Bill Simmons:
“After Jaws, but he's still 29.”

[05:38] Bill Simmons:
“In this house. And just everything about it, just everything, the way it moves.”

The trio examines Spielberg’s use of practical effects and motion control photography, which were groundbreaking at the time. They discuss the technical challenges and innovations that contributed to the film’s immersive experience.

[24:10] Sean Fantasy:
“I think that Close Encounters is like the most majestic movie he made.”

[24:12] Bill Simmons:
“And the first five minutes.”

They highlight specific scenes, such as the air traffic controller sequence and the iconic final encounter, praising their suspense and visual storytelling.

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Casting Choices and What-If Scenarios

[28:07] Chris Ryan:
“What's the Dir. Co’s like, I don't really act. Like, I just do my thing.”

[89:50] Bill Simmons:
“Steve McQueen was like, yeah, Ali MacGraw’s gonna do Steve McQueen. What could go wrong?”

The panel engages in speculative discussions about alternative casting, imagining how actors like Steve McQueen, Robert De Niro, or Meryl Streep might have influenced the film’s dynamic and reception.

[93:56] Chris Ryan:
“Do you think Roy Neary should have been a verb? Like, I just Roy neary it last week. Just left.”

This whimsical idea underscores the character’s profound impact, illustrating how Roy Neary’s obsession with the UFO has permeated popular culture.

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Legacy and Influence on Modern Filmmaking

[65:03] Sean Fantasy:
“What happened the next day? Close Encounters was like two popcorn y and two.”

[84:17] Sean Fantasy:
“I think this movie in 2001 are the most responsible for the current wave of great event filmmakers that we have. So Nolan, Villeneuve, Bong Joon Ho, Guillermo del Toro—they're all hugely inspired by this movie.”

Sean attributes the film’s influence to contemporary directors, highlighting its role in shaping modern sci-fi and fantastical narratives.

[125:03] Chris Ryan:
“That would probably be tough for JJ who made Super 8 and is basically, like, trying to make Close Encounters.”

The group compares Close Encounters with other Spielberg works and its influence on directors like J.J. Abrams, noting its foundational role in modern storytelling about extraterrestrial life.

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Critical Reception and Enduring Appeal

[84:35] Bill Simmons:
“Recasting couch. Director city I came up with every 10 years. Who I would have casted in the Dreyfus part.”

[121:07] Bill Simmons:
“You have no sense of any sort of connection.”

They discuss how critical perspectives, including those from esteemed critics like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, have shaped the film’s reputation. Despite some criticisms about pacing, the consensus remains overwhelmingly positive regarding its craftsmanship and emotional resonance.

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Rewatchability and Personal Reflections

[04:35] Chris Ryan:
“Yeah. But like we kind of like make fun of that, right? Like the Spielberg face and his always seeing the world through a kid's eyes.”

The hosts reflect on the film’s rewatchability, sharing personal anecdotes about viewing the movie multiple times with family and friends. They appreciate how repeated viewings reveal new layers and details, enhancing the overall experience.

[47:36] Bill Simmons:
“This is another one where I just have to say, 1977, we did not have, like, a ton of awesome special effects for scenes like this. Now this is a layup. You just CGI shit and the monkey.”

Despite advancements in technology, the panel acknowledges the ingenuity of the original special effects, appreciating their practical authenticity compared to modern CGI.

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Cultural and Societal Context

[06:05] Sean Fantasy:
“UFOs were potentially evil. They’re coming to get us. They’re going to invade us. That was like all the programming from the radio stuff in the 30s and 40s, the movie shows in the 50s and 60s…”

[07:06] Chris Ryan:
“The movie is way more optimistic and romantic about the otherworldly, the extraterrestrial than it is about the human.”

The podcast situates Close Encounters within the broader context of Cold War-era distrust in government and the evolving portrayal of aliens in media. They contrast the film’s hopeful depiction of extraterrestrial contact with the more adversarial narratives prevalent in earlier decades.

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Final Thoughts and Conclusion

[105:16] Sean Fantasy:
“It’s a very powerful movie.”

[125:06] Sean Fantasy:
“Gene Siskel called this movie a fairy tale for adults, which I've always thought was the best way to describe it.”

In wrapping up, the hosts reaffirm the film’s status as a masterpiece that seamlessly blends awe, wonder, and human emotion. They celebrate its technical achievements, compelling narrative, and lasting influence on both audiences and filmmakers alike.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Bill Simmons [02:39]:
  “Close Encounters is like a beautiful thing of banana bread.”

• Chris Ryan [03:19]:
  “This might be like one of the best directed movies I've ever seen. Is there a bad shot in this movie? It’s like you could freeze frame any single thing from this film. And it's a painting.”

• Sean Fantasy [04:11]:
  “It’s one of only three movies that he has a screenplay credit on. And you can tell that it comes from a deep, deep part of his soul.”

• Chris Ryan [04:35]:
  “The movie is way more optimistic and romantic about the otherworldly, the extraterrestrial than it is about the human. I think it's actually a pretty cynical movie about humanity in a lot of ways.”

• Sean Fantasy [06:05]:
  “Close Encounters is one of the softest government conspiracies of all time.”

• Bill Simmons [23:06]:
  “They say to him, you have to show the inside of the spaceship. Which they do.”

• Sean Fantasy [65:03]:
  “The idea of the barrier of communication is such a key theme of the movie.”

• Chris Ryan [75:05]:
  “There's a lot of really cool recurring images when you rewatch the film of, like, Roy looking at maps. Roy stuck at a crossroads.”

• Sean Fantasy [118:14]:
  “They make music together on the computer. That scene in the movie when he says toys, it's because he's literally showing him a toy coming out of a box. But it looks like he's watching an alien spaceship.”

---

Conclusion

Close Encounters of the Third Kind remains a cornerstone of science fiction cinema, celebrated for its visionary direction, emotional depth, and technical innovation. Through engaging dialogue and insightful analysis, Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fantasy illuminate the film’s multifaceted brilliance, reaffirming its place among the greatest rewatchable films of all time.

Transcript

[Bill Simmons]

This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know, you're totally obsessed? That's happened to me. Like, I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting. Have you done that, Sierra?

[Chris Ryan]

I have, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Or buying the soundtrack on vinyl. Kind of obsessed. Whatever it is, prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to Amazon.com prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes. It's big ass 70s month on the rewatchables. You missed Death Wish last week.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is that what's Big Ass about? Death Wish?

[Chris Ryan]

Do you want to weigh in on big ass movies, vigilante justice while we have you here?

[Sean Fantasy]

I believe in it. I believe it's the right course of action.

[Bill Simmons]

We're doing Close Encounters this week. A movie that maybe needed more time in the oven, but we're pulling it out anyway. Like a beautiful thing of banana bread.

[Chris Ryan]

This brioche is a little soft in the middle.

[Bill Simmons]

Just hoping it's delicious. Holy shit. Was this an undertaking. But Close Encounters of the 3 third kind is next. This episode is brought to you by New Pro Namo Clinical Enamel Strength Toothpaste. One thing we all try to do to stay healthy is to keep up a routine. Things like daily yoga or trying to maintain a healthy diet. So how about making oral health part of your day? Brush your teeth twice daily with Pro Enamel Clinical Enamel Strength for three times stronger enamel protection. And to help protect teeth for life, try New pronamel Clinical Enamel Strength Toothpaste right now. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The experience of an ordinary man shared by people from all over the world, drawn to a single spot by a compulsion they don't understand. To witness the most dramatic event in the history of the human race. And when the communication begins, it is fantastic. Encounters of the Third Kind. All right, I'm Bill Simmons. That's Sean Fantasy, the big picture. Chris Ryan, the watch.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

What else are you up to? Looking at top three draft picks, watching.

[Chris Ryan]

A lot of tape, watching a lot of highlight mixtapes on YouTube. Right now.

[Bill Simmons]

Close encounters, the third kind. I saw it in the theater.

[Sean Fantasy]

Whoa.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Tell us about it. Was this. Was this a.

[Bill Simmons]

Not only did I seen the theater, I think I saw the re release in a drive in.

[Sean Fantasy]

Vague memory, the 1980 vague memory, the 1980 rerelease.

[Bill Simmons]

1980 rerelease. I think I saw in a drive in. But I'm not. Don't confirm. Don't confirm that to the Washington Post or anything, but it's Just a vague.

[Sean Fantasy]

I'll alert the Library of Congress.

[Bill Simmons]

Vague, vague. Tribe.

[Chris Ryan]

There's nobody there. It's okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I saw this movie in 1977. I gotta be honest. I was six years old. It kind of. Or seven years old. Kind of freaked me out.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Understandable.

[Bill Simmons]

Didn't really love the ending. And then. And had no, no. I, you know, the dad's going on the, on the UFO at the end. I'm like, what the fuck? Yeah, dad, are you going to go like. It was like one of those.

[Chris Ryan]

I think that was the intention. Right?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Uh, I think Steven Spielberg agrees with you right now as well.

[Bill Simmons]

This movie is just incredible. What, what was the rewatch like for you? Cr?

[Chris Ryan]

Dude, this might be like one of the best directed movies I've ever seen. Is there a bad shot in this movie? Is like you could freeze frame any single thing from this film. And it's a painting, but it's, you know, it's Spielberg kind of at like his tools have matured by this point.

[Bill Simmons]

After Jaws, but he's still 29.

[Sean Fantasy]

I'm just gonna say he's got even 30.

[Chris Ryan]

So much energy and all of the things he's trying and all the things he' and even the stories about the way he made it, which almost sounds like more like the way sometimes Scorsese makes movies where it's like, we're going to try this, we're going to try that, we're going to try this. I wrote something the night before or Coppola that kind of. It has that energy. It has that like pure autourist energy, which I know he obviously is one, but often relies on, you know, you know, screenwriters to contribute to the story and stuff like that. This really feels something, something different in his catalog.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, it's breathtaking. It's one of only three movies that he has a screenplay credit on. And you can tell that it comes from a deep, deep part of his soul. And it's hard not to watch the movie and not feel like he's making connections that maybe he doesn't even ultimately realize are there in his life, in his heart, in his mind. And his kind of quest for something bigger than himself is just a big part of all of his movies.

[Bill Simmons]

This childlike wonder.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. And. But like, we kind of like make fun of that, right? Like the Spielberg face and his always seeing the world through a kid's eyes. But this is also just a very dark and sad movie about kind of losing your grip on reality and obsession and becoming consumed by something and not even fully understanding why. So it's just bizarrely mature for a 29 year old, fairly like sheltered kid from Arizona. You know, it's just an odd thing.

[Bill Simmons]

I wrote my notes. They don't make them like this anymore.

[Chris Ryan]

That's why you're.

[Bill Simmons]

You just. We say this sometimes with the rewatchables. They don't make them like this.

[Chris Ryan]

They don't.

[Bill Simmons]

The pace is just not like it would be made now. The actors, the patience that he has with like the wide shots where now they would have just cgi. But like I watched with my wife and daughter last night, the second time in a week, and my daughter was like, did they. They put those stars in? And I'm like, no, they couldn't really do that back then. I think they were just caught lightning in a bottle with Muncie, Indiana.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

In this house. And just everything about it, just everything, the way it moves. And watching Dreyfus just lose his mind over the course of 90 minutes and you stay in his side somehow. And then the last 20 minutes is unbelievable.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like the ultimate payoff where they go over the mountain and then they look and Melinda Dylan's face kind of does the jaw drop. And then it's like, wait, what's going on here? It ties into a bunch of 70s shit that we'll talk to. But it's just such a cool, constructed movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

So this came out like six months after Star Wars. And you were saying when you saw that in theaters that there was a divide, that there was the jocks and there was the Star wars kids. Did this movie bridge that gap because this is a really big hit as well.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Or do you feel like kids were like, what the fuck happened here?

[Bill Simmons]

This, this wasn't like Star Wars. This was kind of its own thing. And the cachet of it was that the guy from Jaws made it. That's the only thing I remember. But it tapped into all this UFO stuff that my experience with UFOs and I think everybody's was up until this time was aliens were potentially evil. They're coming to get us. They're going to invade us. That was like all the programming from the radio stuff in the 30s and 40s, the movie shows in the 50s and 60s, and it was all like, watch out, they're. And this movie just flipped it. And they're like, what if they're not coming? What if they're just really interested in finding out more about us? Which now seems like the easiest flip to make. But back then was Like a crazy movie.

[Chris Ryan]

The movie is way more optimistic and romantic about the otherworldly, the extraterrestrial than it is about the human. I think it's actually a pretty cynical movie about humanity in a lot of ways. Yeah, but about the wonders that could be above us and out there. It's incredibly like wide eyed and affirmative. Do you get that? You know?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, but think about 20 years later, it's we're in Armageddon Independence Day mode, where it's like, the aliens are coming. They're fucking get us again.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And that's kind of the generational response to whatever was going on here where it was way more hope in outer space, I think.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. I think Don't Fear the Unknown seems to be the thing that Spielberg was driving towards, that Dreyfus talks about what attracted him to it, that there had never really been a science fiction, large scale movie that was about the potential hope and optimism of connecting with other people. But I don't know, like, I don't think the movie is necessarily down on humanity.

[Chris Ryan]

That might be like a little bit cute to say it that way, but I think that, like, ultimately, like, it's more just that, like, you associate with Spielberg an almost saccharine view of like the family unit or something like that, and that everything is sort of rooted in the relationship between children and parents. And I think that it's a little bit outside of that. Like, even though there are obvious elements that he would continue to refer to over the course of his career, it just feels like a different group of people than I find in most Spielberg movies, to me.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Well, there's also no villain.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Even ET has villains. I don't know if there's a villain in this movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

I don't think there is. He said that he wished he could have made this before Jaws, in part because he was inspired by Watergate. That the idea of, like a mass government cover up was compelling to him and kind of blending that with his interest in genre movies. But you could tell, like, in the time that passes between Watergate and his opportunity to make this movie, like, he kind of loses interest. Like, this is one of the softest government conspiracies of all time.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like, people find their way onto this platform at the end of the movie, like civilians, and they're like, you should join in. You know, it's such a, like an open, not conspiratorial way of seeing what would happen if this happened.

[Bill Simmons]

Scientology, it was just like.

[Chris Ryan]

And the whole thing that the government's doing to the people around Devil's Tower is like putting them to sleep. Like, it's like they're very. It's like.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, well, you talk about the paranoid 70s, which we've discussed in the past here, but this is a whole genre that I love, by the way. This should be a 2B category conversation. All the President's Men, Parallax, View, Three Days of the Condor, Capcore One, China Syndrome, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. All of it's a response to Watergate in Vietnam and not trusting government. By the way, there's 20 more movies, but those are the headliners. So it feels like this is part of that era. But I agree with you. It feels like Spielberg also lost interest in something along the course of it because they start making this in 73 and that's right around the time you would have started thinking, like, what's the government hiding? What else are they doing? JFK, assassinations, previous decades. But it also starts this whole sci fi era that's like the modern sci fi era with Star wars because we get those two. We get Superman and Star Trek in 80 and 81. We get Alien Empire, Superman 2 and Flash Gordon. We get E.T. blade Runner, Star Trek II, and the Thing just in 1982. So something flips and it's like modern sci fi all of a sudden. But I think it starts with Star wars in this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, this movie to me also is like. I remember we were doing Days of Thunder. We were talking a little bit about it kind of ushering in the 90s and getting out of the 80s, but still having like 80s residue as it dove into the 90s. I feel that way about Close Encounters too. There's obviously a lot of 70s in this and there's a lot of the neuroses and stuff that was in the air in this movie. But there also is an element to where it's so predictive that it feels like it's 1983 in this movie, even though that's six years later.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, there's like a six year window where this movie could have come out.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Because to me, ET in this movie are pretty close. But there's a five year difference when those came out. Yeah, but it's the same kind of childlike wonder, what if the aliens are here to be our buddies? The government's a bad guy, but not really.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's just not pessimistic. And all of those other movies that you talked about ultimately end on these moments of like, ugh, I guess we're just Kind of screwed as a society. And this movie doesn't feel that way at all.

[Bill Simmons]

Like Body Snatchers, that's in a world.

[Sean Fantasy]

Where everyone has been consumed. You know, like, that's the bleakest ending of all time. And this one, even though I think it's so sad, the ending of this movie, it's not near. He doesn't seem. He seems excited. Yeah, he's. He gets what he wants.

[Bill Simmons]

He's like, do they have same game parlays up there?

[Chris Ryan]

You guys are HBO.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. So he blends the paranoid 70s with the modern sci fi era. But as a Steve Spielberg movie. Yeah, I call him Steve.

[Sean Fantasy]

Love Steve.

