‘Fargo’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Kyle Brandt

Summary

The Rewatchables: ‘Fargo’ (1996) with Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Kyle Brandt

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this CR Month episode of The Rewatchables, Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and guest Kyle Brandt dive deep into the Coen brothers' masterpiece, Fargo (1996). The trio analyzes why the film is considered a near-perfect crime thriller, discusses its blend of dark comedy and bleak violence, the singular performances, unforgettable characters, Minnesota's idiosyncrasies, and more. Through stories, hot takes, and obscure trivia, they break down the meticulous craftsmanship of the Coens and appreciate how Fargo has influenced pop culture, TV, and cinema over the last 30 years.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Is Fargo a Perfect Movie?

• Kyle Brandt opens with the bold claim: “I think Fargo is a perfect movie... There’s not a scene I don’t love, not a character I don’t love. It’s one of the best scripts ever written.” ([03:12])
• All hosts agree, with Bill Simmons adding: “It’s almost like the perfect distillation of what the Coens can do.” ([03:47])
• The film’s “runtime” is lauded: “98 minutes. Every scene is the good stuff. Not a single filler scene.” ([04:27]–[05:12])
• They compare it to a “perfect game pitching performance”—no wasted frame or detail.

2. Coen Brothers’ Themes & Influence

• Chris: “Everyday people in increasingly crazy situations... They love the evil starting in the most unassuming places, and with dumbest people possible.” ([12:06])
• Bill draws links between Fargo and true crime shows, while noting the recurring Coen motif: “They love a big case of money. Kidnappings, too—such an amazing dramatic conceit.” ([11:22])
• Chris sees Fargo’s DNA in “shows like Barry, The Sopranos... You can just see the Fargo DNA all over the place.” ([13:15])

3. Violence & Tone: The Coen Brothers’ Balance

• Bill: “They especially shoot violence in a way that’s almost unique... It confronts the viewer with high comedy and deep, deep trauma.” ([13:55])
• Kyle: “It’s so fucking funny. That’s why I have vivid memories of seeing this in the theater... Being like, I don’t know what genre this is, but I’m seeing it again tomorrow.” ([15:01])

4. Character Breakdowns and Performances

• William H. Macy (Jerry Lundegaard):
  • Chris: “His total inability to gain any perspective... never thinking for a minute about it crumbling. This is every true crime documentary.” ([19:40])
  • Macy’s career trajectory (“He tried out for a lesser role... then Fargo, Air Force One, and Boogie Nights all in a row.” [21:01])
  • Favorite Macy moments. ([22:14])
• Steve Buscemi (Carl):
  • Wrote the part for him; “Every line I’m writing is for Buscemi.” ([24:16])
  • His role as the “funny-looking” guy becomes a running joke.
  • “I could watch Buscemi for an hour just screaming at that fucking tv. Just plug me into the ozone, baby.” ([23:27])
• Frances McDormand (Marge Gunderson):
  • Not seen until 34 minutes in—a “flex.” ([08:16])
  • Her career: “She’s on that rare list... If she’s in something, you have my attention.” ([28:20])
  • “This is a career maker for her.” ([24:02])
  • Her face acting and scenes, especially with Mike Yanagita ([29:24]), receive special praise.
• Peter Stormare (Gaear Grimsrud):
  • An all-time cinematic smoker; his “levels of smoking” and deadpan, wordless menace spark extensive praise and laughs. ([30:00]–[32:00])
  • “He’s only interested in cigarettes, pancakes, and killing people.” ([82:04])

5. The Mike Yanagita Scene: Pointless or Profound?

• Debated as both the most random and thematically crucial scene; CR: “There’s a whole section of fanhood that thinks it serves no point, but… it’s incredibly instrumental. After Marge sits with Yanagita, she starts thinking about being lied to. It’s a key turning point.” ([06:33]–[07:55])
• Bill adds a third dimension, interpreting it as Marge briefly longing to feel observed and desired, even if just by a sad high school acquaintance.

6. Regionalism and the Minnesota Setting

• “This is a time in America where different regions felt far away and culturally very different. Now, everything is connected.” ([50:34])
• Accents, Midwestern details (“you betcha,” “darn tootin’,” “smorgasbord”), and mundane settings (like the King of Clubs bar, buffets, and snowy landscapes) are celebrated.
• Chris: “Minnesota snapshot… Just a really good slice of life.” ([67:00])

7. Cinematography

• Roger Deakins’ visual strategy: “Everything is white the whole movie… it all leads to the wood chipper where everything’s red—it’s genius.” ([36:09])
• Opening shots (“just a fucking whiteout”; great 4K Blu-Ray) and bar scene lighting.
• Trouble shooting the horizon: “You couldn’t tell where the land was done and the sky began. It contributes to you feeling like you’re on another planet.” ([36:42]–[36:58])

8. Rewatchable and Defining Scenes

• Triple homicide on the highway ([46:35]–[47:04], [56:43])
• The King of Clubs bar scenes ([45:19])
• Escalating violence (“the Cohen’s love a headshot” [48:49]), and abrupt deaths
• The wood chipper climax ([54:54]–[55:39])
• Marge’s police interviews and home life with Norm
• The “car scraping” Midwest motif ([48:07])
• The “true coat” scam and car dealership scenes ([67:07])

9. Awards, Accolades, and Cultural Legacy

• Two Oscars (Best Actress – McDormand, Best Original Screenplay). Did not win Best Picture (lost to The English Patient). ([39:32]–[40:41])
• Siskel & Ebert both named it the best movie of 1996: “Films like Fargo are why I love the movies.” ([42:50])
• Special VHS snow globe with a dead body, a cherished '90s movie store collectible. ([43:20])

10. Unanswerable Questions and Oddities

• Why was Marge pregnant? CR’s son asked—“Cradle of new life in a world that’s got so much death.” ([108:39])
• What exactly is Jerry’s financial issue? “They don’t want you to know.” ([101:53], [102:06])
• Why do Carl and Gaear drive so far with the hostage—logistical nitpicks abound. ([103:06])
• Would cell phones, ring cameras, and modern law enforcement foil the entire plot? (Yes.) ([99:43])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “I think Fargo is a perfect movie... Not a scene I don’t love, not a character I don’t love.” — Kyle Brandt ([03:12])
• “Every scene is the good stuff. Run time: 98 minutes. I keep saying it. Not a single pee break.” — Kyle Brandt ([04:27]–[05:12])
• “It’s the perfect distillation of what the Coens can do.” — Bill Simmons ([03:47])
• “Even the kid actor doesn’t annoy me. Scotty’s good!” — Kyle Brandt ([06:33])
• “She puts on makeup… she wants to feel observed in a different way.” — Bill Simmons, on Marge’s meeting with Mike Yanagita ([07:56])
• “The whole point is that evil could be anywhere, even in the most simple place.” — Chris Ryan, relaying his son’s takeaway ([09:22])
• “They fucking love a big case of money.” — Kyle Brandt, on the Coen Brothers’ obsession ([11:22])
• “You could just say this was a true story and everyone believed it... They Blair Witched us.” — Kyle Brandt ([58:33])
• “You liar!... Give me a goddamn thing.” — Angry customer in the “true coat” scene ([67:18])
• “He’s only interested in cigarettes, pancakes, and killing people.” — Kyle Brandt on Stormare ([82:04])
• “There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’t you know that?” — Marge Gunderson ([80:14])
• “What’s aged the worst? Lunch buffets.” — Chris Ryan ([75:12])
• “I just want to say I really like the cop jackets with the fur hood.” — Chris Ryan, on most coveted piece of movie memorabilia ([112:37])
• “Crowd me one more time! Back the fuck off!” — Kyle Brandt, channeling Tony B from The Sopranos ([25:07])
• “My favorite part is the buffet. Everything’s on the buffet. Big plates, plates you’d do in college.” — Chris Ryan ([63:44])
• “The only other thing that’s aged the worst is I don’t see a lot of hot buffets getting used up anymore.” — Bill Simmons ([73:44])
• “You could see the Fargo DNA all over the place.” — Chris Ryan ([13:15])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:59–05:43 | Fargo as a perfect film, no wasted scenes ("perfect game" analogy) | | 06:33–08:13 | The Mike Yanagita scene debate: pointless or pivotal? | | 08:16–09:22 | McDormand's introduction: delay, flexibility, and CR’s son’s reaction | | 11:22–13:15 | Coen themes: kidnappings, bags of money, "dumb criminals" | | 13:55–15:33 | Violence, humor, and audience impact | | 19:40–20:10 | Macy’s character psychology, “build a pyramid, never think of it crumbling”| | 24:16–24:36 | Buscemi: Part written for him, career run, "full Buscemi" | | 29:24–29:49 | McDormand’s “face acting”—awkward dinner with Yanagita | | 36:09–37:17 | Deakins' cinematography, white-out visuals, wood chipper color design | | 46:35–47:04 | Favorite scenes, kidnapping, and the King of Clubs bar | | 54:54–55:39 | Wood chipper scene & abrupt, meaningless Fargo deaths | | 56:01–57:26 | The triple homicide on the highway: shifting the whole movie | | 67:00–67:39 | Regional Minnesota “slice of life”—Paul Bunyan, true coat scam, etc. | | 99:43 | Cell phones/ring cameras would instantly ruin the plot | | 108:39 | Why make Marge pregnant? (CR’s son: “cradle of new life in a world of death”)| | 112:37 | Dream movie memorabilia: cop jackets, Gustafson Motors sign, driving gloves|

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Categories, Awards & Running Jokes

• Best Hang/Worst Hang: Norm is the best hang almost by default, yet perhaps “too boring;” Carl (Buscemi) is suggested as a surprisingly entertaining (but dangerous) road trip companion. ([65:03]–[65:18])
• “Who Won the Movie”: The Coens, for creating a completely original cinematic world; or, “Minnesota,” for finally getting a defining cultural moment. ([115:44])
• CR Month: This episode is part of a month where Chris Ryan curates the selections.
• Unanswerable Questions: What exactly is Jerry’s financial trouble? Why are the criminals in the car so long? Why is Marge pregnant? ([101:53], [103:06], [108:39])
• Memorabilia: King of Clubs neon sign, Jerry’s scraper, cop jackets ([112:37])
• Dion Waiters Hall of Fame: Steve Park’s Mike Yanagita is hailed as an all-time great scene-stealer. ([88:39], [89:05])
• Regional Accents & Dialect: “You betcha,” “real good then,” “darn tootin’”—celebrated as comedy and authenticity gold.
• Modern Tech Ruins Movie: “Ring cameras, cell phones, texting”—plot would fall apart instantly in 2026. ([99:43])
• Screenwriting is Dead: Craig laments in his remote segment: “98 minute movie and it has everything you need. The scenes are tight... Screenwriting is dead.” ([116:51])

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Tone & Style

The episode is filled with warm camaraderie and good-natured ribbing, with plenty of regional jokes, ‘90s nostalgia, and digressions on food, sports, and arcane Oscar trivia. The hosts maintain the playful, slightly irreverent style The Rewatchables is known for, while also balancing thoughtful insights and deep admiration for the film and its creators.

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Summary Takeaway

The Rewatchables panel makes a compelling, entertaining case that Fargo is one of the most expertly-crafted, endlessly enjoyable American movies of the past three decades—a criminal comedy that is impossibly tight, frequently hilarious, and surprisingly profound. Their conversation is as fun and layered as the film itself: Fargo is, indeed, “the good stuff.”

Transcript

[Chris Ryan]

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[Bill Simmons]

You betcha.

[Chris Ryan]

Chris Ryan, we're in CR month. How's CR month been for you?

[Bill Simmons]

I mean, it's a whole brave new world. I get to call the shots. I have the headset on. I got the Cheesecake Factory menu. I'm dialing things up.

[Kyle Brandt]

Kyle Brand, does it feel like you have the ring, Chris? Can you handle it?

[Chris Ryan]

Kyle Brandt.

[Kyle Brandt]

Hey.

[Chris Ryan]

Not part of the Ringer Podcast network, but a big part of the rewatchables.

[Kyle Brandt]

Darn tooten.

[Chris Ryan]

NFL off season. Always a good time to get you. We're gonna have some fun stuff coming over the next couple months. When was the last time we talked? Dan Dam Arnold Sly.

[Kyle Brandt]

Too long, buddy. Too long.

[Chris Ryan]

Demolition Man's just sitting there for us.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's all sitting there. There's some that we haven't got to. But Bill, the headline here right now is. Do you know that right now this is the first time in my life I've ever been in the same room with Chris Ryan. Ever.

[Bill Simmons]

It's true.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's the first. We've never met in person. This is it. And you know, the kids talk about aura, the energy. Come on, look at this guy.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, what better time than CRM?

[Bill Simmons]

Gary, Carl, right here.

[Chris Ryan]

A movie you've wanted to do for some time. Yes, Fargo is next. This episode of the Rewatchables is presented by TikTok. The online world moves fast. That's why TikTok approaches teen safety with families in mind from the start. On TikTok, teens get over 50 built in protections right when they join. Their accounts are private by default. For those under 16, direct messages are turned off. Only friends can comment on their videos. When safety comes first discovery can follow. Learn [e-mail] guardiansguide. All right, everyone has a favorite Coen Brothers movie. I asked you for a list a while ago. Hey, if you wanted to do a rewatchable, send me 80s 90s, 2000s. You sent all these lists. Really fun list, by the way.

[Kyle Brandt]

Thank you.

[Chris Ryan]

A lot of stuff that I liked. We've done a few of them. Fargo is on the list.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So why.

[Kyle Brandt]

So my headline is a hot take. It sounds like one. I think Fargo is a perfect movie and I know we're gonna poke holes in it. We'll have to talk about Tom Hanks

[Chris Ryan]

said that as well.

[Bill Simmons]

Not a hot take.

[Kyle Brandt]

Is that true?

[Chris Ryan]

Tom Hanks literally said that. That was his take on the show on the rewatch.

[Kyle Brandt]

I love hearing that. There's not. It's not only there's not a scene I don't love, I don't think there's a moment I don't love. There's not a character I don't love. It's one of the best scripts ever written. It's on the short list of best movies to not win best picture. It's terrifying, it's hilarious, it's romantic, it's violent. And there's a lot of great movies. I feel like it's a perfect movie. And I say that fully believe in it. I love that we're doing it.

[Bill Simmons]

Perfect movie. You know, if you do the big five for Oscars and it's the performances and you're like best actor, best best picture or whatever, this one has the five tools. It's like best music.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yep.

[Bill Simmons]

Best shot movie. One of the best shot movies I've ever seen. Best script. I've one of the best scripts you'll ever read. And three or four of the best performances you're going to get in a film. And it's so distinctly them while being part of like this amazing tradition of film noir movies from the previous decades. It's just an incredible creation into Kyle's point. Man, you're watching this. Talk about a perfect game. Pitching performance. Not one scene doesn't have a point. Not one action doesn't have then a causal relationship to the next thing that happens, you know, and it's just so funny and so sad at the very same time. It's almost like the perfect distillation of what the Cohens can do.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, 98 minutes.

[Kyle Brandt]

Amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

We don't have Craig today in studio. He's coming in later. But I know Craig's 100 minute rule.

[Kyle Brandt]

This is within two minutes minus two. So.

[Chris Ryan]

So when you say perfect movie, this is about as close as it gets. I think my favorite Coen Brothers movie is no Country. Yeah, but it's like 1A, 1B. And it's hard not to watch this movie and think of no Country a little bit too.

[Bill Simmons]

They're very much in conversation with each

[Chris Ryan]

other and it's similar themes and it's a more blown out version of what they did here. The thing that's crazy here is it's like those Greg Maddox games from the 90s where it's like, I threw a two hitter, I threw 88 pitches, I struck out eight, two guys got on base, and the game was over in an hour and 49 minutes.

[Kyle Brandt]

Throwing a fastball that's 88 miles an hour. This one also has Randy Johnson's fastball too. It's 100 plus. The runtime thing, you can't get around. I just named six different genres that this movie is. You should need two and a half hours to fill all those genres. It is so tight. I keep saying it. Every single scene I love. There's not a single pee break. There's not a single filler scene. You're like, all right, enough with this. Let's get. Every scene is the good stuff. It really. The perfect game analogy is what it feels like. It was like, I don't even know if they're ever behind on the count, you know, like, let alone a base runner.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, the controversial scene is when she runs into Mike from high school. But that scene's really important.

[Bill Simmons]

It's hugely important.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. It's the whole reason she ends up going back to see Jerry.

[Bill Simmons]

It's that it's. Not only is it plot, plot, important, but it's theme important because it's about the facade that all these people put up. It's about like Jerry with his suit and his pin, and he's like, hey, I'm gonna sell you the true coat, you know? And it's like, but actually, this guy, this guy. Life is going down the drain as you watch him on every single scene. If you know where Jerry ends up, this is why it's a great rewatchable to watch Jerry in the first scene, in the first moment. Every time he interrupts, interacts with Scotty, you're like, this guy is living a lie. And Mike is too. And even though Mike is vulnerable, quote unquote, he's vulnerable about a complete fiction, you know what I mean? He's crying about something that didn't actually happen.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know how you know, it's perfect too. Even the kid actor doesn't annoy me. The kid actors always annoy us. Scotty's good. Like, he does his part perfectly fine, even. He is well cast and performs well. And I love. I mean, the. The Yanagita scene we're gonna talk about a lot. It's probably my favorite scene in the movie. There's two schools of belief about this. There's this whole section of the fanhood that think it's hilarious because it's the most random scene in cinema history and serves no point. It's just a funny thing the Coen brothers wanted to do. Then there's the second layer. They're like, no, no, no, no. It's incredibly instrumental because after Margie sits with Yanaguita, she starts thinking about being lied to. And she knows that Jerry lied to her in the car dealership. I rewatched it again this week after reading that. There's two scenes of Margie just driving by herself. And she does real face acting, Bill. And she goes like a little tiny Oscar winning thing where she's like, hold on a second. And then she's in Leningard's office all over.

[Bill Simmons]

That's right.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's amazing.

[Bill Simmons]

There's also a third layer to it, which I think I hadn't really thought about before. And maybe this is a little TV brain, because you start to be like, what if this is what this is really about? But she dresses much differently to go meet Mike. She puts on makeup. And most of her domestic life with Norm is like, all right, let's go eat the smorgasbord and let's go downstairs and watch a little tv. And I. But she's in Minneapolis at the Radisson. Like, what? Like, I'm not saying that she was going to do something about it, Chris.

[Kyle Brandt]

I danced around a hot take about

[Bill Simmons]

that, but I think she wants to feel observed in a different way.