[Bill Simmons]

And it's an unbelievable follow up to Jaws, which is the other piece of this. He makes Jaws, which basically we talked about in Star Wars. Star wars gets all the credit for kind of ruining movies and where we went. But Jaws kind of started it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The first jail block was everyone wants to be Jaws and wants to own all the movie theaters. And he starts that, and he's 27 at that point, and he's in what's next mode. And he's probably the most scrutinized director of that era other than Coppola at that point in 75. Scorsese, Schrader, all those dudes, De Palma, they're all kind of like indie bands underground. But he follows it up with this, which it feels like a ballsy move.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

To follow up Jaws with a way bigger, more ambitious movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

He's got this great knack, though, don't you think, of knowing when to capitalize on his previous success. You know, like, if you look at going from Jaws to this, this is a real, like, blank check kind of a movie. Like, you know, you've written your ticket. Like, launching DreamWorks. He does. Or doing Jurassic park and Schindler's List in the same year. Or, you know, like, knowing when to flip back to blockbusters after making an awards film. And that kind of like, he just has this fascinating sense of career navigation that I think eludes a lot of his peers because they're so driven by their artistic inspiration. And he is art and commerce. He is like, he's. He makes movies for people. He doesn't make movies for himself, even though the movies are often about himself.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. There's a Dreyfus quote that's on the. Like a. On one of the posters for Close Encounters. I think it might have even been, like, a press release announcing its production or something like that. And Dreyfus talks, quote.

[Bill Simmons]

Can I snort that out did he Hard street surface.

[Chris Ryan]

There was a quote about how Steven Spielberg's basically able to balance the big picture and be able to be like, I can tell this huge story for as many people as possible to enjoy, but also is, like, super concerned with the detail of every shot. And you can feel that in this movie. You can feel that in all of his films, but especially his best ones, where it's the, like, thing that's all the way in the back of the frame, that on the fifth time you watch it, you're like, he did not fucking do that, did he? That's in there. But when you're just watching it, just to watch it at a drive in, it still works. You know, it's. You don't have to have, like, a key to understand this movie. It can just play as this guy has an experience, chases it all the way across the country, gets in a fucking spaceship. It's pretty cool. Or you can watch it and be like, did Vilma Zigmund do that? Like, that's crazy.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Well, Jaws, this movie et three movies that have now been all out for at least 40 years. JAWS will be 50 years this year, and you can still watch it. Like, producer Craig will probably have a kid at some point. I'm guessing in the next 10 years and 10 years from now, we'll be able to watch all three of those movies with that kid. And they'll probably hold up. Even though a lot of it's dated and the clothes are weird and there's no phones, but it's something like eternal.

[Chris Ryan]

You don't think producer Craig's child will have an AI visor surgically implanted on the side of its head as it drinks Soylent? It's very possible and is making bets.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Not ruling it out, just betting on the outcome of each scene. Spielberg, so inspiration came from him and his dad. Watched a meteor shower once in New Jersey. Somehow that led to this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Can I ask, were you a big space kid? UFO kid?

[Bill Simmons]

Really wasn't.

[Chris Ryan]

No. Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

There was a couple TV shows. Lost in Space was okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Never liked Star Trek.

[Sean Fantasy]

What about the Twilight Zone?

[Bill Simmons]

Twilight Zone kind of always freaked me out. I was an only child, so that. I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Just never got there.

[Sean Fantasy]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

I never.

[Sean Fantasy]

What does the only child have to do with the Twilight Zone? I don't know.

[Bill Simmons]

That show you need to talk about.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah?

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Sean Fantasy]

Your parents are like, shut up. We're not talking about the Twilight Zone.

[Bill Simmons]

Put sports back on. I don't know. It just never Got there. How about you?

[Chris Ryan]

I think when I was a kid, I probably was a little bit more dinosaurs and knights in armor. But these movies. No. Yeah. You're not actually. Martha died.

[Bill Simmons]

Dinosaurs and knights. It's the worst porn search I've ever heard. Dinosaurs and knights in armor.

[Chris Ryan]

They don't knock it until you dry it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, you love when a knight just kind of gets in 2025.

[Chris Ryan]

You gotta really push it to get there, you know what I'm saying?

[Sean Fantasy]

See the backside of that T. Rex?

[Chris Ryan]

Let me see Raptor.

[Bill Simmons]

Were you a space guy?

[Sean Fantasy]

I was interested in UFOs. Yeah, sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that. I never really made the UFO crossover, even when X Files was happening.

[Chris Ryan]

Even on like, what was the.

[Bill Simmons]

I was always more interested in the autopsy shows on HBO than the UFO side.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's the DNA stuff.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's entirely possible to me though that this movie coming out before I was born, while you seeing it at its release almost like dictates the way that we saw like our relationship to space and UFOs. Like this being a warmer, softer idea around that makes it not something that like your parents feared or that you feared. And also, you know, we talked about this when we did et. Like ET came out the year I was born. And I think also ET just made every kid want to have a friend who was an alien. Like that. That just felt.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it also depends on when you see it. Like I saw ET and we talked about when we did the ET pod. But like when they're on the bikes in the air, you're just like, this is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. This one I saw, I was probably a little too young, but could still see. It's also.

[Chris Ryan]

Mostly it's. It's about a middle aged man. I mean, there's not a POV though. Okay.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like the house where he nearest 33.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, because it's 1977, he looks like he's.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, he's got five kids and owns a house and has been doing his job for 12 years. But he's not as old as you think he is.

[Bill Simmons]

He's carrying. Older. No sakes though for him.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, unfortunately.

[Bill Simmons]

Had that in.

[Chris Ryan]

Kind of surprised Ronnie didn't pop a couple menthols. But we'll get into somebody.

[Bill Simmons]

Somebody could have done it. So Spielberg does his own science fiction film called Firelight, which he made on his own when he was 18, then used some shots for this movie. He wrote a short story in 1970 about a Midwestern farming community and a Light show a group of teenagers saw in the sky. So he had all these little weird Spielberg pieces. Then did the Columbia deal in 73. Initially it was about UFOs, Watergate and a government cover up. That's how they sold it. As Sean said, it flipped. And then a bunch of writers came in, including our guy, Paul Schrader.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, we've got some intel on that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, Roy was into some. Some escort service. That's. That's how he met Melinda, Dylan's character.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, he was always mixing Pepto, baseball and whiskey together. Yeah, no, it was a military movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, there's a really. I found an interview with Schrader. This was gonna go in Internet research, but I guess technically it's a newspaper. So, uh, Schrader said Steven wanted to make a film about a common man. That was my argument with him. Who the fuck wants to see that? This is supposed to be the greatest event in the history of the earth. At least make the character. Character equal to the event. But Steve felt audiences wanted to see movies about ordinary people. Shakespeare's audience want. Audiences wanted to see Macbeth. They didn't pay to see a play about a porter. But Steve wanted to make a movie about the porter. A guy who would go off to Mars and start a chain of McDonald's.

[Bill Simmons]

Always like the backhanded compliments from the other directors for him. It's pretty funny.

[Sean Fantasy]

There's a lot of.

[Bill Simmons]

But he went. He went back hard at Schrader. He.

[Sean Fantasy]

He had the worst script he'd ever read.

[Bill Simmons]

He said it was the worst script that's ever been turned into a studio.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it's available online.

[Sean Fantasy]

I thought what Spielberg said many years later was interesting about this, which is that he understood. His idea at first was that it should be a cop or a soldier. And that that sense of authority and trust that comes from those figures could be powerful in telling the story like that. And that's why he presented it that way to Schrader. And then he thought about it some more after reading Schrader's script. And he was like, people in uniform are not relatable to regular people. They're figures that exist outside. They manage society. They're not in society. And this is Rick Caruso's problem when.

[Bill Simmons]

He wore a suit every day. Couldn't relate.

[Sean Fantasy]

There's something to it. Yeah. And if you just put it on.

[Bill Simmons]

An oxford and untucked, it put on a half zip.

[Sean Fantasy]

But just making it a guy who works for the power company completely change the perspective when you're watching the Movie. I don't know that I really like intellectualize. What's the job of the guy who I'm following in the story that much.

[Bill Simmons]

But I watched 77. Then I watched the directors. They cut out a scene when he's about to get promoted from the theatrical.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And it's not in there. We don't really know anything about his job in this movie. He's just like off gonna do. So I guess the point Spielberg, I guess wanted to make in his final cut was this is just. Does matter what it sounds about.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I think everything you need to know about him is that he seems incredibly frustrated as he is like sitting in a cramped living room with three children and his wife.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, the lesson really is don't have three kids.

[Sean Fantasy]

Peter can confirm.

[Bill Simmons]

Peter? Peter Biskin, his big month for him on the rewatch.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He wrote in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls. He had a whole thing about this movie and said Spielberg's movies in particular are colored by longing for the absent dead, a nostalgia for authority. His families are often fatherless. The plots are set in motion by the moral and emotional vacuum at the center of the home and resolved by father surrogates. Little harsh, but not untrue.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, this is the Old Testament of that then.

[Sean Fantasy]

Do you want to get into it now? I mean, I think we understand his story very differently now and his relationship to his parents is completely different. And so you've got 40 years of Spielberg movies that are more or less in that thematic vein that Biskin is writing about. But he learned a lot of things near, nearer to the in the last 10 years about his parents that indicated that it was actually like his mother who was the cause of his parents breakup and that his father did not abandon them. But in fact there was an affair. And like it's all in the Fabelmans. And if you watch the Fabelmans, you understand his life completely differently. And now to watch all of his movies where he's got all this frustration and regret and anger about the way that his dad like a quote unquote abandoned them, but that isn't actually what happened. It puts such a strange lens on all these movies because like when you're a kid, you think you know what's going on with your parents and you have no idea, you have no clue what's really between them. And so for him to be like processing this for 30 years of the most popular movies of all time is so interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

You agree with that?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I think that the crucial thing that he said is that he would not have made the same movie if he had had children. Which I'm sure we're going to talk about a lot about Roy's decision making throughout this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Have a couple spots.

[Chris Ryan]

But that, that is like one of the most important things that he brings up. So it's like, yeah, I think you're right. He's making a lot of these films relating to his parents, but he's also making a lot of these films with his own kind of self perception as a parent.

[Bill Simmons]

Or he's making three versions of the same film because that's what happened. He released the theatrical in 77. It did amazingly well. It saved Columbia. Columbia was going broke. Their whole bacon depended on this movie doing well. And it did. But they rushed it. And they rushed it, I think six, seven months ahead of when he wanted to do it. So then when they said they're re releasing it, he's like, I'm cool, I'll get behind it.

[Chris Ryan]

Isn't this fucking crazy that two biggest.

[Bill Simmons]

Movies, but I have to redo it.

[Chris Ryan]

Of this year and two of the biggest movies of the last 40, 50 years are star wars and Close Encounters. And both directors are like, this was just the version that I was ready, that was ready at the time when I had to turn this thing in.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's a good lesson in creativity though. Turn them sometimes maybe you're overthinking it too much. Maybe turn it in. Because even like the stuff they add in the special edition, the studio's like, we'll pay for this, we'll market it.

[Chris Ryan]

That's why you do the redraftables, right?

[Bill Simmons]

But they say to him, you have to show the inside of the spaceship. Which they do. So if you get the 4K Blu Ray of it, they have the three versions. So we see the inside of the spaceship in that version. And I don't want to see the inside of the spaceship. I don't either that the whole point in this movie is you kind of don't know what's out there or what's in there. Anything.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, Roy could get fucking vaporized the second he steps on that ship.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, so Spielberg agreed to it because he wanted to make all these other changes and cut all this fat from the movie. That always drove him crazy and then that he agreed to the spaceship that drove him crazy. So now we get the director's cut in 98, which is the kind of official version.

[Sean Fantasy]

And I think that's the best version. I think that's the one that features some new stuff from the 80 version, like the Cotopaxi, the Finding the Ship, some good edits and it's cleaner. You understand Lacombe and Neri a little bit more than you do in the theatrical cut. But you don't have the spaceship interior, which I don't. I don't really get the appeal of that sequence at all. Ebert, like, loves that sequence. I don't get it at all.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he really did. Well, he's. Spielberg said they gave him 1.5 million to work on the special edition, which is a lot of money back in 1980. Anyway, huge hit for Steve follows it up in 1941, which was not a huge hit, but leads to everything that happens in the 80s.

[Sean Fantasy]

Do you. I know you did the book of basketball 2.0, but is there any part of you that wants to go back to the Book of Basketball and like, take a chapter out, add two more chapters in the middle, redo it, say.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, like I now that I would.

[Bill Simmons]

Change so many things about it now.

[Chris Ryan]

That I've had 10 more years of LeBron, I want to say this, you.

[Bill Simmons]

Know, like, set aside.

[Sean Fantasy]

Your fingers don't work. Why don't you do it?

[Bill Simmons]

Because my fingers don't work.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is that the only reason?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's the only reason.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's so interesting because I totally agree with you. The compulsion of Lucas and Spielberg to just keep going back to these movies that at release were 5 star all time masterpiece classics were movies that are like, these movies will live for 100 years. And they're like, eh, I got a couple of notes for myself.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I gotta get Jabba.

[Bill Simmons]

Anyway, the only thing.

[Chris Ryan]

Can you imagine if Jabba was in close encounters?

[Sean Fantasy]

Isn't R2 underneath the spaceship the only.

[Bill Simmons]

Thing I can identify with? Because obviously the dumb NBA book I wrote wasn't remotely like these two movies. But you go down the line with something where you have a deadline and at some point there's no going back and you kind of have to finish it. Even though deep down you're like, in that case I just should have split that into two books. And it's so obvious now, why don't I just do the first book and then the pyramid could have been the second book. But when you're like 75% down the road, you can't stop. And I assume sometimes that happens with a movie too where it's like, it's gotta come out November 77 and you're just like, all right. And you just put your head down and you try to get to the Deadline.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is that how you felt having to recap the Alexander Daddario episode of True Detective?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I wish I could come back.

[Sean Fantasy]

Should I make this two episodes?

[Chris Ryan]

I would just digitally edit out Andy.

[Bill Simmons]

Andy's being just uncomfortable.

[Sean Fantasy]

I'm here with my co host job with the Hutt.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, that's where you really needed me or Joe House to come in as.

[Chris Ryan]

A special guest host, I think. 11:30pm Bad Mike. Joe House.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Would have done a great job anyway.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, wait, I was just gonna say that. Just as far as the tinkering, you know, obviously we'll get to the part where, you know, eight different writers worked on this movie and tried to help him with it and clearly, like, he was relying on collaborators. But I do get the feeling like, as he, you know, he would wake up and be like, hey, I wrote something last night. And so while we're here, let's shoot this and let's go try this. I wonder if the nature of the way he made the movie led to him wanting to kind of endlessly tinker on it, because it was never. This is Tony Kushner's script, and we are going to nail it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

This is David Koepp's script, and we are just going to honor it.

[Bill Simmons]

There's a lot of fun stuff about how much he actually wrote and whether he's even a good screenwriter. And it seems like there was like eight, nine people involved. There were two people helping him rewrite it. And one of the ways people ding him when the people weigh in is like, he can't write a script. He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing with that.

[Chris Ryan]

So Julia Phillips put that in a very colorful way.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I forgot about that book. I actually. I want to read that this summer because there's an uncut version, too, of the.

[Sean Fantasy]

Julia Phillips, the expanded edition.

[Bill Simmons]

She just.

[Chris Ryan]

She's speaking of directors.

[Bill Simmons]

Cut the Uzih.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's called you'll never eat lunch in this town again.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, and she never worked again.

[Chris Ryan]

She was one of the producers, her and her husband Michael. Right.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's a scabrous memoir of her time in Hollywood snorting so much cocaine.

[Bill Simmons]

She started so much cocaine during the filming of this movie that they bounced.

[Chris Ryan]

Her from post production. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Early on the cocaine thing, too. 1977. Like, that's pretty early to ruin your career with cocaine. It's like that tale.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm sure there's some start of it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Guys out there.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. No, it's like the first year, though, where people. Yeah, we're really doing that anyway. Dick Dreyfus, Jaws 75, Close Encounters and Goodbye Girl in 77 wins best actor for Goodbye Girl. A good example of that category we always wanted for the Oscars.

[Chris Ryan]

Best year.

[Sean Fantasy]

Best year.

[Bill Simmons]

Best year. Where you have to had big things in at least two movies. The all time easiest. But it could be anybody. It could be director, it could be a screenwriter. Any. Anyone. I don't know why they don't do that. We've never found out a good reason.

[Sean Fantasy]

You know, just added to the list of the 300 categories I've given for free to the Academy Awards.

[Bill Simmons]

Best year. No brainer passes on Jaws 2. A movie that we will do on the rewatch at some point.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And then from 78 to 81 the big fix. The competition in Whose Life is It Anyway? A movie that he says afterwards he has no memory of making because by that point he was doing so much cocaine that it actually like burned a hole in his brain and he can't remember.

[Sean Fantasy]

He kind of gets it back with Let it Ride and Stake Out. He gets a couple of good ones.

[Bill Simmons]

What about Bob?

[Sean Fantasy]

What about Bob?

[Bill Simmons]

Big Dick Dreyfus comeback. 86 range.

[Sean Fantasy]

Which you never would have predicted because he's such an unlikely star in the first place.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Sean Fantasy]

So him like having a comeback.

[Chris Ryan]

Him like being a more neish. Dustin Hoffman is an incredible.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it starts with American Graffiti, which I should have mentioned. He also passed on the China syndrome and he left all that jazz during rehearsals.

[Sean Fantasy]

He gonna be in the Michael Douglas part.

[Bill Simmons]

What part was he Michael Douglas part.

[Chris Ryan]

What was he going to play in all the jazz? Shider's part.

[Bill Simmons]

He left the Schider part.

[Chris Ryan]

Get the out.

[Bill Simmons]

Really left the sh. Part and they replaced him with Shatter. Couldn't get the hang of it.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's.

[Bill Simmons]

Couldn't get a feel.

[Sean Fantasy]

Dreyfus would have been terrible.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh my God.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it's. That's a rough one. Who. Who's Dreyfus? In the last 25 years, this version of.

[Chris Ryan]

They don't make them like this anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

Mid 70s Dreyfus. Who is it?

[Sean Fantasy]

God.

[Bill Simmons]

Because now I just feel like they would have put like Jonah Hill in this movie. Not. Oh no, no. Shots fired at Jonah Hill.

[Sean Fantasy]

But started as a comic actor. This guy was like a dramatic actor.

[Bill Simmons]

But don't you think they would have just put like comic actors in here now?

[D]

They don't let ugly people lead blockbusters anymore.

[Sean Fantasy]

I mean, that's true. He's just. He's just way too normal looking. He just looks like a Guy at the grocery store.

[Chris Ryan]

A lot of the guys who I would be like, oh, maybe it would have been this person have just. They just get made into superheroes and eat like three times their body weight and protein to look better. But like Tobey Maguire has a little bit of Dreyfus ish vibes.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. But it's all people that also could have played a superhero.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

That's like Paul Rudd.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Woody Harrelson.

[Sean Fantasy]

Right. But these are all guys who like, after six months and a lot of creatine, hgh, like literally can put a spandex, you know, like Richard Dreyfus can't do that. But I mean, Spielberg has said it multiple times and I think this is, this one's the best example of it. That he is like his ultimate emotional stand in that when he's making a movie that he feels personally connected to, obviously Jaws, this film always. There's a handful of movies that he makes where he's like, I need to get something across about how I feel. This movie is about how Steven Spielberg feels and Dreyfus is the best at that. Even though this is like one of the greatest casting what ifs of all time. The list of people that he went to for this part is amazing.

[Bill Simmons]

I also watched A Goodbye Girl recently in the first six months. No idea how he won best actor. It's just inexplicable. Solid movie, but basically a really well written rom com. And Dreyfus is just.

[Sean Fantasy]

But shouldn't it be Marcia? Did Marsha Mason win? Like, it shouldn't. She should have been the one who was like the focus of the awards campaign.

[Bill Simmons]

Dreyfus just comes in, he's coming in hot.

[Sean Fantasy]

He's like a dick out of work actor.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And she's got a kid, but he's.

[Bill Simmons]

Like full fledged Russell Westbrook 2017 ing it. He's like, I'm also going to grab all the rebounds. He's just doing everything.

[Sean Fantasy]

2017, that's when against Westbrook was published. Do you remember that? Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

So he's got that performance, but then he's got this one which is so much more interesting of a performance. And of course he wins for the other movie, but I think he's just fantastic in this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

This movie was pretty criminally overlooked, I thought.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, but like, I think this is his best performance. I really do like. And I think I've seen all of the Dreyfus movies. I think this is his best one. He's like unravels over the course of 90 minutes in a way that I don't know. I think there's some real art to it.

[Chris Ryan]

He was nominated for Mr. Holland. Right?

[Bill Simmons]

He's great. Mr. Holland. He's pretty good.

[Sean Fantasy]

He's got.

[Bill Simmons]

He was nominated for it.

[Chris Ryan]

He was.

[Sean Fantasy]

How many Oscar nominations does he have?

[Chris Ryan]

Did you guys do that?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. We didn't invite you because you don't like that movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's a great pod, though. That was Mew and Van.

[Bill Simmons]

That was when Van. I think that's when Van. That was his initiation to get his.

[Sean Fantasy]

Was that the first one?

[Chris Ryan]

Mr. Hollow.

[Bill Simmons]

One of the first ones, yeah. Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

That was a very fun episode.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I. I think I love how it's an initiative. You gotta go kill a guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Mr. Holland's opus of this. Explain the Rowena part.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is this, like. This is one of the most egregious best picture snubs of all time, isn't it? It's amazing to me that it's not nominated, especially given the crop of what it's up against.

[Bill Simmons]

I want to talk about that right after this break because this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Life is about choices, including the Oscars. When they screw up. Some Best actor stuff and some best movie stuff, we love to go back and wonder why they made the choices they did, which as we get in the 70s and 80s, is pretty crazy with the Oscars. At State Farm, their goal is to help you make decisions that you feel good about. That's why at the State Farm personal price plan, you can choose the right amount of coverage to help create a competitive price. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility varied by state. Okay, Annie hall wins for best picture. We covered this in Star Wars. Star wars is nominated. The Goodbye Girls nominated Julia and the Turning Point.

[Chris Ryan]

Haven't seen that.

[Sean Fantasy]

I don't think I have, because we did a 1977 draft on the big picture and I watched it and it's a perfectly adequate drama about ballet.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And it is just the way it worked back then. But Close Encounters was like two popcorn y and two.

[Sean Fantasy]

But this movie got nine Oscar nominations.

[Bill Simmons]

Spielberg got nominated for director, which is the weirdest part of it.

[Sean Fantasy]

And. But it does. It's not like it's Armageddon where it got like all the effects and sound stuff. It's like it got A supporting actress nomination. You know, it won for cinematography. There was a special achievement Oscar for the sound effects editing for this movie. So it got. It was acknowledged as an important film. So for it to not hit best pictures, it's strange.

[Chris Ryan]

It's not a kid popcorn movie. It's like asking really deep questions, and it's going places.

[Bill Simmons]

It's the third biggest movie of the year. So Goodbye Girl got for best picture, not for director, and Spielberg got for director, not the movie. Turning Point got both, which I think as the years pass, and then Dreyfus doesn't get nominated at all for this movie. And I guess. Is there a rule you can't be in the same category twice? I don't know. Or it's just. Has that happened? Has anyone ever been best actor for two movies out of the five spots?

[Sean Fantasy]

I believe it has happened. But the reason that the director of the Goodbye Girl wasn't nominated is because it's the same director of the Turning Point. It's Herbert Ross. They're both Ross movies.

[Bill Simmons]

So that's why Dreyfus couldn't get the double best actor either.

[Sean Fantasy]

No. You can get nominated twice in the same category for the same performances, but it's usually very hard because there's. There's a lot of vote splitting, historically.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He has to be best actor. You couldn't have squeezed him. And the only actor that got nominated was our girl, Melinda Dillon.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Can't wait to talk about her.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Anyway, Dreyfus, he ends up winning, so it works out great. Truffaut's in this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

He is, man.

[Sean Fantasy]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Frank, your boy obviously wasn't understanding the significance in 1977, as I was holding onto my dad, terrified, wondering where the dad of three kids was going on a spaceship.

[Sean Fantasy]

But do you want to do the belt for Truffaut films? You know, like, does it go like Wild Child and then Bed and Board, Stolen Kisses, the last metro? Like, what do you think? Where does it end?

[Bill Simmons]

Truffaut month.

[Chris Ryan]

Should we do Truffaut? Yeah, that'd be great. Jules and Jim, 400 blows.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, this was his only role in an English language film and his only acting role in a film that he did not direct. And Spielberg, in one of the great heat checks of all time, who's barely done anything, is like, I'm gonna get this guy in my movie, and he's just gonna act in it.

[Sean Fantasy]

It worked.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Co's like, I don't really act. Like, I just do my thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And he was like, Perfect.

[Sean Fantasy]

He's also like, I don't speak English. I can't really understand what you guys are talking about.

[Bill Simmons]

And also, half of the acting he has to do in this movie is basically like, just look at that wall over there. Because we're gon put these special effects in later.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And I don't know, I like him.

[Sean Fantasy]

He's tremendously effective in this movie. He's really good.

[Chris Ryan]

Helps that Balaban is just like. Like, that's a great interpreter to have for him. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

What is. Is there any other equivalence of this, of Truffaut being in a Spielberg movie? Like the fourth Spielberg movie ever made?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, David lynch was just in a Spielberg movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's true. David lynch was in the Fableman playing a director. Yeah. You know, like, John Houston was in Chinatown. Like, there were like, John Houston in Chinatown's a good one. There were examples of this because, you.

[Bill Simmons]

Know, a lot of Sidney, Paul Shut.

[Chris Ryan]

Vesta, Sidney Pollock and Michael Clayton too.

[Sean Fantasy]

Really good. And, you know, like, Scorsese played Vincent Van Gogh in Kurosawa's Ron, you know, or. No, Kurosawa's dreams. Like, it's something that, like, directors would do for each other as a sign.

[Bill Simmons]

Of admiration, but not for a director who's 29. One hit.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

Just. Just a weird choice, but I like it.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's cool.

[Bill Simmons]

He's like, what if Roy has a threesome with wounded Dylan and ufo, ufo, Alien, just kind of ride it?

[Chris Ryan]

That would be very, very true. Foe.

[Sean Fantasy]

It would.

[Bill Simmons]

John Williams did the score for this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

What a year for this guy. Talk about best year.

[Sean Fantasy]

He sure did.

[Chris Ryan]

Talk about best year. Close Encounters in Star wars in the.

[Bill Simmons]

Same year, did the score, and then Spielberg edited the film to match the score.

[Sean Fantasy]

Insane.

[Bill Simmons]

Because you said John Williams was blacked out during Star Wars. He might have still been blacked out. Yeah, just like fucking grinding it out.

[Sean Fantasy]

He said they did 305 note combinations to get to the place where they wanted to go with this score and that this is the one that they landed on. And he wrote the movie around the combination. I don't even know. Spielberg is just. He's an alien, you know, where it's just like. He just sees and understands things that everybody, even the people who work really closely with him are just like, how did you know that this was gonna work?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, like, there's certain things where I'm like, did you build this entire film around the people in the Indian. Like the Indians pointing at the sky? Like, does the. The film itself, like, explodes when that happens?

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But I'm like, did you have that in your head when you were writing it? Did you know you were gonna get that?

[Bill Simmons]

John Williams, 75 to 78. Jaws, Close Encounter, Star Wars, Jaws 2 and Superman.

[Sean Fantasy]

Pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

Just five of the highlights.

[Sean Fantasy]

Pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

Then he's like, I'm going to come back in 81 and 82 with Raiders and ET back to back.

[Chris Ryan]

This is low key. Even John Williams month too, I guess.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. And then he's like, I'm going to rip off another 40 plus years.

[Sean Fantasy]

Did he do the score for Death Wish as well?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think he did it.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think they asked him. Yeah, Herbie Hancock did it.

[Chris Ryan]

That'd be great if his pseudonym was Herbie Hancock. When I like to do a little jazz over some vigilante killings.

[Bill Simmons]

Would you be surprised if John Williams had an alter ego though, like Garth Brooks did? No, I was just like, yeah. I love making, I love low budget horror movies.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Will Johnyems.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

$19.4 million budget made 306 million. Third biggest movie of 1977.

[Sean Fantasy]

Sheesh.

[Bill Simmons]

Raj gave it four stars when it came out. Then another four stars in 1980 en route. I thought the original film was an astonishing achievement. Capturing the feeling of awe and wonder we have when considering the likelihood of life behind the earth. This new version gets another four stars. It is quite simply a better film. So much better that it might inspire the uncharitable question, why didn't Spielberg make it this good the first time? Settle down, Rog.

[Sean Fantasy]

What do we do then? You know, like when, when Meltzer has a five star match, but then he revisits the tape and sees that he missed a couple of holds and he's like, can we do a five and a half star match? Yeah, like how do you go from higher than 4?

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't realize that went through the Spanners announcers table in this new match.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think this is Spielberg's greatest achievement?

[Bill Simmons]

I still think it's Jaws to be. Difficulty of jaws is 99.9 out of 100. I still don't understand how they made that movie. There's a lot of he's in the ocean for like how many months when we did that? Like he's in the ocean for six months.

[Chris Ryan]

You're at six months. I think that there are better movies that he has made. I think visually this is like as virtuistic as it gets. Like there are things in this movie and I know a lot of that could be Zigmund and it could Be like the different people working in special effects. The totality of the visual achievement for me is like the best he gets.

[Sean Fantasy]

Because of my age. There's something about Jurassic park and Schindler's List and then soon Saving Private Ryan where it felt like he was kind of coming back for his middle age to be like, just so you know, I am the greatest of all time. That those three movies in three completely different ways.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Are they stand alongside?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, sure.

[Sean Fantasy]

This and Jaws to me.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, it's a different question. Right degree difficulty. It's got to be Jaws still just have crazy. That movie was. This is. Feels like the most majestic movie he made.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

ET Is probably the most relatable. Like it's just ET Was a phenomenon.

[Chris Ryan]

Raiders is maybe the most fun.

[Bill Simmons]

Raiders is the most fun. And then Schindler's List is the most meaningful. Jurassic is like he learns all the lessons from his earlier movies and just throws into that. And then Saving Private Ryan's like probably the best pure filmmaking like that. The battle scene, the first 20 minutes. It's probably the peak of his career. Right.

[Sean Fantasy]

Dobbins and I were just saying this on the pod, though. I genuinely think 50 years from now, people will also look at west side Story and Fabelman's as part of this. Like.

[Chris Ryan]

And here he is. Twilight.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yes. Him kind of in his final stage, understanding how to make a movie better than anybody and still pouring himself into it. So I don't know, you know who.

[Bill Simmons]

Also liked this movie? Our girl, Pauline Kael.

[Chris Ryan]

How about that?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. So very few movies have ever hit upon this combination of fantasy and amusement. The wizard of Odds, perhaps in a plainer down home way. She's a big fan.

[Chris Ryan]

Steve, Are there any haters out there on this movie?

[Bill Simmons]

I'm going to get to that.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sean Fantasy]

Well, can I point something out about Ebert and Siskel? Because I went back and rewatched their segment about it and they both did something that we do all the time that I think is really interesting. And I think it's important to clock commentary about movies. Even movies that are considered all time great in real time. They both are. Like, this movie kind of drags a little bit. The second act is a little soft in the middle and it's not that great. Which is something you would say about just kind of any movie that you see on an.

[Chris Ryan]

Like the Roy making the Mashed Potato Mountain kind of.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, I think the lead up to going to Devil's Tower and I don't know that that's like a. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, but now when we talk about a movie like this as so sacred and so important, and you're asking, is it literally his greatest achievement, arguably the greatest American filmmaker, I don't know, since John Ford. Whatever. Now we, like, genuflect at it. But even in the time when it came out, critics have this desire to be like, nothing's perfect. Like, just so you know, even though you stole our breath, you could have, like, tightened this up a little bit, which I find very funny for a movie that is so meaningful to so many people that endures 50 years later, that that's not even really found in Ebert's review. In his written piece, he doesn't say, like, oh, it kind of sags a little bit in the middle. But on tv, he found himself, like, reverting to this comment that you can make about any kind of movie.

[Chris Ryan]

So, like, we just did it on Star wars where we're like, there's a lot of droids in the first 30 minutes of this movie. I'll say this. I. I kind of agree with him about Close Encounters where it's like, oh, okay, that. That 15 to 20 minutes of Roy losing it is slow. But there are even in those sequences, moments, visually, where you're like, with Roy on the phone with Ronnie and the fucking tower is on the TV and the tower is on his table, and you're like, turn, turn, turn. And you realize, like, the way he has blocked it, the way he's framed it, is literally taking over your brain because you're like, she just has to.

[Bill Simmons]

Look at the tv.

[Chris Ryan]

Just look at the TV before it's too late. Look at the tv and you're like, oh, my God. That's just like a really small domestic scene and he's still at the top of his game doing it.

[Bill Simmons]

I can only judge it with the. My version of PR and basketball. The Zoe Simmons looking down versus looking upscale. And there was a lot of looking down at her phone the first 20 minutes. But then when he gets to the. The railroad tracks and the first car behind, then the second car, the lights go up. It got definitely.

[Sean Fantasy]

This is her first time.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

4K.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. This movie is. Is arguably the case for physical media.

[Chris Ryan]

I can't. This is really important to say, when.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you want to do this?

[Sean Fantasy]

I. I mean, whenever you want. But just like this movie in 4K.

[Bill Simmons]

Do your three movies.

[Sean Fantasy]

What did I. I forget what I said. What did I say?

[Bill Simmons]

The three movies that have three different versions of them.