[Kyle Brandt]

She definitely does.

[Bill Simmons]

And I think that that's like. That's a third layer of a scene that is just like, not a throwaway, but is like a comic tragic move midway through the second act of a movie that then goes into this relentless overdrive.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, how about a movie that. Where she wins best actress?

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But we don't see her for the first 34 minutes of the movie.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

What a flex.

[Kyle Brandt]

Incredible.

[Chris Ryan]

It's. I don't know of any other movie that's taken that long. We've seen movies where the characters come

[Kyle Brandt]

in later and best supporting actors, maybe.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, but not not this where the whole third of the movie is done, but it actually makes sense when she comes in because there's no case yet.

[Kyle Brandt]

Didn't you clock that watching it? When. When I did the Marge thing, I paused it, too. And it's a. It's a paint one of Norton's painting, and they're in bed. I'm like, holy shit. We're just seeing Marge now, and the movie's a third over. I did the exact same thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So I watched this movie with my budding film buff, my son.

[Bill Simmons]

That's right.

[Chris Ryan]

Who knew nothing. Like, nothing. He was really excited that it wasn't a long movie.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But he got a couple woes. But then at the end of the movie, he just kind of did one of these. And he's like, I'm gonna chew on that. What was that about? And I said, just sit with it. Sit with it. Let's talk about it tomorrow. It's like, all right, I'm gonna sit with it. And then we talked about it the next day. And basically, I think he kind of figured it out. I had to help him a little bit. You know, he's young. He's 18.

[Bill Simmons]

But what was his conclusion?

[Chris Ryan]

It's just like. The whole point is that evil could be anywhere, even in the most simple place. Yes, you could have dumb, incompetent, normal. All these. All the stereotypes of people who would live in this part of the country. But you never know what could emerge. And this is how it happens. And that's, I think, what the movie about.

[Kyle Brandt]

It makes me nervous that. That your son is on his phone while he's watching Fargo.

[Chris Ryan]

He wasn't. He was locked in.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, Ben's in a. I kept thinking peeks over.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Ben's like, watching 2001.

[Chris Ryan]

He's in a Kubrick and shit like that all of a sudden. But I kept peeking over to make sure. But this movie is so engaging.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

And it moves so fast. And even, like when. When they get the escorts. And it's just. There's a scene. She's riding him, the other guy's in the other bed. Then they're watching Tonight Show. We move on. It's like 20 seconds, but it's just trying to get so much done. I think if they made this movie now in the wrong hands, it's two hours and 20 minutes.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, I mean, I think you could see sort of a version of this in the series that Noah Hawley made that's inspired by the show, which is a lot of interesting Stuff and a lot of like interesting expansions on some of the themes of Fargo. It's never really related, although there's some like cross, there's some stitching that goes back to Fargo. It's not. But it's not explicitly a remake or an extension of it, but it's, it's got a lot of filler. I mean he's making like 8 hour, 10 hour movies of each season and it's kind of antithetical to the sort of what the Cohens were really doing here. I think to your point about like evil can lurk anywhere. It's also about how some of the stories that I think that these guys are so obsessed with the Hollywood gangster and crime films of like the 40s and the 50s that we always associate with New York, Chicago or Los Angeles and it's like Raymond Chandler and a femme fatale and a kidnapping or whatever. It can happen anywhere. Like it's not the place that is the home of the, of the evil or the bad stuff or the crime. It's Not Hollywood in 1949 have it in them. And they can be in the, in a snow blown tundra or in downtown Los angeles in the 40s.

[Kyle Brandt]

It doesn't really know what the Cohen's love. They fucking love a big case of money. It's. I mean it's one of the lead characters in no Country. They love that the case of money shows up in Lebowski as the ringer. Like they love that.

[Bill Simmons]

They love kidnappings. Joel's talked about it. Joel Clone talked about how it's just like just an amazing dramatic conceit because it basically does a stress test on all the characters, both the kidnappers and the, and the victims of. Like you're being put into a position that you have to consider things you never thought you'd have to consider in your life. How much is somebody worth? What would you do maybe to get over on somebody? What would you do with your partner who you're doing it with? Like all this stuff comes out.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I wrote down some common themes from their movies. Let me know what you agree with.

[Kyle Brandt]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Everyday people in increasingly crazy situations, which always works in a movie like even if you think about a movie like say anything like her dad is involved, he's getting in trouble with what was it the IRS or the insurance he was stealing from the nursing home and he's trying to cover it up. Like they love that the evil starting in the most simple, unassuming places, but also with some of the dumbest people possible it seems to be something they're attracted to over and over again, where it's like, can you believe these fucking nimwits? Yeah, but this is like, this is 30 years. This movie's literally 30 years ago. It came out right now, March 8, 1996. But you think of the true crime shows, whether you're watching, like, a Netflix show or Even, like, those 2020 shows on Hulu, it's always these people that you're just watching going, why did they think this was going to work?

[Bill Simmons]

And there's this prescient. The title card at the beginning of, like, everything here is true except for the names, which we ch. Changed to spare them.

[Chris Ryan]

But it's like, yeah, they made that up.

[Bill Simmons]

They made that up. And, like, people have gone through, like, old news papers to try and figure out what case this is about, and then, like, they've kind of let it linger. They are tricksters in that way. Like, they'll play around with the audience expectations.

[Chris Ryan]

Couple other things.

[Kyle Brandt]

What do you got?

[Chris Ryan]

Somebody making a plan. You can't make a plan because it's the old saying about man makes a plan, God laughs. They find humor in everything, which I think one of the things that I think has been ripped off from this movie, and I don't know. I don't know if it's fair to say ripped off, but maybe influenced. But, like, I think of a show like Barry, or I even think of, like, the Sopranos when they lost the Russian in the woods. Like, you can just see the Fargo DNA all over the place.

[Kyle Brandt]

Directed by Steve Buscemi.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And I don't know if I fully realized that for a few years, but when we had Hater on that time when we did no country, and he was talking about how basically, like, he wanted to do Barry because of the

[Bill Simmons]

Coen brothers, I think that they especially shoot violence in a way that's, to me, it's almost unique. I'm sure there are other examples, but it basically confronts the viewer with both the, like, high comedy and. And deep, deep trauma of violence. So, like, you take. We'll get to it. But like the highway scene, the state trooper scene, which is kind of funny.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And it's kind of funny watching him drive like, a Keystone Cop after the guy and stuff like that. But it's also so sad and scary.

[Kyle Brandt]

Another hilariously funny part is the payoff of the. The ticket gate agent where he comes into the second one. Can I have your ticket? He just blows the guy's head off.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's a Horrible thing. And it's so fucking funny.

[Bill Simmons]

Y. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's why, like I have really vivid memories of seeing in the theater. Cause it was so unique. And I just remember sitting there being like, I don't know any of these actors. Like, I knew Buscemi because I was into Tarantino at the time. But like, never seen Macy before. Never seen. I didn't know them. And I remember people laughing so hard at different parts of the movie that were supposed to be funny and weren't supposed to be. I just left as a 15 year old or whatever. I was like just feeling like it's totally unwieldy.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't get it. But it was.

[Kyle Brandt]

What was that? What genre was it? But like, I'm seeing it again tomorrow.

[Chris Ryan]

You know what? So the opening credits, like CR was talking about how when they usually make movies like this, they're set in these cool locations and it's big, fancy, lavish, whatever. And they do that in the beginning. And it's just basically a truck that's towing something coming out of a blizzard. It's the most mundane thing you could possibly see on a highway in Minnesota. But the way they shoot it, you think it's going to be this awesome dramatic thing, but it's also like, oh, that's a car.

[Bill Simmons]

The music is gorgeous. Carter Burwell. It's the moment Jerry, he can't come back now. Like, he's given them the car. Now it's. Now it's too late to do it. Once you set something in motion, you can't pull it back. And he tries to pull it back multiple times and it doesn't work.

[Kyle Brandt]

I got. I mean, I. I have that for great. Jack Gordo, the first shot of whole fucking movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, how perfect is that with the music?

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, you.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, go ahead.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, the only other thing I had was about how you could have the best plan ever. But bad luck, I think the coin flip, they really tied that into the most. You just never know. Like, Anton Chigurh kind of nailed everything. He's throwing no hitter down the stretch and then just gets hit by a car and that's it. Yeah, his bones sticking out of his arm and he just fucked up.

[Bill Simmons]

They. When they make this movie, they're at the end of probably or they're sort of right at the end of one of my favorite runs in cinema history. They open first movies, Blood simple, then they do Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, which is probably.

[Kyle Brandt]

Is that your favorite?

[Bill Simmons]

It's top two with Blabowski.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Barton Fink Hudsucker Proxy. Hudsucker Proxy. Kind of a disappointment commercially because they had Newman in it. Supposed to be this big movie, so they're like, oh, you know, what are they gonna. And they go and make this movie for $6 million.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a Oscar winner. It's a pretty big success relative to its budget. And then after that, it's Lebowski and O Brother, and it's like one of the great runs of direct for directors, I think, in. In movies.

[Chris Ryan]

I was a slow burn with Fargo. I think it's a classic rewatchables example of. I liked it, but then it was a jump into, you know, and. Oh, oh, oh, oh.

[Kyle Brandt]

All right.

[Chris Ryan]

And then all of a sudden, I was like, I get this movie.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

It took me. Sometimes the movies don't sit perfectly in your brain for a while. And this one, no country was the other one for me that I just never liked.

[Kyle Brandt]

It took a while.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I never liked the ending initially.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, I didn't either. I still don't.

[Chris Ryan]

And then as I got older, I was like, I fucking love the ending, man. Tommy Lee Jones, like, he just. He doesn't want to be out there anymore.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I feel like we deserve to see Llewellyn's death as it transpires. And we spent two hours with the guy I like, the guy I want to see.

[Bill Simmons]

I know it's a tough thing. It's like the way it. The way it is in the book and the way they shoot it. If we ever recountry, I would love to do it.

[Kyle Brandt]

The Coneheads want to go to war for it. They don't like people disparaging ending of no Country. I love the movie. I wanted to see Llewellyn how it happened. I don't like that they took that from.

[Chris Ryan]

What's the type of movie that they didn't make that you always wish they could have made?

[Kyle Brandt]

They made almost everything.

[Chris Ryan]

Would you want to see their version of Roadhouse?

[Kyle Brandt]

They're going to stand on the shoulders of Rowdy Harrington.

[Chris Ryan]

Their take on the Double Deuce.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, I would like to see that. Yeah, I think I would like to see that.

[Chris Ryan]

I was like, oh, Cash. No, it really feels like they explored the studio space with all the Iverson

[Kyle Brandt]

in the theater with my wife ever. We were just starting to date. He was burn after reading, and, like, it blew both of our minds. Like, we didn't know what we were watching. Like, really, really weird stuff. And there's a sex machine in that movie, and it's Like, I.

[Bill Simmons]

That's right.

[Kyle Brandt]

Brooke could hang with it. My wife, she was like, I thought that was funny. I was like, I'll marry you.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

So I feel like the Coen brothers helped us out with that.

[Chris Ryan]

One thing they're good at that is underrated is sex. And violence is so mundane in their movies, where even in this, when they cut, there's just like that. Escorts riding Buscemi. The second time, she's just like, what did she say?

[Kyle Brandt]

I hear bells. Okay, dude, like Angelo Dundee in the corner. Come on now. Show the jab. Throw the jab. And he's loving it.

[Bill Simmons]

I have quite a bit for Buscemi. And what's age? The best. It's almost a special Steve Buscemi category for me.

[Kyle Brandt]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

So Joel Cohen said about the William Mason character, I hear bells.

[Kyle Brandt]

What is that?

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't know what sort of. There was some sort of role playing going on.

[Kyle Brandt]

I watched it on the plane today with subtitles on. I learned a lot of things I never knew.

[Bill Simmons]

Playing between the escort from the hoses,

[Chris Ryan]

the dialogue that made me think there was. Oh, I thought, some extra thing.

[Bill Simmons]

That's very funny. I didn't actually think it was.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, she's really, like, in character doing something.

[Chris Ryan]

So Joel Cohen said about the William Mesa character they found interesting, his absolute incapacity for even one minute to project himself into the future so that he might evaluate the consequences of the decisions he has made. There's something fascinating about his total inability to gain any perspective. He's one of those people who build a pyramid but never think for a minute about it crumbling. And this is like. This is every true crime documentary. These people who are just like, no, I'm one move away from. And then I can get away with this. And it just. They're just making it worse.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know if there's, like a sort of super pathology that encompasses being addicted to something or being in incredible debt, but the way that every single thing is just like, I have to put a band aid on the gaping wound that I have so that I can then put my hand back here to stop the bleeding over here. And it's like the things that he doesn't care about at all are his wife and son. It's just the inversion of a real person where he's just like. It's so incredible. And the fact that through all of that, he's still kind of selling cars.

[Kyle Brandt]

Definitely. He's moving products. He's the executive sales manager.

[Chris Ryan]

Jerry Lundegaard hadn't totally happened for our guy, Bill Macy. It.

[Bill Simmons]

No career wise man, it stuff, right?

[Chris Ryan]

Like, he tried out for a lesser role. I think he tried out as the cop who gets shot.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he's a detective in it.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, something. But he was at Mr. Holland's opus the year before. He goes on this run of Fargo, Air Force One and Boogie Nights all in a row. And by Boogie Nights, it's like, I love this guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

And it's somewhere in here that he becomes Bill Macy. And then when you just see him, you knew it'd be a good thing, but I don't think it 100% existed yet.

[Bill Simmons]

When did.

[Chris Ryan]

Another huge background.

[Bill Simmons]

When did Sports Night come on?

[Chris Ryan]

Late 90s.

[Bill Simmons]

Because I always remember his end of that. He does a.

[Chris Ryan]

He was married to Felicity Huffman.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, he does like a two episode or three episode arc that's like, I'm gonna save Sports Night from the network or something like that.

[Chris Ryan]

Favorite Bill Macy ever, or do you have something else?

[Kyle Brandt]

No, I mean, again, I just remember being in the theater, being like, who the fuck is this person? He's like the best. This is the best acting I've ever seen in my life. And then afterwards, he starts showing up with Harrison Ford in Air Force One. He's in Boogie Nights, my favorite movie of all time. My favorite part about Bill Macy and Boogie Nights is there's one part where Jerry Lunderite kind of comes out. And it's when he's on the driveway and he's like, my fucking wife has an Astrocock in the driveway. I'm sorry, my mind is not on the film machine. Okay? And he goes that like. Okay, it sounds just like Jerry Lindegaard. I'm like, oh, that's Jerry. He came out. It kills me.

[Chris Ryan]

Are you giving me shit, Kurt?

[Kyle Brandt]

No, no, no.

[Bill Simmons]

Give me shit.

[Kyle Brandt]

Not at all. It's just the cinematography of the film.

[Chris Ryan]

What's your favorite, Macy? What's your favorite Macy? Yeah, Little Bill's my favorite.

[Bill Simmons]

I would just say that Macy doing Mammoth is my favorite. So whether it's Homicide or Spartan or. I just think he's. He's one of the best deliverers of those. Of that dialogue.

[Chris Ryan]

So it's a nice little small parent part in searching for Bobby Fischer. Something about his face. It's a one of a kind. It's funny because Buscemi's in this too, where it's just like these distinct faces that you can't compare to anybody else who's ever lived. Buscemi. So I really thought about this. He's not that guy anymore. By 96, he had graduated because Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Pink, I think he's not that guy anymore after that. But he does have this run of Fargo, Escape from New York, Conair, and Lebowski, somewhere in there, he's just Steve Buscemi.

[Bill Simmons]

Escape from Los Angeles, right?

[Chris Ryan]

Escape from Los Angeles. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, after 94, my whole world was Tarantino, and so I would just watch Reservoir Dogs over and over and over. So when you see this movie and he's doing, like, Mr. Pink adjacent, he's got a gun. He's fucking bleeding. He's mad. He's pissed off.

[Bill Simmons]

Is wrong with you?

[Kyle Brandt]

He's just so fucking mad. And I remember just telling my friends, I'm like. It's like, Mr. Pink is back. He's so cool. I love it. I could watch Buscemi for an hour just screaming at that fucking tv. Just plug me into the ozone, baby. Fucking shitbox. Just over and over. I just love it. I can't get enough.

[Bill Simmons]

It's like, you can watch this movie, and it's like, Macy, Buscemi, and McDormand could all be the lead characters.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. They're the big three.

[Bill Simmons]

And I. I. I, like, found myself just, like, thinking everything Buscemi did in this movie was the funniest thing I had ever seen in my life. And the best. Like, he blew me away this last viewing.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Dormant, obviously. Like, basically, like, this is a career maker for her, and she becomes, like, a pretty significant star after this.

[Kyle Brandt]

Hall of Famer.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

But, like, this is, like, this time around, for some reason, I was, like, mesmerized by Carl. I was like, this is so great.

[Chris Ryan]

You know, it made sense when I read this in the research that I had never known before that they wrote this for Buscemi. Yes. When you hear stuff like that, and usually some of the best work is when the director, writer, person is like, I have this person in my head. Every line I'm writing is for Buscemi. My favorite for him is still the Sopranos.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

His whole run, he had where he. He just was in full command of. He was full Buscemi at that point. But I think this is. Did you watch Boardwalk? Which one?

[Bill Simmons]

Boardwalk.

[Chris Ryan]

I never got into it.

[Kyle Brandt]

I did.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Did you like it?

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, I did. We bailed after, like, three seasons.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Like, it's pretty great in retrospect because, like, if, like, I was thinking about if Boardwalk was on now, it'd probably be, like, a top three show.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Just release it and pretend it just came out.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the thing is that like when these things pop up, whether it's like on other streaming services or whatever, like they'll get revival. And I'm like, damn, this is like really, really good.

[Kyle Brandt]

That was heyday. Hbo, Sunday nights, like, you couldn't miss it. I watched like three seasons. The greatest thing about his character, Tony B in the Sopranos was like he was really the only guy who would stand up to Tony. Tony. And he. He has this infamous scene where Tony's like brow beating him. He's like, you're crowding me. Like you're crowding me scene. Like, back the fuck off. And that's why he was so cool. And then he just completely comes unhinged. Great character.

[Chris Ryan]

Van and I have talked about this, that I. I still think that's the best stretch of the Sopranos.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think it is too.

[Chris Ryan]

I just rewatched everyone is peak of their powers and they've just figured out the show.

[Bill Simmons]

But it's still.