[Sean Fantasy]

Oh, it's this, it's Blade Runner and it's Apocalypse Now. That the great thing, obviously one of the great things about physical media is you get to see these various editions of the movies that are made over time. But those are also three movies that kind of didn't look great on TV and don't look great on streaming. But when you put those three discs, those three 4K disks into your machine and you can watch any of the versions you want to, you ascend to heaven. You know, you're like, this is how it was supposed to be seen.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's a really. We make this point all the time. This is one of the all time best examples of it. This movie got killed by square TVs and crappy quality. It did not. It was not a movie that was on TNT and TBS for 100 years the same way some of these other ones were. And then when you watch it with the wide TV and the light and it's fucking.

[Chris Ryan]

Might be the longest great shock gordo I've ever like compiled. And I don't know if I've ever seen it look this good. Like I. I might have actually been watching close encounters like 10 times.

[Bill Simmons]

The shot of the house with the stars is like breathtaking.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

But there's like 40 of those.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Roy and Jillian meeting as all the people are swarming by them.

[Sean Fantasy]

The India sequence and just the detail of the hordes moving in the background while there's action happening in the foreground. I mean the entire final 20 minutes.

[Bill Simmons]

And the first five minutes.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

The shot of the clouds behind the Devil's Tower. Elizabeth and I couldn't figure out were like, did they add those clouds or.

[Chris Ryan]

When they climb over the mound. Yeah. And the camera goes up with them and then shoots up to just Barry.

[Sean Fantasy]

Opening the door and the wave of orange light. It's. There's just so many moments in this movie that are jaw dropping.

[Bill Simmons]

Most rewatchable scene. I really like the air traffic controller scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh my God, it's awesome.

[Sean Fantasy]

Good.

[Bill Simmons]

TW5 1 7, you wish to report a UFO? Over. Guys like that, I didn't see anything.

[Chris Ryan]

I wouldn't know what to report.

[Bill Simmons]

Good. Right by us right now. That was really close. Area 31 is out of 340 on the traffic path. Ask them if they want to report officially. DWA517, do you want to report a UFO? DWA517, do you want to report a UFO? Over. Negative.

[Chris Ryan]

We don't want to report.

[Bill Simmons]

Aries31, do you wish to report a UFO, over. We want to report one of those either. Aries31, do you Wish to file a report of any kind of a. What kind of report to file center, Aries 31? Me neither. I'll try to track traffic to destination. But everything about that scene, which shouldn't really be a good scene at all.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

All the actors are really good. The way he does the camera, he's building suspense. And it's just like a guy on a radio.

[Chris Ryan]

He does something where he. The main air traffic controllers talking and talking to the pilots. And as he pulls out another guy and then another guy keeps putting their face in the frame and saying something different about what could be happening. He's like, oh, is this military running, like, rocket launches like over there? And like, do we have some private plane doing it? And then it's just. It's just such masterful filmmaking and you subconsciously retain all this information about a situation that ultimately doesn't really matter. Yeah, but it's just great.

[Sean Fantasy]

Builds the tension beautifully. That's what Kevin Ngandi should have done during the draft lottery. You know, he just let it blurt. He was like, the Sixers lost their pick. It's like, just, hey, settle down. Like, don't overreact.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they need a Spielberg move. Like, he does that in the scene a couple times. He's really good at either zooming in on somebody's shocked face or zooming back from somebody's shocked face. So we needed, like, just shot at Jay Billis, like, the slow version of Jay Bilis, like, in complete awe of what was happening.

[Sean Fantasy]

Or Daryl Morey, in the moment when we saw it revealed, the little kid.

[Bill Simmons]

Barry, waking up with his room going bonkers.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

The monkey with the symbols.

[Bill Simmons]

This is another one where I just have to say, 1977, we did not have, like, a ton of awesome special effects for scenes like this. Now this is a layup. You just CGI shit and the monkey. But, like, just from a. How. How are they doing this standpoint? That scene was huge.

[Sean Fantasy]

I see this. This scene in particular as, like, a tremendous precursor for Poltergeist. Like, his room is just. Reminds me of that kid's room at the Clown in Poltergeist.

[Bill Simmons]

Really great Boston University shirt on that kid. Sure.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I really like it. Like, having Boston represented.

[Sean Fantasy]

Why was he wearing a Boston uniform?

[Chris Ryan]

I think his dad, who bounced on him went, oh, wow.

[Sean Fantasy]

What are you saying about Bostonians? You see what you just indicated?

[Bill Simmons]

This is this movie about child abandonment. It's true. Dreyfus's UFO encounter all the way through the highway. Chase the fake out with the second car that I mentioned, where it turns out the UFO is clearly the. Okay, motherfucker. A word for the exact moment movie goes up a notch.

[Chris Ryan]

It's also the Fortune 3 clap for the most givable moment of him being, like, taken up by the light. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

The flashlight mistake still hits that.

[Chris Ryan]

Hit that. I use that in my mind when Sixers got the third pick.

[Bill Simmons]

Him.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm watching Rutgers.

[Bill Simmons]

Him almost hitting the kid in his truck.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a great. Oh, no. You just think the kid's gonna get pancake and then the UFO's going by and then them chasing him. The one guy goes off the cliff, like, that's holy. That's a great seven minutes all through the.

[Chris Ryan]

The toll plaza. Do we still have to hold plazas?

[Sean Fantasy]

We do.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't remember anything about seeing this in the theater other than being scared at the end, but I assume when the lights go up behind him, that was probably a noise made by the audience. Yeah, Right. Like. Oh, like sinners had that a little bit. When. When she walks away. Josh Allen's wife, when she walks away.

[Sean Fantasy]

From the group, that's how she's formally being addressed. Her name's Hailee Steinfeld.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

When Josh Allen's wife may never allow.

[Chris Ryan]

His wife to be in the film.

[Bill Simmons]

No way. And all of a sudden, that vampire builds him.

[Sean Fantasy]

Won the AFC east nine times in a row.

[Bill Simmons]

Definitely thought about that. Yeah. Drake May's not marrying actress. He's got a seventh married girl.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, well, God bless him for that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's a loyal guy. He's a guy. Love Drake May. He's all I have now. Jason Tatum's out for a year. I just have.

[Sean Fantasy]

Drake May was waiting. Okay, so we're in minute 51.

[Chris Ryan]

I asked Sean if he was going to bring Jason Tatum up, and he was like, no, I don't think so. I was like, I definitely am.

[Bill Simmons]

It's fine. I knew it was coming. You know, the Northern India scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Thoughts? Wait, where's the gt?

[Bill Simmons]

My God.

[Sean Fantasy]

For the record, I have not said anything. I. Before we go to India, the one thing that's really cool about the first 20, 30 minutes is you're like, that's a spaceship. Like, there's no confusion. There's no, like, oh, what is this conspiracy? It's like, that's a fucking spaceship from outer space.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

And you know that you're in a movie where they're. They're Aliens are. If not, they're not going to show up that he. What he's experiencing is real. Even if it feels like a dream.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Unlike when Jason Tatum went down. It wasn't a dream. Well, it was real.

[Sean Fantasy]

Well, perspective matters.

[Bill Simmons]

The northern India scene.

[Sean Fantasy]

Where did me Sounds comfortable.

[Chris Ryan]

Tell us, please.

[Sean Fantasy]

I texted you guys when I was rewatching it because I was like, this is my. My bones are chilled by this. I. To me, I was like, this is movies to me to make something like this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, it's the. Now they would just CGI all the.

[Chris Ryan]

Directing version of the Rick Dalton Award. It's like, holy shit, dude. Every shot, every like camera movement.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

The fingers, like the crowd.

[Sean Fantasy]

But just hearing that five note thing sung by those Indian men. And even though you don't know where the movie's going, the first time you see the movie you're like, there's something special about this melody. I don't know what it is, but he's communicating to you that this sound matters.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Which is just great movie making.

[Bill Simmons]

They come from Linda Dylan's house and take Barry Incredible right through the dog door. Never. Don't have a dog door is one of the lessons of this movie. Yeah, Just open the door, let your dog out.

[Sean Fantasy]

You never had one.

[Bill Simmons]

First of all, it's. It's like just an invitation. For burglars, they're always like, just big enough. Yeah, well, but if you have a burglar crew, I think Pete Pritchard could.

[Sean Fantasy]

Fit through a dog door.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I think Richard Dreyfus could have.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, it's like if you have Ocean's Eleven, you gotta have to see one short guy.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Dog door in Indiana too. It's like it's fucking cold there.

[Bill Simmons]

True.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like, what are you doing?

[Bill Simmons]

Dog doors don't exist anymore. Like, if I went to somebody's house, they had a dog door. I would. I wouldn't know.

[Chris Ryan]

What, you wouldn't trust them?

[Bill Simmons]

No, I was just like, what are you guys doing?

[D]

My family has a dog door, so. How dare you.

[Bill Simmons]

Which family? My.

[D]

My parents.

[Bill Simmons]

They still have a dog door.

[D]

Yeah, but it goes to the backyard where it's fenced in.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, well, that's acceptable.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Is there. Do you. Do you lock the dog door at night?

[D]

No.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Sean Fantasy]

They live in a warm mother city.

[D]

They live in the Bay Area and.

[Chris Ryan]

There are a lot of tall thieves, so they can't get into the door.

[Sean Fantasy]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

But if people get over the fence, they're getting in your house anyway.

[D]

Well, I guess. I mean, if all the Doors are.

[Sean Fantasy]

Facetime them right now and tour your parents home just so we can get a look.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's stage a robbery to see what they were.

[D]

I thought it was a good idea. We could do that.

[Bill Simmons]

I have some nitpicks about that Melinda Dylan house scene in a second.

[Sean Fantasy]

Picturing Tom Noonan with a map to Craig's parents house.

[Chris Ryan]

This is out there.

[Sean Fantasy]

You gotta grab it.

[Bill Simmons]

I enjoy the big air Air Force town hall.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Just because I like town hall scenes.

[Sean Fantasy]

This is a ufo.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's also good because it's. It's one of the few times in the film that I think Roy is like that. I didn't want. I don't want to be like this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But it's ha. Like I didn't want to see. This is the line he has. That's. It's cool.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, one of the best scenes in the movie is the mashed potatoes scene.

[Sean Fantasy]

I can't describe it, what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking.

[Bill Simmons]

This means something.

[Chris Ryan]

It's important.

[Bill Simmons]

I wrote down Spielberg is the goat of these scenes. I don't know why he's so good at them.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like the pouring the wine. The wine scene in. In Jaws. Like when they're sitting around the table or the kid.

[Bill Simmons]

Or the kid imitating.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

But he's just really good at like the most normal family thing is happening. But there's also major happening. Please pay attention. The little kid in this scene is so good. The oldest son just watching him and his mouth starts quivering. He's like, my fucking dad's losing his mind right now. Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Barry gets a lot of the praise for this movie as the great kid actor. The kid who plays near his eldest son is really. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

He's excellent.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I have three left. Roy loses his shit and starts throwing things into his house.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

When they eavesdrop on the UFO communication before they go down. And then the whole ending.

[Sean Fantasy]

I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

Last 40 years.

[Bill Simmons]

How do you separate? We get Barry back.

[Chris Ryan]

Roy Suit Larry, Los Angeles.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Roy gets a red USA jumpsuit. Roy's going in the spaceship. We're done.

[Sean Fantasy]

I love. When are we going to talk about Hynek? When the Heineck emerges with the pipe, like just as the aliens are coming out. That's. That's a great moment.

[Bill Simmons]

What's the most rewatchable?

[Chris Ryan]

I'm probably gonna go. Roy's close encounter.

[Sean Fantasy]

The truck railroad crossing. Yeah, me too.

[Bill Simmons]

I really like the mashed potato scene though. This is turning into my favorite category. What's the most blank thing about this movie. In this case, the most 1977 thing.

[Chris Ryan]

I had kind of a funny one for this that I hadn't occurred to me before. But the most 1977 thing about this movie is that World War II is only 30 years prior to.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

So they're all like these guys disappeared in 1945. And it's like. Yeah, well that's actually just. That's younger than this movie is to us.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, or that's more recent than this movie is to us.

[Bill Simmons]

So what'd you have?

[Sean Fantasy]

I love that Roy's just got the TV on all the time. And he. You can only get information by keeping the TV on. You know, like the news reports flashing. And then he's watching the Daffy Duck cartoon and then they cuts out and something else cuts in. And this idea that like it's not just the no cell phones. The no cell phones. Like even today Spielberg talks about how he's like. Nobody ever says to me it's weird that there are no phones in Close Encounters because it's not. When you're watching the movie, you're just flowing with the characters. But people don't use TV that way anymore. They don't just like turn on channel two and let it stay on for six hours.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

They're so determinative with what they're saying.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I have.

[Chris Ryan]

McAfee has DeChambeau on.

[Bill Simmons]

This is great.

[Sean Fantasy]

McAfee has the marionette alien shams.

[Bill Simmons]

What happened with that lottery?

[Chris Ryan]

McAfee's got Lacombe and Balaban.

[Sean Fantasy]

I have for this category would crush. That would be a great segment. Speaking French.

[Chris Ryan]

That would actually probably be Aaron Rodgers. Favorite episode of McAfee is these two guys just being like aliens are maybe.

[Bill Simmons]

That one to debate Lacombe. A McDonald's sign with only 24 billion served. That jump out to them.

[Sean Fantasy]

Good one.

[Bill Simmons]

Rotary phones, the TVs neighbors hanging out in the street. We don't get that anymore. And if we get it, you assume that something bad is about to happen.

[Sean Fantasy]

Come over to my neighborhood. I live in a very friendly enclave. Yeah. They got kids.

[Chris Ryan]

Everybody's got a dog door. Because everybody trusts each other.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's right. In the real America where we don't lock our doors.

[Bill Simmons]

Here are my two favorites though. A three year old kid named Barry.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's just never happened again.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's so confusing.

[Chris Ryan]

That kid better become Barry Market.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe the last year you named your kid Barry.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And then this is the number one. They're eating Dinner. There's just a thing of whole milk in the middle of the table.

[Sean Fantasy]

Whole milk is back.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, it's back.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Right, Craig, Whole milk is back.

[D]

That's right.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

When's the last time you took down a glass of whole milk?

[Sean Fantasy]

I learned within the last few years that I'm lactose intolerant. So it's been some time. Okay. But for the first 37 years of my life, I would have a glass of milk and be like, I feel terrible and not understand what was happening. Here we are.

[Bill Simmons]

There it is.

[Chris Ryan]

So wait, you. Oh, do you do like oat milk and cereal now?

[Sean Fantasy]

Nope. I eat cereal dry, unfortunately.

[Chris Ryan]

Sorry, I forgot about that.

[Bill Simmons]

You raw dog. Cereal. Oh, my God.

[D]

Oh, no.

[Bill Simmons]

Who does that?

[Sean Fantasy]

And my daughter sees me do it, and so now she does it because she's like, that's how you eat cereal?

[Bill Simmons]

Cereal.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, my God.

[Bill Simmons]

I think almond milk's pretty good with cereal.

[Sean Fantasy]

It isn't bad, but I just have an association with all milks now. I have no milk in anything.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[D]

Didn't we do like 10 minutes on cereal for one minute?

[Chris Ryan]

He and I did. Did you see they're trying to ban Apple Jacks when they're trying to say it's not healthy.

[Sean Fantasy]

The woke mob came for Apple Jacks.

[Bill Simmons]

No, man.

[Chris Ryan]

The MAHA crew was just like, oh, we can't call this, like, part of your healthy breakfast anymore.

[Sean Fantasy]

And it's just like, who's calling Apple Jacks part of your healthy breakfast Apple Jacks?

[Chris Ryan]

When they do, like, Saturday morning cartoon.

[Bill Simmons]

Ads, they think it's like apple slices.

[Chris Ryan]

If you eat a bunch of broccoli. Frosted Freak Flakes is a technically part of your filthy breakfast.

[Bill Simmons]

That's like the most un American thing. We need Trump. Maybe Trump can use his powers for good.

[Sean Fantasy]

Save Apple coming out for Count Chocolate.

[Bill Simmons]

I heard a thing today. Not going to be Trump. What stage the best people being amazed that UFOs exist.

[Chris Ryan]

That's cool.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

People still do that.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, now UFOs exist. We're seeing them all over the place constantly.

[Sean Fantasy]

Should we, like, let's go acknowledge that? Let's do it like, so they. They exist. There is life on other planets that those. That life has come to this planet. Like, you believe that?

[Bill Simmons]

I think we've had a lot of evidence the last few years.

[Sean Fantasy]

You don't believe it?

[Chris Ryan]

I kind of stand with the guy from the news network in the meet in the Air Force meeting where it's like, if it's happening so much like, why don't we have like, really?

[Bill Simmons]

I think that's the problem. We do have video now, though.

[D]

Do we?

[Chris Ryan]

Do we?

[Bill Simmons]

CR is like, I still believe in the long two. And no UFOs.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I love Apple Jacks and UFOs. Do nothing.

[Bill Simmons]

Starter should throw 130 pitches.

[Sean Fantasy]

And no sex before marriage.