[Chris Ryan]

They know exactly what to bring him in. It's just great stuff. And then McDormand, who's won three Oscars, all Best Actress and an Emmy. And a Tony.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

What she won an Emmy for? I forgot.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know. It's my research. Being a Tony and she's won three best Actor Oscars and the only other person to do that is ddl.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Best research I could find for her. She once lived in an apartment with the Coen brothers, Sam Raimi and Holly Hunter.

[Bill Simmons]

That's great.

[Chris Ryan]

And somebody named Scott Spiegel who's probably like, yeah, fuck Scott Spiegel, screenwriter. Scott Spiegel's like, I don't know what happened. Where's my Oscar? Because Holly Hunter won for Broadcast. She won just five Oscars in the apartment. Not to mention that's a great blunt rotation too. But it's funny. My favorite for her is still Almost Famous, but she did not even McDormand. And she didn't even. Yeah, for McDormand.

[Bill Simmons]

This is.

[Chris Ryan]

What's your favorite?

[Kyle Brandt]

All my favorites are coming up. Fargo. Like, this is my favorite Buscemi. Even more than Reservoir Dogs or anything.

[Bill Simmons]

Wow.

[Kyle Brandt]

I just think it's.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it your favorite Stormer?

[Chris Ryan]

See, that's. That's a no for me.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's a great question because, I mean, I have a feeling the direction you might be going on that one Bill. So I'm just going to let you know, I'm an open book. People know there's a character Named Dino Velvet.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

People know where I'm going to land.

[Kyle Brandt]

So it just starts going like this.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

As great as Storm errors in this movie. He's not directing snuff films, but yeah, I mean, it's my favorite. All of that stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

It's Storm here is like, what could be worse than the guy played in Fargo that's the film director. I guess that could take it up.

[Kyle Brandt]

Film is real.

[Bill Simmons]

But then they're still like, ah, we'll

[Kyle Brandt]

put him in Armageddon as a cosmonaut. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So Francis McDormand, long career, was married to Joel. Joel.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And her three Oscars are not like major. It's weird. It's a weird.

[Kyle Brandt]

Three billboards.

[Chris Ryan]

Three billboards and then North Country.

[Bill Simmons]

Nomadland. Right.

[Chris Ryan]

Or no. Badland.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

She got.

[Bill Simmons]

Wasn't it. No.

[Chris Ryan]

Mad.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So it's not like she doesn't have her. I don't know, like your big market movie. They're all. This is probably the biggest one.

[Bill Simmons]

I think that. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

She's. This made 60 million.

[Bill Simmons]

She's got like Meryl Streep performances, but she never does like a Devil Wears product. Like there's not a good way to put it. There's not a Mystic River.

[Chris Ryan]

Almost Famous. Probably the closest.

[Kyle Brandt]

She doesn't do Mamma Mia. You know what's interesting about her too is McDormand. She's had huge gaps. Like she took a like a seven year gap. Yeah. Not long after this. And I looked it up and it coincides with when they decided to adopt a child. So like she's just like.

[Bill Simmons]

She's done a movie since no Man Land. I mean, I think she's doing the next. Yeah. Or maybe Macbeth with Denzel Washington. Then she has the next Joel project. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

She's on that rare list of actor where it's like they have something out and like you have my attention.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Which I think is probably a list of less than 10 people.

[Bill Simmons]

It's DDL ish. You know, it's D. It's. It's Streep.

[Chris Ryan]

It's Streep's still on there for me. I think Hanks is not on there anymore.

[Kyle Brandt]

Hanks was off.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I think Hanks is off. Cruz is off.

[Bill Simmons]

Like there's Jeffrey Donovan who played Bottles in Shock Caller.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Shot Caller. Ever. The whole cast of Shot Caller. I watched Shot Caller last night. I was texting cr. It's just. It's might be my favorite movie the last ten years. Did Limitless come out the last ten years?

[Kyle Brandt]

I can't rem, by the way. McDormand. Primal fear. Like in the Fucking incredible and primal fear. She's with the video camera, like, just getting it, showing the stakes. I think she's great in that movie.

[Bill Simmons]

She's also amazing in the Coen Brothers first movie in Blood Simple.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

She's so. For this movie, she's pregnant. There's an innocence to her. There's some great fics. Some of the best face acting even. She does some really good stuff in the. In the scene with her high school guy Michael.

[Bill Simmons]

The best.

[Chris Ryan]

After he puts his arm around and then she makes him go back. And then she has that look on her face like, this is gonna go for another hour now. And I just want to, like, set myself on fire. And she's kind of that, like, frozen smile, trying to sit her knife.

[Kyle Brandt]

Everything's on that. I always like you so much. Just down. And it's so. Mike, should we do this another time? No, I'm just down again.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, it's. She's awesome in that scene. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And then we have Storm. Our storm.

[Kyle Brandt]

Air storm.

[Bill Simmons]

Actually not. I gotta Admit, it's Debancer DebonSA.

[Chris Ryan]

Can we give him the Sean Penn I Brought My own Pack award for ex?

[Kyle Brandt]

I just want to hear you guys talk about him smoking. All right.

[Bill Simmons]

This is why the move that he does. That is.

[Chris Ryan]

It's so hard to do.

[Bill Simmons]

There's levels, right?

[Kyle Brandt]

Go on.

[Bill Simmons]

And when you get introduced to smoking, it starts. And it's like you're at a bar and you're like, I smoke when I drink. And then you start smoking. Maybe you take. Start taking smoke breaks. You smoke with coffee. You go outside, you get a break from work. It goes up another level.

[Chris Ryan]

This is a move. When you start using these two fingers instead of this, that's like a graduation.

[Bill Simmons]

But when it goes up, another level is when you either have a roommate or a partner who's like, we can smoke inside. Then it's a new world. The final level is when you smoke inside of a car with the windows rolled up.

[Kyle Brandt]

Unbelievable.

[Bill Simmons]

That's when you've given up. You are like, I'm just going to be a full tumor. I don't care. We're never going to let this elevator. Exactly. And it's like Peter Stormer in this movie. And Dustin Hoffman and all the President's Men.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Are the two guys who are like, I will smoke in the Pope's face in a closed locker somewhere. I don't care.

[Chris Ryan]

And, well, he's doing something with The. You don't see it often with a lit cigarette where only the tail end is in his mouth.

[Bill Simmons]

It's right at the bottom lip.

[Chris Ryan]

Seems like it's going to fall over and it's not. And it's just. He's not even really smoking when he smokes. Just going into his eyes, cups it

[Bill Simmons]

and the all time and then it

[Chris Ryan]

goes through the nose.

[Bill Simmons]

Every time is when he flicks it out the window when he's going after the two witnesses and he's just like, boom. And you're like, oh man. No, this. That's such a great little gesture.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's a great as. Can I say something as a smoking prude? Like I just. The, the double nostril blow is always really cool to me. Like that's like reverse dunk or something.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

I was just watching one battle after another and Leo's doing them constantly down on the table.

[Bill Simmons]

It's the De Niro Goodfellow slow mo shot. It's like blows it out like a dragon. It's amazing.

[Kyle Brandt]

If I start smoking, I'm gonna do a lot of those. I just. I've always thought that was cool since

[Craig Horbeck]

I was a kid.

[Bill Simmons]

It's never too late, Kyle.

[Kyle Brandt]

Definitely not. Let's do it after the pot.

[Chris Ryan]

Still got time.

[Kyle Brandt]

Storm. He.

[Chris Ryan]

He actually uses it almost. It's almost like a lollipop. He's like Kojak.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Just kind of dangling from his mouth all times. It's amazing. As I, as I said, I love him and Dino Velvet, but. IMDb credits. Okay, if I gave you Storm Air, Stormar, Storm Air, Buscemi, Macy. Who do you think is 1, 2, 3 for most acting credits?

[Bill Simmons]

Most? Storm air number one.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think storm Air has done a shitload of voiceover and if we consider that acting, I would say that. But otherwise I'll say Macy is. Macy has the most.

[Bill Simmons]

Because Macy I feel like did like 10 years of Shameless.

[Chris Ryan]

Give me some, give me some. Give me some numbers. Give me your 1, 2, 3.

[Bill Simmons]

I think Stormy is like showing up in like prestige TV shows for like two episodes still. Like, I mean, so he's three two.

[Chris Ryan]

Give me a total. Total number 80.

[Kyle Brandt]

I'm going to say like 135 for Stormware.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you have for Buscemi?

[Bill Simmons]

Fifty.

[Kyle Brandt]

Seventy.

[Chris Ryan]

How about Macy?

[Kyle Brandt]

One hundred and five.

[Chris Ryan]

Final standings. Macy 158.

[Bill Simmons]

Holy shit.

[Kyle Brandt]

Way to go, Bill.

[Chris Ryan]

Buscemi 199.

[Bill Simmons]

Really?

[Kyle Brandt]

Wow.

[Chris Ryan]

Storm here 231.

[Kyle Brandt]

Let's go. That's, that's. I've never seen that sequel.

[Bill Simmons]

So like, do you need someone of Eastern European or Russian background to show up and be menacing for an episode? I'll do it.

[Chris Ryan]

They were like, John Wick too. He's like, no more.

[Bill Simmons]

I said there was an interview with Joel Kinnaman I saw recently.

[Kyle Brandt]

Joel Kinnaman. He was like Swedish too, right?

[Bill Simmons]

He's like, the thing is, I bought a house in Malibu and now I gotta pay for it. So I'll. Yeah. And I was like, I wonder if that's Storm Error. Like, I wonder what his house is that. He's like, I will do CSI if it must.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I think when you're banging out like, like Dino Velvet's like four scenes so that you're probably in the set for like five days, six days. So you can basically go from.

[Bill Simmons]

Sure, you can go Dino Velvet right into, you know.

[Kyle Brandt]

Did you see in the research that Storm Air has a band? Yeah, Blonde from Fargo. Yeah, that's what it's called. And I'm like, I. I listened to some Blonde from Fargo music on the plane. Say I had a quit.

[Bill Simmons]

Metal.

[Craig Horbeck]

Hard rock.

[Bill Simmons]

What is it?

[Kyle Brandt]

Folk.

[Bill Simmons]

Folky.

[Kyle Brandt]

He plays guitar and sings though. Like, it's beautiful. I thought it was very, very, very cool.

[Chris Ryan]

We're gonna take a break and then we gotta talk about Roger Dinkins.

[Bill Simmons]

Great. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

This episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. You know that thing where you finish a movie and you immediately have to look up who directed it, what year it came out, how much money it made. Suddenly it's 1am well, Claude is built for that kind of rabbit hole. Deep research featuring digs across dozens of sources, pulls it all together. Cast connections, box office context, production history. So you're not bouncing between 10 tabs because that stinks. It thinks with you. Instead of just handing you a quick summary. Try it free at Claude. AI Rewatchables.

[Bill Simmons]

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[Kyle Brandt]

I don't need an astronaut. Audiences have spoken. Project Hail Mary is an awe inspiring masterpiece.

[Chris Ryan]

So I met an alien.

[Kyle Brandt]

If you've fallen out the of of love with going to the movies, this one will bring you back. Ryan Gosling in the first must see movie of 2026. Project Hail Mary, rated PG 13 may be inappropriate for children under 13 only. Theaters March 20th.

[Chris Ryan]

Roger Deakins. Your guy cr. He is. What's your rankings with? You should release the power rankings like we do. Ringer 100.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, we did this on Big Change a while ago. We did the Deacons hall of Fame. I would say my favorite thing by him is probably still Assassination of Jesse James by a coward, Robert Ford, just in terms of like his cinematography in that movie.

[Chris Ryan]

So put him against. Great shot. Gordo and everyone else is in the Mount Rushmore for you.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, he's definitely top. Top five or six.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, I think so. He's like Vittorio and Gordon Willis and. Yeah. William Fraker and Haskell Wexler. But, like. Yeah, he's incredible, Kyle.

[Chris Ryan]

He used an Aeriflex 35B04 camera for this. In case you were keeping notes at home.

[Bill Simmons]

Did Dino Velvet use a similar radio?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know if he did. One thing I noticed the second time I watched this, by the way, great 4K Blu Ray.

[Kyle Brandt]

Sure.

[Chris Ryan]

Awesome. Everything is white the whole movie. And I don't know if they did this, then they're geniuses. But it all leads to the wood chipper where everything's red and it's like it's white, white, white, white, white, white. And then boom, wood chipper, red everywhere. It's almost like the shin. And I wonder, like, if they talk. I don't. I don't know how.

[Bill Simmons]

They've talked a little bit about how difficult. First of all, Deacons. The one day the sun came out when they were shooting, he was furious because he was like, this is breaking.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, is there a sunny scene?

[Bill Simmons]

Like, I don't. He probably masked it. Yeah, maybe at the dealership.

[Kyle Brandt]

A little sunny. There's a lot of natural light in those things.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. They talked a lot about problems with like, shooting the horizon because the snow and the white sky was so much that you couldn't tell where the, like, land was done and the sky began. But I think it actually contributes to the feeling like you're on another planet when you're watching it.

[Chris Ryan]

Wide shots, white. It's one of these movies that just in your brain you can see different scenes. I don't even know how we do great shot, Gordo for this movie.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's why my selection is just the opening shot, because it's just a fucking whiteout. And then a minute later, Lundegaard drives right past your ear and it's. It. It's like hitting a 40 foot three to start the game.

[Bill Simmons]

I have a couple of nominees for Gordo, but the thing is, is that like the shot as they like kind of push in or when they even first just like, they didn't move the camera that much. But the lighting and the way that you're introduced to Carl and Garrett, that at the bar, was it the king of clubs. You're Just like, I know exactly where I am. I know exactly what kind of dudes these are. They have six beers. They've killed in an hour already.

[Chris Ryan]

Like.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, let's go.

[Chris Ryan]

I know I had this for later, but could you have lived in this part of the country and for how long?

[Bill Simmons]

I'd be a raging alcoholic if I did like that.

[Chris Ryan]

Because I gotta say, that bar, the king of clubs.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

In my 20s, I would have been like, this is great. We're going here every night.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

They got three pool tables, long necks, jukebox, escorts. Sounds awesome.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yes.

[Bill Simmons]

You know what? I. Jacoby told me a really amazing story about going to a bar with Bill, I think, in Charleston sometime during Grayland or a while ago. And, like, I don't know if you used to bartend there or just used to go there, but you hadn't been there in, like, years.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. It was in Faneuil Hall.

[Bill Simmons]

And you walk. Bill walks in with Jacoby, and the bartender just, like, looks up and he goes, like, what will it be, Billy? After, like, years away?

[Kyle Brandt]

That's what you want.

[Chris Ryan]

That was in Charlestown. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Where everybody knows your name.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

What was it that you wanted to.

[Chris Ryan]

It explains a lot of my 20s. I think I could have made it maybe two years without. Then the weather would have driven me nuts.

[Kyle Brandt]

Well, also, if it was back in the 80s, like, there's not even any Timberwolves or anything. Like, that's the Vikings team.

[Chris Ryan]

Gophers are really important.

[Kyle Brandt]

Really important.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

But even that guy didn't even have a ticket for Jerry.

[Kyle Brandt]

You kidding? But he's insulted that he would even ask if he had an extra college hockey game.

[Chris Ryan]

Two Oscar. Two Oscar wins for McDormand. In the screenplay, Big Shot Roger did not get an Oscar.

[Bill Simmons]

Unbelievable.

[Kyle Brandt]

It was pretty good.

[Chris Ryan]

Seven nominations, including the director. They did the thing where it was just Joel directing, even though both of them directed. And then I think at some point, they just did so much good work. People were like, all right, who cares? You can beat both of you. It works for them. They always have this editor named Roderick James.

[Bill Simmons]

It's them.

[Chris Ryan]

That's them that got nominated.

[Bill Simmons]

That's their pseudonym for.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah, I think I read that. So they have a little group name for themselves to edit.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Soderbergh does this with. It's Peter Andrews. He shoots his movies.

[Chris Ryan]

But what would be your editor pseudonym?

[Bill Simmons]

Velvet.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

But it would be like.

[Kyle Brandt]

Mine would just be a machine.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So they don't win for best Directing, and they don't win for Best Picture. Because English Patient takes both. And it's an interesting best Picture because Fargo, Jerry Maguire, Secrets and Lies and Shine. English Patient wins. I don't know if English Patient's winning that one a second time.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a great movie, but that was weinsteinned out, I think.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know what's funny about that? Oscars. I have a funny. That's the 69th Academy Awards. Dustin Hoffman, I remember, walks out and he goes, the 69th Academy Awards. 69. And he looks down, he goes, Jack is smiling. And they go to. Nick's got this big shit eating grin on his face. I like a little 69 every once in a while. What a perv.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh my God. Different times.

[Kyle Brandt]

That was what they did. Bibli. I was 18.

[Chris Ryan]

Best actress McDormand wins.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Beats Brenda Blein, Diane Keaton, Kristen Scott Thomas and Emily Watson.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's a nice crew.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. And then Macy loses for supporting Cuba Gooding. Also Ed Norton loses that year in Primal Fear.

[Kyle Brandt]

I also think this is the last. It's the last year before they expanded to more nominees or the first. First year when it was like 10 best picture nominees. Like that wasn't until it was right on the edge.

[Chris Ryan]

I thought that there was still five.

[Bill Simmons]

It was still five until 08 because they changed it for Dark Knight, basically.

[Kyle Brandt]

Okay. All right.

[Chris Ryan]

Macy, I think should have gone for best actor.

[Bill Simmons]

Ay. For best supporting.

[Chris Ryan]

I think they put him best supporting. But I, I think he should.

[Kyle Brandt]

Who did he lose to? He lost.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Do you feel good about that? I mean, TIDB's great.

[Chris Ryan]

I think, I think he's incredible in that. Other people think it's a horrifying win and that we should redo it. Yeah. It's a polarizing one.

[Bill Simmons]

It's also a testament. I think Macy and Fargo has stood the test of time. I mean, it's like you didn't get the statue, but I think a lot of people.

[Chris Ryan]

It would be an interesting redo because I don't think, I don't think Macy loses. 30 years later.

[Kyle Brandt]

It'll been a significantly different acceptance speech.

[Chris Ryan]

But. But you also have the history of. You also have the history of Macy. The last 30 years of work too. So who knows?

[Kyle Brandt]

That might have felt like who? I don't know. Macy just showed up in movies. Like we're gonna hand it to him right now. Who knows? Kuba put his time in a little bit.

[Chris Ryan]

Tidwa was a really. I, I love the T character and it's probably my single favorite sports movie character.

[Bill Simmons]

Is that the only One that supported. Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

By the way, I. I believe that he was a professional wide receiver. Like, that's very hard to do.

[Chris Ryan]

Plus, we got Kush right behind you.

[Kyle Brandt]

Kush Lash. Wow. That's Kush right there.

[Bill Simmons]

SMU Jersey.

[Chris Ryan]

Cameron Crowe, he. That was his contribution to the studio. There's only three of them.

[Kyle Brandt]

Did Kush go to SMU? How the hell.

[Chris Ryan]

I guess they paid him $7 million. Budget made 60 points.

[Bill Simmons]

Kush have gone in nil as a great, great conversation.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Anything, I guess.

[Chris Ryan]

MSC so made 60.6 million. Released in VHS, laser, DVD, Blu Ray, and 4K Blu Ray. The Fab Fives.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

All five of them inspired the TV series that CR mentioned. And then Siskel and Ebert together said best movie of 96.

[Bill Simmons]

They had the criteria, orgasm. When they reviewed this on their show, they were just like, this is why we go to the movies.

[Chris Ryan]

They did. They did a lot of.

[Kyle Brandt]

I felt the same way. They're right.

[Chris Ryan]

You could see Sean just lifting their shtick 30 years later. A lot of movie celebration stuff. Sean's like, these guys, get me Ebert. Four stars. It rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen. Films like Fargo are why I love the movies.

[Kyle Brandt]

You mentioned that, the DVD and all that. They also had this really fucking cool thing. When I was a senior in high school, I worked at the movie store in the mall. Like I worked at Suncoast Motion Picture Company. And Fargo released this special version of the VHS where you would get a snow globe with a dead body in it.

[Chris Ryan]

I remember that out.

[Kyle Brandt]

And it was like the hottest fucking item to get. And we had people lining up before the store would open and we have to like stock them. And they would all be gone in 10 minutes. And I remember I got one and it was the coolest souvenir. It's like a bloody dead body. Like the guy in the red coat. I don't.

[Chris Ryan]

That would be a good.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's an awesome souvenir.

[Chris Ryan]

That'd be good for the memorabilia thing later. Look, let's. Let's see.

[Bill Simmons]

Throw your weight around out there on ebay.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, one other thing with the releases, this was. This is a. What's age the worst for this movie that they did. The. It shot really wide. Yeah. And when it was on cable for years and years with the square TVs, the pan and scan, it was really bad. It really, like, hurt.

[Bill Simmons]

The movie from a rewatch is it you feel like you're watching Like Lawrence of Ru.

[Chris Ryan]

You feel like you're in Minnesota. All right, let's do the categories. Most rewatchable scene. We mentioned the opening credits. Jerry meets the kidnappers at King of Clubs, the most North Dakota dive bar possible. It seems amazing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, they. They encourage you to smoke inside of King clubs.

[Bill Simmons]

I think you have to do it to stay warm.

[Kyle Brandt]

Excuse me, if you're not smoking, sir, can you please leave?

[Chris Ryan]

Excuse me, sir. You haven't smoked in an hour.

[Bill Simmons]

Almost every scene that those guys are in, there's, like, seven empty beer bottles, like, somewhere in the shot.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Like, even when they have Gene kidnapped, like, at the safe house, there's, like, tons of dead soldiers.

[Kyle Brandt]

I have a zag for this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I had it in my picking knits. I think it's a little bit of a hacky way that directors show someone's drunk, that there's like six empty. I think any proud tavern, someone clears those bottles.

[Bill Simmons]

Sure.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think it is. Is a little transparent. They do the same thing in Zodiac with those blue glasses. When Downey and Gail get fucked up, like, yeah, someone comes and gets those glasses. I think it is a little bit of a hacky way to show some stuff. You may be.

[Bill Simmons]

Am I overestimating the King of Clubs? King of Clubs might have one guy. He's behind the bar and he cleans up once.

[Kyle Brandt]

This is what I wanted in response. I like it.

[Chris Ryan]

And the waitress was also an escort.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So Savannah had to just sleep for

[Kyle Brandt]

a half an hour.

[Bill Simmons]

She's at the Blue Eyes.

[Chris Ryan]

That little room for her. The kidnapping scene. I love. She's knitting. She's watching some.

[Bill Simmons]

She's, like, watching Wake Up, Minneapolis.

[Kyle Brandt]

They're making Holidazzle eggs in the show.

[Bill Simmons]

It's also the fucking funniest thing in this movie might be them being like. And we're doing a riverboat cruise of the Nile this year, so you guys gotta sign up for that. I'm like, what? Can you imagine going to Egypt based on a morning show? Being like, we're doing a group tour of the Nile. And, like, it's such a perfect little throwaway.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think the accommodations are on that trip.

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know. But it also, like, so much of this stuff because they're from Minnesota. Must be that happened to them or something.

[Chris Ryan]

The other movie that jumped into this was Young Adult, which is a movie that is very popular. In the Simmons house with Charlie's Jason Raymond movie, she goes back home for her high school reunion, but she's still in love with Patrick Wilson. But it really ties into this whole kind of Minnesota. How Just weird. Everybody is there.

[Kyle Brandt]

Well, also so trusting. Like the strangest part of the home break in is that Carl comes up looking like he went to spirit Halloween and got home. Intruder costume with a crowbar. And she just stands there watching him for a long time until he breaks the glass and all shit breaks loose.

[Bill Simmons]

Like you'd be losing. I can't believe this is happening.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

What is she doing? Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So kidnapping scene. Her face is great. It's a really, like, all of a sudden super. We're like, oh, we're doing this. I mean, this could be. What's our award for this?

[Kyle Brandt]

Dan Campbell. That was 4th and 19.

[Chris Ryan]

The shower curtains is good.

[Kyle Brandt]

She's really good in that scene. She seems completely terrified.

[Chris Ryan]

What kind of finders fee are you looking for?

[Bill Simmons]

We're not a bank. Jerry.

[Kyle Brandt]

One of my favorite.

[Chris Ryan]

What a terrible plan, by the way. What did he just think they were gonna give him $750,000?

[Kyle Brandt]

The dynamic here, where Jerry has set off this felony abduction of his wife. And it's like, oh, shit, I might get some money. I have to call it off.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

Is so clumsy and so stupid. It reminds me of like, when I lose something around the house. I'm like, ah, fuck. And then I order on Amazon for 60 bucks. And then I find it and I go to try to cancel the order on Amazon. No, it's too late. It's already shipped. God damn it. Except it's the abduction of his wife. It's so sloppy and so idiotic that he does that. And then it messes that up on top of it. I love that scene with Stan.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm putting the three together of this scene. Him flipping out in the ice scraper is the next scene.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

And then him coming home and rehearsing the phone call in the kitchen. It's all in a row.

[Bill Simmons]

I love that. How penetratingly cold it is is always in the background of this movie. The ice scraping. She needs her car to get a jump from Norm when she first leaves the house.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, that's Midwest living.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I love the pictures came from that.

[Kyle Brandt]

Because you just came from it.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm recording this right after the blizzard.

[Kyle Brandt]

Second one of the winter. Two feet, all that shit. The first thing Jerry does when he enters King of Clubs is something he does like six times in this movie where when he walks into a room, he goes like this. He passes feet a few times. And like, that's Midwest living. The scrape off on the thing that is so relatable. Someone who's gotten in the car and be like, God damn it, I have to scrape the fucking windshield. And then he has his crash out, which is just so well acted and so relatable. I love it.

[Chris Ryan]

The criminals kill the cop and two innocent bystanders.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. This is big.

[Chris Ryan]

Just keep it still, lady, or else we're gonna have to, you know, shoot ya.

[Kyle Brandt]

Laugh out loud in the theater. Hilarious.

[Chris Ryan]

Really good. Unexpected murder followed by the. Oh, daddy.

[Bill Simmons]

Also the Cohen's love a headshot. Yeah. This is like. It's always like, whoa. Like, it really stops you in your tracks big time.

[Chris Ryan]

Slight nitpick. I don't know enough about shooting somebody from two feet away. Okay, But Marvin in Pulp Fiction, like, his head basically explodes.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Would your head explode from that close? Or would it just be the divot?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't know what happens to Carl over the course of the movie that I think, like, he eventually, like. Like he suffers from some, like, random shot shots and stuff like that. So.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Marge, this is a quick one, but Marge interviewing the two escorts kills me.

[Kyle Brandt]

Fantastic.

[Chris Ryan]

He's not circumcised.

[Kyle Brandt]

Funny little fella. The running joke of. Of Buscemi being funny looking in a way they can't describe. That reminds me, you said they wrote it for him. Like they're writing those lines about how funny looking he is.

[Bill Simmons]

And you get that script. You're like, oh, man, the Coen brothers wrote me apart. This is great.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, and everyone's just, how weird.

[Chris Ryan]

I wonder how that would feel if you're reading that. You're like, tough. They're like, we wrote this for you, Steve. You're Carl.

[Kyle Brandt]

Even the process. How weird looking you are. Yeah. The whole movie.

[Bill Simmons]

The great thing about the. The hooker scene is also. Sorry, the escort scene or whatever is. Francis McDormand has talked about how it's just written that way in the script down to the. Oh, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like.

[Bill Simmons]

Like every. All the punctuation. It's like, so can you imagine those two brothers sitting there and then goes. And then the one hooker says this and the other hooker says that, and then Francis says this. It's so funny to imagine them coming up with this.

[Chris Ryan]

We didn't. I meant to do this at the top, but we didn't talk about the accents and how that kind of shaped how this movie was consumed in 1996. Because it was kind of like an accents movie. And in a way, it seemed like it was going to work against McDormand in the Oscars.

[Bill Simmons]

I actually had this for what was the most. 1996 part of this movie is that it's not necessarily the last time, but it is a time in America where different regions felt far away and culturally very different. And in the sense that, like, now.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting, because you could be like, yeah,

[Bill Simmons]

I could find out, like, what the three best pizza places are in Minneapolis St. Paul, like right now on Instagram, and, like, watch people eat slices.

[Chris Ryan]

You could go on the King of Clubs Instagram, be like, guys, it's smoke at night.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

Bring your own cigarettes.

[Bill Simmons]

This felt like when you were like, is this what it's like here? Like, is this what Minnesota is like and what North Dakota is like?

[Chris Ryan]

It's such an important point because I felt like in the 70s, 80s and 90s, the only way I knew where what anything was like was in TV or movies.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, I didn't know what, like, San Diego was like, not a chance. Or Denver. How would you know? Beverly Hills. Right.

[Bill Simmons]

You'd see movies set in Florida Keys. And you're like, this might as well be set on Jupiter. This doesn't look like anything I've ever seen in my life.

[Chris Ryan]

And then how cool the show or the movie was in the location shaped like, to me, Miami was the coolest city we had. Just because of my advice.

[Bill Simmons]

You go to Miami.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, okay.

[Chris Ryan]

All right. It's fine. I have Buscemi braid in the parking lot guy. I have Shep beating up Buscemi. Let's smoke a fucking peace pipe.

[Kyle Brandt]

He has to get that in there, doesn't he? He's so proud with that line about the peace pipe.

[Chris Ryan]

I have the father in law getting killed just because it's shocking. That got a real woe from my son. No cheat, no money.

[Kyle Brandt]

Who the fuck are you? That the last couple scenes Buscemi has as an actor, you can just hear the Cohen son. I'm like, you're done. You can't take anymore. I want you at a 10 out of 10. It's the phone call with Jerry.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

After he gets beat up by Shep. And then when he shows up and Wade gets out of that car, it is a hundred out of 100. Buscemi. I'm not around anymore.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

He looks like. Like a crazed dog. And it's that perfect Buscemi paper towel. I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna shoot you. And he does. He's such a psychopath.

[Chris Ryan]

And he could do it in any movie, including one of my favorites, which we're considering for From Hell month. Domestic disturbance with all Steve Buscemi plays. Get this, the scumbag who comes into Vince Vaughn's life. Yeah, but he just. He can break it out whenever he wants. I only have a couple more. I have the Eklund and Swedlands guy. So I'm tending bar there at Eklund Swedlands last Tuesday. That whole speech, it's just. He just rips off a monologue in a monotone and he's just, like, doing

[Bill Simmons]

the ice and snow off of his driveway before more snow comes and hits it again. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And I say, what kind of action? And he says, woman action. What do I look like? And I say, what do I look like? I don't arrange that kind of thing.

[Bill Simmons]

Are you calling me a jerk?

[Kyle Brandt]

Last guy called me a jerk. Jerk is dead now. And I know me in from old age.

[Chris Ryan]

I think this might be my favorite scene.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's a great scene.

[Chris Ryan]

I fucking love this scene.

[Kyle Brandt]

So do I. And it's that weird, like, deputy in the SUV who has two scenes and then it's driveway guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Can I. I think it's as good a time as any because it relates to the accent. I wrote down the five most Fargo people in Fargo. Oh, yeah?

[Chris Ryan]

Let's hear it.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, just the accent. The. Everything all right at 5? I have Jerry's manager at Gustafson Auto who's watching the Gophers game. You kidding? You named him already? And number four, I have the female cashier at the diner.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

How was everything today? And Jerry's like, how are you doing? Huge laugh in the theater. And number three, I got driveway guy going crazy out there at the lake. Guy who's just kind of just sweeping his wet driveway with the hood up and everything going crazy out there at the lake. And number two, I have our girl, the blonde escort from went to White Bear High School. Go Bears. And then I think, number one, we haven't mentioned him yet. I mean, Lou. Lou, the officer with Margie. All right, Margie. I mean, that guy is like a thousand on the scale. He is by far.

[Chris Ryan]

He's in the protocol. Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

That guy. Hey, Norm. How are the paintings going?

[Chris Ryan]

Brought you some coffee.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. That guy. You all right? He's the one who thought the plate was dlr and then he was killed. Dealer.

[Chris Ryan]

He's just stupid.

[Kyle Brandt]

I agree with you. Please work there, Lou. He's the most Fargo guy in Fargo.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a good list.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, thank you.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm trying to think if I would add anyone, but I think there's a

[Kyle Brandt]

lot of fun ones.

[Chris Ryan]

No, I think you Hit the basics. Marge goes to see Jerry a second time. We talked about the Mike scene already. The wood chipper scene into the drive, which was an all time.

[Bill Simmons]

It's axe to the head.

[Chris Ryan]

Holy shit, we're doing this woodchipper. Well, all of a sudden we hear the wood chipper in the back for a long time. We have our pregnant hero who has not been in any danger at all. And there's no backup movie and just has a gun and she's creeping around and we know it's going to be bad. And I'm prepared for anything at this point from Fargo. The first time I say it, like, are they just gonna shoot her?

[Bill Simmons]

Deaths are so abrupt in this movie. And it just. It gives you that sense of like, kind of. Not the pointlessness, but how fleeting and. And we're just like bags of meat out here. And like anything can happen to you at any point. We've followed Carl throughout this whole movie being like, oh, is he gonna get away with it? Is he gonna get this? And fuck, he just gets hit in the head with an axe.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Thrown in a wood chipper. That's what life does.

[Chris Ryan]

And then I have the 3 cent stamp, which I really like as an ending.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's a cute ending.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think that the second scene, we only get two with Margie and Jerry is unbelievable acting by the both of them. Where Jerry does the. Ma', am, I answered your question. Yeah. I'm cooperating here. And she gets real pissed off.

[Chris Ryan]

But I just say he gets.

[Kyle Brandt]

You have no call to get snippy with me.

[Chris Ryan]

Snippy with me.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's the only time Marge gets mad in the whole movie. And she's just super silly when he

[Bill Simmons]

runs off and she's like. He's fleeing the interview, kicking an outside

[Kyle Brandt]

line on the fucking phone. That scene's amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

So you have Mike as your favorite scene.

[Kyle Brandt]

Mike Yanaguida scene is my favorite scene. It's preempted by the Mike Yanaguida phone call at 10:45. Once they establish who they are, there's this git. And then he goes, so how the heck are you? When they walk in and they go for that hug and Mike goes, oh, you look great. It's like, oh, mayday, mayday, get the fuck out of there.

[Chris Ryan]

Say, careful.

[Kyle Brandt]

Everything about that scene, I'm gonna about it later as well.

[Chris Ryan]

Is.

[Kyle Brandt]

It makes me so happy.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you have?

[Bill Simmons]

I think just for filmmaking purposes, it's the triple homicide in the highway. Yeah. Because.

[Kyle Brandt]

Outstanding.

[Bill Simmons]

You're like, oh, they Got pulled over. I wonder how this is going to work out. You're like, that's not how I thought it was going to work out. That also features one of my favorite. There are two shots that basically talk to each other. It's the shot of the two witnesses driving by slowly. And they're like, yep. And then it also happens when Macy goes out of the parking garage and he goes past the attendant who's been killed. So I just find that the entire movie jumps up and not, I think,

[Kyle Brandt]

storm mayor for most of the movie. Ups. Then it's just like comatose. And then he snaps.

[Bill Simmons]

He's like, I'll kill three people for nothing. You know?

[Kyle Brandt]

And it's that shot you talked about where finally he's driving. First time he's ever driving. And the flick. And he's driving with the gun. And you're like, he's Satan. He's gonna kill. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And then. And then, like, he's chasing them. And then the car lights disappears. Just great.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's so cool. I love this movie.

[Chris Ryan]

I think that's the answer. But I think my favorite is still the guy's monologue.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. The Yanagita.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Doesn't use the word jerk. He calls me a jerk.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, the guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

What's the most 1987 or 1996 thing about this movie? You can go either movie set in 1987.

[Kyle Brandt]

For 87, Scotty Lundegaard's got a white snake poster over his bed. And 87 is the year that the. That album came out. And here I go again. Was all. I mean, that's 87. March of 87.

[Bill Simmons]

Even notice.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah. Oh, right over his bed.

[Bill Simmons]

Holy.

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't notice it either. I noticed the accordion poster.

[Kyle Brandt]

Well, we'll get to that.

[Bill Simmons]

Right over. Is it Tawny Contain or is it just a white.

[Kyle Brandt]

No, it's. I think it's like the album cover.

[Craig Horbeck]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

But like that foremost important music video performance.

[Kyle Brandt]

Here I go again on the car. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Tonic.

[Kyle Brandt]

That is 87.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

And so, Scotty, that's great. This at. That's 87. The 96 for me is just what we've already talked about, that you could just say this was a true story and everyone just believe it because they can't research it. It's like they.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, good point.