[Bill Simmons]

15 round heavyweight fights.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

And whole milk.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay. So you're just like, they're. It's out there. They're out there. Area 51. They were constantly flying around.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Think so.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think that's controversial anymore.

[Sean Fantasy]

I definitely think there is life in other galaxies. I'm not unconvinced that they've been to our galaxy. I believe they probably have. That's just something I believe and can't prove.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

This planet, I don't believe it.

[D]

We haven't confirmed anything for our planet. That something is coming.

[Sean Fantasy]

So Joe is ready to confirm.

[Bill Simmons]

How do you explain Giannis and Tadaku?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, there's a line in this movie where it's like, Einstein was probably an alien.

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

What else do you have? For what stage is the best?

[Chris Ryan]

There's a lot of really cool recurring images when you rewatch the film of, like, Roy looking at maps. Roy stuck at a crossroads. Very reflective of the characters, like, in her life, but without explicitly saying, this guy's at a crossroads, he doesn't know where he's going.

[Bill Simmons]

Like the end of Castaway.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And then there's like a lot of really awesome imagery of Roy is always like, going against a crowd. Like a crowd is running towards him and he's like, I have to go through this to get to the other side. So just really always being conscientious of, like, reflecting character with that and God, man, Jillian, Roy really got something, you know, that, like, desperation that. That we went through something, but it's not romantic. I know. It's like when they see each other, like, on the lookout, like the next day, they're just like fudge. Only the two of us understand this.

[Bill Simmons]

I think they could have gone at it. Get it?

[Sean Fantasy]

He gets a little attention over Linda. Dylan has something special. Yeah, she just does.

[Bill Simmons]

I had her in what stage? The best.

[Sean Fantasy]

Just, she's just got gear for her something special.

[Chris Ryan]

My last footstage. The best is when a guy in Mission Control figures everything out before everyone else. It's just like, excuse me, wait, it's longitude. I feel like that happens in any Mission Control situation. Like, one dude just sort of sees the whole chessboard.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you have, Sean?

[Sean Fantasy]

I think this movie in 2001 are the most responsible for the current wave of great event filmmakers that we have. So Nolan Villeneuve, Bong Joon Ho, Guillermo del Toro, they're all hugely inspired by this movie. A lot of their movies are kind of grasping for what this movie gets. That's this, like, complicated mix of cynicism and wonder. This idea of, like, something bigger than you. But grounding all of those movies and.

[Bill Simmons]

Family stories unfortunately leads to Zemeckis making Contact.

[Sean Fantasy]

I mean, him too. And he was like his apprentice at this time. I like Contact, but, okay, motion control cameras used again, as on Star wars. And Douglas Trumbull, who worked on 2001, bringing them to this movie so that they can have effects that, like, Craig shouted out the clouds. That's just something that he created and mapped onto just a regular 35 millimeter shot of the sky, which is just incredible.

[Bill Simmons]

So Craig's Pro that and dog doors.

[Sean Fantasy]

So far, it's quite a list. Spielberg writing credits.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Written and directed by Steve Spielberg.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Close Encounters, AI and the Fabelmans. That's it. That's his whole career.

[Chris Ryan]

The AI one's a little weird, right?

[Sean Fantasy]

Well, he, like, completed something.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he sure did.

[Sean Fantasy]

Also Age the Best is Bob Baker designing the marionette. I go to Bob Baker's Marionette theater on the regular with my kid.

[Bill Simmons]

Future thriller.

[Chris Ryan]

Incredibly creepy. To welcoming.

[Sean Fantasy]

Gene Siskel called this movie a fairy tale for adults, which I've always thought was the best way to describe it.

[Bill Simmons]

Huge Gene Siskel year.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Fever came out this year.

[Chris Ryan]

I would say that the last thing I had for what's Age the Best is the pop culture durability of small town suburban America. And so, like, basically from this movie 3T through Goonies, all the way through Stranger Things, people have returned to this as the setting for something amazing is happening here. You know, something adventurous is happening by the dog door.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, there's a really good. You're gonna make fun of me, but it's fine. There's a really good review of this movie written by Christopher McQuarrie, the Mission Impossible director on letterboxd. And he writes long reviews. He's obviously a great writer, and he wrote something that is never communicated in the movie literally, but is true, which is that all who come in contact with the alien spacecraft are imprinted with a fragmentary vision which compels them instinctively toward a common objective. That if you have been, if you have encountered the alien, you're drawn to Devil's Tower. That, like, something is pulling you. But he, like, Near. He can't even figure out the words to explain how he feels. He just feels it. Which is how people tend to make choices in their life. You know, they just like something happens and then they just like, instinctually, I have to do this thing. But there's no scene where they're like, here's the lore of the alien. And the alien has a. They dropped a seedling from the sky and a plant grew. And it made people smell something. Like. It doesn't have that science fiction thing of over explaining everything that I just think makes the movie feel so timeless.

[Bill Simmons]

There's been movies since where the person only he can see the thing. I feel like it's been ripped off every time we've ever seen a movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

Man on Fire.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Field of Dreams.

[Bill Simmons]

Field of Dreams is a really good example. More what's age? The best for me. Roy Sunburn, I always thought was really smart, really funny. The half faced sunburn. The little kid is just incredible. Barry. There's a good cast in what if with him, but he just makes some great faces, very likable. I never feel like he's in total danger.

[Sean Fantasy]

Did you read the story of how he got that performance out of him or hear Spielberg tell it?

[Bill Simmons]

He would only do one or two takes, right?

[Sean Fantasy]

But he would do something. Every time he had a scene where he had to look up at the sky, he said he would bring a present to set and he would open the present at an elevated spot on the set while he was filming Carrie Guffey, the actor. And he would very slowly open the ribbon and slowly lift the box and slowly remove the toys so that the kid just stood there like this, waiting to see what was inside the present, his mouth open. And that scene in the movie when he says toys, it's because he's literally showing him a toy coming out of a box. But it looks like he's watching an alien spaceship. This is like ingenious shit.

[Bill Simmons]

Steve. I like the giant globe.

[Chris Ryan]

I was going to say, do we.

[Bill Simmons]

Have giant background globes anymore?

[Chris Ryan]

I think mostly for ornamental purposes.

[Sean Fantasy]

What did they say it costs?

[Chris Ryan]

It's $2,500. That was actually my book about metals. I love that moment. It's a $2,500 globe. What are you guys doing?

[Bill Simmons]

I love it.

[Chris Ryan]

And then they have to roll the globe down the hallway.

[Bill Simmons]

Any movie with a plot involving Devil's Tower, I feel like you're just in good hands. Yeah, it's like, oh, shit. Devil's Tower is involved now. 1970s big family. Moms calmly Navigating their crazy husband. Perfect. That wife is out the door now in five minutes.

[Sean Fantasy]

I wouldn't say Terry Garr is terribly calm in the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

No, she melts down once or twice.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. But she's like. She's trying to, like, keep order on the chaos there.

[Sean Fantasy]

Gotta watch out for.

[Bill Simmons]

They called Carrie Guffey. One take Carrie, by the way. No relational. One take Gene.

[Sean Fantasy]

Don't take cr.

[Bill Simmons]

So little kids wearing numbered football baseball shirts that don't have a team. This was a total thing in the 70s. I have pictures of myself in those shirts. And then it just went away.

[Sean Fantasy]

Why was it a thing?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think we realized we could sell.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think we commercialized working tough really yet.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you remember when the first time you had a Red Sox thing was.

[Bill Simmons]

For Halloween, dressing up as Fred Lynn.

[Chris Ryan]

But that had to be, like, an entire uniform. Do you remember, like, the first T shirt you got?

[Bill Simmons]

I think it was later. I just don't think people thought the same way with that.

[Chris Ryan]

I think you might be right. I'm. I'm sure people will be like, oh, you're a fucking idiot. But, like, I just think people time was when they had, like, the. The. The NBA hats with, like, the cursive font. Like, that's when I started buying random other shit.

[Bill Simmons]

I have a bunch of Celtics T shirts that for some reason my mom saved that are all different, like, Celtic ones from different sizes. So they definitely made them. But I just don't feel like people were the sports stuff the same way. Maybe I'm wrong, but those T shirts specifically made me nostalgic. Close Encounters, first collaboration between film editor Michael Kahn and Spielberg.

[Sean Fantasy]

You know, they still aren't working together.

[Bill Simmons]

They've never not worked together since this movie, which I thought was really cool.

[Sean Fantasy]

Michael Kahn's 94 years old.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And Spielberg said, this is like. This is the hardest one to edit. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

Because it was just like the last 25 minutes really hard. And then the last one. Melinda Dylan, who was in this in Slap Shot same year, Hanrahan's wife, which we covered last year when we did Slap Shot, she was also in Christmas Story. She was in Absence of Malice. She was in a few other things.

[D]

Which Melinda Dylan in? Is it Melissa or Melinda?

[Sean Fantasy]

Melinda.

[D]

Melinda in Christmas Story and this. She's probably in the two most iconic mashed potatoes scenes in movies, right?

[Bill Simmons]

No question. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

She sort of is the mayor of Apex Mountain for Mashed Potatoes.

[D]

Yeah, Mashed Potato Mountain.

[Bill Simmons]

Just a great job by her.

[Sean Fantasy]

Lives in City hall at the top of Apex Mountains. Right? Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Speaking of mashed potatoes, that big Kahuna burger award for best use of food and drink. You could almost change it.

[Sean Fantasy]

No brainer.

[Chris Ryan]

Close encounter right there is mashed potatoes.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, that's good.

[Bill Simmons]

Picahuna burger is still pretty great.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Never taste that tasty burger.

[Sean Fantasy]

This is a tasty burger.

[Bill Simmons]

We're gonna take a break and then do the rest of the categories. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever finish a movie and the next thing you know you're totally obsessed. Like I'm talking about ordering a book about 70s film lighting or buying the soundtrack on vinyl kind of obsessed. Whatever it is, prime helps you get more out of whatever passions you're into or getting into. Head to Amazon.com prime and follow your obsession wherever it goes. This episode is brought to you by Lionsgate. From the world of John Wick comes the movie Ballerina, only in theaters June 6th. The greatest action franchise of the past decade is back, starring Ana de Armas and Keanu Reeves returning as John Wick. Everything you love is here. The mythology, the characters, the high intensity action. But this time, the universe expands with new faces, new settings and even higher stakes. Ballerina, Only in theaters June 6th. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card is a no fee credit card that gives you daily cash back every day. That's 3% back at Apple and 2% back on every purchase made with Apple Card using Apple Pay. Apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on creditworthiness rates as of January 1, 2025. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com all right, CR Go nuts. Great shot, Gordo. Oh, my God. Try to limit yourself to three.

[D]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

We've talked about bronze and gold.

[Chris Ryan]

Let's see.

[Bill Simmons]

I think the wide shot of the house with the stars.

[Chris Ryan]

There are no bad shots. Barry's abduction, I think. And the red light coming through the doorway is incredible.

[Bill Simmons]

Looks at the pits of hell.

[Chris Ryan]

I mentioned Roy and Jillian in the the crowd. I think that might be my favor. I think Roy and Jillian meeting and coming together, embracing as all those people. The waves of people are getting on and off the train.

[Bill Simmons]

India is really good.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Like to throw that in there as well.

[Sean Fantasy]

India's amazing. I think the first time you see the board when they play Williams five note score and you see the colors across the board. That's like a chills moment for me.

[Bill Simmons]

The wind in the first five minutes with the sand and people wearing the things over their face. Like Spielberg's always really good at that for some reason.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

And then like you pointed out before Devil's Tower on TV with the sculpture and you know, and they're side by side.

[Bill Simmons]

Side by side. Kid Cudi, Pursuit of Happiness. Where best needle drop. There's actually no real music in this, just John Williams.

[Chris Ryan]

I thought it might be interesting to mention just here that Spielberg said he wanted the movie to feel like when you wish upon a star.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. But then it kept getting cut out.

[Sean Fantasy]

The original cut ended with that. The original version from Pinocchio. And then they. It tested badly.

[Bill Simmons]

Is that what they said the research was? They did it in Dallas and people laughed. Spielberg got hurt, took it out stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

But I think that that's worth mentioning is like a, it's not necessarily a needle drop, but it is obviously a huge influence on the. And you know, they talk about Pinocchio in the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

The Chess, Rockwell and Brock Lanterns award for best character name. Roy Neary is really good as a lead.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is it better than Claude Lacombe?

[Bill Simmons]

Claude Lacombe's also really good there. Roy Neri is that, that could have been a bunch of 70s lead actors.

[Chris Ryan]

I like the, the major Wild Bill Walsh, the guy who's just like, I, I gotta gas these people. If you don't get them off the mountain.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you got for your flex category?

[Chris Ryan]

It's tough because it's basically I, I, I just gotta talk about the smoking because there's just. Ronnie would be, would be the Chris Ryan award winner. If the main character, I mean like it's not the main character, but if Ronnie is just slamming Winston's the entire time, I think she just becomes that much more relatable. The Terry Garr character and also Melinda.

[Bill Simmons]

Either of them could have smoked some.

[Chris Ryan]

Virginia Slims, whatever they may be. Does Spielberg have many smokers in his movie outside of Saving Private Ryan?

[Bill Simmons]

No. That's why there's none in here. I think in 77 in Indiana, I feel like everybody's smoking.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh my God.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like you're almost looked at weirdly if you're not lighting one up at 8 o' clock at night.

[Sean Fantasy]

There's cigars in 1941.

[Bill Simmons]

Ashton through the dog door.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Butch's girlfriend works through the dump. Butch's Girlfriend Award. Wink link of the movie. Sean, you go, do you have one?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Joseph Sommer as Larry Butler.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

I feel like we could have done a little better.

[Chris Ryan]

I had that too. You know, he's like, I, I'm, I'm from la.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Put to sleep.

[Sean Fantasy]

I wanted like a little for a movie that's so realized.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

And so well cast.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He'd be that later. I have Roy Neary, worst family man in any great movie. Just a reprehensible father, husband. He's so, it's unbelievable. He's got three kids and a wife. He's like, ah, I gotta follow this thing. I'll see you guys later.

[Sean Fantasy]

I, I, I can't understand the decision that he makes at the end of the movie. But this is, this is three people that are like obsessed with what they're obsessed with, like the things that we care about, we care about to a degree that is unhealthy and has led us to this moment in our lives and in some ways has been good.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

So like, you can't totally castigate a person.

[Chris Ryan]

Save my comments for hottest take.

[Sean Fantasy]

Okay. Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Roy, one of Roy's kids could have come in with like an ice skate blade stuck out of his head. And I could have been like, hold on, hold on. But like he had almost finished with this.

[Sean Fantasy]

I can't defend him because I would never leave my kid, ever for anything, ever. But if you encountered an alien and he cosmically, it cosmically changed you. Yeah, I think that's what the movie's trying to convey. There's no going back from this moment.

[Bill Simmons]

Spielberg himself, who did not have kids when he wrote this movie, was like, eh, probably could have, probably would have done a couple different things.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You have no sense of any sort of connection. But this is also the 70s when you just, your kids left for four hours.

[Chris Ryan]

And I think it's worth you pointing out like that. He's 33. It's like life just got away from me here.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

That's, that's why he should have been smoking long darts though.

[Sean Fantasy]

I mean, three kids before 31 or whatever.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He's living in Muncie, Indiana. Yeah, well, back then it was, I know, common. 4. I remember one of my friends when I was a kid who had like four or five kids and every time he came home we would be bummed out because it was just, he just hated everybody and you could just feel it. I remember feeling that when I was like six. Some people in their 70s, they were just like, what happened? Maybe it's still like this now, but you could really be like What? I have four kids. I met my wife when I was 18. Now I'm 32.

[Chris Ryan]

32.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm just gonna get bombed. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

You don't think Drake's ever just like, God damn. I didn't play the field at all. I thought he was a left tackle.

[Sean Fantasy]

But he was a guard.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm sorry. Just gonna get a riot count, not tell anybody. What do you have for weak link?

[Sean Fantasy]

Meanwhile, Josh Allen, childless. Hailee Steinfeld.

[Chris Ryan]

I had Larry the jogging LA Guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Wood stage the worst. Other than no iPhones or camera phones.

[Sean Fantasy]

The aliens at the end are not good. Like, it just doesn't look good. The marionette alien looks good. And the final alien. Yeah, that one.

[Chris Ryan]

That one's really cool.

[Sean Fantasy]

Rimbaldi looks good. That does the hand signs. But the little girls in the alien suits, it looks terrible. Like, we can be honest about it.

[Bill Simmons]

I think probably I kind of like it.

[Chris Ryan]

I wonder if it's. This is literally what has.

[Sean Fantasy]

You're zagging.

[Chris Ryan]

We've kind of done so much cool with aliens.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Throughout cinema history. Like, would you put this in the top 10 aliens you've seen on screen?