[Kyle Brandt]

They like, they Blair Witched us. Kind of like this is real. Just trust us. All right? And it's not.

[Bill Simmons]

People are probably, like, looking at microfiches trying to find, like, in the library. Yeah. Minneapolis Tribune. The only Other one I had for 96 about this movie is $6 million budget, $60 million. But box office us that's. That's the dream. That's a huge win 10x return on a modestly budgeted movie that you have creative control over that winds up becoming

[Chris Ryan]

Raj and Jean just hugging each other in the. That's really all you want.

[Bill Simmons]

And us three nimrods in a. In a room 30 years later being like, yep, that's the best.

[Kyle Brandt]

Perfect movie, man. Perfect.

[Chris Ryan]

I had no ring cameras because we just catch every immediately.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, I thought about that a lot.

[Chris Ryan]

I have faxing stuff. I have low life criminals having sex in the same room and two double beds and then watching the Tonight Show.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

All right. So Bill, I, I had this.

[Chris Ryan]

What would you would be the show now.

[Kyle Brandt]

I don't. Fallon. I, I don't. I don't. I had this.

[Chris Ryan]

Nobody wants to watch Jimmy Fallon after having sex.

[Kyle Brandt]

You and another guy watching s. He's doing bad beats.

[Bill Simmons]

I, I think Scott Van Pelt's going to interview Lamar after this game.

[Kyle Brandt]

Shout out to Scott, great job. Would you and another guy who you barely know be in the same room and two queen beds at the same time?

[Bill Simmons]

Look, come on now. It depends on how many times he's been to King of Clubs.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's. I've never. I can't imagine. Wouldn't you at least go out for burgers or something? Come take a turn? Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Jesus Christ.

[Chris Ryan]

I've been in. I've been in this situation. Have you? Not all the way through, but there's a moment when somebody's got to get out of there, get it and go to a different place.

[Bill Simmons]

Taps out.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's also weird like if you're both doing at the same time, like not only one finishes. Is it a competition then you're going. They're stopping.

[Bill Simmons]

It's really. Carl also is like watching Garrett's really funny watch.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, there's two separate things. One is would you want to be in the situation. Two is would you want to be in the situation with either of those two guys in the other. And the answer is, is a strong no.

[Bill Simmons]

It's so funny that they're like they're doing a ransom deal, but they're also like we're keeping expenses low. You know, like, dude, he two girls, one room.

[Kyle Brandt]

He doesn't want to pay the four bucks for that barking. You know. How do you think they decided who had which girl? Like I, I found that a lot.

[Chris Ryan]

They both had that worse.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Neither type was particularly A knockout. I would say the most 1987 thing about this movie we did not mention yet. It's a Playboy in the bathroom reading rack. When she's. When she's in the bathroom, the wife as she's getting kidnapped. They have a rack of magazines. Jerry has a Playboy, including Playboy magazine. Maybe it's just for the magazine rack.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, that goes against type. I don't see him as that.

[Chris Ryan]

That was 1987. It was realistic.

[Kyle Brandt]

Definitely. Scotty must have loved that too. That's huge.

[Chris Ryan]

What stage? The best. We mentioned a couple things already.

[Bill Simmons]

I can do my run of Steve Buscemi here if you want.

[Chris Ryan]

Go.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, let's go.

[Bill Simmons]

So what stage is the best? Steve Buscemi, 90s scumbag. Test tube, the drug purity guy from King of New York. Mink from Miller's Crossing. Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs. Mr. Sh from Things to do in Denver when you're dead. And Carl from Fargo.

[Chris Ryan]

Just all in a row.

[Bill Simmons]

Just an app. Not in a row. But just throughout that decade. Just be played a crazy scumbag.

[Kyle Brandt]

The scummiest of all of them. If you had like your number one I it.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, honestly, probably this one.

[Kyle Brandt]

This guy's tough.

[Bill Simmons]

I would not want to spend a night with Test tube from King of New York. It's the. That's the. That's the like, go get me Mike Coca Cola scene with Lawrence Fishburn.

[Chris Ryan]

Remember that?

[Kyle Brandt]

Carl's kind of pleasant. Like he's trying to make conversation about the road, like he's human. You know, trying to do a podcast. Yeah, yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Steve Buscemi with a woman riding him on top is just really funny and it tastes the best. And I. The idea of Joel and Ethan being like, like, what if this guy just really likes chicks on top? That's so good. Sport search. He's never on top.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's true.

[Bill Simmons]

And Steve Bumi being described as little and funny looking by multiple characters. And then the. The crowning achievement is definitely Carl taking a hooker to a Jose Feliciano concert.

[Kyle Brandt]

I love this scene.

[Bill Simmons]

Jose Feliciano got no complaints.

[Kyle Brandt]

Fantastic.

[Bill Simmons]

Telling her is in town on business. But just a little of the old in and out before asking her if she's been to the celebrity room before. And he passes her if she finds being an escort interesting.

[Kyle Brandt]

What are you talking about?

[Chris Ryan]

She has this look on her face the whole time that's intentional where she's just like, oh my God. Like they told her, like, can you make an ugly face? No, no. Make it uglier.

[Kyle Brandt]

Do one more time. Make it Much uglier.

[Chris Ryan]

Proceed your chin into your neck, and that's it.

[Bill Simmons]

Keeping is when he's just like, waiter. The guy just.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, man.

[Kyle Brandt]

And she says she's never been there because it's nice. You know, she's been there with a client before.

[Chris Ryan]

Another one stage. Well, we didn't mention the score, which was great. But in every scene they're in together, Marge and Norm are either lying in bed or eating.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

They have no other interactions. We don't even see them, like, watching TV in the living room. It's just. They're in bed or at a table.

[Bill Simmons]

She's, like. At night, like, she's got the chips in between the two of them.

[Chris Ryan]

That's tough.

[Kyle Brandt]

The scene with them at that buffet. Jesus Christ.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. It's.

[Bill Simmons]

It's an incredible moment.

[Kyle Brandt]

They both are three plates deep now. She's deeply pregnant.

[Chris Ryan]

Big plates. Like, plates you do in college when you haven't eaten for 24 hours.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's fucking lunch, too.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's not even dinner.

[Bill Simmons]

This is the thing that I was thinking about. There are two. Two sides of this. One is he brings her Arby's, which I was trying to think of, like, the last time in my life that life worked in a way where my wife would bring me my lunch and we would hang out at my work at all. And then the other side of it was just, like, the amount of calories you're hitting. Oh, it's good at noon.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

And, like, what happens to your body?

[Chris Ryan]

Swedish meatballs alone is, like, 2500 calories.

[Bill Simmons]

So much chicken fricassee. And. And, like.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, that's a cream stew. I actually had World War 3, dude.

[Chris Ryan]

I had all this written down.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's gonna be a terrible afternoon, because

[Chris Ryan]

obviously, this is the big Kahuna Burger award winner for bestiest food or drink. The buffet.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, good.

[Chris Ryan]

Chicken and dumplings, chicken fricassee, fried Torah and broiled toro.

[Bill Simmons]

Swedish meatballs.

[Chris Ryan]

That's the only five things. There's more. There's, like, potatoes, and she got a

[Kyle Brandt]

whole bowl of Jello.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. There's all kinds of. There's always room for Jello. It was like the fat buffet.

[Bill Simmons]

Everything's like, the tort. Or, like, what are you talking about?

[Chris Ryan]

It's some sort of Minnesota fish that's really smelly.

[Kyle Brandt]

Okay. I. This led me. I struggled a lot in this movie with good Hank. Like, I hard. Like, who I would want to hang with.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

And I was like, I think it might be Norm.

[Chris Ryan]

It's Norm by default, but Norm's not necessarily a good hang.

[Bill Simmons]

I think good hang, bad hang is pretty easy, Norm.

[Chris Ryan]

We know bad hangs.

[Bill Simmons]

Carl's the good hang. Garrett's the bad Hay. I would love to take a road trip with Carl.

[Chris Ryan]

King of clubs.

[Bill Simmons]

Get his. Get his thoughts on Montana where the escorts are.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, I guess so. There's a good side of them. I just had to find a hard time landing on normal. Just too boring. And like, when I watch him eat

[Bill Simmons]

that lunch, like, Jesus Christ, he's a loving man.

[Chris Ryan]

He only gets locked in one time when she says she's going to Minnesota, and he's like, minnesota?

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

That's the only time he's even, like, leaning forward. Couple more, I would say he's the best. I like movies where there's the loser son in law with the wealthy father in law.

[Kyle Brandt]

This is great.

[Chris Ryan]

And the guy's just shitting on him in all these different ways. He hates Jerry and he's like. At some point he's like, well, I don't want to want Gene and Scotty to worry. And the guy's like, gene and Scotty never have to worry.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's the coldest line in the movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Such a great line. Just cuts his jugular.

[Kyle Brandt]

This could work out real good for me and Gene and Scott. And he just slashed his throat like you said. He fucking hates Jerry. In the scene in the diner where Jerry's trying to be like, this is my deal, Wade. No way. You don't know. Like, he. Oh, my God, he hates.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm going to do all this stuff to Zoe's husband if I don't like whoever she marries, I'm going to turn into.

[Bill Simmons]

Zoe's going to be fine.

[Chris Ryan]

Zoe and Ben will be fine.

[Kyle Brandt]

And I had this unanswerable questions, like, what is it like, if you hate your son in law, it must be really bad.

[Chris Ryan]

Pretty tough.

[Bill Simmons]

What would the son in law would be?

[Kyle Brandt]

What?

[Bill Simmons]

Pitching you on, like, a player podcast that you had to do?

[Kyle Brandt]

Terrible.

[Bill Simmons]

This is my deal, okay?

[Kyle Brandt]

This could work out real good for me.

[Bill Simmons]

And Zoe eats his own pod.

[Chris Ryan]

People think players podcasts are done. They're coming back. The Minnesota snapshot we get here of the Paul Bunyan statue, the accent, college hockey crap, bars, motels, buffets, bar girls, kind of sort of escorts. True coat being really important for your car.

[Kyle Brandt]

God, that's a great scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Just a really good slice of life.

[Kyle Brandt]

I didn't even mention that scene. Yeah, see, that's that scene with that guy pissed about the true coat.

[Chris Ryan]

I love it.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's Ethan Cohen says that is verbatim something that happened to him really is like coming down to be like, all right, we finally agreed on a price. And he's like, I slipped the true coat charge on you right under, like, the last second.

[Kyle Brandt]

And they get it in.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Because he's like, I. I don't have my car anymore, and now I'm down here in the middle of the winter. Give me a goddamn thing.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, the guy in the scene so badly doesn't want to swear, and he goes, you liar. He's like. The wife's like, all right, calm down, calm down.

[Bill Simmons]

Jerry being like, I gotta talk to my boss.

[Kyle Brandt]

But, yeah, he says he can knock a hundred dollars off that true code. And God, that seems great.

[Chris Ryan]

I also have the accent stuff, which we talked about, but I think my favorite one is your darn tootin.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't know how you even write that.

[Bill Simmons]

Where do you guys think this is? An unanswerable questions, but just because of an accent thing, do you think Carl's supposed to be from Minnesota or is he from out of town?

[Kyle Brandt]

All right, so he knows a lot about Minnesota, including, like, where to get laid. Like, he's all about the glass ICS building. I think he's from the Midwest, not necessarily from Minneapolis. I think he's from the Midwest.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay. Because he's like, oh, daddy, when. When that guy gets shot in his lap.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, that's a weird.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a weird thing to say. He also, like, seems. Seems pissed at Jerry and. And Wade and people to be like, you guys are so annoying. Like, how nice you are. You think you're big time.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, that's so good.

[Chris Ryan]

So you think it's possibly from, like, Sacramento?

[Bill Simmons]

I don't think it's from California because he seems pretty used to the northern winds. But, like, I see him from being like Peoria or Juliet or something.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you have any. What stage? The best of all the.

[Kyle Brandt]

The language things. I like ending a phone call with real good then. And hanging out up. That's how they say goodbye in the accent including. The best part is when Carl is saying, I'm going to shoot you and your wife and all your little fucking kids in the back of the fucking head. Be there. And Jerry goes, all right, real good then. And throws up like, I. I love ending a phone call that way. Throwing the phone down like that.

[Chris Ryan]

One more break and then we'll do the rest of the categories. This episode is brought to you by Taxact. Like an expert coach, Taxact offers step by step guidance and guaranteed accuracy when filing taxes. Get tips along the way. Add Expert Assist to talk to tax experts and let our experts do your taxes for you. With Expert full service, TaxAct helps you find the deductions and credits you deserve so you can get them over with. Visit taxact.com to learn more. Conditions apply. See taxact.com for details.

[Bill Simmons]

This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing company. No matter how you do game day on the couch, in the crowd or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in in with a full lineup of non alcoholic beer styles you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip off with a variety of non alcoholic craft styles. Available at your local grocery store or online@athletic brewing.com near beer fit for all times

[Chris Ryan]

all right, Great shot, Gordo. We did it.

[Bill Simmons]

Got a couple Paul Bunyan towering over the night sky.

[Kyle Brandt]

Scary.

[Bill Simmons]

Looks a lot like Gary the innocent couple driving by the state troopers murder scene. Jerry going past the parking attendant. That sort of like them sort of going into danger that way is really great.

[Chris Ryan]

I got opening scene.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Chess Rockwell, Brock Landers Aware. Best character name. Would you go Marge Gunderson or Jerry Lundegaard?

[Kyle Brandt]

I would go Shep Proudfoot.

[Chris Ryan]

Shep Proudfoot.

[Bill Simmons]

Shep Proudfoot's great.

[Kyle Brandt]

And it's even great when the little deputy comes in. He goes Shep Proudfoot. That's a name name like they they actually acknowledge how cool the name is. And when Marge says Mr. Proudfoot just sounds awesome. Yeah, I love it.

[Chris Ryan]

What do you have for flex category here?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, okay.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't have the Kid Cudi because we didn't really have a needle drop.

[Bill Simmons]

We did my we did Sean Penn. Brought my own pack. I had the Rick Tichetti Guard Meat Award for the most memorable death by a security guard or other bystander whom the movie treats as inconsequential but who probably had a spouse and kids who love race for the state trooper who gets top of the headshot.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I mean you could also go for the poor parking garage guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Sure. There's a lot of like just.

[Chris Ryan]

Or you could go for the two kids who are just driving by and just trying to get away and they flip their car.

[Bill Simmons]

Could have just called this movie guard meat. Otherwise it's Sean Pen. I brought my own pack award for Storm Air.

[Kyle Brandt]

The the state trooper is a great trooper too. He picks up on the he sees the tags.

[Bill Simmons]

Here's the here's the.

[Chris Ryan]

He shows the driver's license and only shows his picture. He doesn't.

[Bill Simmons]

He's trying to pay him off.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I mean, he's got the 50 hanging out about the top, and he's like,

[Bill Simmons]

I'll just pay for it. Here in Brainerd.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Want to be in compliance.

[Chris Ryan]

Butch's Girlfriend award, weak link of the film.

[Kyle Brandt]

This is tough.

[Chris Ryan]

I think people would put in Mike

[Bill Simmons]

Yanagita, then they're not watching the same

[Chris Ryan]

movie as I. I think that's an important scene. I don't have a weak link.

[Kyle Brandt]

I. I think the only weakling could be if you're someone who is really turned off by graphic violence, at least, like the wood chipper. I'm not that person. You know, like, if. If. Like. I don't know if my wife would like the state trooper scene, and she might. Like, I don't like that movie because of that, but.

[Bill Simmons]

Or if it's too flippant, if there's something about the violence that doesn't feel like, wait, we have to sit with this. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I mean, it's.

[Bill Simmons]

It's.

[Kyle Brandt]

So.

[Chris Ryan]

I have a weak link that's really a picky knit. But it could. You could talk yourself into it. Like, Scotty's just not curious enough of, where's Mom?

[Bill Simmons]

He's a teenager.

[Chris Ryan]

I know, but I was trying to think of my own son. If my wife just disappeared out of nowhere, how many days before he would have been like, hey, where's Mom? What the fuck's going on? Why are you on the phone all the time? I think. I just think kids are a little more perceptive than he asks, like, are

[Kyle Brandt]

you gonna call the cops? Are you gonna call Stan? And, like, he's nervous, for sure.

[Chris Ryan]

I think the kid calls the cops at some point. The kid's like, my mom's gone.

[Kyle Brandt]

I want.

[Chris Ryan]

I need to tell the police.

[Kyle Brandt]

Because he says to his dad, like, we should call the cops. And he's like, no. Like, he's. He really, like, puts this.

[Chris Ryan]

The whole part about not calling the

[Bill Simmons]

cops is a borderline compressed amount of time, too. I. I don't think it's, like, a half of them, like, kicking around, really.

[Chris Ryan]

One of the lessons of this movie. Call the fucking cops.

[Bill Simmons]

Sure.

[Chris Ryan]

Yes. That was the father in law's mistake. Say, no, no, we can't bring him in here.

[Bill Simmons]

Scotty, maybe. Maybe be nicer to your mom because you never know when she's going to get kidnapped.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, true.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Come on, Scotty. What stage the worst. We mentioned how they did the, the Blair Witch move. That was really all I had. For what stage the worst. Because it just seems dopey now because you would just Google and be like, this didn't happen. Why these fucking guys do this?

[Bill Simmons]

I think as a character who is aged the worst, if you went into future in the fictional world of Fargo, it would be Scotty. Totally orphaned, but terrible. Probably a multi millionaire because he Wade's estate. Inheriting Wade's estate. Yeah. So now he's running parking lots in all of Brainerd, I guess.

[Kyle Brandt]

Murdered his grandpa's murder.

[Bill Simmons]

Very dark guy. I would love to see Fargo too. Just the Scotty Chronicles.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's the guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe he buys the Minnesota Wild, you know, like

[Kyle Brandt]

that's good.

[Chris Ryan]

But in with Glenn Taylor and the

[Bill Simmons]

T Wolves, I guess the only other thing that's aged the worst is I personally don't really see a lot of hot buffets getting, getting used up re anymore, do you?

[Kyle Brandt]

I see them at the supermarket. Supermarket has a hot food buffet. It'll be like a sweet and sour shrimp and then like ears of corn.

[Bill Simmons]

It's always interesting.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

But then I, I just always think twice about it.

[Chris Ryan]

I think middle America, it's still going.

[Kyle Brandt]

Okay. There's a big spit guard factor there. You know, it's very communal even.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay, put it this way. Smorgasbord style. Like, like it's all 4,500 calories per scoop.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. My age. The worst was really jarring watching this. Do you guys now, like, do you sleep with your phone on your bedside table or is it away from where you sleep?

[Bill Simmons]

It's, it's pretty close.

[Chris Ryan]

I, I, I flagrantly don't listen to all the evidence not to put your phone near where you sleep. I have it like within reach.

[Kyle Brandt]

I've done the work. And it's like in another room, Margie being woken up up by that phone next to her face with an actual functional bell inside it. Like in the middle of the night. Like, I, I wonder if, like when Ben watched this, he's like, holy. Like, that phone is so loud and you don't even know who's calling. It could be an ex murderer. It could be some weirdo from high school. The fact that she just is picking this up in the middle of the night. Like, I used to do that, of course, because I was alive for that. But that's aged terribly.

[Bill Simmons]

Not being able to turn your ringer off, but also see who. It's crazy.

[Kyle Brandt]

And if you took the phone off the hook, it would be, yeah, probably One the.

[Chris Ryan]

Of.

[Bill Simmons]

Of, you know, a dozen cops in, like, a certain area in Brainerd. So she's got.

[Chris Ryan]

I think the. The buffet for lunch was a good call. Cr as a wood stage. The worst.

[Kyle Brandt]

When you said smorgasbord, my mouth dried up a little bit.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. It's just like, I just. I. I just very rarely come across somebody who's like, I gotta hit this chicken fricassee and meatballs before I get. I remember the afternoon part of my job.

[Kyle Brandt]

Potato salad too.

[Chris Ryan]

When I worked for Kimmel's show, we used to have, like, we would write. We'd have this big lunch that they would cater every day. They'd bring in, like, Italian, and people would be like, oh, we should get Thai today, or Zanku chicken and get all this food. And we would all, like, overeat. And then it's like, all right, time to write jokes. And we'd all be like, yeah, like, all right.

[Bill Simmons]

You don't even eat, like, before we do a live show. Like, it'll be 8pM you only for, like, five hours.

[Chris Ryan]

Four.

[Bill Simmons]

Pure hot water.

[Chris Ryan]

So then I was like, we gotta stop eating so heavy before we do Joe. Like, we should get healthier stuff. Everyone's so fucking mad at me.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Fucking Simmons. They're east coast shit. Wanted to get salads. Fuck you. Like, they wanted sandwiches and that stuff. But I was thinking about that when I was watching that buffet of just eating a sweet Swedish meatball. I know, at 12:30 in the afternoon, I wouldn't be able to function after that. Hans Gruber scale villain ranking. We'll do Stormar, I guess, for this.

[Bill Simmons]

How would you rank in this movie, though? Is Jerry the most evil person in this movie?

[Chris Ryan]

I had this in unanswerable questions. Is he the worst person in the movie?

[Kyle Brandt]

He does the most evil thing.

[Chris Ryan]

I actually think he is because he doesn't care about his son at all. He has stuff to actually care about and doesn't his wife and his son. He's just their fucking disposable for some weird things.

[Kyle Brandt]

Stormare is just like a sociopath. He doesn't feel anything. But I think Lindegaard is the most despicable character by far.

[Bill Simmons]

So in some ways, he's, like, the biggest villain in the movie.

[Chris Ryan]

So what ranking would you give him?

[Bill Simmons]

I'd have, like, zero.

[Kyle Brandt]

To Gruber.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Like an eight.

[Kyle Brandt]

He's also the biggest because he's more

[Bill Simmons]

of a Simon Gruber, like, a little bit below a Simon. Seven. Eight. Yeah, he.

[Kyle Brandt]

He, like, in. They had. They Call him out in the first scene. He won't even ask his wife or the father in law for the money.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, when they. When they catch him in the hotel room and he's just like, oh my God. Screaming like a baby.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, he's fresh. Fresh in prison.

[Kyle Brandt]

She's just London in prison. It'd be a five second movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Friends of the skinheads to try to survive. He's just getting killed. Ruffalo H ribitic purge over acting Word. I didn't have anybody.

[Bill Simmons]

Hard to give it to this movie because.

[Kyle Brandt]

So good.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I mean you. You want to give it to Yana Gita? No. Like he's these spectacular.

[Bill Simmons]

Nailing it.

[Kyle Brandt]

Proudfoot goes for it. Like. But he's supposed to, you know, it's.

[Chris Ryan]

I foot may be the closest.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

You.

[Chris Ryan]

You have a flex category.

[Kyle Brandt]

All right. Flex category. I'm going to do the. The Will Campbell award for a character he knows weighing over his head and is going to mess it up for the rest of the movie. No, I just made that up.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh my God.

[Kyle Brandt]

I haven't seen Bill since the super bowl. So I wanted to hit him with

[Bill Simmons]

some Super Bowl Campbell for the character with the shortest arms.

[Chris Ryan]

I felt like I got shot in the face like Carl.

[Kyle Brandt]

There's an actor you know is not up to the task with the rest of the Castor in McLaren. Allegedly.

[Chris Ryan]

Allegedly.

[Kyle Brandt]

No. I have Billy Batts award for the most biting and scalable insult. The scene with him pulling up to that for the parking ticket.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh my God. Your clip on tie.

[Kyle Brandt]

Here we go. I suppose you think you're an authority figure. That stupid fucking tie in uniform, huh?

[Craig Horbeck]

Huh?

[Kyle Brandt]

Big guy king clip on tie there. Big fucking man. If these are the limits of your life, pal, rule a little fucking gate here. Here's your $4, you pathetic piece of shit. God, isn't that erotic? And this guy, that shot of his smile just fading and just stupid bad teeth and everything. And then this part where that scene changes where he goes, I just pulled in here. And then he has his butt. He goes, I just fucking pulled in here. And then the guy starts honking. That scene is so relatable. We've all been at that gate and be like, I really have to pay the $4.

[Bill Simmons]

And he even tries to kind of reach out to him where he's like, I've decided not to go on my trip.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. It turns out so.

[Bill Simmons]

It's not even like I'm deciding not to park. I'm flying where I thought it was going to fly.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, I Still have to pay the $4, right? You kidding me? Oh, God, I love that part. And it's an amazing put down.

[Chris Ryan]

That was a good one.

[Kyle Brandt]

Thank you.

[Chris Ryan]

The CR Thinks Luke Wilson could have been Harris support Hottest Take award. What'd you have, C.R.

[Bill Simmons]

we alluded to this a little bit in our opening conversation, but this movie is in direct conversation with no country for Old Men. And I think, you know, you have the bag of money, the character in over their head, sacrificial wife, and a cop who is trying to make sense of the extreme violence that they come across. I thought it was amazing that Marge's last lines basically is like, so that was Mr. Lundergard. That was Mrs. Lunder guard over there on the floor. And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd. And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know? Don't you know that? And here you are. It's a beautiful day. Well, I don't understand it. And then Ed, Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones in no country just goes the crime. You see? Now it's hard to even take its measurements. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to do this job. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. It's just kind of like that I've gotten to the sort of part of evil and the darkness out there that is incomprehensible. And it's amazing that these guys are like that. In between, Cormac McCarthy writes this novel, but that they're kind of making the same story and talking about the same stuff.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting. Yeah, because that. That's one of the things I love about no country is he has this realization, like, what am I doing this for?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, there's some dark shit out there. I'm getting older, and I just. It's not for. It's not. Not for me anymore. I think about that when I watch some of these cop movies. Sometimes these people, you know, in their early 30s, they're jumping over, like, parking garage just trying to catch somebody. And it's like, at some point, you must realize, definitely, the man, there's just gonna be another guy coming. I know I'm doing this. I don't get respect from anybody for it.

[Kyle Brandt]

Remember, I mean, the end of Seven where he's like, the world is a wonderful place and worth fighting for. I believe the first part.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

And the Morgan Freeman's just like, I just saw the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. And, yeah, this. I think I'm done.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I'm done. What did you have for this, Kyle?

[Kyle Brandt]

So guy or Grimsrud Stormir in this?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Of all the insane shit he does in this movie, the wood chipper, the executions, by far the craziest thing he does is calling for a second pancake

[Bill Simmons]

meal of the day.

[Kyle Brandt]

Fucking outrageous.

[Bill Simmons]

Have you ever done it?

[Kyle Brandt]

I don't think it's ever been done. I want to put yourself in the position where you're on a fucking road trip and in the morning you have a full stack of fluffy, buttery, syrupy pancakes.

[Chris Ryan]

And you're sitting. It's immediate constipation.

[Kyle Brandt]

You're sitting, you're fucking farting. Disgusting.

[Chris Ryan]

You are chain smoking. That might help with the constipation.

[Kyle Brandt]

And then in the same day, they're like, let's run it back. I want another stack of pancakes. Carl's first reaction is, what, are you nuts? And I feel like the Cohens are like, we need a creative way to tell people what a lunatic this is.

[Bill Simmons]

He's only interested in, like, cigarettes, pancakes, and killing people.

[Kyle Brandt]

Not even, like. Not even pasta or pizza. Like, pancakes. I don't want it in the same week after a plate of pancakes. And there's also this funny detail where the line says, we stop at Pancakes House. And he kept going to the Cohens and be like, I think there's a typo in the script. It should be pancakes. And they're like, there's no typos in the script. Yeah, Pancakes House. Which makes them sound more crazy. I. It's like you have a mattress in your stomach all day.

[Bill Simmons]

I'm trying to remember. Like, this is a great one. Like, when have you doubled cuisine in the same day?

[Kyle Brandt]

And what cuisine would it be?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, pizza.

[Kyle Brandt]

Maybe like tacos, like a breakfast burrito.

[Chris Ryan]

This is where we. If we had Joe House here, he would just be rattling.

[Bill Simmons]

He'd be like, oh, I'll do a morning gumbo. And then like a nighttime seafood tower.

[Kyle Brandt]

I could probably be protein, probably not dairy, but you know that Grims was like that full ice cream scoop of butter on every slice, not to mention the sides. And Carl's like, let's go get a steak and a beer. I know. And he's like, more fucking pancakes. It's insane. All the other shit he. I get why he puts the wood chipper. He's to conceal the evidence he shoots the cop for self preservation. The pancakes is inexplicable.

[Chris Ryan]

Red Auerbach used to find any Celtic that had pancakes.

[Bill Simmons]

Are you serious?

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, really? Slow him down.

[Chris Ryan]

Just an actual.

[Bill Simmons]

Are you saying Red Arbach invented heat culture?

[Chris Ryan]

If Red Arbach found out you had pancakes, he fined you, like, $25. He bought you. They're the worst thing a human being could eat.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, they're rough.

[Bill Simmons]

They're fucking amazing, though.

[Chris Ryan]

In 1997, a year after this movie, a pilot was filmed for a TV series set in Brainerd. Shortly after the events of the film. Starring Edie Falco as Marge Gunderson. No involvement from the Coens. Directed by Kathy Bates. The pilot you can find on YouTube. I sent it to you guys. It's an amazing what if. Because if this pilot gets picked up up. The Sopranos now no longer has Edie Falco as Carmella. Who. I think there's three people that have to be on that show. Right. If you're going Sopranos. Does this show work without these people? It's really only Tony and Carmela. I even think you could have somebody else's Melfi and probably be fine.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Paulie Walnuts would be my third. I just think he's irreplaceable. And one of the funniest people I've ever met.

[Bill Simmons]

Would Imperioli be like, Christ, maybe.

[Chris Ryan]

So there's four. Yeah. Imperial would be the fourth. But I just think if you take Carmelo out of that, I don't think that's the greatest show of all time anymore. So the pilot doesn't get picked up. Huge. What if it's almost like we have in sports where it's like, there's a cheap. Portland had taken mj. The fucking world.

[Bill Simmons]

The ripples go up to. There's no Fargo series from Noah Hawley.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Bill Simmons]

So you miss out on. And Kirsten Dunson. Jesse Plemon season. The Billy Bob Thorton renaissance kind of starts on Fargo.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Like there's a lot of stuff that comes out of Fargo that wouldn't have happened.

[Chris Ryan]

Edie Falco. Instead she goes and does Oz. Yes. Which leads to Sopranos. We get her an eye on.

[Kyle Brandt]

Because they initially they wanted Braco for Carmela.

[Chris Ryan]

She said no, she didn't want to be the wife again.

[Bill Simmons]

She's done caring.

[Kyle Brandt]

So I wonder if they could have gotten her. Probably not. I think it was right. Like, you can't have that show without Falco. She's one of the greatest performances ever.

[Chris Ryan]

You know why she didn't want to be the wife. Carmela.

[Bill Simmons]

Because that's all we had. Cameron.

[Kyle Brandt]

They would have found it.

[Bill Simmons]

They would have found it.

[Kyle Brandt]

They would have found it.

[Chris Ryan]

Casting what ifs. Oh, no. The way she says, oh, no, Cassie, what ifs? I almost couldn't believe this and had to research it. And it's true. I thought it was Internet bullshit, and it's just not. Bill Pullman was supposed to be Jerry. Jerry, really?

[Kyle Brandt]

Bill Pullman.

[Chris Ryan]

Bill Pullman was supposed to be Jerry and had to back out. Had some sort of scheduling conflict and that's what led to William H. Macy.

[Bill Simmons]

Like. Yeah. Macy talked about how he basically, like, chased the Cohens across the country doing auditions.

[Chris Ryan]

Bill Pullman, he's way too handsome.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like, he's. Pullman is dashing. Like he's romantic. Leads. No way.

[Bill Simmons]

God, I wonder what he pulled out for Bill Pullman.

[Chris Ryan]

Is.

[Bill Simmons]

That wouldn't have been. That's not Independence Day.

[Kyle Brandt]

Right?

[Bill Simmons]

Like, when. When would he.

[Kyle Brandt]

Independence Day.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's like 96, right around there.

[Chris Ryan]

Bill Pullman was in the mix, like, a big, big A list way for, like, five years. Sure. Because even malice, which we have not done on the rewatchables. But Sierra and I both love. But he's. It's him, Kidman and Alec Baldwin. It's the three of them. He's in Independence Day and I don't know.

[Bill Simmons]

He's sleeping.

[Kyle Brandt]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

He's in one of the wider. Yeah. Which one of those Wider.

[Bill Simmons]

The wider.

[Chris Ryan]

Then they looked at Richard Jenkins for a while and gave it to Macy.

[Kyle Brandt]

I don't know.

[Chris Ryan]

Jenkins. Jenkins is so good in Brad with a Minnesota accent.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know. If. If Pullman becomes Lund Guard. Does William H. Macy become the president, United States of. In Independence Day?

[Bill Simmons]

That'd be pretty good. Pretty good.

[Chris Ryan]

Wow.

[Kyle Brandt]

As Jerry L. We will not go quietly tonight. Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Best. That guy. It has to be Harv Presnell as Wade Gustafson. I don't.

[Kyle Brandt]

Is that what you had, Chris?

[Bill Simmons]

No, I had Larry Brandon.

[Kyle Brandt]

I got Larry Brandenburg.

[Bill Simmons]

Stan.

[Kyle Brandt]

Stan Grossman. He's in Shawshank.

[Bill Simmons]

He's part of the crew.

[Kyle Brandt]

Think about it. He doesn't have any lines, but he's part of that. Red and Andy Crue was betting on the fresh fish, and I just. I had no idea what his name was. Larry Brandenburg as Stan Grossman. Is that what you had, Chris?

[Bill Simmons]

That's what I had. You know, he does two episodes of Cheers.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a really good one. You might be right.

[Kyle Brandt]

Right.

[Chris Ryan]

Because the only reason they had Harv, he hadn't Made a movie in 20 years.

[Kyle Brandt]

This is awesome.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

He was like this 50s, 60s, 70s guy and then retired. And then they'd, like, pulled him back somehow.

[Bill Simmons]

They had the best eye for faces. Like, they'll just be like, that's. That's who it is. You know?

[Kyle Brandt]

And then like two seconds later, he's in Private Ryan as, like, a general. And that's him. Right. He shows up in that movie.

[Bill Simmons]

But the only one armed guy, right?

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So the Shashank crew was. It was the guy who was in silent rage. Yeah, that guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

I don't know his name, but it

[Chris Ryan]

was the stuttering guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

I do believe you're talking out of your ass.

[Chris Ryan]

That guy. Yeah, yeah, the stuttering guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

It was Brooks William Sadler.

[Chris Ryan]

William Sather Haywood. And then that guy was the quiet guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yep.

[Chris Ryan]

Morgan Freeman. There was one more too. And then I guess the.

[Kyle Brandt]

Well, there's the guy from the Sopranos who marries Janice. Isn't he in that crew?

[Chris Ryan]

Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, Rich.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, Rich.

[Kyle Brandt]

He's a great crew.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Dion Waiter's award.

[Bill Simmons]

Steve Park.

[Chris Ryan]

Who do you have?

[Bill Simmons]

Steve Park.

[Kyle Brandt]

Steve park has Mike Yanagita.

[Chris Ryan]

I could offer you Shep Proudfoot at Steve Park.

[Bill Simmons]

It's maybe the one of the great Dion of. Of.

[Chris Ryan]

I could offer you the guy who wanted to pay 195 for his vehicle with no true car.

[Bill Simmons]

Very funny. Very good.

[Chris Ryan]

I could offer you Jose Feliciano.

[Kyle Brandt]

Got no complaints.

[Chris Ryan]

And I could offer you the two escorts who made the point that he was funny looking, not circumcised.

[Kyle Brandt]

I love all those Mike Yanagida. Chris, you just brought me there. I have Yanagita on my waiters. Rushmore. Like, I have Drexel and True Romance. I've got Walking in Pulp Fiction. I've got Mike Yanaguida and I've got the Goat. Multiple migs. Like those. Those are my four all time Dion waiters. He's in the George Washington state of rushmore. Multiple MIGs, two lines of dialogue, an eternal impression. But Yanagita is on that with.

[Bill Simmons]

I would only add John. John Marley is Jack Wilson. Godfather.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

We've had so many good dms. I would love to see the complete list.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, listen, that sounds like a br.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a great list.

[Kyle Brandt]

It sounds like a bracket too. Like it's tourney time. The.

[Bill Simmons]

They did.

[Chris Ryan]

Roger Ebert would be a good bracket.

[Kyle Brandt]

Roger Ebert did a special episode of their show with Scorsese and when it went to 2000 where they list their top 10 movies of the night 90s Scorsese comes on and he says he's got Fargo at number four. One of the first things he says in his commentary about this movie that won all these awards is. And there's this amazing scene with this Asian American actor who's giving all his emotions out. It's just a beautiful scene. Like, he fucking loved the Yanagita scene. Scorsese. It was like his favorite scene in the movie. Yeah. It's so, so, so good.