[Bill Simmons]

1977. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Scott makes the Xenomorph. Like, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Later, like, just. You're getting fifth grade girls, you're getting 50 of them from some town and putting an alien costume on them, and you're calling it a day.

[Sean Fantasy]

Fifteen years later, we get Natasha, Hannah Henstridge. You know what I mean? Like, we don't need great advances in alien interest.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It was actually 17 years. Seven months later, in three days, Countdown.

[Chris Ryan]

To species has begun.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[D]

Was this the first time in a major popular movie that they showed aliens?

[Sean Fantasy]

No, no, no, no. You mentioned the Day the Earth Stood still early.

[Bill Simmons]

I would say in a modern movie, though.

[Sean Fantasy]

No, they're. I mean, they're all through 50s and 60s sci fi.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm saying, like, from mid-70s forward, it's like, this is the demarcation movie for where the aliens would go.

[Sean Fantasy]

What are the biggest Alien movies of the 70s?

[Bill Simmons]

Do you know they made an Alien sequel called Aliens 1986, Chris.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Sigourney Weaver. I did. Yeah. I just found out about that. Supposedly it's good. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Is that the one where Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro are raiding the southern border?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think that's it.

[Sean Fantasy]

If only there was a podcast where you could go back and talk about older movies. Check that out and just think about what, like, what they meant instead of.

[Chris Ryan]

Letting the QB algorithm dictate it to.

[Bill Simmons]

Be not Nearly enough cigarette smoking. Is age the worst. Nobody realizing Roy has PTSD.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Because we don't know what PTSD is at 1977. But he's clearly just completely traumatized.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. This is like Ronnie could take a beat and just be like half of his body got singed. Like something clearly happened out there.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe the. Maybe the glaring sunburn on his face. Like something horrible has happened here.

[Sean Fantasy]

She's trying to get him to fix his face with makeup.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Sean Fantasy]

Not very sympathetic.

[Bill Simmons]

Stealth UFO watch parties that nobody knows about. Probably. You're not pulling that off in 2025.

[Chris Ryan]

Probably.

[Sean Fantasy]

No. No cell phones.

[Bill Simmons]

So the TV show Soap, which was a show I really liked in the late 70s, and they had a whole plot where Bert got abducted that was basically based on this movie. And now that show, nobody even knows that exists. I'm putting that in what stage? The worst. But yeah, they got a half a season of Soap out of basically a Roy Neri plot with Bert. And then he came back from outer space and, like, wanted to have sex with his wife all the time. She's like, something's going on with this guy. Yeah. Soap. Late 70s. Richard Mulligan.

[Sean Fantasy]

Oh, wow.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Wow. From Empty Nest.

[Bill Simmons]

The grandmother. Grandmother from who's the Boss? Was the star Billy Crystal played.

[Sean Fantasy]

Oh, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

A gay character. He's like the first gay character ever. There was a guy with a ventrocus guy. It's a weird show. I liked it. And then.

[Sean Fantasy]

Mothership interior in the 80 cut. And then the movie brats being unable to stop fiddling with their creations. I feel like that didn't age well that they did that.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you have a Ruffalo Hannah Rubenick Partridge over acting. Word.

[Chris Ryan]

Not really.

[Bill Simmons]

I didn't either.

[Chris Ryan]

I have Balaban when he's just like, explain what's going on, like in the desert.

[Bill Simmons]

Sean, what do you have for a Fox category?

[Sean Fantasy]

The Z Watanao Award. What happened the next day.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Roy is anally raped repeatedly for 30 years on the spaceship.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a complete anal probe.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is.

[Chris Ryan]

Is Ronnie. Is Ronnie with a greater Muncie Realtor in a week or less.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Clean out the living room.

[Chris Ryan]

This is Jack. He has a Cadillac. You know, he treats me really well. You're just gonna have to call him Dad.

[Bill Simmons]

I think that oldest son is definitely Rob in a liquor store. By age 15. The CR thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harrison Ford. Hottest Take Award. What do you have?

[Chris Ryan]

Roy gets a lot of heat for abandoning his family.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Who?

[Chris Ryan]

I think you could make a case, abandon him in some Ways earlier in the film.

[Bill Simmons]

I like it.

[Chris Ryan]

If I had the chance to be one of the first human beings to have meaningful contact with an extraterrestrial life form race, I'm hitting the fucking transfer portal. Goodbye, family. Anyone can have a family.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I get to go to Mars or wherever. Like, that's incredible.

[Sean Fantasy]

So do you not fear the unknown? Because that's the big question at the center of this.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I think what it is is that, like, there's no other choice for him by this point. Like, this has clearly become, like, an obsession that he's willing to throw his family away for.

[Sean Fantasy]

But you're saying you're making the choice.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And.

[Sean Fantasy]

And you're saying, I will take. I don't know who's. What's. What's that dude Ace is going to go to. Going to the Sixers.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like, I'm going Ace Bailey. I don't care what the pundits say.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I think that it's just, like, it's not a choice at all. Like, families are great and everything, but, like, if you got to be, like, the first person to meet aliens, you could start another family.

[Bill Simmons]

I see it. I. I was thinking, like, if my kids were the same age what Roy was, you know, I'd be like, I really want to go, but Zoe's got a game on Saturday. The Pats are playing the Colts Sunday. How much sports am I gonna miss?

[Sean Fantasy]

Same. This is a complete same cruise.

[Chris Ryan]

Tatum's ramping up.

[Bill Simmons]

I heard this new cougar has a chance. I'm just saying.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I think about it, though. Entertain it. What do you have for hottest take?

[Sean Fantasy]

Is this the best movie ever made with a long title? I think it is.

[Bill Simmons]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So six words?

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, six or more.

[Chris Ryan]

What are the Avatar sequels called?

[Bill Simmons]

I wish you had prepped us for this.

[Chris Ryan]

Would you call.

[Sean Fantasy]

Now you know how I feel.

[Bill Simmons]

Everything, Fellowship of the Ring, everything, everywhere, all at once.

[Sean Fantasy]

I think this is a better movie than the Fellowship of the Ring, which is a movie I love, but I think it's better. I think the biggest contender is probably Dr. Strangelove.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh. Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, but I mean, go through your.

[Chris Ryan]

Den of thieves 2. Pantera.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, your favorite. The Assassination of Jesse James. By the Coward, Richard Cord. Robert Ford.

[Sean Fantasy]

Who's Richard Cord?

[Bill Simmons]

Coward. Robert Ford. Richard Ford's an author.

[Sean Fantasy]

He is an author.

[Chris Ryan]

He is an author. Sports writer.

[Bill Simmons]

Birdman had a long one. Borat. Cultural Learnings of America.

[Sean Fantasy]

We haven't gotten to a film that is Better than Close Encounters yet.

[Bill Simmons]

That's a good one.

[Chris Ryan]

Sure.

[Sean Fantasy]

Borat. I mean, Borat rocks.

[Chris Ryan]

Borat's funnier than Close Encounters.

[Sean Fantasy]

Agree. No debate there.

[Bill Simmons]

My hottest take.

[Sean Fantasy]

So is it.

[Bill Simmons]

I think you're right.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's right.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's a good call.

[Chris Ryan]

Great one.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't even know if it's a hot take. It's like a lukewarm. Lukewarm.

[Chris Ryan]

You said you didn't have enough time to prep.

[Bill Simmons]

Look at this perfect tape.

[Sean Fantasy]

I also got that anally rape joke in there too. So it's. I'm. I worked hard.

[Bill Simmons]

Mine is if the 2025 version of this movie would somehow manage to reflect all the things that suck about 2025, Roy would be a lunatic on Reddit every day.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Roy's kids would all immediately be diagnosed with collateral PTSD and turned into overmedicated zombies. They'd just be fucking drinking riddled shakes. PETA would be protesting the animal sleep gas. And the UFOs never would have come because everyone had a camera phone. And they would have been like these guys with the phones, like that. We're out. So the movie never happens. And Roy's in jail.

[Chris Ryan]

What's he going to jail for?

[Bill Simmons]

Just for. For what happened.

[Sean Fantasy]

Trespassing. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. He's in Reddit. Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Using Reddit. It's gonna be tough for a lot.

[Bill Simmons]

Of people out there casting what ifs.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, God.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Sean Fantasy]

This is a crazy one.

[Bill Simmons]

Steve McQueen, first choice, impressed with the script, said, I can't cry on cue. I'm not your guy because I'm fucking Steve McQueen. I'm not crying in a movie, motherfuckers.

[Sean Fantasy]

Spielberg's story about the meeting with McQueen is incredible. McQueen gets the script. He likes the script. He says, I want to meet Steven Spielberg. He invites him to a bar. Steven Spielberg literally said, I had never been to a bar before in my.

[Bill Simmons]

Life or had sex with a woman.

[Sean Fantasy]

He's 26 years old. Steve McQueen says, Meet me at the Doom room. They go meet at the Doom room inside the bar. It's a raucous, rowdy bar. He said McQueen had 14 beers. He had three.

[Chris Ryan]

The Wade Bogs.

[Sean Fantasy]

He said a fight broke out in the middle of the meeting that they were having, and the McQueen got up as if he was going to enter and try to break up the fight, and then pulled himself back because he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of Spielberg. And finally he said, I love this script. I really want to do it. I actually cried a little while Reading it. But I know that I could never achieve that for you on camera. So I can't do your movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Bob Evans is like, yeah, Ali McGraw's gonna do Steve McQueen. What could go wrong? They're gonna be together for three.

[Sean Fantasy]

She's gonna meet him at the Doom room. No big deal.

[Bill Simmons]

I know he's cool, but how cool is he?

[Chris Ryan]

Hey, Ali, I know I left a couple voicemails. You know, no big deal. Call me back.

[Bill Simmons]

He just sounds like for me, by all going, by all accounts, the coolest actor of all time.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, still now, to this day, such.

[Chris Ryan]

A different movie if he's in it.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he's. I don't think he can be in this. Ah, he needed to be a little.

[Chris Ryan]

Paul Schrader version of it where it's like a little bit more of an.

[Bill Simmons]

Whatever this movie is, it can't be him. So anyway, James Khan, Dustin Hoffman, Pacino, Gene Hackman all turned down the part. Nicholson's intrigued but has scheduling conflicts. And meanwhile, Dreyfus already has heard about the movie because he's on the set with Jaws and he's lobbying. Lobbying. Lobbying.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. There's some great stories about Dreyfus, like sticking his head into Spielberg's office and being like, I heard Nicholson's crazy. Yeah, you don't want him.

[Bill Simmons]

But then he wanted a lot of money and points. They back off. They go back to Pacino, still not interested. Nicholson says, no, thanks again. This is in the research. Hackman turned down the role because he was in a troubled marriage and could not spend 16 weeks outside of Los Angeles on location shooting. And then James Kahn's like, I'll do it for a million and 10% of the gross. This is a pretty interesting James Kahn movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

I think it could have worked with James. He's like a. Maybe a little too strapping.

[Chris Ryan]

I think he would have been a little bit more intimidating as a disaffected father, though. Like him getting mad at the family and throwing shit through the window to build the Devil's tower. Mud. Mud.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, him coming out of Rollerball and doing this. I don't know how you shut off Rollerball.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it stays crowd canning job.

[Sean Fantasy]

He just has that streak of. Of rage underneath the surface that Dreyfus doesn't have. Dreyfus is always, like, flummoxed and bent out of shape, but he's not angry and con. I'm like, is this guy gonna throat punch me? Like, he just always looks like.

[Chris Ryan]

Even in Owl, you're like, holy shit.

[Bill Simmons]

That's how I Feel about Brian Curtis when you're in person with him.

[Sean Fantasy]

I know he has a physical intimidation factor.

[Bill Simmons]

Terry Garr wanted to portray Gillian, but was cast as Ronnie. Meryl Streep and Amy Irving also auditioned for Ronnie. Amy Irving then auditioned to be Steven Spielberg's girlfriend and then mother of his child and wife. Meryl Streep went on to some good things.

[Sean Fantasy]

I heard she did not familiar with her.

[Chris Ryan]

She would have been a cool Ronnie. She would have been a cool Gillian.

[Bill Simmons]

Hal Ash, he worked with Melinda Dillon. Suggested her to Spielberg. Cast three days for the filming. And then this was a great cast in what if not for this movie? Stanley Kubrick. Have you heard of him?

[Sean Fantasy]

I have.

[Bill Simmons]

So impressed by Carrie Guffey's performance as little Barry that he wanted to cast him as Danny Torrance. And unfortunately, Guffey was filming the Sheriff and the Satellite Kid and its sequel, Everything Happens to Me. I hope did not get to be in the shine.

[Chris Ryan]

I hope he fired his fucking agent. You know, Carrie went on to work for Merrill Lynch. Be like a finance guy.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, he's your guy, right? That's your financial advisor. Cary Guffey. One take Carey Tough Beat, one click Carry.

[Bill Simmons]

Now best that Guy award. I think Bob Balaban counts, even though now he's Bob Balaban. But for everyone Truffaut at the time.

[Sean Fantasy]

At the time was anybody. Like, the only people who were saying who was doing that guy were the cinephiles.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, you're missing the farmer who saw Bigfoot. Is the snow shovel guy from Home Alone.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Robert's Blossom.

[Bill Simmons]

That's your answer.

[Chris Ryan]

Henriksen is also in this.

[Bill Simmons]

Dan Waiters. I'm just giving it to Carl Weathers because he just died. It's great to see him.

[Sean Fantasy]

Great. I think it was.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he should have been dressed.

[Chris Ryan]

Like Apollo Creed, but that would have been good.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like in the trunks.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Just dressed up like he came from the set. We don't get to give this out. The Brandy Booth Award. Spielberg's cocker spaniel Elmer can be seen when the humans get released. Also appears in Jaws as the Brody family dog. Oh, he's in Jaws and Close Encounters.

[Sean Fantasy]

Wow.

[Bill Simmons]

Elmer.

[Sean Fantasy]

I was going to give that award to the doggy door.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, could happen too. Recasting Couch, director of City. What do you got?

[Chris Ryan]

None.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, what do you have? I had none either. Unless. Except that one guy you mentioned that they could have.

[Sean Fantasy]

And Joseph Summer. We could have done a little better.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, maybe if it was John Cazale.

[Chris Ryan]

But recasting the director, just John Cazale.

[Bill Simmons]

James Brolin even.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Pull monster popcorn. One set for two days.

[Sean Fantasy]

Oj. Why not?

[Bill Simmons]

Oj oj.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, that would have been great for the legacy of this film.

[Bill Simmons]

Recasting couch. Director city I came up with every 10 years. Who I would have casted in the Dreyfus part.

[Chris Ryan]

Jesus. Let's do it.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah, Cool.

[Sean Fantasy]

Go.

[Chris Ryan]

You're going to share.

[Bill Simmons]

1987, Tom Hanks. 1997, Will Smith.

[Sean Fantasy]

No, too handsome. Too heroic.

[Bill Simmons]

He needs to zag, though. And he loves aliens.

[Sean Fantasy]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Who would you have instead in 1997?

[Sean Fantasy]

But he could have uttered that. His catchphrase. Welcome to Earth.

[Bill Simmons]

Nick Cage.

[Chris Ryan]

Nick Cage could work.

[Sean Fantasy]

That would have been good gear.

[Chris Ryan]

Too hot.

[Bill Simmons]

Too old. 97. Yeah, we're in like 97. I mean, like, Bruce Willis is a little too old.

[Sean Fantasy]

But I mean, this is a category that we're going to talk about. But to me, this is like this. This is a Philip Seymour Hoffman part.

[Bill Simmons]

I have him for 07.

[Sean Fantasy]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

2017. Chadwick Boseman.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah, that would have been great.

[Bill Simmons]

That's all I got. Craig. Flex category.

[D]

Can I go? Hottest take.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

The musical communication back and forth scene between the mother chef and the humans. It works for the five notes and then it completely loses you. And it's just kind of awkward and weird once the spaceship starts playing the Tuba for like 10 minutes and they're just like riffing like jazz musicians. Liz and I were laughing and I've seen this movie before, but yeah, that Spielberg got a little. He was doing tricks on it as.

[Bill Simmons]

The kids said, yeah, wow. Okay.

[Sean Fantasy]

Steve got over his feet.

[D]

Yeah, the tuba.

[Sean Fantasy]

Steve and John Williams didn't know what they were doing.

[D]

And then start coming out. I'm like, all right, just a couple.

[Chris Ryan]

Notes from Old Dog Door here. Dial it back on the music, Steve.

[D]

Lose the tuba.

[Bill Simmons]

It's another director's commentary has to come now. It's like, I heard this Craig Horbeck.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Really made me rethink the musical.

[Sean Fantasy]

The Horbeck cut is coming.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm removing the music from Close Encounters.

[D]

It's a Vichi now.

[Bill Simmons]

Half ass. Internet research. The exact quote on Schrader's script from Spielberg. One of the most embarrassing screenplays ever professionally turned into a major film studio. Director didn't like it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Tough one.