[Chris Ryan]

Who do we have for Pulp? For Dion? Was it the Wolf or Walking?

[Kyle Brandt]

This. Watch up your eyes.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it was walking. Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Do you know that the guy, Steve. Stephen Park. I know everything about this scene. He's talked about this scene. And when he performed it, Mike Yaniguita, the Cohens came up to him afterwards, and they're like, so fucking funny. Hilarious. And he was, like, really hurt.

[Bill Simmons]

Cause he's like, this is supposed to be a fucking.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like. I thought it was. I was, like, pouring my heart out. It's funny. Like, they're laughing. He thought it was like a straight, dramatic scene.

[Chris Ryan]

Oh, interesting.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

The fact that he goes same side of the booth and just takes the. That and takes that.

[Bill Simmons]

She's like, I didn't want to crane my neck. I know.

[Kyle Brandt]

And Chris, we've never done a pod. Can you imagine? Five minutes, then I'm just coming over here. Chris, do you mind if I sit over here? And you're like, no, I like you over there. I can see you better. I'm just going to sit like this

[Bill Simmons]

child, you Yanagita for the rest of this pod.

[Kyle Brandt]

Because if she was all right with him sitting there.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God, dude, they're 15.

[Kyle Brandt]

He's going in for the kiss. I have a take on that. That, like, Yanagiri has a room, and he's got there early. He's got a room at the Radisson.

[Bill Simmons]

It's been there for lunch at the Radisson.

[Kyle Brandt]

No, no, no. He's suited up. Up. She's got, like, a scotch. Like, this is everything.

[Chris Ryan]

Hold on. In Yanagita's defense.

[Kyle Brandt]

Go on.

[Chris Ryan]

She suggests the Radisson. It's a hotel.

[Bill Simmons]

Do you think when he's watching her on tv, do the press conference or, you know, get interviewed about this case, that she. He can see that she's pregnant or does she have a big coat on?

[Chris Ryan]

I don't think you think he's like, pregnant fetish.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I just think it's like, I wonder if when she walks in. So we have to clearly.

[Chris Ryan]

Pregnant porn searches for this movie woman on top and pregnant or two.

[Kyle Brandt]

Third trimester.

[Chris Ryan]

Too wood chipper.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think he's probably Crest Palm that she's pregnant.

[Bill Simmons]

I think so too. I think when she orders the diet Coke, he's like, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Recasting cat director.

[Kyle Brandt]

She wants her to get like a Long Island.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know, I wonder. I. I would hope if she would not leave that drink unattended either. Like, I think everything's on the table. Not good.

[Chris Ryan]

Recast the couch. Director City.

[Bill Simmons]

You can't do a different city.

[Chris Ryan]

Can we test drive Robert Duvall as the father in law?

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Give it a test drive. Just because he passed away recently. But yes, it's taking like a little more firepower for that character. Does that do anything for.

[Kyle Brandt]

He's going to McDonald's. He didn't finish. Yeah, he'd be fantastic.

[Bill Simmons]

The thing I like about it is like these guys pick this dude out of relative obscurity. Hasn't acted from 20 years. It looks like the role of his lifetime. The role he's been meant. He's meant to do. And he does the exact thing they need him to do. And sometimes it's like.

[Chris Ryan]

Know when it's like a 70s, like,

[Bill Simmons]

what if Brando could do this? And it's like, well, what if Brando then ruins the movie?

[Kyle Brandt]

You know, he shows up too in. In Face off right after this. Like he got hot. He's in Face off too. Like he. Directors were picking him.

[Chris Ryan]

They liked him half asserting. Research Storm ER has 18 lines of dialogue.

[Kyle Brandt]

Great.

[Chris Ryan]

Never says more than one sentence.

[Bill Simmons]

I think most of it is in the pancake conversation.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know what it makes me think of our guy right here. Very few lines of dialogue. Machine like killer. It's close to the song.

[Chris Ryan]

Look at that guy.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

I love that man. In his book stand for the battle for America's Soul, Ohio governor John Kasich spends three pages describing his hatred for this film.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, okay. What's his substance?

[Chris Ryan]

That's how I didn't.

[Bill Simmons]

I think he probably hates its depiction of a smaller town. America.

[Chris Ryan]

The Paul Bunyan statue was built for the film. In dispatch dismantled. Wade's car dealership was filmed in Richfield, Minnesota, now occupied by a Best Buy.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Kyle Brandt]

They're still at Best Buy. Great.

[Chris Ryan]

King of Clubs was in northeast Minneapolis. Demolished in 03. Replaced by low income housing.

[Bill Simmons]

Before BS come in with a tiny little investment.

[Chris Ryan]

Joel Cohen had McDormand and John Carroll lynch conceive a backstory for their characters to get the feel of the characters. And they decided Norm and Marge Met working on the police force. When they married, they had to choose which one quit. Norm quit and took up painting.

[Kyle Brandt]

Because Norm doesn't work. Right.

[Chris Ryan]

He's a painter. Painted the 3 cent stance.

[Bill Simmons]

I paint that they work that. They went to high school together. Because Yada Gita is like, oh, you remember her? She was a year behind us.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I mean, he was hilarious in high school.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

The trademark Minnesota. Yeah. Appears 179 times in the script.

[Kyle Brandt]

Great.

[Chris Ryan]

That's all I got. Apex Mountain.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, for Apex Mountain, certainly. Swedish Meatballs. Because when you think about what IKEA was doing.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

With their. Their amazing cafe.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

When you would go get some furniture that you would then get divorced while you put it together. Yeah. And then also this movie. I just. I don't really know when Swedish meatballs have peaked again.

[Kyle Brandt]

Again.

[Bill Simmons]

I would also say GMAC Financing plans.

[Kyle Brandt]

Sure. Riley Giefenbach. Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Just. And then True Code Sealant.

[Chris Ryan]

Would you say Coen Brothers?

[Bill Simmons]

No, I'd say no country is Going Brothers.

[Chris Ryan]

I would say that as well. Macy. It's not yet, but maybe after Boogie Nights we're getting there. Getting in the vicinity. Some would argue the cooler when he actually led a movie that had a lot of people in it.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Shameless show. Like, people love that show. Shameless. He was on for years.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like Emmy Rossum. I never watched it, but I know people like it.

[Chris Ryan]

Minnesota, probably the World Series in 88 or 87. Kirby Puckett. Oh, fuck.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Or 91. One of those two World Series.

[Kyle Brandt]

The 98 Vikings and Moss's rookie year in Randall Cunningham. And they went to title game. They were unbelievable.

[Bill Simmons]

KG winning that. That first round series against the game.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Windshield scraper scenes.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Buscemi.

[Kyle Brandt]

Well, he wins a Golden Globe for that. Boardwalk Empire. This is my favorite role of his.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I think there's been bigger moments. I think Con Air is probably like his apex.

[Kyle Brandt]

He got that right after this.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

He starts being a movie star. He starts doing all the Sandler movies.

[Chris Ryan]

Like, it's funny. I would probably. I'd probably. I'm not right. But I would probably say Sopranos because he was also directing.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

And when he was in Sopranos, it was such a big deal. Deal.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It's like, oh, my God, they got Buscemi for.

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Chris Ryan]

Play Tony's cousins.

[Kyle Brandt]

And he was amazing.

[Chris Ryan]

Unbelievable.

[Kyle Brandt]

You're right.

[Chris Ryan]

I can't believe they're doing this.

[Kyle Brandt]

And the way his story ended on the porch is. That's so good.

[Chris Ryan]

McDormand. No, but I don't know what it is.

[Bill Simmons]

I think.

[Chris Ryan]

I think her career was intentionally designed not to have an apex.

[Bill Simmons]

Three billboards was, like, the most attention I think she got.

[Chris Ryan]

The Blue Ox. Probably the most fun. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. They're having a hell of a time in the house.

[Chris Ryan]

Shovel murders. Better shovel murder for you.

[Kyle Brandt]

We dance close with some shovel murders in Home Alone.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the thing. It's implied.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. The street shovel.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Remember in Halloween, there was a good through the face shovel murder, but this was pretty good. Fargo.

[Kyle Brandt]

Fargo. The town.

[Bill Simmons]

It could have been named Brainerd. Most of the action in the movie takes takes place.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

So they. They talked about that and said they just like the name Far Great.

[Bill Simmons]

This is the best thing about them is that, like, people will spend decades kind of, like, unpacking their movies, and they're like that. Kidnapping is just cool.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

We just like making movies.

[Chris Ryan]

Why don't you name it Brainerd? Yeah. Sound good enough?

[Kyle Brandt]

Sounds much cooler.

[Chris Ryan]

Storm air. I'm still going. Dino Velvet.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I don't care how good he was.

[Bill Simmons]

I think Armageddon, but, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Six months after this movie came out, he was in a jungle with Steven Spielberg shooting the Lost World. Like, he had a fitness. What a run show.

[Chris Ryan]

Late 90s was a good run for him. Dangling cigarette smoking.

[Kyle Brandt]

There's a scene where Ray Stance and Ghostbusters has one dragging on his lip for, like, 10 seconds as he's looking at slime. It's iconic. He lets this thing hang, and he's like, I don't know how they did it, because it's really. You know what I'm talking about. It's really funny.

[Chris Ryan]

Minnesota accents.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

All right, here's my favorite one. One in movie. Disfiguring facial wounds. Mount Rushmore. I have one battle.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Freeway with Ker Sutherland.

[Bill Simmons]

Okay.

[Chris Ryan]

Reese Witherspoon shoots him in the face, and then he. Fargo. What's the fourth one?

[Bill Simmons]

It's definitely Aaron Eckart in Dark Knight.

[Chris Ryan]

There we go.

[Bill Simmons]

Two face.

[Kyle Brandt]

We burns half of his face off,

[Chris Ryan]

but he didn't get shot, though.

[Bill Simmons]

No, I'm sorry. I just mean face injury.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I. I think we can sneak that in then.

[Kyle Brandt]

Gus Fring has the same thing at the end of Breaking Bad. Like, half of his face is melted off just like that.

[Chris Ryan]

It's true.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's good.

[Chris Ryan]

Cruiser. Hanks.

[Bill Simmons]

It's Hanks. Because he thinks this is a perfect movie.

[Chris Ryan]

And Hanks could have played how many characters in this?

[Bill Simmons]

He could have played Jerry.

[Kyle Brandt]

Jerry for sure could have played the

[Chris Ryan]

Older Hanks could have played the dad.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, he could play. He could play the guy shoveling snow in his driveway. He was like going crazy out there

[Kyle Brandt]

in the late guy.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Honestly, he would have been a really interesting storm air. He never really went. We never got dark tanks.

[Bill Simmons]

Not this dark, no.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It would have been disorienting to watch him play somebody that evil.

[Kyle Brandt]

This the road to predition. He's a killer with a tommy gun and gets in gunfights and stuff like that, but not like this. I have. I have Cruz written down as storm er just because. Oh, I want to talk about his smoking. Yeah. Like Vincent from Collateral, the smoking. I just want to see you guys

[Bill Simmons]

doing Carl more than stor. Like.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, really?

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Cruz, just be like, you're imbecile.

[Chris Ryan]

I was like doing cocktail cruise. Yeah, yeah. Scorsese or Spielberg? Clearly Scorsese. We did best hang, worst hang the two criminals.

[Bill Simmons]

Carl Guerra is what I got.

[Chris Ryan]

Does Sarah Connor award for wood modern technology ruin this movie?

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Ring cameras, cell phone pings and texting. I think we catch these guys in five minutes.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. You can't take a license plate off of a parking garage car. You're just everywhere. You're on five cameras.

[Bill Simmons]

Kind of wild that when she gets out to the.

[Chris Ryan]

The.

[Bill Simmons]

The scene of the state trooper being having been shot, it's just two cops. Like. Like you'd think there would be like the FBI would be there. Like there would be like 30 cops out there. And it's just the two.

[Kyle Brandt]

She asked Lou, where is everybody? He's like, well, it's cold, Margie. That's the explanation. It's cool.

[Bill Simmons]

That's right.

[Kyle Brandt]

There's like no one wanted to come out picking it.

[Chris Ryan]

We mentioned the title. I have a couple good ones, but what'd you guys have?

[Kyle Brandt]

I'll rattle some. First of all, the London guards would definitely have a dog, which I think would be a fun part of the home invasion. The fact that Scotty does not have a Kirby Pucket poster in his room is ridiculous.

[Chris Ryan]

1987 doesn't like sports.

[Kyle Brandt]

He's a hockey.

[Bill Simmons]

He likes hockey.

[Kyle Brandt]

Most importantly, though, he would add a

[Chris Ryan]

North Stars poster or something.

[Kyle Brandt]

North Star something. Most important. Picking it. I know, it's a funny line. It makes for a good dialogue. There's no fucking way. Carl is uncircumcised. This is a white guy from the Midwest West. Hello. There's no way. I know, it's funny. Now if you want to talk about storm air, the Swedish guy, then we can talk. Yeah, there Carl is. She says it wasn't.

[Chris Ryan]

I get.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's funny. There's no way he's uncircumcised.

[Chris Ryan]

That's a great one.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God.

[Kyle Brandt]

Month.

[Bill Simmons]

Why does Carl not take off. Why does he go back for G and go back to, like, be like, hey, I got.

[Kyle Brandt]

He gives him the money.

[Bill Simmons]

Some money.

[Chris Ryan]

Sabana Vad.

[Kyle Brandt]

Or maybe he's worried he'll come after him. Maybe he gives him the 40,000. He's like, I got a million. I'm just gonna do this right. Close the end. I'm out of here. But if.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, in retrospect, why did he bury the. The money?

[Kyle Brandt]

Because he didn't want to show up to the house with it in the car.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. Because then he can always use that as like, if he needs.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, why wouldn't he bear. Bury it closer to the house?

[Kyle Brandt]

I know.

[Bill Simmons]

Because he's. Half of his face is hanging off.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

I guess he's all right. So I have two. I have the father in law. Never connecting dots. You seem like a smart guy, a good businessman.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Jerry needs. He wants the money himself for the kid. 750.

[Kyle Brandt]

That's a good one, Bill.

[Chris Ryan]

Then the kidnappers want a million. It's like right in the vicinity. I just would have been like, unanswerable.

[Bill Simmons]

Question is, what's. What's Jerry gotten himself into? Is he.

[Chris Ryan]

They don't want you to know. It's like a suitcase.

[Bill Simmons]

He's taking out wounds on cars that don't exist.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Is it to pay for something else or is it to pay for that parking lot?

[Craig Horbeck]

Lot.

[Chris Ryan]

They don't want us to know.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Or is it just to get.

[Chris Ryan]

They said that they. Cohen literally said we don't. We didn't want people to think about it. They did the.

[Bill Simmons]

The Pulp Fiction, the GMAC thing when he's just like, yeah, so I'm going to need those VIN numbers. He's like, okay, I'll fax it over. Yeah, I'm gonna have my girl send him right over.

[Kyle Brandt]

Think about his master plan is just. Just write them hard to read in pencil and fax it. And that's like.

[Bill Simmons]

That's the perfect $300,000. They were like, okay, here you go, bud.

[Kyle Brandt]

My patience is at an end. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Well, I was thinking, what's the most realistic. Realistic funny reason that he's down $300,000 or whatever? Be like him gambling on both socks

[Bill Simmons]

in the 86 World Series

[Chris Ryan]

playoffs. 93.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. You gotta be thinking differently about him. Now that I know Jerry Lendergaard has a Playboy hanging right there in his bathroom, he might be some sort of pervert

[Bill Simmons]

at the diner, you know, that's

[Kyle Brandt]

a very weighted moment. Yeah, he kind of looks just. How you doing? Yeah, like he full up does how you doing to her. It's a good call, Chris. There might be something there with him.

[Chris Ryan]

I think the father in law would have figured that out. Second thing, why are the criminals in the car for this long? I did some Googling.

[Kyle Brandt]

It's not that far.

[Chris Ryan]

Fargo to Minnesota, four hours. Brainerd to Minnesota, two hours. Brainerd to Fargo, three hours.

[Bill Simmons]

Minneapolis.

[Chris Ryan]

Why do we have to. Why do we have to stay overnight? Minneapolis. Why do we have to stay overnight anywhere? It's a four hour drive. I'm driving, dude. In three. Three to get a hotel and sleep in the same. You're going to do it in three?

[Bill Simmons]

Despite the fact that it's complete white out blizzard condition.

[Chris Ryan]

I have to do pancakes twice with Stormar and then share double bed hookers with them. I want to get to my location and get. Get away from this guy. They make it seem like they're driving from like New York.

[Bill Simmons]

Imagine anybody more miserable in this circumstances than you.

[Kyle Brandt]

Jesus Christ.

[Chris Ryan]

The smoking in the car, the windows. Personal assault.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, my God. Honestly, they say that's a cancer agent, carcinogen, Whatever.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a sociopath behavior.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Okay. Sequel, prequel, Prestige tv. All podcast. Untouchable, obviously. Prestige tv, because we had it. Yep. And I didn't see the first season of Fargo. I never watched the Fargo TV series, which is a hole. Maybe I should. But the first season picks up with what happened to the money, Right?

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Kyle Brandt]

They talk about the case that's buried.

[Bill Simmons]

The case is buried, goes back, and I think one of the characters is Marge's. I think Ted Danson plays Marge's father or grandfather. I can't remember. It's been a while since I've seen it.

[Kyle Brandt]

Bilbo's in it, right? Like he's the. The guy who plays Bilbo in the Hobbit.

[Bill Simmons]

Elijah Wood.

[Kyle Brandt]

No, that's Frodo.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, Bilbo.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. What's the guy? He's a super famous actor. I thought he was the lead in.

[Chris Ryan]

Kyle, you're in the wrong room right now.

[Bill Simmons]

Ian Holm.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. No, no, not Ian Holm. In the new movie. In the Hobbit movies. What's that guy's name?

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, Martin Freeman.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Martin Freeman.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. I can't remember. This is the thing is I. I just haven't seen the Fargo since they came out.

[Kyle Brandt]

I haven't seen either.

[Chris Ryan]

You guys might be talking another language right now.

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Kyle Brandt]

When's the fellowship pod?

[Chris Ryan]

It was Sierra.

[Kyle Brandt]

If you could do Star wars, you could do fellowship. Never.

[Bill Simmons]

It would be funny to do hobbit in this room and you just aren't there. We just have like a cut out of you.