[Bill Simmons]

Schrader's script was a guy as an encounter goes to the government, threatening to blow the lid off to the public. Instead, he and the government spent 15 years trying to make contact. The USAF and NASA refused to comment to cooperate in the film. Spielberg thought that Was a good sign for the film.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. What do they have to hide?

[Bill Simmons]

Right? Yeah. You'll never eat lunch in this town again. From Julia Phillips threw daggers everywhere at this film and said Spielberg was a perfectionist. That's why she got fired. Wasn't the mounds of cocaine she was doing.

[Sean Fantasy]

How's your memoir? You'll never smoke heaters in this town again. Going.

[Chris Ryan]

You'll never blog in this town again.

[Bill Simmons]

Six year old girls. 50 of them played the aliens. They're all from Mobile, Alabama.

[Chris Ryan]

Must have been a weird casting call.

[Bill Simmons]

Tried puppetry. Didn't work. Doug Trumbull was the visual effects supervisor. Doug.

[Sean Fantasy]

Doug.

[Bill Simmons]

Our guy. Doug. And there was a $3.3 million budget. Their work helped lead to advances in motion control photography. Mothership. Ralph McQuarrie. Been here for Ralph.

[Chris Ryan]

77. One of the best years in this.

[Sean Fantasy]

I have him coming up later.

[Bill Simmons]

This. I'm just going to read this verbatim. Spielberg was eager to show Trufa Truffaut the Hold on Truffaut. The giant landing sightset. Hoping to impress the other director. Truffaut didn't seem to be impressed at all. Spielberg and his crew later realized Truffaut was used to directing movies in small intimate settings. And he could not grasp the scale of the landing site. When he went into the set of the hotel room where Gillian watches the Devil's Tower newscast. Truffaut stood up and said now this is a set. And was dead serious. And they were like, okay, this was.

[Chris Ryan]

The spaceship they built like the soundstages in Alabama for this one. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Truffaut wasn't a huge fan. Didn't really get it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Kind of makes sense if you have seen any Truffaut films. So it makes me wonder why Steven Spielberg wanted him in the first place. He never really made like a space epic.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a weird one.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think this movie is like better or worse? If it's like Gerard Depardieu.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Martin Balsam or something like an American. Yeah. Like. Like there's. Because there was casting what ifs for these guys. But it was all French characters.

[Bill Simmons]

I think Packman would have been interesting.

[Sean Fantasy]

Just a nerd out though. Like the idea of the barrier of communication is such a key theme of the movie. And the idea of Balaban being an interpreter and also that the aliens need interpreters and they take on the human form. But they also have. Have this musical signature and that this like how we are connected without language is such a powerful idea in the movie that I really like that. It is not just a French person, but a French person who's like. The 400 blows communicated something so profound to this generation of filmmakers who are in the 70s trying to pay tribute. It's him. Yeah. Paying homage to what Truffle gave them.

[Bill Simmons]

John Ford's the Searcher. Spielberg watched over and over again as.

[Chris Ryan]

He made the movie the Horizon Line.

[Bill Simmons]

That movie always keeps popping into the rewatchables research as like this North Star for all these filmmakers in 70s and 80s.

[Sean Fantasy]

Well, that shot of Ethan opening the door Searchers is the shot of the door opening and Close Encounters.

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, it's like, oh, did he want to do a criteria orgasm?

[Sean Fantasy]

I hadn't thought about it until now. But they're connected.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, there's. And then in Fabelman's he has David lynch playing John Ford talking about the importance of where you set the horizon in a frame. And if you watch Close Encounters with that in mind, you can totally see it.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

Tops made 66 trading cards and 11 stickers in 1978 of this film.

[Sean Fantasy]

Dreyfus, were they like, here's Ronnie, here's her numbers.

[Bill Simmons]

Literally three kids. This is what they did.

[Sean Fantasy]

Meltdown.

[Bill Simmons]

Dreyfus and Truffaut did not want to be in the card set and are not in it.

[Chris Ryan]

So everybody but Richard Dreyfus and Francois Truffaut has a Tops card from Close Encounters.

[Bill Simmons]

It's not even just Top Larry. There's seen stuff. It's this weird thing they did for a while.

[Chris Ryan]

Is that on ebay? Like, do you think it's.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, yeah. For not that much either.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

Jaws has cards. Rocky 1 and Rocky 2 have cards. ETS cards. There's a lot of them.

[Sean Fantasy]

When are we doing ringer cards?

[Bill Simmons]

There's been offers.

[Sean Fantasy]

Big Wa.

[Chris Ryan]

Brian Curtis, the Killer.

[Bill Simmons]

Throat Slitter. So the version, their cards were about Ronnie Neary and her children and some of the other characters. I don't think it did that great. Apex Mountain. Spielberg.

[Sean Fantasy]

No, I mean, it has to be Dreyfus.

[Chris Ryan]

Definitely. Dreyfus wins an Oscar is about as.

[Bill Simmons]

Apexy as it gets, right? UFOs in a movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I think so. I think. What's Independence Day?

[Sean Fantasy]

I mean, it really could be. It really could be.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Because this is specifically a ufo.

[Bill Simmons]

Plus, it starts.

[Chris Ryan]

It's not like spaceship. It's not aliens. We're talking UFOs.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. I mean, I think in the 50s when movies like the Day the Earth Stood still were coming out and films were so important to the culture and the amount of people that saw that movie, you know, you could say Klaatu Barat and Nick two and all that stuff that came out of those movies was huge. And we don't necessarily have the perspective on it since the. What we cover on the show is basically the last 50 years. But for the. For the post, you know, the new Hollywood era, this is probably the most important UFO movie ever made.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I think I agree. UFO sunburns, definitely.

[Chris Ryan]

For sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Truffaut? No, no, I'm gonna say no. Melinda Dillon, same year, Right.

[Sean Fantasy]

With Flesh Shot.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Pretty good.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Mashed potatoes. Mashed potatoes, certainly.

[Chris Ryan]

As a building material. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Did this maybe movie make you want to have mashed potatoes when you saw them?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I felt the same way.

[Sean Fantasy]

Do you?

[Bill Simmons]

There's a lot of mashed potatoes, though, for five people.

[Chris Ryan]

But that's how they used to get down in muncie in the 70s.

[Bill Simmons]

Right. That's a lot of.

[Sean Fantasy]

It was like whole milk.

[Bill Simmons]

She should have been smoking those for Jesus as she was eating the mashed potatoes. Like, bite. Smoke.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's advertising. Yeah, for sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Movie dads losing their minds. Probably not. I think it's still the Shining.

[Sean Fantasy]

Good.

[Chris Ryan]

Technically, Henry Hill's a dad in the second half of Goodfellas.

[Bill Simmons]

Muncie, Indiana. I'm gonna say yes.

[Sean Fantasy]

Huh.

[Chris Ryan]

Any big basketball players from there?

[Bill Simmons]

Probably Terry Garr. I'm going to say the Tootsie era, when she started to go on Letterman.

[Sean Fantasy]

And was she nominated for Tootsie? Yeah, she was. Right. So I would say Tootsie.

[Bill Simmons]

NBA players from Muncie, Indiana, include Allen Level, used to be on the Rockets, Jay Edwards, Craig Neal. Nobody that famous.

[Chris Ryan]

That's not. Bob Knight hadn't started the whole Bloomington talent factor.

[Sean Fantasy]

And you believed that he had the right way of coaching.

[Bill Simmons]

How about those red American tracksuits?

[Chris Ryan]

Those are awesome. Those are going to be in my memorabilia dream team.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe break those back up.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, that's cool.

[Bill Simmons]

Bad parenting.

[Sean Fantasy]

Bad parenting in a Apex Mountain in.

[Bill Simmons]

A major box office smash movie.

[Sean Fantasy]

I see this boy's life's probably up.

[Chris Ryan]

There, but as a smash.

[Sean Fantasy]

Bad parenting in a smash movie.

[Bill Simmons]

You'll remember me.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you think John McClane is a better or worse dad than Roy Neary?

[Sean Fantasy]

He seems like a pretty good dad.

[Chris Ryan]

He puts himself in a lot of.

[Sean Fantasy]

Danger, but he's not his children.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, he could have said, you know what? Like, if we lose Bedelia, like, I have to be there for my children.

[Bill Simmons]

Rodney drove his family away.

[Sean Fantasy]

He just abandoned them.

[Chris Ryan]

So did John McClane eventually.

[Sean Fantasy]

But then they're reunited, marry Elizabeth Winston. You know, she comes back and Live free or Die Hard.

[Bill Simmons]

Cruise or Hanks? I think it's Hanks. But I would have also really enjoyed Cruz.

[Chris Ryan]

Cruz basically does a version of this in War of the Worlds.

[Sean Fantasy]

Don't you think that Cruz would be better at the obsession part? Hanks is more the everyman, which is useful. But Cruz being the guy who's like, I gotta go to Devil's Tower. You buy More.

[Bill Simmons]

It depends on what year of Cruz I'm getting. So, like, if it's 87, maybe because we don't have a ton of background with him yet, it's hard to imagine. But if we're in the late 90s with him, I'm just assuming it's going to become an action movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And it's hard to imagine. Cruz is like a guy working for the Muncie power department. That's right. Whereas he ever had like a normal job because even in color of money, he's still like a fucking incredible pool player.

[Bill Simmons]

But bartender in Jamaica, he's the best.

[Chris Ryan]

Bartender of all time. Or the second best, depending on. Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

I have him, number one.

[Sean Fantasy]

He was just a. He was a normal senator in Lions for Lambs.

[Chris Ryan]

That's true.

[Bill Simmons]

What do you have? Craig Hanks. Okay. Scorsese or Spielberg? Spielberg. By the way. Spielberg. Ninth rewatchables movie, I think. Tied for the lead.

[Sean Fantasy]

With who?

[Bill Simmons]

With Tony Scott.

[Sean Fantasy]

Nice.

[Bill Simmons]

And Michael Mann.

[Chris Ryan]

Nice.

[Sean Fantasy]

Wow.

[Chris Ryan]

And we still have a few Spielbergs on the board though, too. Right?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't like that. Man is now in a tie.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. You got to get public enemies on the board.

[Bill Simmons]

Got it. We gotta. There's some work left.

[Sean Fantasy]

Time for the keep.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's time for Man.

[Chris Ryan]

Should be Logan's Run.

[Bill Simmons]

What role would Philip Seymour Hoffman have played? Clearly Roy Nary. Okay. Picking knits.

[Chris Ryan]

Are Jericho Mile, not Logan's Run.

[Bill Simmons]

My biggest pick in.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's okay. You're okay.

[Bill Simmons]

And you can clearly tell it's a movie written by somebody who didn't have kids yet. No mom is letting their kid go out that dog door.

[Chris Ryan]

Even in the the.

[Bill Simmons]

There's no way. She just never era. First of all, there's like. Like moms get like crazy strength when their kids are in danger. Even she's holding on to the kids with dog doors. She's not letting go.

[Chris Ryan]

But this isn't like a carjacking. Like, this is. Like, this isn't a car. Like, this is like, I have a red light. Shit is coming through the.

[Bill Simmons]

How about the kid? She's in the kitchen freaking out and the kid just climbs away and goes out the dog door.

[D]

Like she would be holding on to the kid the entire moment.

[Bill Simmons]

You're holding on to the kid. All you.

[Sean Fantasy]

The minute something like this happens, the. Your instinct is just to go. To grab your kid.

[Bill Simmons]

Kid. The whole point of being a parent is you're putting the kid above your own safety, your life, everything. That's just. It's the DNA of it. And you're just like this with your kid the whole time.

[Chris Ryan]

I wouldn't know. I'd just be watching Dylan Harper tape, you know.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I don't think Spielberg knew.

[Sean Fantasy]

I think it does raise the question why the is there a dog door with a three year old in this house anyway? This is. I know this is the dog door.

[Bill Simmons]

Episode now, but how can you have.

[Chris Ryan]

She's not even that freaked out the first time he goes outside though.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like she's freaked out in the kitchen though. And Melinda, Dylan even says, but when.

[Chris Ryan]

She looks out there, she's like Barry, where are you going? She's kind of like Barry.

[Bill Simmons]

But that was the 70s though. We've covered this. We just go. We're gone all day. Our parents, we let our three year.

[Sean Fantasy]

Olds wander in the street.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I told you. We used to go to the Chestnut Hill dump. Yeah, just for the day. Come back at like 7:30.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, I used to go to the Bada Bing every day after school.

[Bill Simmons]

Look at another parent. Nick, nitpick. So Barry comes off the UFO and she's like, Barry, Melinda, Dylan is the mom. Oh my God. I just feel like you're inspecting your kid first. That kid comes off, I'm picking him.

[Chris Ryan]

Up, taking a look at him, making.

[Bill Simmons]

Sure all the digits are there. Do you still have two feet? Do you still have arms? Do you have hands? I'm just looking at you.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is he an alien?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

You're just. You're inspecting him before you interact with him.

[Chris Ryan]

I think that I do realize untapped sequel potential of like Barry. Something that happened to Barry.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I have that in unanswerable.

[Chris Ryan]

Barry the Omen, 1989.

[Bill Simmons]

Barry in high school. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Barry Omen versus Damien Oman.

[Bill Simmons]

Barry Omen's kid. They don't kill any animals. They just sleep gas them. What the. What's going on?

[Chris Ryan]

That was an odd bit.

[Bill Simmons]

I sleep gas.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's weird.

[Chris Ryan]

The major was lying.

[Bill Simmons]

Sleep gas, Craig.

[Chris Ryan]

Why?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know. I just want to test it out.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah, you blaspheme John Williams. You get sleep gassed.

[Bill Simmons]

And then my My last one, the pilots come off the ufo. My first question is, what? What year is this?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

These guys are super chill. Like they haven't thought I'd be like.

[Bill Simmons]

Hi, I'm Bob Gordon. Us. Right. I'd be like, like, where am I? What year is this?

[Chris Ryan]

What do you think? Hits those guys first is like the craziest thing.

[Sean Fantasy]

The baseball's integrated.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, what the.

[Bill Simmons]

There's a professional baseball league. Yeah. 1945-76.

[Chris Ryan]

Aaron has how many home runs? What?

[Sean Fantasy]

Why is it only about baseball?

[Bill Simmons]

Be funny. They just super racist about baseball.

[Chris Ryan]

Who is this?

[Bill Simmons]

Richie J. The spaceship.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Reggie Jackson has a candy bar.

[Sean Fantasy]

What's up with the guy who's greeting them when they're getting off the plane? And he's, he's just like, lieutenant, welcome back. What is that guy's problem? Why is he like trying to assuage those guys?

[Bill Simmons]

There wasn't one guy. It's like, what year is this? It's 1977. What? 1977. Like, this is like the. I'll step on my sequel now. The sequel is these guys going back to their families and their wife and is 32 years older.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

They're just like, ah, not sure if this is gonna work. I'm just a 24 year old gunner. Yeah. I left World War II. Now I have a 58 year old wife.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I just think Ty Cobb's the best thing that ever happened in baseball.

[Bill Simmons]

Totally misunderstood his kid. Their kids are older than them potentially.

[Chris Ryan]

Uh huh.

[Sean Fantasy]

Uh huh.

[Bill Simmons]

It just had so many questions.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a really cool back to the future thing. Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

It would have been distracting for a guy to be like melting down and being like, what do you mean, 1977. But the whole time you're watching it, you're waiting for someone to have any reaction. They have no reaction.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I would add a lot of sports questions. I just would have wanted to go through every year to see if the Red Sox won. All right, just don't tell me if you won. Let's go 46. Cardinals went 47, Yankees went, fuck, 48. It just goes up here. We get to 75, it's like, well, red's. Red sucks. Final say, you're not as low as that one.

[Sean Fantasy]

And then you would have only had to wait another 27 years.

[Bill Simmons]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

What if they got off and they were like really scared of Barry? Dude. No, you guys didn't bring Barry back to you. The devil.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. That could have been another sequel. Barry just going nuts. What other nitpicks do you have, you.

[Chris Ryan]

Know, the, the conspiracy being for the greater good and like how nice everybody involved in the military and the science community are? Yeah, it's more of like an age of the worst, probably, but it, it's a very warm version of we're really trying to look out for everybody's best interest.

[Bill Simmons]

Spielberg sucking up to the Illuminati, trying to get it.

[Sean Fantasy]

I think it's a little suspicious, the centrality of power that someone like lacombe has on American soil. That's a little weird. That probably isn't likely to happen.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, good point.

[Chris Ryan]

That is funny. When Roy's like, he's not even American.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

There's an incredible moment on Steven Spielberg's Inside the Actors Studio. Do you know what I'm referring to?

[Bill Simmons]

I saw that when it happened, but I don't remember it.

[Sean Fantasy]

So this is a real thing that happened. James Lipton is interviewing him. And this is what Lipton says. He says, your father was a computer engineer, your mother was a concert pianist. And when the spaceship lands, they make music together on the computer. Suggesting that Roy nears. Boarding the spaceship represents Spielberg's wish to be reunited with his parents, for them to be reunited as a couple. And in the moment on the show, it like dawns on Spielberg, like what he has done and doesn't realize it. And it's a very beautiful moment about how you kind of create things and don't necessarily understand how you're bringing ideas and feelings inside of yourself and putting them in the world. But I'm like, how the fuck did he not like, ever put that together?

[Chris Ryan]

Like, the subconscious is a very powerful thing, man.

[Sean Fantasy]

Like, he's talked about this movie non stop for 25 years. At this point, when he's being interviewed, like, there have been multiple documentaries made about this movie where he's reflecting on what it means. And it took James Lipton at the actor studio to coordinate these ideas.

[Chris Ryan]

Did he say that before or after Fableman's? I mean, before before.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

It was like 20 years ago inside the Actor's Studio.

[Bill Simmons]

I got nostalgic. Now it'd be Spielberg on Theo Vaughn's podcast. They would be like, how'd you make that ufo? Think it was cool, man.

[D]

You like yogurt?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, cool.

[Sean Fantasy]

At the time, everybody was like, james Lipton, what a blowhard. What this, this is so good.

[Bill Simmons]

He really was. And the other picking that.

[Sean Fantasy]

No, I, I, I think the prevailing one to me is what Chris said, which is like, the government sure is friendly in this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, it's really, like even having like a. A televised meeting with the people who feel like they've been vanished or like had experiences and just being like you guys. Your concerns are really valid.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

You know?

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I wish I could tell you some of something else.

[Bill Simmons]

Give you an sequel prequel. Prestige tv, all black cast are untouchable. I still like the idea of the Prestige TV sequel of these guys coming back to their families off the ship. And maybe it's almost like an episode of Lost. Each episode is senator on one guy trying to re acclimate himself with his now aged family.

[Chris Ryan]

End of the first season, Roy comes back.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, Roy comes back. But it's 2007. You think this is an untouchable.

[Sean Fantasy]

He thought about making a real sequel many times and it was presented to him as it could have been a huge windfall and he never pursued it. And it's not that he's above sequels, he's made sequels.

[Bill Simmons]

But you'd have to have Roy in the sequel. If Spielberg was doing it, I think.

[Sean Fantasy]

That would be interesting. The time to do it would have been in the early 2000s, you know, it would have been when you had crossed that 30 something year threshold and Dreyfus was still acting.

[Bill Simmons]

Zemeckis was like, I got this. Spielberg's like, fuck this shit. Fucking Contact. Now I'm not. Now I'm never making a sequel.

[Sean Fantasy]

I don't think it's been ruined.

[Chris Ryan]

I love that Spielberg turned into you. Now I'm fucking never doing it.

[Bill Simmons]

Fuck this.

[Chris Ryan]

How about that?

[Sean Fantasy]

I believe Spielberg likes Contact. Just for the record, okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Danny Trejo, Doris Burke, Sam Jackson. No, Byron Mayo, Barney Cousins, Tony Romo, Harling Mays, Chris Collinsworth, Daniel Plainview, Long Legs or Wilford Brimley in the Firm.

[Chris Ryan]

Didn't you have somebody in addition you wanted to add or no.

[Bill Simmons]

You want to go first?

[Chris Ryan]

Sure. I can do Doris Burke. Talking about Roy's oldest son. Yeah, we see you, Brad. You may not be able to solve fractions, but now you're gonna have to solve being the man of the house. Your crybaby father has chosen a life of the unknown out in outer space instead of taking you to Pinocchio. So get ready to learn drywall, buddy. At least until Terry Garr finds a silver fox somewhere on the Muncie singles scene.

[Bill Simmons]

I think they've turned this into Baron Mayo as Dorothy Burke.

[Chris Ryan]

Did you feel like DB and you.

[Bill Simmons]

Didn'T throw in a young man there? That's been her.

[Chris Ryan]

We see you, young man.

[Bill Simmons]

That young man that young man.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Has found something in that cereal box.

[Sean Fantasy]

What's the kid's name?

[Chris Ryan]

Brad.

[Sean Fantasy]

Wouldn't it be Mr. Brad?

[Chris Ryan]

Mr. Brad, did you think that RJ and DB were doing a kind kind of in New York's pocket for that game?

[Bill Simmons]

What kind of.

[Chris Ryan]

You didn't think so?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh my God.

[Chris Ryan]

They were like, oh, that's another really tough foul.

[Bill Simmons]

You mean when Josh Hart tripped Tatum?

[Chris Ryan]

And they were like.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, they were like, ah, that was worse.

[Sean Fantasy]

It's been a very pleasant hour and 50 minute podcast.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Sean Fantasy]

That was not a dirty thing.

[Chris Ryan]

I just rolled a grenade in there and walked out.

[Sean Fantasy]

I have absolutely Ridiculous. You're ridiculous.

[Bill Simmons]

I have a new character for this.

[Chris Ryan]

As a, you know, non partisan observer.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm just saying out there, just rooting for the Knicks. Jay Williams, from First Take. I have new character.

[Sean Fantasy]

Not from Duke University or from First Take.

[Bill Simmons]

Where it goes around and everybody agrees on something and it goes to Jay Williams. I know Claude the Comb pulled it off. I know he brought all those air plane pilots back and I know he established actual contacts with the aliens that our planet being destroyed. I get it. But how hard was that really? How hard was that really? That's my question, guys. So he figured out six sounds of a synthesizer. Now he's a hero. Where was the science? That's my question because are you a scientist or a music producer? If I need a music producer in 1977, Guys, I'm getting Brian Eno. I'm getting Alan Parsons. I'm not getting Claude the Comb. And that's all I'm saying. Jay Williams, first take. Thank you. New debut.

[Chris Ryan]

Way to go in your bright ITO bag.

[Sean Fantasy]

One day, every member of the sports media will be a member of this category.

[Chris Ryan]

Team College on.

[Bill Simmons]

Just want to ask her who gets it.

[Chris Ryan]

Wait, did you have any imitations?

[Sean Fantasy]

I do think there's a really good case for Wilford Brimley saying. And what does she find in that spaceship? Mitch? Heartbreak.

[Chris Ryan]

A break. She goes down to her local.

[Bill Simmons]

The Devil's Island.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, Devil's Tower. What does she find?

[Bill Simmons]

Mitch?

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Did I say Devil's Island?

[Chris Ryan]

Devil's.

[Bill Simmons]

You did, but that's Devil's Town.

[Chris Ryan]

Maybe that could be the sequel. Close Encounters for Devil's Island.

[Bill Simmons]

Just one Oscar. Who gets it?

[Chris Ryan]

Steve?

[Sean Fantasy]

I wrote John Williams, honestly.

[Chris Ryan]

Also maybe Vilmos, the cinematographer.

[Sean Fantasy]

You did get it. But he did get it.

[Chris Ryan]

Did have a little bit of assistance on this one, didn't he?

[Sean Fantasy]

They did reshoots and he was not available for the reshoots. And some of the reshoots were done by John Alonso. Doug Slocum, who shot the Indiana Jones movies and shit. Another, like, incredibly accomplished cinematographer.

[Chris Ryan]

Not Nestor Almendro's.

[Sean Fantasy]

No, no. Someone else.

[Bill Simmons]

I have Steve.

[Sean Fantasy]

Okay.

[Bill Simmons]

Probably unanswerable questions. Did Roy ever come back?

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. What happened to Roy? Did he ever see his family again? Why don't people age on the ship?

[Bill Simmons]

A rare case of, like, a sequel, actually would have answered some questions. But on the other hand, it's kind of cool never knowing whether Roy came back or not.

[Chris Ryan]

What do Ronnie and the family think when they come home and see what Roy's done to the house? And she gets back from her sisters? She's like, I have this ranch house.

[Bill Simmons]

I think you're calling, like, my mortgage sanitarium. Yeah, right. Like, if this guy ever comes back, we have to lock him up with a straight jacket because there's 500 pounds of dirt and trees in my living room right now.

[D]

And Ronnie will have no idea what happened to him. Right?

[Sean Fantasy]

No. But we do know culturally what happened to Barry Omen, you know, and that he is the Antichrist. And so that will get us.

[Bill Simmons]

My next question. What was Barry like around 1989? Just in high school?

[Chris Ryan]

Have you seen Reboot man?

[Bill Simmons]

Red darts through people's faces.

[Chris Ryan]

Why does Roy, like. What is the reason for Roy getting fired?

[Sean Fantasy]

Unclear. Because he just didn't show up to work, maybe.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, or is he speeding around in his truck and, like, too much. Too much reckless driving? Because I. I feel like a lot of people in Muncie are like, probably.

[Bill Simmons]

The bar was pretty low to keep your job.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. So, like, why would you get fired the next day?

[Bill Simmons]

I agree there was something missing from that, especially in the 77 cut. He's getting promoted.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. And then he goes right there. So it's almost like a scene is missing.

[Chris Ryan]

I guess a lot of things happen. What is it like, they're basically, like, urgent. Like, you wonder whether or not, like, Roy is being put in position to follow this link to, like, get out to Devil's Tower.

[Bill Simmons]

Linda, Dylan's husband, who we never seen this movie. What if it was Hand Rahan and he's, like, transferred for the Indiana team? He played. Played college at Boston University. That's why he got transferred over.

[Sean Fantasy]

Kind of checks out.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. So you can't say it was.

[Chris Ryan]

That would be great. If she gets back from Devil's Tower, Paul Newman's waiting for in a leather overcoat.

[Sean Fantasy]

Who's the closest NHL franchise to Indiana? Is it, like, the Blue Jackets?

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we did have the Indianapolis racers. Wha. In 1977. The racers were Gretzky played.

[Sean Fantasy]

Hmm.

[Bill Simmons]

Any other unanswerables?

[Chris Ryan]

No.

[Bill Simmons]

What piece of memorabilia would you want from this movie or not? One.

[Chris Ryan]

Jumpsuit, certainly.

[Bill Simmons]

Jumpsuit was magnificent.

[Sean Fantasy]

Clay mountain sculpture.

[Bill Simmons]

For me, I have the cymbal banging monkey toy. But I also like the bees.

[Sean Fantasy]

See the movie the monkey. The horror movie that came out this year.

[Bill Simmons]

I did not see that because the reviews were mixed. But I will say it at some point.

[Chris Ryan]

I have a weird memorabilia question because I have to say that just the one shot of the McDonald's. I like, had like the urge where I was like, should I go get a fucking Big Mac right now? Like, this is because you get. You see the arches.

[Sean Fantasy]

Question.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

When that happened, was your wife out of town?

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. But I didn't go. And I do want to know memorabilia wise, is a 1977 McDonald's burger taste much different?

[Sean Fantasy]

Oh.

[Chris Ryan]

Than a 2025 McDonald's burger?

[Sean Fantasy]

Good question.

[Bill Simmons]

That wasn't probably the same.

[Chris Ryan]

My wife did not want to have this conversation. You'd be surprised.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you think Roy Neri should have been a verb? Like I just Roy nar it last week. Just left.

[Chris Ryan]

Does that mean like when you abandon your family or something?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I just did a.

[Sean Fantasy]

You're saying that's what Josh Hart did to Tatum?

[Bill Simmons]

He neared him Coach Finack award for best life lesson. Listen, it's okay to dump your family as long as you're trusting your gut.

[Chris Ryan]

That's my hottest take. Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Is it justifiable if the aliens are real?

[Chris Ryan]

It's a leap of faith, you know?

[Sean Fantasy]

Do you. Do you support the reading of the film? That none of that is really happening.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, that it's all in his head.

[Sean Fantasy]

And then near he's having a psychotic break.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh.

[Chris Ryan]

Triggered by.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like how in Top Maverick he dies in the first 10 minutes.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those.

[Bill Simmons]

That's my favorite one ever.

[Sean Fantasy]

So he's going the death dream. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. It's.

[Chris Ryan]

It's heaven. When he gets to the top of Devil's Tower.

[Sean Fantasy]

No, I think it's just a mass delusion.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, wow.

[Sean Fantasy]

I don't know. It's just a nature interesting line of thought.

[Bill Simmons]

If it's a massive delusion, he's probably having sex with Melinda Dylan at some point. He's going to throw one in there quickly.

[Sean Fantasy]

You Henran's wife Love slap Shit.

[Bill Simmons]

Threesome. Best double feature choice. I have Starman with Jeff Bridges.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's a good One.

[Bill Simmons]

I really like that movie. Yeah, I've probably seen that movie more than just about anybody.

[Chris Ryan]

The Carpenter movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I love Starman.

[Sean Fantasy]

Tonally. Those are really matched.

[Bill Simmons]

You know that movie, either of you. Craig, Jack, Jeff Bridges. It's like a really great Jeff Bridges movie. Similar, like 1984.

[Sean Fantasy]

Curiosity and wonder. And it's not cynical or mean in any way. It's the rare unused Carpenter movie.

[Bill Simmons]

But does he have, like, 10 special balls and he can use each one? He, like, saves a deer with one of them, and then he starts running out of balls. Like, literally.

[Chris Ryan]

I had Asteroid City, which is a Wes Anderson movie from a few years ago about alien visitation, but also very melancholy about family.

[Sean Fantasy]

That's a good one. There was a special feature on the 4K that I think was made maybe seven or eight years ago. And it's three kinds of Close Encounters is the name of it. And it's three interviews. One with Spielberg, one with Denis Villeneuve, and one with J.J. abrams. And J.J. and Denis talking about how the movie kind of changed their lives and how they see movies. And then one with Spielberg kind of talking about the movie 40 years later. And in that documentary, Spielberg says, I think Arrival is the best movie about alien encounters since Close Encounters. I think that this is the absolute pinnacle of this kind of a film.

[Chris Ryan]

That would probably be tough for JJ who made Super 8 and is basically, like, trying to make close encounters.

[Sean Fantasy]

Super 8 is not uttered once during this documentary.

[Bill Simmons]

Didn't he make Cloverfield, whatever that one was, too?

[Sean Fantasy]

He didn't direct it. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Who won the movie? Spielberg. Yeah.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yes.

[D]

He's also making another UFO film right now.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[D]

That we didn't talk about.

[Bill Simmons]

He's chasing ghosts.

[Sean Fantasy]

Well, we've never done War of the World, too. And War of the Worlds is totally in conversation with this.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Craig.

[Chris Ryan]

Wait, what was that?

[Bill Simmons]

You know, the world's compared to this.

[Chris Ryan]

Movie, but do you like War of the Worlds?

[Bill Simmons]

It's fine.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay.

[Sean Fantasy]

I think it's good.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's very good, but I don't think it's as good as Close Encounters.

[D]

Craig, my tuba. Thoughts aside, I do love this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I feel shame.

[D]

I do. I love this movie. Spielberg is my. After watching this, it just reconfirmed why Spielberg is my favorite director. I still think he just makes movies like Spielberg movies are what movies are supposed to be. He makes the pla. The platonic ideal of movies. To me, like, they are how you are supposed to feel after watching something. Like, there's no better feeling than the first shot of A Spielberg movie, like, you see the camera coming down, you just like feel it. And I actually think this movie does not resonate super hard with my generation or has not endured the same way other Spielberg films have. And I honestly think it's because he made E.T. too soon after this. Like, if he just waited 15 years after Close Encounters to make E.T. i think Close Encounters is a way bigger movie for. For people my age.

[Bill Simmons]

I think the rewatch ability of it on the 80s 90s TV apparatuses really heard it. Yeah, it was one of the rare ones. It was just really hard to watch. They could never get the camera right when they would pan and scan on it just never was the same kind of impact.

[D]

And I just think if you're a parent and you want to show your kid an alien movie, you're picking E.T. you're like, you're never going to pick this one first.

[Chris Ryan]

I wonder whether. But this has had like a sort of cinematic studies revival. Like, it's a big letterbox movie. It's a big, like, people are like, this is top three Spielberg.

[Sean Fantasy]

Yeah. It's been re released theatrically a couple times. And I think it's widely seen as. Even though I think it's actually a very mature portrait of parenting. One of Spielberg's most mature movies. And so it's like ET Is a movie you watch when you're a kid. Jurassic park is a movie you watch when you're a kid. Jaws is a movie you watch when you're a kid. As you're starting to get into adult life and having real responsibility. It's a very powerful movie.

[Chris Ryan]

All right, you did a great job.

[Bill Simmons]

Close Encounters did a great job. What?

[Chris Ryan]

Just, just on this pod. You were like, I'm nervous. You know, I wanted more time in the.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, I felt like we needed more time, much like Spielberg making the movie. But we did fine.

[Chris Ryan]

We may not have gotten Jay Williams.

[Sean Fantasy]

I was just gonna say you brought Jay Williams to the table. And we'll be forever changed because of that.

[Bill Simmons]

Thanks to Craig and Jack, as always, you can watch this on the ringer movies. And thank you to Ronick Channel as well. And thank you to Ronick. And we have one more big ass 70s movie next week, which I don't know what it's gonna be yet. It's great to see you guys. Thank you. Let's go sa.