[Kyle Brandt]

Like right there.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm in one of those cages. Like shot caller. If you had a shot caller.

[Bill Simmons]

No, no.

[Chris Ryan]

Is this movie better with Wayne Jenkins, Fergie, the florist, Zane Lowe or somebody else? Kyle, you want to go first?

[Kyle Brandt]

I go first. All right, so it's March. I'm going to have to really work up for this. I just feel like at that Radisson. I think Gus is there.

[Chris Ryan]

Mike. Dan. Young fella. Ah, Suited up to the Radisson.

[Kyle Brandt]

Linda Cooksey. Suck it. Same side of the booth.

[Chris Ryan]

Rejected. Not.

[Bill Simmons]

Son of a goddess.

[Kyle Brandt]

No, my voice isn't right right now. Holy shit. It's March.

[Bill Simmons]

It's Gus time.

[Chris Ryan]

Mike Yanagida would be the best name. Gus has never said Yanagita. Mike Yanagita.

[Kyle Brandt]

He would love Yanage.

[Chris Ryan]

He would love that one. There's a guy on Arkansas now, Darius Acuff.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Just waiting for Gus.

[Bill Simmons]

You're really having a college basketball redis.

[Chris Ryan]

I'm into this draft. Yeah, I've been watching.

[Kyle Brandt]

I was.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah, I've been watching some.

[Bill Simmons]

Holy shit. Gus.

[Chris Ryan]

Crd.

[Bill Simmons]

I was going to do Zane, but,

[Chris Ryan]

like, it feels like people wanted Zane Maj.

[Bill Simmons]

I just want to say right out front, right out in the open, you're on an incredible journey in law enforcement, but you're also on an incredible journey. Journey of motherhood. And tell me about that. Tell me about your journey because we're all watching. We're all waiting. Just like you,

[Kyle Brandt]

Chris. What? You do it. You do. You do this thing. Yeah, that's like. That's perfect.

[Bill Simmons]

I've been watching a lot of tape. I'm gonna. I'm over the course of CR month, I think. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

I hope that's not to the detriment of Frenchie appearances, because that's.

[Bill Simmons]

No.

[Kyle Brandt]

I'm such a fan. Yeah, I even lifted it for the last part.

[Chris Ryan]

The policewoman and the mother.

[Bill Simmons]

I do think Carl Showalter would also make an incredible first take guest just because he's like, I'm not going to debate you. I'm not going to debate you.

[Kyle Brandt]

Stephen, that's great.

[Bill Simmons]

Carl show. Walter, what do you think about Anthony Richardson going to a new team? I'm not Going to debate you. I'm not here to Carl is Sam

[Kyle Brandt]

Donald now an elite quarterback in the league.

[Chris Ryan]

Carl the ninth person at first take not to sell any of Shakes jokes.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh God.

[Kyle Brandt]

I'm selling them at home. I'm laughing at home.

[Chris Ryan]

A couple people are on there. So only a couple. Just want to ask her who gets it. I mean McDormand won the Oscar.

[Bill Simmons]

I. I would say Macy Buscemi or Francis or the Cohen or Deacons is like a legit.

[Kyle Brandt]

And the Oscar goes to Stephen park as my dad.

[Chris Ryan]

They look like Marge.

[Kyle Brandt]

Marge up here.

[Bill Simmons]

So what's going on with you? Mad? You're doing law enforcement. You're doing the motherhood thing. Norm's painting what keep us all up. Where have you been man?

[Chris Ryan]

Much? You eat lunch. You eat so many calories.

[Bill Simmons]

He'll do like a 55 second long question. And then tame and Paul will be like, yes. It's so good, man.

[Chris Ryan]

Probably unanswerable questions. Why was Marge pregnant? Is a question my son asked. But I. I think. Oh, that was one of his questions. Why did they make pregnant. Why did they make her pregnant for the movie? Was their purpose behind.

[Bill Simmons]

I think she's the.

[Chris Ryan]

I think it's just to make it

[Bill Simmons]

cradle of new life in a world that's got so much death. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

We talked about what kind of money trouble was Jerry in. Could you really dispose of bodies for the wood chipper?

[Kyle Brandt]

I think so. I think if you push hard.

[Chris Ryan]

A wood chipper.

[Kyle Brandt]

You got a high grade wood chipper and you're strong back here.

[Bill Simmons]

You know, it's pre NAFTA machinery.

[Kyle Brandt]

Because he probably was going to put Mrs. Lundegaard in their next too. He was like halfway done.

[Bill Simmons]

Piece of timber in there. They should be able to put a human body.

[Chris Ryan]

It's a lot of DNA evidence, though, on the shot.

[Kyle Brandt]

It doesn't make sense.

[Bill Simmons]

Those guys are spooging all over motel rooms across Minnesota. They're like when Michael Douglas comes in and does the black light and it's like this guy. Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Do you have any answer?

[Kyle Brandt]

If they put the tags on the license plate, did they get away with it? Like that unravels everything. Which is by the way, Carl is so stupid. Like you have to put the fucking tags on there. That means there's no murders in Brainerd. They get to the house, it probably goes sideways. Cause Wade's still gonna show up for the drop off. But Carl's not gonna be pissed. And having killed people and I just. The tag. If they put the tags on, does it work.

[Bill Simmons]

It's a great point. But the fact that he doesn't. Cause he's like fuck them. I don't put my tags on. Is exactly why he's a crazy criminal. So it's like the same reason why. It's like if those guys don't need to get laid basically every night, I know they're fine. Like nobody's seen them. Nobody knows who they are. It's the. They find them through the escort.

[Chris Ryan]

It would seem like the number one thing you're doing as a criminal is you're going at some parking garage at three in the morning and taking off somebody's license plate.

[Bill Simmons]

Which is what Carl does eventually, but just too late.

[Chris Ryan]

But that's like. That should be one of the first five things like get a gun, steal a license plate, leave my cell phone at home so I can.

[Bill Simmons]

Don't have a lot of violently tinged conversations with people in random bars.

[Chris Ryan]

Right.

[Kyle Brandt]

You.

[Bill Simmons]

That are very memorable.

[Chris Ryan]

Don't tell two escorts exactly what my plans are for the next five days when it includes the kidnapping.

[Kyle Brandt]

And do it for more than $20,000. Like that's what they're originally paid. 20 grand each for the whole abduction and everything. It's pretty bad.

[Chris Ryan]

That was another unanswerable I had is what was Storm errors. What was his. What was he doing two weeks before this?

[Kyle Brandt]

Smoking bouncer at a bar.

[Chris Ryan]

Like nah, but like part time driving a snowplow.

[Bill Simmons]

Been in that state though. Like three packs a day. Eight. Eight beers a night. Probably a girl at the end of it for a long time.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Obviously not a great guy because Shep knew him from some from. Probably from prison. So maybe got out of the.

[Bill Simmons]

Carl or Gar.

[Kyle Brandt]

This is very interesting. Shep vouches for Gare, knows Carl, but doesn't vouch for.

[Chris Ryan]

For him.

[Kyle Brandt]

I. I don't understand what their relationship is. Carl and Shep.

[Bill Simmons]

I think it's just doing prison time with each other. Yeah. I don't know. Shep didn't know Carl was. I thought he's like, don't know that guy. Don't vouch for him.

[Kyle Brandt]

Well, he's lying because the second.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, right.

[Kyle Brandt]

Carl comes in, he's a. Shep, what are you doing? I was banging that.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

And they're. They're at his house.

[Bill Simmons]

Maybe he's just being honest. I don't vouch for him.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, he doesn't like him. I think it's because Shep and Grimser, they're one of a kind. They don't talk like they're very violent. Whereas Carl never shuts the fuck up. And I think that's the worst thing you can do as a criminal is keep talking.

[Chris Ryan]

One of the things I always learned from these crime movies is you're just more likely to commit more crimes after you get outta prison with people you serve time with. So really the move is to when you get out of prison, cut all the ties with the people you're in prison with. Cause that's where they're gonna look immediately to see if what was he in that?

[Bill Simmons]

I just think that that's a level of sophisticated planning that would rob us of so many good crimes. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Also when you're in prison, like. Like just don't ever call anybody Slick.

[Bill Simmons]

That's right.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Any sort of nickname. Don't really have any traits that people can point to.

[Kyle Brandt]

Slick.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Changes the whole movie.

[Chris Ryan]

What piece of memorabilia would you want or not want from this movie? I just want to say I really like the cop jackets.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

With the, with the fur hood.

[Bill Simmons]

The brown ones.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. I think if you got like a game used, like what was her. Her dumb partner's name?

[Kyle Brandt]

Lou. Lou.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Game use Lou.

[Chris Ryan]

Game Lou. Like, like you.

[Bill Simmons]

You can do some like walking talks around LA wearing that.

[Chris Ryan]

And when it gets cold. I would also offer a Gustafson Motors sign.

[Bill Simmons]

Yes.

[Chris Ryan]

Like just have that right over there.

[Kyle Brandt]

Gustafson Motors would be really cool.

[Chris Ryan]

Yeah. Gustafson Motors.

[Kyle Brandt]

I was really charmed during the Ace Ventura pod listening to Craig Horbeck's naivete about Isotoner gloves and Dan Marino that he couldn't wrap his mind around just leisure gloves. Cause it's a really weird concept. Carl has driving gloves for the entire movie. It's so good with the open knuckles and everything. Sounds great. I think I'm ready to enter a driving glove phase in my life.

[Bill Simmons]

Driving slippers as well. Oh, that's be great. Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Driving slippers. Yeah. I. I want Carl's gloves. And I'd like to just drive to like baseball practice.

[Chris Ryan]

What are the driving as? You know, I love to drive. What are the driving gloves? Is it better grip? Like, what am I getting at?

[Bill Simmons]

Less pressure on your hands. So it's like.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think it goes back to when there wasn't power steering and you had to really twist the wheel.

[Chris Ryan]

Interesting.

[Kyle Brandt]

I think it's that old school and now I just think it's stylish.

[Bill Simmons]

Guys who were just like, I gotta drive six hours. My hands are gonna get callous if

[Chris Ryan]

I don't coach Finack. Mr. Miyagi were best. Worst life less. And there's more to life than a little money, you know? Don't you know that? Yeah, that's got to be the life lesson.

[Kyle Brandt]

I had a Mr. Miyagi worst life advice.

[Bill Simmons]

The kids like cakes twice in a day.

[Craig Horbeck]

Yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Worst. The kids like to say, oh, shoot your shot. Like Mike Yanagi. Don't shoot that shot. Yeah, sometimes you don't shoot your shot. Take.

[Bill Simmons]

Take the social cues, Mike. Yeah, yeah.

[Kyle Brandt]

Don't even say.

[Chris Ryan]

I mean, he was deranged.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know, Linda Cooksey. He was bothering her for a long time.

[Chris Ryan]

Time booth move was fast, but I might have waited 20 minutes.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, you don't know how long Mike's been sitting there drinking Dewars, though. Like maybe he's got a lot of liquid coffee.

[Kyle Brandt]

It looks like a doers. Yeah, I saw that.

[Bill Simmons]

Dewar's feels like a lunchtime at the Radisson.

[Kyle Brandt]

Drink the same color of doers. That's so I wrote down doers. That's so funny. Chris.

[Chris Ryan]

I. Again to defend Mike. I think when she picks the place and it's a hotel, I think you think you're ready to roll. She answered the phone in 10:45.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah, she's excited as hell about it. She's dressed up another city with the husband at home. She even says, we've been married a long time in the scene. Like she's a little excited. She wasn't gonna do anything but little walk in the wild side.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah.

[Chris Ryan]

Best double feature choice.

[Bill Simmons]

No country.

[Kyle Brandt]

Eight millimeter.

[Craig Horbeck]

Double.

[Kyle Brandt]

I want more storm air. I want more storm air. I got it written down. 8 millimeter. One of the most intense theater experiences I've ever had. Terrified in that moment movie when he's

[Bill Simmons]

walking through machine millimeter with Kyle.

[Chris Ryan]

I didn't realize you like the movie this much. Yeah, we'd have to have Van in it too. We're be gonna be able to do four. Four person rewatchables again. Sure.

[Bill Simmons]

Men's recovery project of guys talking about 8 millimeter again.

[Kyle Brandt]

I gotta go back and listen to the first millimeter podcast.

[Chris Ryan]

You're gonna see things you won't be

[Kyle Brandt]

able to unsee when he's just looking through his fingers at that and it's just rolling on him. Oh, I love that movie.

[Chris Ryan]

Hardcore is on 2B.

[Bill Simmons]

By the way, what's your double future?

[Chris Ryan]

I have a triple.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, great.

[Bill Simmons]

My God.

[Chris Ryan]

Raising Arizona. Fargo. No country. There you go. Every 10 years, check in with the Cohen killers. I think they won the movie too. I have them for who won the movie.

[Bill Simmons]

It's completely original depiction of the world.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know what I wrote down? I wrote down Minnesota.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh, way to go, Kyle.

[Kyle Brandt]

Pre Randy Moss. Pre Joe Maurer. Pre Jesse Ventura. This Marge Gunderson was like the face of Minnesota.

[Chris Ryan]

Pre K, K, early kg. Kg's on the team, but they don't know he's gonna be kg.

[Kyle Brandt]

Yeah. Rookie year. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like Minnesotans might have a love hate with this movie because maybe that makes fun of them.

[Bill Simmons]

I think. I think this movie had like, the only dip in its popularity, was like any kind of feeling that it was mocking the people. And this is a criticism the Cohen's get sometimes where it's like, oh, they're making fun of the people that they're depicting. Yeah, but I don't think that's truth. I just think that they see humor in it.

[Kyle Brandt]

You know, it's really fun, funny.

[Chris Ryan]

We're going to throw to Craig, who's not here, but he's going to because he's at Indiana Indianapolis for the combo.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh, got to be there.

[Chris Ryan]

Anybody's at St. Elmo's watching the Pats beat reporter eat shrimp. But Craig's going to weigh in with his take right here.

[Craig Horbeck]

All right, fellas, what's up? I am in Indianapolis right now. Not really, but at the time of this taping, I was. So I'm going to respond here in my own little solo video. And I got to say, guys, I know you're not here right now, so you can't respond to me. But, guys, screenwriting's dead. Because what the Coen brothers are able to do with all of their movies, you almost forget how it used to be and how tight things used to be. I looked it up. The Coen brothers have made one movie that came out in theaters that was over two hours long. And it was no country for old men was two hours and two minutes. Outside of that, you look at the 80s, the 90s, and the 2000s, raising Arizona, blood Simple, Fargo Burn After Reading, True Grit, Serious Radio man, all under an hour and 50 minutes. So, yeah, I made me realize screenwriting is dead. This is a 98 minute movie and it has everything you need. The length makes you want to rewatch it. The scenes are tight. They do exactly what they need to do and they get out. And yet it doesn't feel rushed. It never feels rushed. So I love Fargo. I love the Coen brothers. I was a film major in college, and I always felt like the Coen brothers were making movies for young people who Love movies. And they felt like film made your movies, not in a stuffy way, but in an attainable way. Like, everything they do feels real and kind of handpicked and like you can recreate it and like, it makes you want to go out and do your own stuff. So I. I've always loved the Coen Brothers. Their movies are always slightly off balance. You kind of always watch with your head tilted a little bit, and they're really funny, dark, twisted, funny all the time. All of their movies, Movies. Also, one of my favorite things about Coen brothers movies in general, and specifically with Fargo, is the casting. Everybody in this movie looks like a real human being. Bill Macy, Buscemi, Francis McDormand, all the way down. John Carroll lynch, who's been in four of the last five rewatchables we've done Peter Stormiel and keep going all the way through. They all look like real people. And I just think that makes such a difference. And it's a little different now the way that things are casted. And half of the side characters we have now need to have 500,000 Instagram or TikTok followers to be casted a movie so that you can market a little bit more. But they all feel like real people. And the person now who I think is doing that similarly is Tim Robinson, who when you watch a show like the Chair Company or his movie Friendship or things like that, everyone in those movies feels real. And it's fascinating. And to me, it makes you more invested in the story. So I love the Cornbr Brothers. I love Fargo. I think the scene where both of the guys are having sex in the motel next to one another, followed by the four of them watching the Tonight show, is one of the funniest scenes in movie history. So that is my review. 5 out of 5 on Letterboxd. Thanks, guys.

[Chris Ryan]

All right, thanks, Craig. I can't believe Craig has that thing for a pregnant woman. That's so fucking weird. Why did I say that?

[Kyle Brandt]

I respect it, buddy. Respect it.

[Chris Ryan]

Really hardcore.

[Bill Simmons]

Send it to Indianapolis and see what happens.

[Chris Ryan]

That's it. Well, we did it. Sierra Month. We have two in the. The books. How you feel three movies left.

[Bill Simmons]

So far, so good.

[Kyle Brandt]

Good.

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah, you know, it's a lot of pressure.

[Kyle Brandt]

Three movies mapped out.

[Bill Simmons]

We have a couple mapped out. We have three mapped out.

[Chris Ryan]

We know we're ending the month with LA Confidential. Yes. And there's two. Two more that we don't know.

[Bill Simmons]

We're negotiating with each other.

[Chris Ryan]

You got Bud White T. It's. It's your call. Oh, yeah, yeah. We even like dived out of Netflix. We dived out of Netflix for this?

[Bill Simmons]

Yeah. So we'll see.

[Chris Ryan]

Find it.

[Kyle Brandt]

Another LA Confidential ends the month. How about I give you your balls back, you wopcock sucker? I love Bud White. I'll be listening, folks.

[Chris Ryan]

No, that was watching Gus and Zane back to back.

[Bill Simmons]

Oh my God.

[Chris Ryan]

It's an honor to be here.

[Bill Simmons]

Gus is so good.

[Chris Ryan]

I felt like I was at a buffet with Swedish meatballs and chicken FR Than thanks to Gehow Eduardo as well. And CR Month will be be back next week with a movie we've talked about. I think it's the movie we should we just say what we're going to do next week.

[Bill Simmons]

Well, what are we doing next week?

[Chris Ryan]

Well, we were talking about a certain movie that we'd been talking about for a long time that recently became available.

[Bill Simmons]

Eddie and the Cruisers.

[Kyle Brandt]

Oh shit. That's been years.

[Chris Ryan]

I've just.

[Bill Simmons]

We got to do it.

[Chris Ryan]

Words of Music CR Thanks, Kyle. Great to see you. Thanks, cr.

[Kyle Brandt]

Great to be here, Bill. It.